Ellie Russell

Eleanor Porrazzo was born November 8 1925 on St. Marks Place in New York City to Romilda and George Porrazzo, the youngest of five children in an Italian immigrant family. A rapid advancement student at Washington Irving High School, Eleanor graduated at 16. Like many of her generation, she helped support her family by going to work at an early age. Though she had hoped to attend college and study journalism, she instead found jobs singing with bands, thus embarking on a ten-year career in show business under the name of Ellie Russel (and sometimes Eleanor Russell and Elly Russell). With the United Services Organization (USO) she performed for troops in the U.S. and in war-torn Germany and Belgium; her remembrances are documented at the Institute on WWII and the Human Experience. After returning to the U.S. she sang and toured the country with several prominent big bands, among them the Charlie Barnet, Jerry Wald, Larry Clinton, Sy Oliver and Jimmy Dorsey Orchestras and Les Brown and his Band of Renown. She originated and toured nationally in the role of Happy Hotpoint for Hotpoint Corporation industrial shows, and in the early television era she was a featured cast member of the Jerry Lester Show, a daytime variety program on ABC. In the mid-1950s, while performing at a hotel in Miami Beach, she was introduced to radio announcer Jim Harpring. Within the year Eleanor retired, married Jim, moved to Miami, and started a family, to which she was deeply devoted. Eleanor Harpring passed away peacefully at her home in Vero Beach, Florida on May 11, 2019, surrounded by her family.