LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes movie star Jane Russell died on Monday at the age of 89, her family said. Russell, best known as the buxom star of 1940s and 1950s movie, died of respiratory failure at her home in Santa Maria, central California, her family said. Jane Russell passed away peacefully today at home surrounded by her children at her bedside, Russells son Buck Waterfield said in a statement. In 1953 Russell paired with Marilyn Monroe in her biggest hit, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jane tried to convert me (to religion) and I tried to introduce her to Freud, Monroe said. Russell also had a hit with Clark Gable in The Tall Men in 1955. But many of her movies were quickly forgotten. Russell was at her best in comedies. Multimillionaire producer-industrialist Howard Hughes discovered Russell and put her in her first movie, The Outlaw. Except for comedy, I went nowhere in the acting department, Russell said in her autobiography. The truth is that, more often than not, Ive been unhappy about the pictures Ive been in.