Oh, to be a fly on the wall - #943 in a series...

Romy Schneider and Sophia Loren

Jayne Mansfield, Liza Minnelli, Mitzi Gaynor, Kaye Ballard

Edith Piaf reading the palm of Django Reinhardt

Ramon Novarro and Robert Montgomery

Divine makes her thoughts known on the Trumps

I had the last laugh

"All my life I wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor. Now Elizabeth Taylor looks like me".

"I think I've always been respectable. What I do onstage is not what I do in my private life... It's an act... It's how I make my living. People laugh, and it's not hurting anyone."

"Of course the last thing my parents wanted was a son who wears a cocktail dress that glitters, but they've come around to it."

"People who used to make fun are now fans. I had the last laugh."



It's Divine's birthday, bitches.

All hail!

Divine (born Harris Glen Milstead, 19th October 1945 - 7th March 1988)

Sometimes she`s too bold

"[Divine] is a real person. Sometimes she`s too bold, but she has socially redeeming qualities, no matter what she does. She`s her own person, and a lot of people like that."

"I love making people laugh. I just happen to do it dressed as a woman. It`s a part I play, and I've never confused the two."

"I asked my dad, `are you embarrassed by what I do?` And he said, `at first I was, but I feel if I made as much money wearing a dress as you do, I`d wear dresses too.'"

The sadly-missed icon of trash, John Waters acolyte and international drag superstar Divine would have been 70 years old today.

Divine (born Harris Glenn Milstead, 19th October 1945 – 7th March 1988)

Divine Saves The World

From Dangerous Minds:

In San Francisco in the 1970s, Todd Trexler was one of the most prolific and sought-after poster artists for the city’s predictably amazing drag scene. He generated many posters for the Nocturnal Dream Shows and midnight movie screenings at the Palace Theater on 1741 Powell Street (it was also called the Pagoda later on). His attention-grabbing yet stately posters captured and perhaps helped define the distinct aesthetic of San Francisco’s drag happenings. The contrast of Art Deco filigrees to big personalities like Divine and the Cockettes is very effective.

Sadly, Trexler passed away in February of this year at the age of 70. His essential posters can be seen in an exhibition that opens this week at Magnet (4122 18th Street) in the Castro district of San Fransisco. Some of the items have not been on display in 40 years.

As an art student in 1968, Trexler began making posters, many of them hand-drawn. He was close with Sebastian (or, as he was also known, Milton Miron), a key member of the Cockettes. Todd continued to do work for them for a number of years in the 70s, before moving to Monterey to attend nursing school in 1979.

Here’s Trexler on the “Divine Saves the World” poster shown above:

"I absolutely adored working with Glenn on the few occasions that I did! The day that we planned to take photos for the VICE PALACE poster I’ll never forget. Glenn and I sat in the back seat of a car with Sebastian in the front. We drove around San Francisco looking for a place to use as a backdrop. We ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts and decided it was perfect! Glenn was in makeup, bib-overalls with the sides split to make them large enough. He had tossed a couple of 50’s net prom dresses in the trunk of the car. He slipped into a pair of open-toed backless mules and wrapped the prom dresses around himself and instantly became DIVINE! I took the photo and that poster is an all-time favorite of my poster career."

Divine decadence, indeed.

Todd Trexler posters website

And I'm just not satisfied

It is indeed a shame that the opening gala of the 27th Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LLGFF) at the British Film Institute on Friday clashed with our cherished Polari.

For, as it says on the festival website:

...it "kicked off in flamboyant style with the gala screening of I Am Divine, a new documentary about the legendary actor and drag queen Divine.

An LLGFF favourite following the screening of his film Vito at last year’s Festival, director Jeffrey Schwarz flew in for this international premiere, four days after the film was unveiled at its world premiere at America’s SXSW festival. Several friends of Divine were among the audience, including sculptor and performance artist Andrew Logan, record producer Pete Waterman and Mark Moore of S’Express.

The after-party was held aboard HMS President, in tribute to Divine’s legendary performance on a paddle steamer on the Thames during the Gay Pride parade in 1985."

Festival programmer Brian Robinson was there on the riverbank in 1985 and recalls Divine’s show:

"It was a very funny day, very busy. There were lots of stalls along Jubilee Gardens. You could hear the sound of Divine singing on the boat before you could actually see Divine. And when the paddle steamer hoved into view, you could see Divine gyrating. It was an extraordinary sight. In the middle of the river, even Divine looked small, but it was a great moment that I’ve never forgotten."

And neither have I - for I too was there!

One of the campest moments of my life...

Native Love (Step by Step)
Dance-ah feel the heat
Rock your body to the native beat

Step by step
Slowly I turn
Step by step
Come on

Well here I am I got the beat
I'm gonna rock to the rhythm of the body heat
Come on now let's have big fun
Rock to the rhythm let's get undone.

I've achieved my teenage dream
Cuz love was on my mind
This native love is restless
And I'm just not satisfied.

And I'll never get enough
Of that native love.

Step by step
Slowly I turn
Step by step
Come on

My car is my Ferrari and my body's Jack LaLanne
My clothes are by Armani and my hair is by Elaine
Tiffany and Cartier are telling me the time
This native love is restless
And I'm just not satisfied.

And I'll never get enough
Of that native love
Dance ride feel the heat
Rock your body to the body heat.

What it looks like
What it is
Say pungra, jungra
Say damn to the thungra

Step by step
Slowly I turn
Step by step
Come on

This native love is restless
And I'm just not satisfied
This native love is restless
And I'm just not satisfied

Hey GQ man, here I stand
For everyone to see
And if I'm not your type, well that's alright
Cuz that don't matter to me.

Got the rhythm and the rhyme
I'm right on time
I'm gonna blow your mind
This native love is restless
And I'm just not satisfied.

The Lesbian and Gay Film Festival continues until 24th March 2013.

Man is the Hunter

"I don't care whether people like me or dislike me. I'm not on earth to win a popularity contest. I'm here to be the best human being I possibly can be."

Tab Hunter - movie icon, poster-boy-hunk for a whole generation of teenage girls and closet queens, latterly cult character actor and now out, gay and proud gay man - was born on 11th July 1931.

As we wish Mr Hunter (aka Arthur Andrew Kelm) a happy 80th birthday, it is worth highlighting the fact that the former teen idol starred in not one, but two of the campest films ever made, and both are well worth entering in the Museum.

He played the cinema owner (and love interest) "Todd Tomorrow" alongside Divine's troubled housewife "Francine Fishpaw" in John Waters' 1981 "Odorama" masterpiece Polyester:



From The New York Times:

Francine worries helplessly about household odors, and does her best to make sure her suburban house is furnished with all the velour, gilt and brightly colored plastic her family could want. Polyester is a movie that can get laughs out of a dinette set simply because it is a dinette set. The props, all through the movie but particularly in Francine's lovely home, are priceless. Mr. Hunter is certainly endearing, playing a man who runs an art-house drive-in, one with champagne and caviar at the refreshment stand and a Marguerite Duras triple bill on the screen. Divine, lovestruck and trying hard to please, is seen poring bewilderedly over a copy of Cahiers du Cinema.

From Prince Planet Movies site:

The biggest inspiration for Polyester comes from one of John Waters’ idols, the great Douglas Sirk. If you can imagine one of Sirk’s sumptuous Technicolor melodramas from the 50s but with a 300-pound drag queen as the female lead, you have an idea of what to expect.

Polyester trailer

Mr Hunter, evidently by now entirely comfortable with playing love scenes with a very large tranny, went on to appear once more against Divine (and that other archetypal self-parodist Lainie Kazan) in Paul Bartel's 1985 camp spoof Western Lust in the Dust:



From the film's sleevenotes:

Gold fever has struck the wild western town of Chile Verde, where hard-living cowboys and hot-blooded wenches all lust for wealth and each other. But when mysterious gunfighter Abel Wood and defiled singer Rosie Velez (Tab Hunter and Divine, reunited from "Polyester") come together with saloon owner Marguerita Ventura (Lanie Kazan), fiery passion and unbridled greed turns the town upside down. Do these two wanton women share the secret to a fortune in buried treasure? And how far south of the border will desperate men have to go to uncover it?

Lust In The Dust trailer

Not bad for the boy who sang Young Love. [Read my blog on Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle about Mr Hunter last year.]



Mr Tab Hunter, we salute you!

http://www.tabhunter.com/