If you could see her through my eyes

The great "Emcee" Joel Grey celebrates his 80th birthday today, and an exhibition dedicated to him opens in New York tomorrow.

Joel Grey/A New York Life examines the enduring impact that performer and photographer Joel Grey and his adopted city have made on each other. Through rare artifacts from his stage and screen career, objects from his personal collection, and his own photography, the exhibition offers a unique look at New York through Grey’s eyes. It will include posters, playbills, and costume pieces from Grey’s iconic productions, combined with a selection of his New York City photographs. Together, they dramatize how the breadth of his artistic work has been nurtured and inspired by his life in New York City.

With an illustrious career in the New York theatre spanning nearly six decades, Joel Grey is known for his Tony and Academy Award-winning portrayals of the Emcee in both the Broadway and film versions of Cabaret. In addition to his work for stage, screen, and television, Grey is also an accomplished photographer. Working behind the camera for nearly 40 years, he has made New York images—including some taken with his cell phone—that focus lovingly on the urban environment, including candid details of street life, signage, and New York's built environment. In accentuating overlooked moments and the multitude of everyday details of the city, Grey’s photographic work provides a quiet and poignant counterpoint to his life in the spotlight.

Joel Grey: A New York Life

Facts about Joel Grey:

• He is the son of Mickey Katz, the famous "gurgler" of the Spike Jones Orchestra.
• His daughter is actress Jennifer Grey, the star of Dirty Dancing.
• He originated the role of the Wizard in the musical Wicked.
• In 1991, he played Adam, a devil, in the final episode of Dallas.

"I think there's nothing like live theatre. Everyone wants to be part of it. So why not try it?"

"The fact that I got away with singing and dancing for a long time is still a miracle to me."

On old age: "I really don't deal with my self or my life by the numbers."

"I don't need to be on the stage to live."

Joel Grey, born 11th April 1932.

Joel Grey/A New York Life is at the Museum of the City of New York 12th April - 7th August 2012

More about the exhibition

He modernised the nude

From the BBC:

The work of US photographer Herb Ritts is the subject of a major exhibition at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, nearly 10 years on from his 2002 death.

According to the Getty Center, Ritts "revolutionised fashion photography, modernised the nude, and transformed celebrities into icons".

Herb Ritts: LA Style runs until 26 August 2012

On the Jukebox this weekend

"I am just too much"

"Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life."

"An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know."

"When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch."

"Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."

"Everybody has a heart. Except some people."

"In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star."

"Old age is no place for sissies."

"That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers."

"I am just too much."

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (5th April 1908 – 6th October 1989)

The True Fairy of Rock

On Thursday I went to the British Film Institute on the South Bank for a special talk about the influence of certain extraordinarily flamboyant gay performers - Jackie Curtis, Lindsay Kemp and Jayne/Wayne County specifically - upon the early 70s musical phenomenon known as "Glam Rock".

The marvellous Rupert Smith (of "House of Homosexual Culture" fame), presenting, drew upon some rare photographs and even rarer video footage to illustrate the subtle ways our own homegrown (and mainly straight) stars of the genre - Bryan Ferry, Marc Bolan and David Bowie among them - took a lot of the decadence embraced by the post-Warhol, post-psychedelia artists and performers who congregated in New York at the turn of the decade, and made it their own (with far greater commercial success, of course).



The occasion was the premiere at this year's London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival of the film documentary Jobriath AD (for which I sadly didn't manage to get a ticket), which charts the life, rise, and spectacular fall of the man described as "the world's first gay rock star", and features contributions from stars at the time, together with newer fans such as Jake Shears, Stephen Merritt, Joey Arias, and Marc Almond.



Mr Almond wrote the following for The Guardian:

In Bolan, Bowie and Ferry, we had three straight men. The press needed a whipping boy, someone to laugh at. The US was having its own brief, glam-rock moment. Enter Jobriath, who introduced himself to the world with the career-killing words: "I am the true fairy of rock." To the British music press, he seemed a charlatan and, worse, an American who had supposedly plagiarised our beloved Bowie. He was kicked, bullied and beaten by the critics – and I adored him instantly for that.

Jobriath (born Bruce Wayne Campbell) was a readymade entity with no big backstory, yet to those in the know he was thrilling and seductive, a guilty secret. I remember, before hearing a note, taking a journey to the big city to buy his first album, the eponymous Jobriath, on import. Its striking cover showed him with porcelain skin and film-star ruby lips, a fallen, broken, beautiful statue. On a first listening, the music is a baffling mix of glam, musical theatre and 1970s rock. At a time when we craved simple guitar chords and a Starman chorus, Jobriath seemed just too musical, too clever – not pop enough. His voice had a touch of Mick Jagger at his most sluttish (like that other wonderful US glam import, David Johansen of the New York Dolls). He was a mix of wide-eyed innocent and world-weary punk. And though there was a nod to Ziggy in the vowels, Bowie he was not.

For me, above all else, he was a sexual hero: truly the first gay pop star. How extreme that was to the US at the time. His outrageous appearances on the hallowed US rock show The Midnight Special prompted shock, bewilderment and disgust. Everyone hated Jobriath – even, and especially, gay people. He was embarrassingly effeminate in an era of leather and handlebar moustaches.

Despite (or maybe bcause of) this catastrophic failure, acts as diverse as the Pet Shop Boys, Gary Numan, Def Leppard's Joe Elliot and Siouxsie Sioux have cited him as an influence, and Morrissey is perhaps Jobriath's most prominent celebrity fan - it is said the moody one fought to get Jobriath's albums re-issued in the 1990s.

Here are those shocking (at the time) performances from The Midnight Special in 1974:

Jobriath - Rock of Ages

Jobriath - I'maman

And here is the trailer for the documentary Jobriath AD itself:

Jobriath A.D. - Glam Rock's Lost God trailer

Jobriath died with complications arising from AIDS in 1983, aged 36, while living in a pyramid on top of the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

The star who never was certainly left an extraordinarily camp legacy.

Jobriath pages on the fab Queer Music Heritage site

Read an excellent article on Jobriath from MOJO magazine in 1998

My kind of techological development

Hand-made Art Deco computers by Jeffrey Stephenson Design

Thoughts for the day

More delightful US miltary VD posters are available at Mikeliveira's Space