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[W!nston]

Ian McKellen

Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He is the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BIF Award, two Saturn Awards, four Drama Desk Awards and two Critics' Choice Awards. He has also received two Academy Award nominations, four BAFTA nominations and five Emmy Award nominations. McKellen's work spans genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. His notable film roles include Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and Magneto in the X-Men films.

McKellen was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours. Sir Ian was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Cambridge University on 18 June 2014.

Personal life

McKellen and his first serious partner, Brian Taylor, a history teacher from Bolton, began their relationship in 1964. It lasted for eight years, ending in 1972. They lived in London, where McKellen continued to pursue his career as an actor. For over a decade, he has lived in a five-storey Victorian conversion in Narrow Street, Limehouse. In 1978 he met his second partner, Sean Mathias, at the Edinburgh Festival. This relationship lasted until 1988. According to Mathias, the ten-year love affair was tempestuous, with conflicts over McKellen's success in acting versus Mathias's somewhat less-successful career. Mathias later directed McKellen in Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2009. The pair entered into a business partnership with Evgeny Lebedev, purchasing the lease on The Grapes public house in Narrow Street.

In the late 1980s, McKellen lost his appetite for meat except for fish, and so mostly excludes it from his diet.

He has a tattoo of the Elvish number nine, written using Tengwar, on his shoulder in reference to his involvement in the Lord of the Rings and the fact that his character was one of the original nine companions of the Fellowship of the Ring. The other actors of "The Fellowship" (Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Sean Bean, Dominic Monaghan and Viggo Mortensen) have the same tattoo. John Rhys-Davies, whose character was also one of the original nine companions, arranged for his stunt double to get the tattoo instead.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. In 2012, McKellen stated on his blog that "there is no cause for alarm. I am examined regularly and the cancer is contained. I've not needed any treatment."

He became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church in early 2013 in order to preside over the marriage of his X-Men co-star Patrick Stewart to his then fiancée Sunny Ozell. McKellen was awarded an honorary degree by Cambridge University on 18 June 2014, becoming a Doctor of Letters.

LGBT rights campaigning

McKellen at Manchester Pride 2010
While McKellen had made his sexual orientation known to his fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public, in a programme on BBC Radio 3. The context that prompted McKellen's decision — overriding any concerns about a possible negative effect on his career — was that the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Bill, simply known as Section 28, was under consideration in the British Parliament. Section 28, which proposed to prohibit local authorities from "promoting homosexuality" 'as a kind of pretended family relationship', was ambiguous and the actual impact of the amendment was uncertain.[55] McKellen became active in fighting the proposed law, and declared himself gay on a BBC Radio programme where he debated the subject of Section 28 with the conservative journalist Peregrine Worsthorne. McKellen has stated that he was influenced in his decision by the advice and support of his friends, among them noted gay author Armistead Maupin. In a 1998 interview that discusses the 29th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, McKellen commented, "I have many regrets about not having come out earlier, but one of them might be that I didn't engage myself in the politicking." He has said of this period: "My own participating in that campaign was a focus for people [to] take comfort that if Ian McKellen was on board for this, perhaps it would be all right for other people to be as well, gay and straight". Section 28 was, however, enacted and remained on the statute books until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in the rest of the UK.

In 2003, during an appearance on Have I Got News For You, McKellen claimed when he visited Michael Howard, then Environment Secretary (responsible for local government), in 1988 to lobby against Section 28, Howard refused to change his position but did ask him to leave an autograph for his children. McKellen agreed, but wrote, "Fuck off, I'm gay." McKellen described Howard's junior ministers, Conservatives David Wilshire and Dame Jill Knight, who were the architects of Section 28, as the 'ugly sisters' of a political pantomime.


McKellen at Europride 2003 in Manchester.
McKellen has continued to be very active in LGBT rights efforts. In a statement on his website regarding his activism, the actor commented that:

I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about – nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I never want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern; legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.

McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, a LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the Stonewall riots. McKellen is also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, GAY-GLOS, The Lesbian & Gay Foundation, and FFLAG where he appears in their video "Parents Talking".

In 1994, at the closing ceremony of the Gay Games, he briefly took the stage to address the crowd, saying, "I'm Sir Ian McKellen, but you can call me Serena": This nickname, given to him by Stephen Fry, had been circulating within the gay community since McKellen's knighthood was conferred. In 2002, he was the Celebrity Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade[64] and he attended the Academy Awards with his then-boyfriend, New Zealander Nick Cuthell. In 2006, McKellen spoke at the pre-launch of the 2007 LGBT History Month in the UK, lending his support to the organisation and its founder, Sue Sanders. In 2007, he became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organisation that provides support to young, homeless and troubled LGBT people.

In 2006, he became a patron of Oxford Pride, stating:

"I send my love to all members of Oxford Pride, their sponsors and supporters, of which I am proud to be one... Onlookers can be impressed by our confidence and determination to be ourselves and gay people, of whatever age, can be comforted by the occasion to take the first steps towards coming out and leaving the closet forever behind."

McKellen has taken his activism internationally, and caused a major stir in Singapore, where he was invited to do an interview on a morning show and shocked the interviewer by asking if they could recommend him a gay bar; the programme immediately ended. In December 2008, he was named in Out's annual Out 100 list.

In 2010, McKellen extended his support for Liverpool's Homotopia festival in which a group of gay and lesbian Merseyside teenagers helped to produce an anti-homophobia campaign pack for schools and youth centres across the city. In May 2011, he called Sergey Sobyanin, Moscow's mayor, a "coward" for refusing to allow gay parades in the city.

 

[dargelos]

That's interesting when the writer seems to suggest coming out as non religious was even more of a leap than coming out as gay.
And that saying "net worth" seems a bizzare comment on a mans resume. My net worth is zero, so I dont deserve to live then, I see. That's just the gulf between English English and American English. Imagine the difficuly for someone like bigsal who uses a translator.

 

[W!nston]

Elton John

Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English singer, songwriter, composer, pianist, record producer, and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.

In his five-decade career Elton John has sold more than 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. He has more than fifty Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, fifty-eight Billboard Top 40 singles, twenty-seven Top 10, four No. 2 and nine No. 1. For 31 consecutive years (1970–2000) he had at least one song in the Billboard Hot 100. He has the most No. 1 hits on US Adult Contemporary Chart (16 No. 1's). His single "Something About the Way You Look Tonight"/"Candle in the Wind 1997" sold over 33 million copies worldwide and is "the best-selling single of all time". He has received six Grammy Awards, five Brit Awards – winning two awards for Outstanding Contribution to Music and the first Brits Icon in 2013, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, a Disney Legend award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of 100 influential musicians of the rock and roll era. In 2008, Billboard ranked him the most successful male solo artist on "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists" (third overall).

Elton John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, is an inductee into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998. John has performed at a number of royal events, such as the funeral of Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in 1997, the Party at the Palace in 2002 and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace in 2012.

He has been heavily involved in the fight against AIDS since the late 1980s. In 1992, he established the Elton John AIDS Foundation and a year later began hosting the annual Academy Award Party, which has since become one of the highest-profile Oscar parties in the Hollywood film industry. Since its inception, the foundation has raised over $200 million. John, who announced he was bisexual in 1976 and has been openly gay since 1988, entered into a civil partnership with David Furnish on 21 December 2005 and continues to be a champion for LGBT social movements worldwide and same-sex marriage.

Sexuality and family

In the late 1960s, Elton John was engaged to be married to his first lover, secretary Linda Woodrow, who is mentioned in the song "Someone Saved My Life Tonight". He married German recording engineer Renate Blauel on 14 February 1984, in Darling Point, Sydney, with speculation that the marriage was a cover for his homosexuality. John came out as bisexual in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, but after his divorce from Blauel in 1988, he told the magazine that he was "comfortable" being gay.

He has revealed that he considers himself lucky to have avoided the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that claimed the lives of prominent gay celebrities such as Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury and many of his friends and loved ones. He admitted that he did not know how he had failed to contract HIV from the risks he took with unprotected gay sex.

In 1993, he began a relationship with David Furnish, a former advertising executive and now filmmaker. On 21 December 2005 (the day that the Civil Partnership Act came into force), John and Furnish were amongst the first couples in the UK to form a civil partnership, which was held at the Windsor Guildhall. Their son, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, was born to a surrogate mother on 25 December 2010 in California. A second son, Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John, was born to the couple by the same surrogate mother on 11 January 2013. John has stated his intention to marry Furnish in a quiet ceremony in May 2014, now that it is legal in England.

In September 2009, he announced his intention to adopt a 14-month-old boy, Lev, from an AIDS orphanage in Ukraine, but he was denied due to his age and marital status. Furnish stated they would continue to financially support Lev and his brother and would campaign for a change in Ukrainian law.

Elton John has ten known godchildren, including Sean Lennon, David and Victoria Beckham's sons Brooklyn and Romeo, Elizabeth Hurley's son Damian Charles, and the daughter of Seymour Stein.

In 2010, he was criticised by some Christian groups in the United States after describing Jesus as a "compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems". William Anthony Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, responded: "To call Jesus a homosexual is to label him a sexual deviant. But what else would we expect from a man who previously said, 'From my point of view, I would ban religion completely.'"

After supporting civil partnership, as opposed to same-sex marriage, in 2008, John is now a staunch supporter of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom and argued in 2012: "There is a world of difference between calling someone your 'partner' and calling them your 'husband'. 'Partner' is a word that should be preserved for people you play tennis with, or work alongside in business. It doesn't come close to describing the love that I have for David, and he for me. In contrast, 'husband' does." In 2014, he returned to addressing the religious perspective on sexuality, claiming Jesus would have been in favour of homosexual marriage.

In 2013, he resisted calls to boycott Russia in protest at the country's anti-gay legislation, but told fans at a Russian concert that the laws were "inhumane and isolating" and he was "deeply saddened and shocked over the current legislation."

 

[W!nston]

Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp, Chelsea, London 1975 © Edward Barber

Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt, 25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999) was an English writer and raconteur.

From a conventional suburban background, Crisp grew up with effeminate tendencies, which he flaunted by parading the streets in make-up and painted nails, and working as a rent-boy. He then spent thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art colleges. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted increasing public curiosity, and he was soon sought-after for his highly individual views on social manners and the cultivating of style. His one-man stage show was a long-running hit, both in England and America, and he also appeared in films and on TV. Crisp defied convention by criticising both gay liberation and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Early Life

Denis Charles Pratt was born in Sutton, Surrey, the fourth child of solicitor Spencer Charles Pratt (1871–1931) and former governess Frances Marion Pratt (née Phillips; 1873–1960); he changed his name to Quentin Crisp in his twenties, after leaving home and cultivating his effeminate appearance to a standard that both shocked contemporary Londoners and provoked homophobic attacks.

By his own account, Crisp was effeminate in behaviour from an early age and found himself the object of teasing at Kingswood House School in Epsom, from which he won a scholarship to Denstone College, Uttoxeter, in 1922. After leaving school in 1926, Crisp studied journalism at King's College London, but failed to graduate in 1928, going on to take art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic.

Around this time, Crisp began visiting the cafés of Soho – his favourite being The Black Cat in Old Compton Street – meeting other young homosexual men and rent-boys, and experimenting with make-up and women's clothes. For six months he worked as a male prostitute, looking for love, he said in a 1999 interview,[citation needed] but finding only degradation.

Crisp left home to move to the centre of London at the end of 1930 and, after dwelling in a succession of flats, found a bed-sitting room in Denbigh Street, where he "held court with London's brightest and roughest characters."[citation needed] His outlandish appearance – he wore bright make-up, dyed his long hair crimson, painted his fingernails and wore sandals to display his painted toe-nails – brought admiration and curiosity from some quarters, but generally attracted hostility and violence from strangers passing him in the streets.

Middle Years

Crisp attempted to join the British army at the outbreak of World War II, but was rejected and declared exempt by the medical board on the grounds that he was "suffering from sexual perversion". He remained in London during the 1941 Blitz, stocked up on cosmetics, purchased five pounds of henna and paraded through the black-out, picking up G.I.s, whose kindness and open-mindedness inspired his love of all things American.

In 1940, he moved into the bed-sitting room he would occupy for the next four decades, the first floor apartment at 129 Beaufort Street. Here he stayed until he emigrated to the United States in 1981. In the intervening years he never attempted any housework, saying famously in his memoir: "After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse".

He left his job as engineer's tracer in 1942 to become a model in life classes in London and the Home Counties, and continued posing for artists for the next three decades. "It was like being a civil servant," he explained in his autobiography, "except that you were naked." Pamela Green, who went on to be a famous glamour model of the 1950s and '60s, remembers him at Saint Martin's School of Art, as “very thin with a skin so white it almost had a greenish tinge”.

Crisp had published three short books by the time he came to write The Naked Civil Servant at the urging of agent Donald Carroll. Crisp wanted to call it I Reign in Hell, referencing Paradise Lost ("Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven"). Carroll insisted on The Naked Civil Servant, an insistence that later gave him pause when he offered the manuscript to Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape on the same day that Desmond Morris delivered The Naked Ape. The book was published in 1968 to generally good reviews. Subsequently, Crisp was approached by doentary maker Denis Mitchell to be the subject of a short film in which he was expected to talk about his life, voice his opinions, and sit around in his flat filing his nails. This broadcast brought enough attention to Crisp and his book that he soon entered talks about a television drama serial based on the memoir.

Fame

In 1975, the television version of The Naked Civil Servant was broadcast on British and US television and made both actor John Hurt and Crisp himself into stars. This success launched Crisp in a new direction: that of performer and lector. He devised a one-man show and began touring the country with it. The first half of the show was an entertaining monologue loosely based on his memoirs, the second half was a question-and-answer session with Crisp picking the audience's written questions at random and answering them in an amusing manner.

When his autobiography was reprinted in 1975 after the success of the television version of The Naked Civil Servant, Gay News commented that the book should have been published posthumously (Crisp commented that this was their polite way of telling him to drop dead). Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell claimed to have met Crisp in 1974 and alleged that he was not sympathetic to the Gay Liberation movement of the time. Tatchell claimed that Crisp asked him: "What do you want liberation from? What is there to be proud of? I don't believe in rights for homosexuals."

By now, Crisp was a theatre-filling raconteur. His one-man show sold out the Duke of York's Theatre in London in 1978. Crisp then took the show to New York. His first stay in the Hotel Chelsea coincided with a fire, a robbery, and the death of Nancy Spungen. Crisp decided to move to New York permanently and set about making arrangements. In 1981, he arrived with few possessions and found a small apartment on East 3rd Street in Manhattan's East Village.

The title page of Crisp's 1981 book, How to Become a Virgin. Mr. Crisp's handwritten dedication for a fan appears beneath the title, and reads: "To Graham from Quentin Crisp". The dedication is written in a large, round hand with a circle dotting each I.

Quentin Crisp's handwriting and signature, from a dedication on the title page of How to Become a Virgin (1981)

As he had done in London, Crisp allowed his telephone number to be listed in the telephone directory and saw it as his duty to converse with anyone who called him. For the first twenty or so years of owning his own telephone, he habitually answered calls with the phrase: "Yes, Lord?" ("Just in case," he once said.) Later on he changed it to, "Oh yes?", in a querulous tone of voice. His openness to strangers extended to accepting dinner invitations from almost anyone. While he expected the inviter would pay for dinner, Crisp did his best to "sing for his supper" by regaling his hosts with wonderful stories and yarns much as he did in his theatrical performances. Dinner with him was said to be one of the best shows in New York.

He continued to perform his one-man show, published ground-breaking books on the importance of contemporary manners as a means of social inclusivity as opposed to etiquette, which he claimed is socially exclusive, and supported himself by accepting social invitations and writing movie reviews and columns for US and UK magazines and newspapers. He said that provided one could exist on peanuts and champagne, one could quite easily live by going to every cocktail party, premiere, and first night to which one was invited.

Quentin Crisp in a performance of his one-person show, An Evening With Quentin Crisp, in Birmingham, 1982. In this sepia-toned photograph, a straight-faced Quentin Crisp gestures from an ornate, high-backed chair. A large, red handkerchief flops from his jacket pocket.

Crisp also acted on television and in films. He made his debut as a film actor in the Royal College of Art's low-budget production of Hamlet (1976). Crisp played Polonius in the 65-minute adaptation of Shakespeare's play, supported by Helen Mirren, who doubled as Ophelia and Gertrude. He appeared in the 1985 film The Bride, which brought him into contact with Sting, who played the lead role of Baron Frankenstein. He appeared on the television show The Equalizer in the 1987 episode "First Light" and as the narrator of director Richard Kwietniowski's short film Ballad of Reading Gaol (1988), based on the poem by Oscar Wilde. Four years later he was cast in a lead role, and got top billing, in the low-budget independent film Topsy and Bunker: The Cat Killers, playing the door-man of a flea-bag hotel in a run-down neighbourhood quite like the one he dwelled in. According to director Thomas Massengale, Crisp was a delight to work with.

The 1990s would prove to be his most prolific decade as an actor as more and more directors offered him roles. In 1992, he was persuaded by Sally Potter to play Elizabeth I in the film Orlando. Although he found the role taxing, he won acclaim for a dignified and touching performance. Crisp next had an uncredited cameo in the 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia. Crisp accepted some other small bit parts and cameos, such as a pageant judge in 1995's To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Crisp's last role was in an independent film called American Mod (1999), and his last full-feature movie was HomoHeights (also released as Happy Heights, 1996). He was chosen by Channel 4 to deliver the first "Alternative Christmas Speech", a counterpoint to the Queen's Christmas speech, in 1993.

Last Years

Crisp remained fiercely independent and unpredictable into old age. He caused controversy and confusion in the gay community by jokingly calling AIDS "a fad", and homosexuality "a terrible disease". He was continually in demand from journalists requiring a sound-bite, and throughout the 1990s his commentary was sought on any number of topics.

Crisp was a stern critic of Diana, Princess of Wales and her attempts to gain public sympathy following her divorce from Prince Charles. He stated: "I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die." Following her death in 1997, he commented that it was perhaps her "fast and shallow" lifestyle that led to her demise: "She could have been Queen of England – and she was swanning about Paris with Arabs. What disgraceful behaviour! Going about saying she wanted to be the queen of hearts. The vulgarity of it is so overpowering."

In 1995, he was among the many people interviewed for The Celluloid Closet, a historical doentary addressing how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality. In his third volume of memoirs, Resident Alien, published in the same year, Crisp stated that he was close to the end of his life, though he continued to make public appearances and in June of that year he was one of the guest entertainers at the second Pride Scotland festival in Glasgow.

In 1997, Quentin Crisp was crowned King of the internationally recognized Beaux Arts Ball run by the prestigious Beaux Arts Society. He presided along with Queen Audrey Kargere, Prince George Bettinger and Princess Annette Hunt.

In December 1998, he celebrated his ninetieth birthday performing the opening night of his one-man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, at The Intar Theatre on Forty-Second Street in New York City (produced by John Glines of The Glines organisation). A humorous pact he had made with Penny Arcade to live to be a century old, with a decade off for good behaviour, proved prophetic. Crisp died in November 1999, nearly one month before his 91st birthday, in Chorlton--Hardy in Manchester, on the eve of a nationwide revival of his one-man show. He was cremated with a minimum of ceremony as he had requested, and his ashes were flown back to Phillip Ward in New York. He bequeathed all future UK-only income (but not the copyrights which belong to Stedman Mays, Mary Tahan and Phillip Ward and are managed by Ward) from his entire literary estate to the two men he considered to have had the greatest influence on his career: Richard Gollner, his long-time agent, and Donald Carroll. His estate at death was valued in excess of $600,000.

Influence and Legacy

This colorful portrait focuses on Crisp's face (under his trademark fedora), but the viewer can still glimpse a stylish shirt collar. Crisp squints down his nose at the viewer through almond-shaped eyes. Green stripes extend from eyelid to eyebrow.

Quentin Crisp (oil on canvas), a portrait by American painter Ella Guru. Like the sculptor John W. Mills before her, Guru rendered Crisp wearing his trademark fedora.

Sting dedicated his song "Englishman in New York" (1987) to Crisp. He had remarked jokingly "that he looked forward to receiving his naturalisation papers so that he could commit a crime and not be deported." In late 1986 Sting visited Crisp in his apartment and was told over dinner – and the next three days – what life had been like for a homosexual man in the largely homophobic Great Britain of the 1920s to the 1960s. Sting was both shocked and fascinated and decided to write the song. It includes the lines:

It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile,
Be yourself no matter what they say.
Sting says, "Well, it's partly about me and partly about Quentin. Again, I was looking for a metaphor. Quentin is a hero of mine, someone I know very well. He is gay, and he was gay at a time in history when it was dangerous to be so. He had people beating up on him on a daily basis, largely with the consent of the public."

Crisp was the subject of a photographic portrait by Herb Ritts and was also chronicled in Andy Warhol's diaries.

In his 1995 autobiography Take It Like a Man, Boy George discusses how he had felt an affinity towards Crisp during his childhood, as they faced similar problems as young homosexual people living in homophobic surroundings.

Crisp was the subject of a play, Resident Alien, by Tim Fountain and starring his friend Bette Bourne in 1999. The play opened at the Bush Theatre in London and transferred to New York Theatre Workshop in 2001, where it won two Obies (for performance and design). It went on to win a Herald Angel (Best actor) at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002. Subsequent productions have been seen across the US and Australia. A film of the same name was released by Greycat Films in 1990.

The song "The Ballad of Jack Eric Williams (and Other Three-Named Composers)" from William Finn's song-cycle Elegies refers to him.

In 2009, a television sequel to The Naked Civil Servant was broadcast. Entitled An Englishman in New York, the production doented Crisp's later years in Manhattan. Thirty-four years after his first award-winning performance as Crisp, John Hurt returned to play him again. Other co-stars included Denis O'Hare as Phillip Steele (an amalgam character based on Crisp's friends Phillip Ward and Tom Steele), Jonathan Tucker as artist Patrick Angus, Cynthia Nixon as Penny Arcade, and Swoosie Kurtz as Connie Clausen. The production was filmed in New York in August 2008 and completed in London in October 2008. The film was directed by British director Richard Laxton, written by Brian Fillis, produced by Amanda Jenks, and made its premiere at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, in early February 2009 before being shown on television later that year.

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I apologize for this lengthy post but I think Quentin was so much larger than life he deserves it. I remember the first time I ever saw him on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the early 1960s when I was still young but old enough to be curious about someone I related with more than others.

 

[Shelter]

Oh Quentin Crisp - yes I remember that I have shortly seen a movie AN ENGLISMAN IN NEW YORK from 2009 starring John Hurt. He was marvellous in this role. A good recommendation to all who are interested.

 

[c750dt]

Please forgive me if he's already been mentioned here but how about Alan Turing? He was quite substantial in his day (and he totally nailed the role of gay nerd) though the end of him was very sad.
http://anon.projectarchive.net/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Also, while this strays just a little, does anybody have word on why Nikola Tesla just never could be with a woman? Had they been born a tad closer together, Turing and Tesla would have been an awesome couple.

All external links must be anonymized/ moderator

 

[dargelos]

Quentin Crisp was the scariest man I ever met. Scary in a ghost sense, he seemed about a thousand years old when I brought him his microphone for a personal appearance. He was so thin and other worldly it was like meeting a wraith. His amazing manner and charm could still win over any audience.

 

[gb2000ie]

Please forgive me if he's already been mentioned here but how about Alan Turing? He was quite substantial in his day (and he totally nailed the role of gay nerd) though the end of him was very sad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Also, while this strays just a little, does anybody have word on why Nikola Tesla just never could be with a woman? Had they been born a tad closer together, Turing and Tesla would have been an awesome couple.

I did a wee write-up of him a few pages back - definitely the archetypical gay nerd

 

[W!nston]

The Matthew Shepard tragedy was a watershed event for the American Gay Equal Rights movement.

Matthew Shepard

Matthew Wayne "Matt" Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 6, 1998, and died six days later at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, from severe head injuries.

Two men were arrested shortly after the attack. During the trial of one of his killers, it was widely reported that Shepard was targeted because he was gay; a Laramie police officer testified at a pretrial hearing that the violence against Shepard was triggered by how the attacker "[felt] about gays", per an interview of the attacker's girlfriend.

Shepard's murder brought national and international attention to hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels. In October 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (commonly the "Matthew Shepard Act" or "Shepard/Byrd Act" for short), and on October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law. Following her son's murder, Matthew's mother Judy Shepard became a prominent LGBT rights activist and established the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Shepard's death inspired notable films, novels, plays, songs, and other works.

Background

Shepard was born in 1976 in Casper, Wyoming, the first of two sons born to Judy (née Peck) and Dennis Shepard. His younger brother Logan was born in 1981. Matthew attended Crest Hill Elementary School, Dean Morgan Junior High School, and Natrona County High School for his freshman through junior years. Saudi Aramco hired his father in the summer of 1994, and Shephard's parents subsequently resided at the Saudi Aramco Residential Camp in Dhahran. During that time, Shepard attended The American School In Switzerland (TASIS), from which he graduated in May 1995. He then attended Catawba College in North Carolina and Casper College in Wyoming, before settling in Denver, Colorado. Shepard became a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and was chosen as the student representative for the Wyoming Environmental Council.

He was described by his father as "an optimistic and accepting young man who had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences." In February 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, Shepard was beaten and raped, causing him to experience depression and panic attacks, according to his mother. One of Shepard's friends feared that his depression had driven him to become involved with drugs during his time in college.

Murder

On the night of October 6, 1998, Shepard met Aaron McKinney (then 22), and Russell Henderson (then 21), at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, Wyoming. It was decided that McKinney and Henderson would give Shepard a ride home. McKinney and Henderson subsequently drove the car to a remote, rural area, and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and torture Shepard, tie him to a fence, and leave him to die. According to their court testimony, McKinney and Henderson discovered Shepard's address and intended to steal from his home, as well. Still tied to the fence, Shepard, who was in a coma, was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, a cyclist who initially mistook Shepard for a scarecrow.

Reggie Fluty, the first police officer on the scene, found Shepard alive but covered in blood. The medical gloves issued by the Albany County Sheriff's Department were faulty, and Fluty's supply ran out. She decided to use her bare hands to clear an airway in Shepard's bloody mouth. A day later, she was informed that Shepard was HIV positive, and she may have been exposed due to cuts on her hands. After taking an AZT regimen for several months, she proved not to have been infected. Judy Shepard later wrote she learned of her son's HIV status during his stay at the hospital following the attack.

Shepard had suffered fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. He experienced severe brainstem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate his heart rate, body temperature, and other vital functions. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face, and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. While he lay in intensive care, and in the days following the attack, candlelight vigils were held around the world.

Shepard was pronounced dead at 12:53 a.m. on October 12, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital, in Fort Collins, Colorado. He was 21 years old.

Hate Crime Legislation

The nature of Shepard's murder led to requests for new legislation addressing hate crimes, urged particularly by those who believed that Shepard was targeted on the basis of his sexual orientation. Under then United States federal law and Wyoming state law, crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation were not prosecutable as hate crimes.

In the following session of the Wyoming Legislature, a bill was introduced defining certain attacks motivated by victim identity as hate crimes, however the measure failed on a 30-30 tie in the Wyoming House of Representatives.

At the federal level, then-President Bill Clinton renewed attempts to extend federal hate crime legislation to include homosexual individuals, women, and people with disabilities. The United States House of Representatives rejected these efforts in 1999.

In September 2000, both houses of Congress passed such legislation; however it was stripped out in conference committee.

On March 20, 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act (H.R. 1592) was introduced as federal bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Congress, sponsored by Democrat John Conyers with 171 co-sponsors. Shepard's parents attended the introduction ceremony. The bill passed the House of Representatives on May 3, 2007. Similar legislation passed in the Senate on September 27, 2007 (S. 1105), however then-President George W. Bush indicated he would veto the legislation if it reached his desk. The Democratic leadership dropped the amendment in response to opposition from conservative groups and Bush, and because the measure was attached to a defense bill there was a lack of support from antiwar Democrats.

The House passed the act, designated H.R. 1913, by a vote of 249 to 175.[46] Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, and a bipartisan coalition introduced the bill in the Senate on April 28; it had 43 cosponsors as of June 17, 2009. The Matthew Shepard Act was adopted as an amendment to S.1390 by a vote of 63-28 on July 15, 2009.

On October 22, 2009, the Senate passed the act by a vote of 68-29. President Obama signed the measure into law on October 28, 2009.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church, led by Fred Phelps, received national attention for picketing Shepard's funeral with signs bearing homophobic slogans. Romaine Patterson, a friend of Shepard's, organized a group which assembled in a circle around the Westboro Baptist Church protesters, wearing white robes and gigantic wings (resembling angels) that blocked the protesters. Police had to create a human barrier between the two groups. Angel Action was founded by Patterson in April 1999.

Legacy

In the years following Shepard's death, his mother Judy Shepard has become a well-known advocate for LGBT rights, particularly issues relating to gay youth. She was a main force behind the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which she and her husband Dennis founded in December 1998.

In Popular Culture

Numerous works have been inspired by Matthew Shepard's life, death, trial, and its aftermath, including doentary and narrative films and television shows, stage plays, and musical and written works. Additionally, openly gay NBA player Jason Collins wore the jersey number "98" in honor of Shepard during the 2012–13 season with the Boston Celtics and the Washington Wizards. After joining the Brooklyn Nets in 2014, NBA marketing reported high interest in Jason Collins' "98" jersey, and high sales once available for purchase

 

[Shelter]

Hello Sniffit, I must admit that I've shed some tears when I have read your post about Matt Shepard!

But what I've not known until now was, that the Bush administration stopped the act that a hate crime can include too homosexual victims. You must have had the feeling as a gay man to be less worth than a rat.

 

[W!nston]

John Waters

John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, stand-up comedian, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films. Waters's 1970s and early '80s trash films feature his regular troupe of actors known as the Dreamlanders—among them Divine, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Edith Massey. Starting with Desperate Living (1977), Waters began casting real-life convicted criminals (Liz Renay, Patty Hearst) and infamous people (Traci Lords, a former pornographic actress).

Waters dabbled in mainstream filmmaking with Hairspray (1988), which introduced Ricki Lake and earned a modest gross of $8 million domestically. In 2002, Hairspray was adapted to a long-running Broadway musical, which itself was adapted to a hit musical film that earned more than $200 million worldwide. After the crossover success of the original film version of Hairspray, Waters's films began featuring familiar actors and celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Edward Furlong, Melanie Griffith, Chris Isaak, Johnny Knoxville, Martha Plimpton, Christina Ricci, Lili Taylor, Kathleen Turner, and Tracey Ullman.

Although he maintains apartments in New York City and San Francisco, and a summer home in Provincetown, Waters still mainly resides in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, where all his films are set. Many of his films take place in a neighborhood called Hampden. He is recognizable by his trademark pencil moustache, a look he has retained since the early 1970s.

Early life

Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Patricia Ann (née Whitaker) and John Samuel Waters, who was a manufacturer of fire-protection equipment. His family were upper-middle class Roman Catholics. Waters grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. His boyhood friend and muse Glenn Milstead, later known as Divine, also lived in Lutherville.

The movie Lili inspired an interest in puppets in the seven-year-old Waters, who proceeded to stage violent versions of Punch and Judy for children's birthday parties. Biographer Robrt L. Pela says that Waters's mother believes the puppets in Lili had the greatest influence on Waters's subsequent career (though Pela believes tacky films at a local drive-in, which the young Waters watched from a distance through binoculars, had a greater effect).

Waters was privately educated at the Calvert School in Baltimore. After attending Towson Jr. High School in Towson, Maryland, and Calvert Hall College High School in nearby Towson, he ultimately graduated from Boys' Latin School of Maryland. For his sixteenth birthday, Waters received an 8mm movie camera from his maternal grandmother, Stella Whitaker.

Early career

His first short film was Hag in a Black Leather Jacket. According to Waters, the film was shown only once in a "beatnik coffee house" in Baltimore, although in later years he has included it in his traveling photography exhibit.

Waters enrolled at New York University (NYU). The school, however, was not what Waters had in mind:

NYU...I was there for about five minutes. I don't know what I was thinking about. I went to one class and they kept talking about Potemkin and that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I had just gone to see Olga's House of Shame. That was what I was more into.

Extremely influential to his creative mind, Waters tells Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was The Wizard of Oz.

I was always drawn to forbidden subject matter in the very, very beginning. The Wizard of Oz opened me up because it was one of the first movies I ever saw. It opened me up to villainy, to screenwriting, to costumes. And great dialogue. I think the witch has great, great dialogue.

Waters has further credited his influences as, among others, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Federico Fellini, William Castle and Ingmar Bergman. He has stated that he takes an equal amount of joy and influence from high-brow "art" films and sleazy exploitation films.

In January 1966, Waters and some friends were caught smoking marijuana on the grounds of NYU; he was soon kicked out of his NYU dormitory. Waters returned to Baltimore, where he completed his next two short films Roman Candles and Eat Your Makeup.[1] These were followed by the feature-length films Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs.

Waters's films would become Divine's primary star vehicles. All of Waters's early films were shot in the Baltimore area with his company of local actors, the Dreamlanders. In addition to Divine, the group included Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Susan Walsh, and others. These early films were among the first picked up for distribution by the fledgling New Line Cinema. Waters's later films premiered at Baltimore's Senator Theatre and sometimes at the Charles Theatre.

Waters's early campy movies present exaggerated characters in outrageous situations with hyperbolic dialogue. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living, which he labeled the Trash Trilogy, pushed hard at the boundaries of conventional propriety and movie censorship. A particularly notorious scene from Pink Flamingos, added as a non sequitur to the film's end, featured—in one continuous take without special effects—a small dog defecating and Divine eating its feces.

Move toward the mainstream

Waters's 1981 film Polyester starred Divine opposite former teen idol Tab Hunter. Since then, his films have become less controversial and more mainstream, although works such as Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, and Cecil B. Demented still retain his trademark inventiveness. The film Hairspray was turned into a hit Broadway musical that swept the 2003 Tony Awards, and a film adaptation of the Broadway musical was released in theaters on July 20, 2007 to positive reviews and commercial success. Cry-Baby, itself a musical, was also converted into a Broadway musical.


Waters in New York City
In 2004, the NC-17-rated A Dirty Shame marked a return to his earlier, more controversial work of the 1970s. He had a cameo in Jackass Number Two, which starred Dirty Shame co-star Johnny Knoxville, and another small role as paparazzo Pete Peters in 2004's Seed of Chucky.

In 2007, he became the host ("The Groom Reaper") of 'Til Death Do Us Part, a program on America's Court TV network featuring dramatizations of marriages that soured and ended in murder.

In 2008, Waters was planning to make a children's Christmas film called Fruitcake starring Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey. Filming was planned for November 2008, but it was shelved in January 2009. In 2010, Waters told the Chicago Tribune that "Independent films that cost $5 million are very hard to get made. I sold the idea, got a development deal, got paid a great salary to write it—and now the company is no longer around, which is the case with many independent film companies these days."

Waters has been known to create characters with alliterated names for his films including Corny Collins, Cuddles Kovinsky, Donald and Donna Dasher, Dawn Davenport, Fat Fuck Frank, Francine Fishpaw, Link Larkin, Motormouth Maybelle, Mole McHenry, Penny and Prudy Pingleton, Ramona Ricketts, Sandy Sandstone, Sylvia Stickles, Todd Tomorrow, Tracy Turnblad, Ursula Udders, Wade Walker, and Wanda Woodward.

 

[dargelos]

As soon as you mention John Waters you have to mention Divine. John would not have been as succesful without Divine and she/he would not done the same without John. They were made for each other.
There is a great film about this melodious singer and glamorous actress called;
I Am Divine
You want to watch this film. It is posted by hormet under Gay Themed Movies. Fingers crossed the link is still alive.

 

[W!nston]

As soon as you mention John Waters you have to mention Divine. John would not have been as succesful without Divine and she/he would not done the same without John. They were made for each other.
There is a great film about this melodious singer and glamorous actress called;
I Am Divine
You want to watch this film. It is posted by hormet under Gay Themed Movies. Fingers crossed the link is still alive.

I totally agree dargelos!

I collected the pics to use for a 'Divine' post but it was just too late to do it last night so I'll be adding it next... later tonight.

 

[W!nston]

Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead)

Harris Glenn Milstead, also known by his stage name Divine, (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988) was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, he was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical appearances, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career; People magazine described him as the "Drag Queen of the Century".

Born in Maryland to a conservative, middle-class family, he embraced the counterculture of the 1960s and became involved with Waters's acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, starring in early Waters films Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). Hits on the U.S. midnight movie circuit, the films became cult classics. In the 1970s, Divine moved to theater, appearing with The Cockettes before performing in Women Behind Bars and The Neon Woman. Continuing cinematic work, he starred in Polyester (1981), Lust in the Dust (1985) and Hairspray (1988). In 1981, Divine embarked in the disco industry, producing Hi-NRG tracks that were mostly written by Bobby Orlando. He achieved global chart success with hits like "You Think You're a Man", "I'm So Beautiful", and "Walk Like a Man".

Although Divine died in Los Angeles, California from cardiomegaly in 1988, he has remained a cult figure ever since, particularly within the LGBT community, and has provided the inspiration for fictional characters, artworks and songs. Various books and doentary films devoted to his life have also been produced, including Divine Trash (1998) and I Am Divine (2013).

Early life (Youth: 1945–65)

Glenn "Divine" Milstead's high school yearbook photo at age 17

Harris Glenn Milstead was born on October 19, 1945, at the Women's Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Harris Bernard Milstead (May 1, 1917 – March 4, 1993), after whom he was named, had been one of seven children born in Towson, Maryland to a plumber who worked for the Baltimore City Water Department. Divine's mother, Frances Milstead (née Vukovich; April 12, 1920 – March 24, 2009), was one of fifteen children born to an impoverished Serb immigrant couple who had grown up near Zagreb (in today's Croatia) before moving to the United States in 1891. When she was 16, Frances moved to Baltimore where she worked at a diner in Towson, here meeting Harris, who was a regular customer. Entering into a relationship, they were married in 1938 before both gaining employment working at the Black and Decker factory in Towson. Due to his problems with muscular dystrophy, Harris was not required to fight for the U.S. armed forces in the Second World War, and instead Harris and Frances worked throughout the war in what they saw as "good jobs". Attempting to conceive a child, Frances suffered two miscarriages in 1940 and 1943.

By the time of Divine's birth in 1945, the Milsteads were relatively wealthy and socially conservative, adhering to the Baptist denomination of Christianity. Later describing his upbringing, Divine would recollect: "I was an only child in, I guess, your upper middle-class American family. I was probably your American spoiled brat." His parents lavished almost anything that he wanted upon him, including food, and he became overweight, a condition he lived with for the rest of his life. Divine preferred to use his middle name, Glenn, to distinguish himself from his father, and was referred to as such by his parents and friends.

At age 12, Divine and his parents moved to Lutherville, a Baltimore suburb, where he attended Towson High School, graduating in 1963.[12][13] Bullied because of his weight and perceived effeminacy,[14] he later reminisced that he "wasn't rough and tough" but instead "loved painting and I always loved flowers and things." Due to this horticultural interest, at 15 he took a part-time job at a local florist's shop. Several years later, he went on a diet that enabled him to drop in weight from 180 pounds to 145 pounds (80 to 65 kg), giving him a new sense of confidence. When he was 17, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist, where he first realized his sexual attraction to men as well as women, something then taboo in conventional American society. He helped out at his parents' day care business, for instance dressing up as Santa Claus to entertain the children at Christmas time. In 1963, he began attending the Marinella Beauty School, where he learned hair styling and, after completing his studies, gained employment at a couple of local salons, specializing in the creation of beehives and other upswept hairstyles. Milstead eventually gave up his job and for a while was financially supported by his parents, who catered to his expensive taste in clothes and cars. They reluctantly paid the many bills that he ran up financing lavish parties where he would dress up in drag as his favourite celebrity, actress Elizabeth Taylor.

John Waters and Divine's first films: 1966–68

Milstead built up a large collection of friends, among them David Lochary, who became an actor and costar in several of Divine's later films. In the mid-1960s, Milstead befriended John Waters through their mutual friend Carol Wernig; Waters and Milstead were the same age and from the same neighborhood, and both embraced Baltimore's countercultural and underground elements. Along with friends like Waters and Lochary, Milstead began hanging out at a beatnik bar in downtown Baltimore named Martick's, where they associated with hippies and smoked marijuana, bonding into what Waters described as "a family of sorts". Waters gave his friends new nicknames, and it was he who first called Milstead "Divine". Waters later remarked that he had borrowed the name from a character in Jean Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), a controversial book about homosexuals living on the margins of Parisian society, which Waters – himself a homosexual – was reading at the time. Waters also introduced Divine as "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost", a description widely repeated in ensuing years.

"Divine. That's my name. It's the name John [Waters] gave me. I like it. That's what everybody calls me now, even my close friends. Not many of them call me Glenn at all anymore, which I don't mind. They can call me whatever they want. They call me fatso, and they call me asshole, and I don't care. You always change your name when you're in the show business. Divine has stuck as my name. Did you ever look it up in the dictionary? I won't even go into it. It's unbelievable."— Divine, 1973.

Waters was an aspiring filmmaker, intent on making "the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history". Many of his friends, who came to be known as "the Dreamlanders" (and who included Divine, Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole), appeared in some of his low-budget productions, filmed on Sunday afternoons. Following the production of his first short film, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Waters began production of a second work, Roman Candles (1966). This film was influenced by the pop artist Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966), and consisted of three 8-millimeter movies played simultaneously side by side. Roman Candles was the first film to star Divine, in this instance in drag as a smoking nun. It featured the Dreamlanders modeling shoplifted clothes and performing various unrelated activities. Being both a short film and of an avant-garde nature, Roman Candles never received widespread distribution, instead holding its premier at the annual Mt. Vernon Flower Mart in Baltimore, which had become popular with "elderly dames, young faggots and hustlers, and of course a whole bunch of hippies". Waters went on to screen it at several local venues alongside Kenneth Anger's short film Eaux d'Artifice (1953).

Waters followed Roman Candles with a third short film, Eat Your Makeup (1968), in which Divine once more wore drag, this time to portray a fictionalized version of Jackie Kennedy, the widow of recently assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy. In the film, she turns to kidnapping models and forcing them to eat their own makeup. Divine kept his involvement with Waters and these early underground films a secret from his conservative parents, believing that they would not understand them or the reason for his involvement in such controversial and bad-taste films; they would not find out about them for many years. Divine's parents had bought him his own beauty shop in Towson, hoping that the financial responsibility would help him to settle down in life and stop spending so extravagantly. While agreeing to work there, he refused to be involved in owning and managing the establishment, leaving that to his mother. Not long after, in the summer of 1968, he moved out of his parental home, renting his own apartment.

Personal life

During his childhood and adolescence, Divine was called "Glenn" by his friends and family; during his adult career, he used the "Divine" as his personal name, telling one interviewer that both "Divine" and "Glenn Milstead" were "both just names. Glenn is the name I was brought up with, Divine is the name I've been using for the past 23 years. I guess it's always Glenn and it's always Divine. Do you mean the character Divine or the person Divine? You see, it gets very complicated. There's the Divine you're talking to now and there's the character Divine, which is just something I do to make a living. She doesn't really exist at all." At one point he had the name "Divine" officially recognized, as it appeared on his passport, and in keeping with his personal use of the name, his close friends nicknamed him "Divy".

Divine considered himself to be male, and was not transgender or transsexual. He was gay, and during the 1980s had an extended relationship with a married man named Lee, who accompanied him almost everywhere that he went. They later separated, and Divine went on to have a brief affair with gay porn star Leo Ford, something that was widely reported upon in the gay press. According to his manager Bernard Jay, Divine regularly engaged in sexual activities with young men that he would meet while on tour, sometimes becoming infatuated with them; in one case, he met a young man in Israel whom he wanted to bring back to the United States, something his manager prevented him from doing. This image of promiscuity was disputed by his friend Anne Cersosimo, who claimed that Divine never exhibited such behavior when on tour. Divine initially avoided informing the media about his sexuality, even when questioned by interviewers, and would sometimes hint that he was bisexual, but in the latter part of the 1980s changed this attitude and began being open about his homosexuality.[Nonetheless, he avoided discussing gay rights, partially at the advice of his manager, realizing that it would have had a negative effect on his career.

Divine's mother, Frances Milstead, remarked that while Divine "was blessed with many talents and abilities, he could be very moody and demanding." She noted that while he was "incredibly kind and generous", he always wanted to get things done the way that he wanted, and would "tune you out if you displeased him." She noted that in most interviews, he came across as "a very shy and private person". Divine's Dutch friends gave him two bulldogs in the early 1980s, on which he doted, naming them Beatrix and Claus after Queen Beatrix and her husband Prince Claus of the Netherlands. On numerous occasions he would have his photograph taken with them and sometimes use these images for record covers and posters. Divine suffered from problems with obesity from childhood, caused by his love of food, and in later life his hunger was increased by his daily use of marijuana, an addiction that he publicly admitted to. According to Bernard Jay, in Divine's final years, when his disco career was coming to an end and he was struggling to find acting jobs, he felt suicidal and threatened to kill himself on several occasions.

Legacy and influence

The New York Times said of Milstead's 1980s films: "Those who could get past the unremitting weirdness of Divine's performance discovered that the actor/actress had genuine talent, including a natural sense of comic timing and an uncanny gift for slapstick." In a letter to the newspaper, Paul Thornquist described him as "one of the few truly radical and essential artists of the century... [who] was an audacious symbol of man's quest for liberty and freedom." People magazine described him as "the Goddess of Gross, the Punk Elephant, the Big Bad Mama of the Midnight Movies... [and] a Miss Piggy for the blissfully depraved." Following his death, fans of Divine visited Prospect Hill Cemetery to pay their respects. In what has become a tradition, fans have been known to leave makeup, food, and graffiti on his grave in memoriam; Waters claims that some fans have sexual intercourse on his grave, which he believes Divine would love.

Divine has left an influence on a number of musicians. During the mid-1980s, the androgynous performer Sylvester decorated the powder room of his San Francisco home with Divine memorabilia. Antony Hegarty of the band Antony and the Johnsons wrote a song about Divine which was included in the group's self-titled debut album, released in 1998. The song, titled "Divine," was an ode to the actor, who was one of Antony's lifelong heroes. His admiration is expressed in the lines: "He was my self-determined guru" and "I turn to think of you/Who walked the way with so much pain/Who holds the mirror up to fools." In 2008, Irish electronic singer Róisín Murphy paid homage to Divine in the music video for her song "Movie Star" by reenacting the attack by Lobstora from Multiple Maniacs.

Divine was the inspiration for the design of Ursula the Sea-Witch, the villain in the 1989 Disney animated film The Little Mermaid. Due to Divine's portrayal of Edna Turnblad in the original comedy-film version of Hairspray, later musical adaptations of Hairspray have commonly placed male actors in the role of Edna, including Harvey Fierstein and others in the 2002 Broadway musical, and John Travolta in the 2007 musical film. A 12-foot (4 m) tall statue in the likeness of Divine by Andrew Logan can be seen on permanent display at The American Visionary Art Museum in Divine's hometown of Baltimore. I Am Divine, a feature doentary on the life of Divine, was premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest film festival, and had its Baltimore premiere within Maryland Film Festival. It is produced and directed by Jeffrey Schwarz of the Los Angeles-based production company Automat Pictures.

 

[dargelos]

There was the night Divine played Londons Hippodrome, after the show she went to the club's restaurant and asked for the menu. "No, not that sheet of cardboard, all the dishes on the menu". And she ate them all. No suprise Glen had a heart attack.

 

[W!nston]

David Bowie

David Robert Jones (born 8 January 1947), known professionally by his stage name David Bowie (/ˈboʊ.i/), is an English musician, singer-songwriter, actor and arranger. Bowie has been a major figure in the world of popular music for over four decades, and is renowned as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice as well as the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work. Aside from his musical abilities, he is recognised for his androgynous beauty, which was an iconic element to his image, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.

​

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969 when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture."[4] The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album Low (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. Low, "Heroes", and Lodger, the so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums, all reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise. After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its parent album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and "Under Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with Queen. He then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with Let's Dance, which yielded several hit singles. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. He has not toured since the 2003–04 Reality Tour and has not performed live since 2006. Bowie's latest studio album The Next Day was released in March 2013.

David Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure." In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the UK, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the US, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all time.

Sexual orientation

Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." Bowie declared himself gay in an interview with Michael Watts in 22 January 1972 issue of Melody Maker, a move which coincided with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.[45] In a September 1976 interview with Playboy, Bowie said: "It's true—I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me." According to his first wife Angie, Bowie had a relationship with Mick Jagger.

In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made" and "I was always a closet heterosexual." On other occasions, he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being."

Asked in 2002 by Blender whether he still believed his public declaration was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied:

Interesting. [Long pause] I don't think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that bisexuality became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.

Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock", and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time, experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional.' " Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world ... and they created their bisexual fantasy." Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' ... Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women."

Personal life

Bowie married Mary Angela Barnett (also known as Angie Bowie) on 19 March 1970 at Bromley Register Office on Beckenham Lane, Bromley, London. They had a son together, Zowie Bowie (now known as Duncan Jones, film director), and divorced on 8 February 1980 in Switzerland.

On 24 April 1992, David Bowie married Somali-American model Iman in a private ceremony in Lausanne. The wedding was later solemnized on 6 June in Florence.[198] They have one daughter, Alexandria "Lexi" Zahra Jones, born in August 2000.[199] The couple reside primarily in New York City and London.

Regarding his religion, in 2005 he said, "Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always." He added that he is bothered by being "not quite an atheist".[201] In the Esquire interview "What I've Learned", he stated, "I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic."

Bowie has shown an interest in Buddhism since 1967. He frequently studied in London under the Tibetan Lama Chime Rinpoche before becoming a solo artist. During a 2001 interview, Bowie claimed that "after a few months of study, he told me, 'You don't want to be Buddhist ... You should follow music.'"

Bowie later wrote the song "Silly Boy Blue" and repeatedly sang Chime's name at the end of the track on his 1967 album David Bowie. Bowie also became a student of the Crazy wisdom Tulku Chögyam Trungpa.

 

[dargelos]

David's records mean a great deal to me, I could talk about Diamond Dogs until you lost the will to live;
. Tres butch little number
. Says dirty I want you
. When it's good it's really good
. When it's bad I go to pieces

I put the rat chant on a tape loop to upset everybody; rat rat rat rat rat rat rat rat rat rat rat rat rat ad nauseum.
Still it came as a suprise to see Bowie pop up here among the gay icons, not that I mind. The bisex act was always just that, an act. David Bowie was a character played by David Jones in the same way that Slim Shady is a character played by Marshall Mathers. Life as a performance- but he's been good at it.

 

[W!nston]

Bowie's androgynous persona opened many doors and minds for the Gay Rights movement. As a Pop Icon his influence was ubiquitous. His fashion style, his use of Ziggy Stardust and his music put Gay and Bi-Sexual into popular discourse. The mainstream culture was affected and that helped the Gay Rights movement gain momentum like a snowball rolling downhill.

I know he is not Gay himself but neither was Princess Diana, Judy Garland nor many others who were instrumental in the early days after Stonewall.

Bowie belongs in any list of Gay Icons... IMO

 

[dargelos]

It's your topic Sniffit and you shall have anyone you like on it, they are all welcome. Curious, isn't it that so many pop legends, Liberace, Freddie, Morrisey, it's a long list, find it hard to come out fully while David is faking gay when he dosen't need to. Can you think of anyone else who did this, Katy Perry dosen't count she was only lesbian for one song.

 

[W!nston]

Well I certainly appreciate your input on this topic along with everyone else who is reading and/or commenting.

It might be 'my party' (thread) but how much fun would it be if no one else came?

Lots of love and respect to you my friend!

Sniff