Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (13 page)

I remember after one of the rehearsals we were walking up to Max’s Kansas City. Jackie had on torn hose and a 1930s dress from a thrift shop and somebody came up and said, “Hey, are you a real woman?” And Jackie said, “Do you think a real woman would dress like this?” Jackie had a great sense of humor about himself.

Agosto Machado

In 1970 my neighbor across the hall was the very handsome young actor Robert La Tourneaux, who had just starred as Cowboy the hustler, Harold’s birthday present in the fabulous motion picture of
Boys in the Band
. Robert really was a hunk, and Jackie Curtis adored him and was kind of stalking him, coming by to visit and trying to persuade him to be in his next show,
Vain Victory
. I was very thrilled to be Robert’s neighbor and friend, and I was delighted to run into Jackie Curtis one day who was standing outside Robert’s door one day writing him a note because he wasn’t at home. I was so thrilled to see Jackie Curtis that I was speechless – I think I mumbled hello as I walked slowly to my door and unlocked it and went inside, never taking my eyes off of her.

To my delight, a minute later she knocked on my door! I opened the door and gave her a big smile and said, “Yes?,” and she said, “Can you sing?” I was crestfallen, and said no. She said, “Well, can you dance?” And I said, no. She said, “Can you act?” And I said, no. And she said, “Do you want to be in a show?” And I said YES!!!

And I always say, opportunity didn’t knock on my door – Jackie Curtis did.

Jackie Curtis Journal Excerpt – 1972

Some people are born to run. Some people are born to rule. Some people are born to play pinball. Some people are born to be blonde. Some people are born to lose. While others are born to be wild. Bad, wicked, and wild. Everybody gets to know them real well. Me? I was lucky just to be born at all. Plus I read somewhere in a very old first edition lime green almanac, that being born on February 19th is the hardest star in the constellation to place.

I was definitely born too late. Nobody told me that by the time I got out of school there would be no more studio system. Well what could I do? I go to the gates and yell “Jonesey!” Gone are those lush days, when a star could disappear for two weeks on a whim, and not show up and hold up production. The front office just couldn’t handle it anymore, even if your pictures weren’t slipping at the box office. No more Doris Day, no more Judy Garland, no more Gary Cooper, no more June Allison. The grooming of the new talent would now become the grooming of the no-talents. It was something akin to the night before Christmas – not a creature was stirring, not even Mickey Mouse. Nothing, no lights, no camera – no action.

Remember its Andy Warhol who became a silver-haired shaman, or a father, if you will – of the sixties. He brought not just films to the screen, not just stars, but superstars. Don’t you get tired with all these movies today about junkies, and drug addicts, and dope fiends. If we have to have movies like that, why can’t they all be musicals? I have just written a script for the world’s first dope musical. It opens in a luxury penthouse on Mott Street with our heroine – that’s the leading lady – pacing the living room floor. She’s nervously biting her fingers and her toes. She goes to the window, throws it opened, and says “What’s taking Frenchy so long? Why doesn’t he come? And bring me that which I must have. Take away your kisses and your hugs, but don’t take away my dangerous drugs.”

Paul Serrato

Jackie had learned that I was a composer and a musician and asked me to write the music for a show he had written based on the life of Tommy Manville. Manville was heir to an industrial fortune, and Jackie was smitten with one aspect of his life, the fact that Tommy Manville, for all his money was a big playboy and he loved chorus girls and marrying chorus girls. So this seemed readymade for a musical. Jackie of course would be playing the part of Tommy Manville. The show was called
Lucky Wonderful
because Jackie couldn’t use Tommy Manville’s real name. The show was a hit and Jackie’s reputation as a writer and a comic performer was very quickly growing at that time.

Melba LaRose, Jr.

I was in Jackie’s second play
Lucky Wonderful
in 1968. It was a musical take on Tommy Manville and all his wives and was done at the Playwrights Workshop – Tony Bastiano’s place, a basement on Waverly Place – Tony was often called “LaPapa.”  Jackie played Tommy Manville.  Jackie was in his Huntz Hall period, so he was taking male hormones and looked like a curly-haired collegiate trust fund kid in a raccoon coat and big shoes.  The show had some great songs by Paul Serrato including a love ballad “Who Are You?” that Jackie sang beautifully.  Roz Kelly & I played all the women’s roles.  I played five roles; Ninny Eldorado – a Russian princess with a tarnished crown, Popcorn Collins – a Southern tap dancing movie star, Norma Lewis – a fallen star, and then a wacked-out gossip columnist a la Hedda Hopper, and a trashy chorus girl. My big song was “Do You Still Carry a Torch?” and I remember on closing night for fun I came out to sing the number carrying a real burning torch and Jackie, not to be outdone, ran off-stage and came back like a waiter with a towel over his arm and a tray with a pitcher of ice water and doused the flame!

Most people could not follow Jackie’s train of thought.  He was extremely educated and bright, and always exploring new ideas – I remember once he showed me a play he was writing in Esperanto!  He wanted me to play a character named Ashes Mercredi. Mercredi Cendres means Ash Wednesday in French, so the name is playing on that. Jackie was one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. 

Paul Serrato

Around 1970 Jackie had the backing and the resources to do a new musical and that one was going to be called
Vain Victory
. This was around the time that
Hair
had opened uptown on Broadway and we were going to do
Vain Victory
downtown where a lot of the artistic innovative alternative culture was really happening – below 14th Street.
Vain Victory
was produced at Ellen Stewart’s La Mama Theatre on east 4th Street. Every counter-culture star that you can name was in it.

Jackie of course was friends with all artists, everybody loved him, and wanted to help this young kid from the Lower East Side see his projects through. The scenery for
Vain Victory
included beautiful hanging clouds created by Larry Rivers. Andy Warhol donated a big silkscreen of one of his cows. The music was provided not only by myself, but also by Peter Allen who wrote some tunes for it, and Eric Emerson who wrote and performed a couple of the tunes. The show opened at La Mama and it became an immediate smash hit.

When we were doing
Vain Victory
the persona he was projecting was that of James Dean. Jackie was so into the James Dean myth that the set for
Vain Victory
included the shell of a car, which became the focal point of a lot of the singing and a lot of the action. That was because James Dean died in a car crash. About a year or so later when
Grease
opened on Broadway there was a car on stage as part of the set. This is anther instance where uptown would come downtown and look around to check out all the creative ideas to see what they could pick up and use and take uptown and make money on and let it go mainstream.

Some nights twenty or thirty people got up out of the audience, including Andy Warhol, and took part in the production. The show was only supposed to have a two week run, but it was so successful that it ran the entire summer of 1971. I think of
Vain Victory
as the downtown answer to
Hair
, because
Hair
was a counter-cultural hit for the mainstream audiences uptown and downtown you had
Vain Victory
, which was the counter-cultural statement of people who really were involved with the counter-culture, who were the counter-culture.

Several scenes of
Vain Victory
were filmed by PBS and incorporated into the series called
An American Family
. In the second episode Lance Loud’s mother comes to the Chelsea Hotel where Lance is struggling with coming out. Lance decides to take her to La Mama to see
Vain Victory
. The show included a wonderful moment when Jackie walks down an immense staircase singing. He performed as “Blue Denim” the male lead in the show. Candy Darling was the female star and performed the role of Donna Bella Beads in a mermaid outfit.

Lily Tomlin

When I met Jane Wagner, one of the first things she said to me was you have to meet Jackie Curtis, you have to see what he’s doing and the kind of things he represents. And so we went to see
Vain Victory
which was in rehearsals at La Mama and I feel really privileged that I was part of that whole society, even in a peripheral way. Before it opened, Jane and I had to go back to California, so on opening night we sent him a telegram congratulating him and wishing him great success.

Paul Ambrose

Through Jackie I met the director Anthony Ingrassia who thought I was perfect to play the part of Mother Cabrini in a play. I freaked out because I have never been any good at standing up in front of audiences. I always get terrible stage fright. I couldn’t even read out loud in school. That’s why it is so ironic that I ended up trying to be an actor. I declined the part of Mother Cabrini. But then Jackie started talking about her next play. She said it was going to be something called
Vain Victory – the Vicissitudes of the Damned
. She wanted me for the part of Juicy Lucy and we went uptown to some fabulous place on Central Park West that was supposed to be Barbara Streisand’s apartment. We walked in and there were all these society people, art patrons and gallery owners – all there for this reading of Jackie’s play. That was my first public appearance as Juicy Lucy “My name is Juicy Lucy, I’m a water baby, my skin screams to remain moist.” I had long blond hair, you know … 100 pounds ago. I thought I was in show business.

I was so naive; I had no idea that if you did a show in drag that you were likely to be considered a woman for the rest of your life. For years people would only treat me nicely if I answered to the name “Marie.” This is Jackie Curtis’s doing.

Juicy Lucy got to be a bigger part as rehearsals went on. There was some talk about it being my fault because I could handle more drugs than most of them, and I would get them real high and then take their lines. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose, but there was talk.

The rehearsals for
Vain Victory
lasted for six months. They were over at the La Mama loft and the first thing Jackie did was paint the window glass black so no light came in at all. Jackie decided to direct this one himself. He had just started shooting speed and things were a little odd at times. To rehearse more than a week or two was unheard of, because typically a show only ran two weekends. Ellen Stewart was just wonderful and she supported six months of rehearsals. During all that time we never ever go through the entire play in one evening. There’d be a 12 hour shift of one group and then some of them would sleep in the back and some of them would crawl home. Whoever was there was the scene we did.

We were sort of like the circus in town and everyone would come to the
Vain Victory
rehearsals because day and night they were running because Jackie kept us high. Lily Tomlin was there with Jane Wagner. Gary Cooper’s daughter was there. And Sandy Dennis who just loved Jackie. Somewhere along the lines – and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, Bette Midler saw Candy Darling in a mermaid outfit, and me in a wheelchair and ended up on stage a year later in a wheelchair wearing a mermaid outfit.

Craig Highberger

Jackie wrote
Vain Victory: the Vicissitudes of the Damned,
between 1969–71. Ellen Stewart, founder of La Mama Experimental Theater Club put it on the 1971 schedule and supported an unprecedented six months of rehearsals. Paul Ambrose (who played Juicy Lucy) remembers that the first thing Jackie did was paint the windows black so you couldn’t tell whether it was night or day. Rehearsals ran continuously, and members of the cast dropped in at all hours. Whoever was there determined which scenes were rehearsed and rewritten. Jackie’s rehearsal copy of the script is more than 1” thick – more than 200 pages with scene deletions and copious additions, new dialogue, setting descriptions, costume notes, and sketches on the back of nearly every single page. Jackie was almost constantly on speed during this period according to many sources. The show when it opened ran two and one-half hours after trimming fully one-third.

The script was set alternately at a high school graduation, at a circus, in Hollywood, and on board the good ship
Vain Victory
. The characters included leading men Dorrian Grey, and Eric Emerson who played a combination angel-cowboy. Styles Caldwell who was also a member of the cast remembers that before every performance they slathered Eric’s naked body with Vaseline and then covered his entire body with silver glitter, except for his penis – which was covered in bright red glitter! Emerson’s costume consisted of a pair of leather chaps (bottomless, and crotchless chaps) and a cowboy hat! At some point during the first week of the play Jackie and Eric were convinced to cover Eric’s charms to avoid the very real possibility of the Police closing the play for public obscenity.

The show became an instant smash hit. Andy Warhol came opening night and to numerous other performances with an entourage because Jackie had advertised that Warhol was a cast member – he was billed as “the Winged Avenger.” During the show he stood up and took pictures with his Polaroid SX-70 camera. During intermission Ellen Stewart remembers that opening night Jackie came out to talk to Andy and told the audience that he was ghost writer for the show!

One evening less than a half-hour before curtain a frantic call came to the box office. The audience was informed that the show would be starting late because John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and party who had reserved the entire front row were running late at an uptown restaurant. The New York Times critic called the show “the quintessence of camp” and dubbed Jackie “America’s foremost transvestite playwright.” The successful run was extended as long as possible at La Mama and then moved to another venue – the WPA Theatre on the Bowery for another eight weeks. The show ran for a total of six months.