Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (10 page)

Harvey Fierstein

I couldn’t believe that we would all go to Max’s Kansas City, sit at Warhol’s table in the back and eat, and drink and then walk out on the check. But Jackie said it was alright to do, so we did it. Jackie would do that all the time.

Holly Woodlawn

So one afternoon we went over to the factory to visit Andy. Really we arrived unannounced like this because we were there to hit him up for some money, which we had done before. But Pat Hackett who was the secretary stopped us and said that Andy wasn’t there. There was a nice reception area with some chairs so we said we’d just wait but she said he had called and said wasn’t coming in. So we went across the street to the park in Irving Place and sure enough in less than an hour there came a taxi and Andy got out and we saw him go upstairs. So we went back into the building and down into the basement and we found the power panel. It was unlocked and everything was labeled and so we shut off every breaker for Andy’s floor. Then we went upstairs in the elevator and when the door opened we screamed into the dark space “Andy Warhol, you are dead! We know how to use a gun!” and made our exit. The next day our rent was paid.

What Jackie Learned from Greta Garbo:

Working with Andy Warhol and being part of his inner circle was like walking into a desert of destroyed egos. It was like being in the cold room where they work with dangerous flammable chemicals, where everything is 20 degrees below zero. You’ve got to have incredible stamina and drive to hang out with them. I was the black sheep of the Warhol crowd. I was definitely not the darling. Candy was the darling. I was the rebel. I could tell from the way I was treated that I was certainly not a welcome addition. But I was one of their hottest properties at the time and I knew it. And I knew what I could demand, just as Greta Garbo did when she was at MGM. Greta Garbo demanded the highest salary and Louis B. Mayer said no and she would just say, “I think I go home,” turn on her heel and leave. That’s what I did and we got along very well after that.

Penny Arcade

Jackie and I had an enormous emotional resonant erotic relationship. I don’t mean that it was sexual, it was energizing. We were an incredible team and we patrolled. We were both from working-class immigrant Italian families, matriarchal families, and had a lot in common. We were both highly intelligent, belligerent and lived in a fantasy world. And wanted to love the whole world. Both of us didn’t take no for an answer. I joke with a lot of my gay male friends about their latent bisexuality. Jackie really didn’t have any. Jackie was sort of asexual. Jackie’s relationship was really with Jackie. Jackie wasn’t really looking for a partner. He liked to go to a little park he called the Garden of Meditation and have anonymous sex with guys in the bushes or in the men’s room. I think Jackie was a fairly promiscuous person who went for very long periods of time not having sex at all.

I remember being somewhere on Madison Avenue uptown in the 80s or 90s going to some rich people’s party. Because as Warhol superstars we were invited to these parties with rich people and the only thing that drag queens like better than drugs and booze is free food. The thing that really impresses drag queens is we’d go to these rich people’s parties and there’d be all this food. And we are all the way uptown and we’ve lost the address. And everybody is frantic we’re going to miss the party. And I remember standing in the middle of Madison Avenue and saying “We can’t miss the fucking party, we ARE the party.” And this was in 1967 and it wasn’t an expression, a slogan, it was the reality, because straight rich people wanted wacky weirdoes like us and the entertainment didn’t happen until the freaks arrived. Actually at one point Warhol realized he had a good thing going and that summer he announced he was starting this “rent a superstar” service for hostesses that wanted to liven up their boring Upper West Side cocktail parties.

Craig Highberger

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Andy Warhol’s birthplace. My uncle had been in some classes with Warhol at Carnegie Mellon University, so in the late 1960s, I was very aware of Warhol’s work and the scene in New York. When I was a senior in high school I went to campus showings of Warhol’s films and that’s where I first became fascinated with Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn. I had been making Super-8 movies throughout high school and luckily a film I made about drug use and the generation gap won an award in a PBS competition and helped me get into NYU film school.

Within days of arriving in NYC in the fall of 1972 I met Jackie Curtis. He was in drag and came into the basement of my dormitory, the Joseph Weinstein Residence Hall at 11 University Place near Washington Square and joined a group of gays and lesbians who were protesting the fact that the University would not allow a gay student group to hold meetings on University property. Jackie was not political and was probably there because the all night sit-in was likely to get publicity and news coverage. Wherever there were cameras, Jackie was right there.

I was fascinated with Jackie and we had immediate rapport. Jackie spent the night in my dorm room because my roommate had not yet arrived. We became good friends and for the next thirteen years I photographed and videotaped his performances. For several years Jackie frequently crashed at my apartment after a night of carousing. Sometimes Jackie would stay for a week or so.

Holly Woodlawn

I never had an apartment lease until I was maybe thirty. Who had to pay rent? Jackie, Candy, and I were the toasts of the town for years. Parties and places to go every night, different places to crash every day. We couch-surfed our way around Manhattan for years and years. We were professional houseguests.

Steven Watson

I met Jackie indirectly through a network that involved the “Hot Peaches” which was a very important gay gender-fuck kind of cabaret musical group in the 1970s. Their first show was at Jackie’s place on Second Avenue. Through the Hot Peaches I came into contact with Minette, who I think of as the great drag godmother of them all. And Minette loved Jackie. Minette sent Jackie a Christmas card, which he had pinned up and it was signed, “Jackie, you’re a corker – Minette.” So I decided I wanted to interview Jackie, and went to his room above Slugger Ann’s and I walked in and Jackie was cooking a huge pot of spaghetti and he dumped it out into the colander and steam kind of filled the room and it felt so Jackie in that it’s dramatic, and it’s about cheap food and bulk, a very Jackie moment.

Part of what fascinated me as I interviewed Jackie, is that there was this incredible kind of emotional ping-pong that was both brilliant and kind of scary, because it was driven by so much need. It was very tangible, that in your contact with Jackie there was something he wanted from you – which was attention. It was around the time that Jackie’s mother died, the late 1970s. And Jackie would call and insist that I meet and interview him. And I remember during one of the interviews Jackie had the movie
Rebel Without a Cause
playing on the VCR without any sound. We could both see the screen and Jackie would periodically stop the interview and give some of the James Dean lines, which was quite eerie.

I saw Jackie in the James Dean boy phase and in the girl drag phase. I saw Jackie’s so-called return to drag at Slugger Ann’s, and Jackie came out wearing Slugger Ann’s wedding dress and Jackie was both glamorous and bossy and totally dominant and confident. The whole thing was a wonderful kind of dramatic badge of courage. Then I saw Jackie perform as a boy when we did the book
Minette: Recollections of a Part-Time Lady
and that night Jackie appeared as a boy wearing just a simple white shirt and he sang the song “A Quiet Thing” and it was incredibly vulnerable, it was a whole other side that Jackie allowed people to see.

Jackie on living in James Dean mode (1976):

I want to be a serious actor. I want some dignity in my life. The drag life just drove me to the edge of my sanity. I was a superstar along with Viva, Edie, Bridget, Jane Forth, Candy, Ultra Violet, Joe, and Taylor but that’s all over now. There is no underground. Half of them are dead now. I saw a fellow in drag at a party last night. He had long painted fingernails. He wanted to be Holly, Divine, Candy. He made me feel depressed. It’s degrading in the eyes of God. It’s a violation of yourself, your family and your God. I did it. Candy did it. It’s done. I spent three weeks in the hospital when I had a kidney removed in 1974. Candy Darling had just died. It gave me time to think. I knew I held the rest of my life in my hands. You only have one trip. I want to be a movie star. I want a legitimate occupation. I want to work, not fool around.

Robert Heide

The real question is does anybody know Jackie Curtis? Is Jackie sometimes Barbara Stanwyck? Is Jackie sometimes James Dean? There’s a mystery there. My first meeting with Jackie was through Ron Link, who was directing Jackie’s play
Glamour, Glory and Gold
with Melba LaRose, and Robert DeNiro’s first appearance in a play. Candy Darling was one of the stars and her hair was still the original brown and her teeth were not yet fixed. Jackie was just a quiet, shy boy and at that time he had flawless skin. Ron Link was doing his usual slam-bam directing and cursing everybody out. I remember him arguing with Jackie a lot. There was a lot of fighting going on. But that was part of the play and some of it spilled over. Ron was kind of a Warner Baxter control freak kind of director.

Jackie hadn’t yet developed the persona that we all came to expect, whether it was Barbara Stanwyck or James Dean. That melodramatic persona allowed Jackie to emerge in the same sense that people emerged through the Angels of Light – it was a time of gender-bender. We’re talking about the sixties, when all hell was breaking loose.

My favorite memory image of Jackie is a visit to Candy Darling’s deathbed. Myself and John Gilman and a crazed actor name Tom Ellis who worked with Tallulah Bankhead were there. There were roses and Candy was propped up in bed. Then in comes Holly Woodlawn and Jackie, covered with glitter. And the TV goes on and they’re sitting on either side of Candy watching the soap opera
Peyton Place
. And Tom Ellis makes the comment; “This is the real three sisters.” Somebody should have staged a version of Chekhov’s
Three Sisters
starring Jackie, Candy and Holly. Can you imagine what a sensation that would have been?

George Abagnalo

When Candy Darling was dying she was in and out of Cabrini hospital for five or six months. During one of these times she was in the hospital and was going to get out again she always had a private room, without having to pay for it because they knew Candy would not fit in an open ward with either men or women patients.

At that time I was working for Paul Morrissey at the factory and I went up to visit Candy after work one weekday afternoon. I had a big box of candy Andy Warhol had bought and asked me to take to her. After being shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968 and almost dying, Andy absolutely hated hospitals and would not go himself. I walked into Candy’s room and there were about a dozen gay men crammed in there visiting her. Three were sitting on the bed, two or three had chairs and the rest were sitting on the floor or the windowsills. Amongst them were Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn.

Everybody was sitting around and talking and cracking jokes and it was very pleasant and then the local TV news came on. All of a sudden there was this news film of some poor elderly woman wailing and crying as two policemen dragged her out of a building. Everyone got very quiet and looked at this on the TV because it was absolutely heartbreaking. You could see all of these old women from the neighborhood watching the police put this weeping old woman into a police car. It was just horrible and humiliating and one of the men sitting on the bed next to Candy said, “oh my god, what’s happening to that woman?” There was a moment of silence and then Jackie Curtis said, “That’s the factory! She is being evicted from the factory!” And everyone was absolutely hysterical. Candy laughed so hard she got red in the face and we nearly had to call the nurse.

Jeremiah Newton

In 1974 when Candy Darling was dying of cancer in the hospital Geraldine Smith, Tinkerbelle, and I were there with her constantly. We were Candy’s support system. Candy was in that private hospital room like a queen. Candy had all of these photographs of herself pinned up everywhere. Lots of people would send her flowers. Instead of throwing them out when they died Candy insisted we keep them all there. It was an amazing sight, all of these rows of vases filled with wilted roses and bouquets, with the live ones in the foreground. It was like a memorial display of death in life.

Jackie and Holly came to visit one afternoon. Jackie, Candy and Holly were just hilarious together. They would play off of one another. I remember Candy saying, “You know Holly used to work for the American Kennel Club. She’s a real dog, that one.” I remember Holly and Jackie sat there and ate an entire box of Candy’s chocolates, and most of her lunch tray. They tried to get the nurse to bring them lunches too, like it was room service. Lauren Hutton had come to visit sometime earlier and brought Candy a beautiful makeup bag completely filled with very expensive Ultima makeup. After Holly and Jackie left we found that some of it was missing. So they were banned from coming back into her room. Candy was furious and very hurt.

Interview with Jackie Curtis (1974)

Why did you start performing and living in drag?

I thought there could be nothing more attractive than to be a struggling actress, because then people would give you a break. And that’s what happened. But the moment I became a superstar everybody was saying, Jackie Cutis is a female impersonator, a drag queen, a faggot, a homosexual, a gender fucker. I mean the gender is very tender in my case, and I’m not any of those things. I’m just Jackie Curtis, and that’s all I want to be.

What do you remember about your childhood?

I used to have a recurring dream when I was a child. I dreamed that I was in a small house, a small space and I was just too big. It was nightmarish and I was just trying to get out of there. I was a child of the Lower East Side, the ghetto. Trying to escape. I tried everything. I tried to be funny, I tried to sing, I shined shoes, I opened up cab doors, and I met famous stars. I ran an elevator at the Ziegfeld Theater, I was an usher, and I sold lemonade and chocolate and checked hats and coats. I went to the high school of art and design.