Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (20 page)

Craig Highberger

Andrea Feldman was a rich girl who was one of the stars of Paul Morrissey’s
Heat
. She had a trust fund and her parent’s set her up in a nice apartment building on Fifth Avenue in the Village. One afternoon friends arrived to find Andrea sitting in the middle of her living room floor with a screwdriver disassembling the window air conditioner. She announced she was looking for hidden microphones. Andrea frequently called herself Andy Warhol’s wife, introducing herself alternately as “Andrea Whips Warhol” or “Andrea Whips Feldman.” She hung out at Max’s Kansas City where she would frequently leap up onto a table screaming, “Okay everybody, it’s SHOWTIME!.” Then she would screech show tunes off key while gyrating and stripping until a bouncer pulled her off the table, kicking and screaming.

There was one infamous night at Max’s in the spring of 1972 when Andrea was in the middle of “SHOWTIME.” The backroom crowd wasn’t really paying attention to her anymore. She had been pulling this stunt for years and it was getting old. Jackie Curtis walked by the table Andrea was performing on and Andrea deliberately kicked Jackie in the shoulder. Curtis grabbed Andrea’s leg and she lost her balance and fell to the floor – and got up fighting. Andrea and Jackie tussled and Jackie’s Barbra wig went flying across the room. Andrea grabbed the front of Jackie’s housedress and just ripped it completely off. Jackie stood there in Jockey shorts to which he had safety-pinned his torn stockings! The bouncer dragged Andrea out of Max’s to thunderous applause and laughter as Jackie tried to safety pin his dress back together. A few weeks later just before HEAT opened, on August 8, 1972, Andrea committed suicide by jumping out of the window of her fourteenth floor apartment building at Fifth Avenue and 12th Street.

Laura de Coppet

One evening I went out to a big party with Curtis and he was cruising. We were separated for a couple of hours and when I found him later, I said well what happened, any luck? And he said, no, not really – he had a ten-inch dick, but a face like a frying pan. I think that’s a very funny line.

Jackie’s Marriages

Married Eric Emerson – July 21, 1969. (Divorced June 6, 1970.)

Married Archie Dukeshire – October 28, 1970. (Divorced April 17, 1971.)

Married Hunter Cayce – November 27, 1971. (Divorced January 5, 1972.)

Married Hiram Keller – February 14, 1972. (Divorced March 1, 1973.)

Married Lance Loud – June 9, 1973. (Divorced August 7, 1975.)

Married Peter Groby – December 24, 1976. (Divorced May 14, 1978.)

Married Kevin McPhee – July 23, 1980. (Divorced September 14, 1981.)

Married Gary Majchrzak – May 26, 1984. (Jackie Curtis’s final wedding.)

Husband Number Six: Peter Groby – poem by Jackie Curtis

LOVE is an astonishing thing, even in art. It can do what no amount of culture, criticism or intellect can do, namely, connect the most widely divergent poles, bring together what is oldest and what is newest. It transcends time by relating everything to itself as a center. It alone gives certainty, it alone is right because it has no interest in being right.

He had loved and in loving found himself.

Yet most men love in order to lose themselves.

Everything in the world can be imitated or forged, everything but love. Love can be neither stolen nor imitated; it lives only in the hearts that are able to give themselves wholly. It is the source of all art.

To be loved is not happiness.

Every man loves himself.

To love: That is happiness.

—Jackie Curtis © 1985 The Estate of Jackie Curtis

Paul Ambrose

For many years Jackie shared an apartment with his grandmother a couple of blocks away from the bar that she ran called “Slugger Ann’s.” One night Jackie was having sex with this sailor he had picked up and brought back to the place. Jackie was in drag, wearing this Barbra Streisand styled wig that actually belonged to his grandmother. You can just imagine the scene when Slugger came in after closing the bar up very late on a Saturday night. She walks into her living room and sees Jackie, wearing her wig, in the middle of giving a sailor a blowjob. She was probably planning on wearing that wig to church later that morning. Slugger Ann just went ballistic, screaming and smacking Jackie, “Take off the wig, Jack, take off the wig!” Of course the sailor jumped up and took off into the night. There was never a dull moment at “Slugger Ann’s” with those Chihuahuas, and the only Jukebox in town that had a 45rpm record of Jackie Curtis singing “Blood Red Roses” from some failed Broadway musical that had only two performances.

Holly Woodlawn

One night Jackie and I left Max’s Kansas City around four in the morning and we were broke so we had to walk back to the apartment we were living in on 10th Street and First Avenue. This was before it was chic to live there. It was a rough neighborhood back in the early seventies. So we were walking home and we both ran out of cigarettes and all the stores and bars were closed. We had to walk past a Fire Station across the street. As we approached, we could see someone standing out front smoking a cigarette. And Jackie said, “Holly, wait for me here, I’m going to go get us some cigarettes.” And she went across the street and talked to this guy for a minute and then they both stepped back out of sight into the alley next to the Station. I could guess what Miss Curtis was up to.

Well I stood there by myself for what seemed like forever and I was getting really nervous because it’s 4:30 A.M. and this was not a great neighborhood. I am in this little strapless black dress with sequins and it’s just too dangerous to walk home alone. Suddenly a car pulls up next to the curb and this creep gets out. He thinks I’m a whore and tries to pick me up. So I run across the street to get away from him and go looking for Jackie. I turn the corner into the alley and there is Jackie in her housedress with this big burly New York City Fireman hugging her from behind. As I get closer I notice that Miss Curtis’s housedress is pulled all the way up in the back and the front of the Fireman’s pants are undone. He is plowing her! Right out in the open in this alley! I said, “Oh my God, Jackie you will do anything for a lousy cigarette. You are disgusting!” and I walked around the corner to the front of the station. A little while later they walked around the corner zipping up and brushing themselves off and I said to the Fireman, “Excuse me, do you have a brother?” He said no. “Well do you have another half hour?” Unfortunately he didn’t. I was incensed that Miss Curtis made out that night and I didn’t. At least he gave us what was left of his pack of cigarettes.

Craig Highberger

One night at 3 A.M. the frantic ringing of my door buzzer awakened me. There was Jackie in drag at my door with a big drunken sailor who had latched onto him, thinking that he was a prostitute. He had Curtis’s red lipstick smeared all around his mouth! Jackie look really scared and immediately asked if I had any cold beer. We planted this big brute on the couch mumbling about his sexual needs and in the kitchen Jackie said, “Craig you’ve got to help me, I can’t get rid of him – he wants to fuck me in the ass and I don’t want to! He’s big and rough and drunk and I can tell he’s going to beat me up or rape me or both. What are we going to do?” I had visions of our bolting, leaving him there and getting the Police, but luckily he passed out cold. I took his arms, Jackie took his legs. We carried him out of the apartment, put him down in the hallway and locked the door. He was gone the next morning.

Michael Musto

Jackie wasn’t only great on-stage; Jackie was great as Jackie off-stage. He was incredible 24/7. He had that special something. He was a raconteur, he was somebody who, as an interviewer, I cherished – because so many interview subjects just sit there or give one-word answers or won’t reveal anything. If anything, Jackie revealed too much. She told you everything. She told you stuff that, she probably didn’t even know about until she thought about it to tell an interviewer. And I would just turn on the tape and just let her go and she would say, “Well if you could be more specific with the questions.” But I was purposely being vague, because you got more out of her just by throwing some generic subject at her and letting her ‘riff’. And eventually you would get all the specifics, all the details you needed. Some of them may not have been true, I’m not so sure. Did she really have a grandmother named ‘Slugger Ann’? Did ‘Slugger Ann’ really dress her like a girl? Did she really meet Nicholas Ray? Was Carol Burnett really her spiritual godmother? Whatever! I believed it! And it made good copy and that’s the important thing.

Holly Woodlawn

I was doing my nightclub act at Reno Sweeney’s in 1977 and Jackie came with some friends. When I came on she shouted “gay gown!” and heckled me and was a real bitch. One night after the show Curtis invited me over to watch Mildred Pierce on the Late Show. And when Butterfly McQueen came on Jackie said, “I know her. I know Butterfly. She’s very sweet. We talk on the telephone all the time.” Of course I didn’t believe a word she said. And then Jackie was doing her cabaret act at Slugger Ann’s a year or so later and there in the audience was Butterfly McQueen – it was true! She was friends with Butterfly. How odd is that? The truth is truly stranger than fiction.

Paul Ambrose

We all of course adored everything and everyone in the Wizard of OZ, and Margaret Hamilton lived in New York City. And somehow Jackie got her address from someone who knew her. She said she wanted to send her flowers on her birthday or something. And one day Jackie and Estelle just went over to her building with a bouquet of flowers and told the doorman they had come to see Margaret Hamilton. Of course the doorman said “Is Miss Hamilton expecting you?” And Jackie just bold face lied and said to him “Yes, tell Miss Hamilton that Jackie Curtis and his friend Douglas Fisher have flowers for her.” And it worked, the doorman called and announced them and sent them on up. They knocked at the door and there the little old darling was. She was almost eighty years old and she invited them in and made them tea. Jackie invited her to a party someone was giving but she declined because she was going to be out of town visiting old friends in Texas. But Jackie stayed in touch with her and called her on the phone and they exchanged cards and letters for years.

Jackie died on the 15th of May 1985 and coincidentally Margaret Hamilton died the very next day, May 16th. On May 17th the New York Times printed both their obituaries. Jackie’s was right beside a production still of the Wicked Witch and Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of OZ. Curtis would have liked that.

Jackie on image (from a letter to Craig Highberger):

You know that the product I have always been selling and will always be selling is that fantastically cool ice blonde with a heart that would melt if a puppy dog crossed the room and didn’t look at her the right way.

Sasha McCaffrey

One night I found a beautiful Russian sable coat neatly folded over a railing outside a brownstone in the Village. Someone was probably getting in a cab to go to the airport or somewhere and just forgot it. It fit me like a glove, and it looked fantastic. It was one of those magic things, like it was meant to be mine. So it was in my closet at home. Now people were in and out of my place all the time, as many as five people might be living there at any one time. One day I came home from work and there on my front stoop are Douglas Fisher and Jackie Curtis. Jackie is wearing my Russian sable coat a red wig and all the Lucy red lipstick in the world, smoking a cigarette and Douglas says, “Shit, there’s Sasha, he’s going to kill you!” Jackie just said, “Sasha, I wanted to borrow your coat. I was going to ask you but it looked so fabulous, I didn’t think you’d mind.” When Jackie pulled it on, it was obviously too small for her because both of the sleeves had ripped off at the shoulders and she was showing bare arms from the shoulders to where the sleeves were all bunched up at the forearms.

I said, “Look at that, you’ve ruined my fur coat, you’ve ripped the arms off!” Jackie said, “What do you mean ruined it? That’s the style. Estelle, tell him about style.” I said, “Jackie, there’s something wrong with you. You’re very different. Your mind doesn’t work like a normal person’s.” I knew at that moment that I simply had to decide, is this the limit? Or am I going to accept and like Jackie for the rest of my life? And the answer was yes, I am. It’s not logical. You don’t know why. It’s not because you’re bored, it’s not because you’re just trying to get through whatever circus this is that has been handed to you. Jackie was a very unique person and completely fascinating.

Joey Preston

One time Curtis showed up wearing my grandmother’s fur coat. And my mother says, Curtis, what are you doing with that coat, he says: ‘Nana gave this to me, this is my coat’. And stamps his foot on the floor and my dog is barking a mile a minute, he’s going: ‘Beast! Beast! Leave me alone!’ This is my coat, Nana gave this to me’. My mother says, “Curtis, Nana was my mother, when she dies the clothing goes to me, this is my coat, as soon as you’re finished with it, it comes back to me.” Curtis pulls the coat tight around him and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, leave me alone, I’m leaving this house.”

Another thing that disappeared from the house was a pair of fabulous eyeglasses that my mother had made-to-order. She really loved unusual eyeglasses. She had shown them to Curtis, but after he left she never saw them again. She figured he’d probably absconded with them. And sure enough, he wore them as part of his costume in one of his shows. Luckily I was stage manager. As soon as the show ended, I took them back and I gave them back to my mother.

Craig Highberger

At NYU there was a class in directing for the stage. One scheduled exercise was to have several different students direct the same content simply for comparison’s sake. The selected scene was from
I Am a Camera
, John van Druten’s theatrical adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s
The Berlin Stories
. I persuaded Jackie to come in drag to the class and play Sally Bowles (the role Julie Harris played in the 1955 film). Jackie was perfect as the depression-era Berlin party girl. She wore her Greta Garbo gray wig and a little black dress with scarves and carefully selected jewelry. Jackie was astonishing in the scene, and the Professor acknowledged that Jackie was much better than any of the “real” girls who played the part.