Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (3 page)

January 5, 1972 – Jackie divorces Hunter Cayce.

February 14, 1972 – Jackie marries Hiram Keller.

February 16, 1972 –
Women in Revolt
premieres at the Cine Malibu in New York City.

March–April 1972 – Jackie Curtis begins signing Andy Warhol’s name to checks at Max’s Kansas City without his permission. Jackie, Holly, Candy and friends dine on Andy’s account for more than a month before their signing privileges are revoked by Warhol’s business manager.

May 1972 – Jackie’s play
Americka Cleopatra
premieres at the WPA under the direction of Harvey Tavel. Curtis plays the lead, Harvey Fierstein plays his mother Incredibe, Alexis del Lago appears as Charmin Gale and Agosto Machado as Lady Iras. The reviews are mixed. The Village Voice reviewer calls the production “… uneven, frenetic, and a bit of a hodge-podge affair,” but also singles out members of the cast for their performances: “Alexis del Lago was delicious as Charmin Gale and Agosto Machado was absolutely hilarious as the rubber-titted lady in waiting, Iras. Good ole Harvey Fierstein was brilliant as Cleo’s Jewish mother. Jackie Curtis after all is Jackie Curtis. His/Her performance was a gum-chewing, crack-snapping one which only he/she could have brought off.”

August 1972 – Alice Neel paints “Jackie Curtis as a Boy.” It depicts him seated in Neel’s studio wearing blue jeans, a baseball jersey and prominent five o’clock shadow.

November 1972 – Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” is released as a single and on the album
Transformer
. With lyrics about Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Joe Dallesandro it quickly rockets to #1. Radio stations in the US sometimes unknowingly air the unedited LP version, which includes lyrics about Candy “giving head.”

December 1972 – Andy Warhol asks Candy, Holly and Jackie what they would like for their Christmas present. Candy asks for a bottle of Chanel No. 5, Holly asks for a dress, and Jackie asks for a color television. Warhol grants all three requests.

March 1, 1973 – Jackie divorces Hiram Keller.

June 9, 1973 – Jackie marries Lance Loud.

July 27, 1973 – The Jackie Curtis Revue and Eric Emerson are the support band for a Manhattan Transfer concert. The event is advertised in the gay press as “Manhattan on Parade – A Fabulous Evening Cruise on the Hudson.” Jackie convinces both his mother and Aunt Josie to join the festivities. At 10 P.M. the S.S. Bay Belle sails up the Hudson with nearly 500 gay men, Jean and Josie. When it docks at 2 a.m. they guide a very inebriated Jackie into a taxi.

September 1973 – Episode 2 of the ground-breaking documentary series
An American Family
airs on PBS. Filmed in 1971 it includes Lance Loud taking his mother Pat to see Jackie starring in
Vain Victory
at La Mama. Scenes of the performance were actually filmed later in the summer of 1971 when the show had moved to the WPA.

October 1973 –
Broken Goddess
, a black and white silent film starring Holly Woodlawn opens at the Playboy Theater on a double bill with Alla Nazimova’s 1922 silent classic
Salome
. Jackie Curtis lies down in the gutter as Holly Woodlawn’s limousine arrives forcing Holly to step over her.

Fall 1973 – Candy Darling is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, believed induced by the many illegal hormones she had been taking for years.

March 20, 1974 – Jackie Curtis calls Holly Woodlawn telling her that “Miss Darling’s back in the hospital again, and she’s only got two minutes so you better hurry.” When Holly started sobbing saying she could not face her dying friend, Jackie told her: “We gotta go visit her. Photographers and the press are gonna be there.”

Candy, who had always been slim, was now terribly emaciated, weighing only about 80 pounds. Her eyes were beautifully made up and her lips were painted a bright crimson red but the right side of her face was paralyzed from Bell’s palsy. When they arrive, Holly says to Candy “It’s okay, hon. You don’t have to talk. I know you’re tired.” Candy responded, “Yeah. Putting on lipstick … it really takes it out of me.”

March 21, 1974 – Candy Darling dies of Leukemia at the age of 25 at Columbus Hospital, a few blocks from the Factory. Andy Warhol pays for a lavish movie star’s funeral uptown at Frank Campbell’s Funeral Home. The viewing is held in the same room where Judy Garland’s had been five years earlier. Funeral attendees include Peter Allen, Paul Ambrose, Pat Ast, Tally Brown, Jackie Curtis, Eric Emerson, Maxime de la Falaise, Victor Hugo, Paul Morrissey and Sylvia Miles. Andy Warhol does not attend the funeral. During the service Candy’s real gender and real name, James Lawrence Slattery is not mentioned. A beautiful goodbye note written by Candy is read aloud at the service, which includes the line: “I would like to say goodbye to Jackie Curtis, I think you’re fabulous,” which causes Curtis to burst into tears.

March 22, 1974 – the revival of
Glamour, Glory and Gold
(directed by Ron Link) opens at the Fortune Theater the night after Candy Darling’s death. At curtain up, Ron Link walks onto the darkened stage and asks for a moment of silence in memory of Candy and then on behalf of Jackie Curtis, dedicates the performance to her.

May 31 – June 8, 1974 – Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn appear together in
Cabaret in the Sky – an Evening with Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis
at the New York Cultural Center. The show is a smash hit.

May 1975 – Eric Emerson is found dead near the West Side Highway at the age of 31. Although officially it is listed a hit and run, it is rumored that he overdosed and his body was moved there.

Spring 1975 – Jackie Curtis graduates from Hunter College. (This cannot be confirmed, no diploma has ever been found – although it was published in his obituary.)

May 1975 – Jackie reads in Variety that
James Dean: the Legend
a made-for-TV biography has been green-lighted for production. The script is by William Bast, who had roomed with Dean in the early 1950s, when both were trying to break into films. Jackie travels to Hollywood California expressly to audition for the lead, moving in with old friend and
Vain Victory
veteran Styles Caldwell. He joins the Beverly Hills Health Club, begins working out and taking steroids (male hormones) to bulk up. Stephen McHattie ultimately is cast as Dean. Jackie is so crestfallen he turns down a minor role in the production. He continues to look for male roles.

Summer 1975 – Jackie goes back to drag and meets a casting agent at a party looking for a transvestite for an episode of Valerie Harper’s TV show
Rhoda
. Curtis plays a very obvious drag queen, one of several girls responding to an ad Rhoda’s sister Brenda had placed for a roommate. The part is hilarious and gets lots of laughs from the studio audience, but it winds up on the cutting room floor, some say because advertisers are squeamish due to Florida orange juice huckster Anita Bryant’s anti-gay crusade.

August 7, 1975 – Jackie divorces Lance Loud.

July 1976 – Jackie Curtis returns to New York City. Gossip columnists print photos of a very masculine Jackie in a crew cut and rumors of his romantic involvement with Sandy Dennis. He tells one interviewer: “I want to be a boy now. Maybe I’ll marry Sandy Dennis. Sandy has 28 cats – she has a dog, she could add me.”

September 23, 1976 – A revival of
Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit
opens at La Mama, directed by John Vaccaro.

December 24, 1976 – Jackie marries Peter Groby.

May 1977 – Both Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn headline their separate cabaret acts at fashionable New York City nightspots including Reno Sweeney’s. Jackie occasionally shows up at Holly’s show drunk and high on speed, heckling her from the audience.

June 1977 – Jackie becomes frustrated with life in New York City and impulsively moves to Elisabethton, Tennessee to try living with his father, stepmother and half-brother Tim. While there he gets a driver’s license and looks (unsuccessfully) for a job. His writes friends that his stepmother is uncomfortable with his presence.

September 1977 – Jackie goes to LA and stays with friends while trying to land parts in films or television shows.

January 1978 – Jackie returns to New York City, moving back in with his grandmother Slugger Ann.

May 14, 1978 – Jackie divorces Peter Groby.

August 15, 1978 – Jackie’s mother, Jenevive Uglialoro Holder Tarsio, dies of cervical cancer.

December 8, 1978 – Jackie Curtis visits Andy Warhol. Curtis had called a week in advance to make an appointment and was supposed to bring one other person. Jackie arrives with an entourage of fifteen people, including two photographers.

August 1979 – The book,
The Unmuzzled Ox: The Poets’ Encyclopedia
is published. The longest poem (8 pages long) in the book is ‘B-Girls’ by Jackie Curtis. The poem is based on the customers who hung out at Jackie’s grandmother’s bar – ‘Slugger Ann’s’ – located on the lower east side of New York.

October and November 1979 – Jackie announces his return to drag and performs Friday and Saturday night shows at Slugger Ann’s. Jackie wears Slugger’s wedding dress and sings an eclectic mix of songs including “Everyone’s Going to the Moon,” “I Enjoy Being a Girl” and an autobiographical number “A Star is (Still) Born.”

Spring 1980 – Jackie plays Mrs. X in Nick Markovich’s play,
Tyrone X
.

July 4, 1980 – Jackie’s grandmother Slugger Ann, Anna Marino Uglialoro Verra, dies of blood disease.

July 23, 1980 – Jackie marries Kevin McPhee.

September 14, 1981 – Jackie divorces Kevin McPhee.

June 1983 – Jackie spends part of the summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with Craig Highberger. They videotape five of Curtis’s poems including “B Girls,” and shoot lots of photographs. Jackie is drinking a fifth of vodka every day or two. Craig leaves for work one morning as Jackie begins watching a videotape of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. When Craig returns nine hours later Curtis is watching the film – for the 5th time in a row.

April 21, 1983 –
I Died Yesterday
a play by Nick Markovich premieres at La Mama starring Jackie Curtis as Frances Farmer. The show receives favorable reviews. The cast includes Penny Arcade, Peter Groby, Rita Redd, and Styles Caldwell. Jackie receives credit for “Additional Dialogue” in the program. Jackie’s cousin Joey Preston begins working as stage manager and assistant to Curtis.

Winter 1983 – Penny Arcade helps Jackie stop drinking by spending every night with him for months on end. Curtis is smoking a lot of cigarettes and drinking a lot of coffee.

March 1984 – Curtis videotapes a pilot for
Moral Heights
a gay TV soap opera he has scripted based on characters from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
and other movies. It is never telecast.

May 26, 1984 – Jackie Curtis’s final wedding takes place at No. 1 Fifth Avenue. The groom is Gary Majchrzak and Andy Warhol’s art dealer Leo Castelli gives Jackie away. Artist Larry Rivers and his jazz band provide music. After the ceremony Jackie holds up an astrological chart and explains that his staged weddings had come full circle and this was to be the final one. Attendees include Andy Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat and, Melba LaRose who originated the role of Nola Noonan in
Glamour, Glory and Gold
. Melba had tap danced at Jackie’s very first wedding in 1969.

Summer and fall 1984 – Curtis friend Gomadi begins supplying Jackie and Margo Howard-Howard with heroin. They frequently shoot up together. Jackie overdoses, but Margo revives him. The injection site becomes infected and Jackie is hospitalized at St. Vincent’s hospital for nearly a month.

November 1984 – Rehearsals begin for
Champagne
at La Mama.

January 3, 1985 –
Champagne
, Jackie’s final play opens at La Mama. Jackie plays lead character Piper Heidsieck, a movie star who is foolishly trying to become a Broadway stage star. Curtis is using heroin and has bows tied around his arms to conceal abscess scarring. Reviews are mixed.

March 1985 – Jackie stops using drugs. He changes his name to Shannon Montgomery and begins attending acting classes at the HB Studio. He has photographer Scavullo take a new head shot of him as Shannon and begins to audition for male roles in theatrical productions and New York-based soap operas.

May 15, 1985 – Jackie Curtis dies of an accidental heroin overdose at the age of 38. His wake is held at the Andrett Funeral Home on 2nd Avenue and 21st Street and the funeral mass at St. Ann’s Church. Jackie Curtis is laid out in his coffin as a man in a dark suit with his hair slicked back and a big white flower on his lapel. Photographs of Curtis in drag are arranged on poster board displays and various show business mementos and a plaque reading “John Holder, a.k.a. Jackie Curtis” is placed inside the coffin. Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol send flowers but do not attend.

Chapter 1 – Youth

Gretchen Berg photographed Jackie Curtis in 1966 when he was just 19. She remembers: “There was something tragic and very sad in his eyes, even when he smiled.”
Photo © Gretchen Berg

When I was a student in Paradoxology at the University of Spirit Lake in Washington, my professor told me that my mission in life was to see through the veneer of ambiguity, enigma, language, mathematics, science, and existence. To this end, I have traveled around the world collecting serious and whimsical puzzles.

Gretchen Berg

It was the hot summer of 1966, America was getting involved with Vietnam, people were marching in the streets, there was a lot of marijuana smoke in the air, like the smell of flowers, and I went up to East 47th Street, to the studio, the factory of Andy Warhol. I did an interview with him and I also took photographs. And when I finished, this young kid walked up to me. He was very tall. He had a football player’s physique and he said, “Hello, my name is Jackie. I need some pictures for my portfolio, would you take some pictures of me?” I introduced myself and he said, “I talked to Gerard, I know all about you. You know Andy wants me to star in a film about his life, I’m going to play Andy as a boy.”

So the next day or two we went out together in the East Village and took a lot of photographs. Jackie Curtis was like some flowers – they’re very bright and happy during the day, but at dusk he started to get more and more melancholy. Some people are like that; they take on the coloring, the mood of the night. Jackie seemed to be more of a night creature in many ways. And when the moodiness hit him, that’s when I took my very best pictures of him. There was something tragic and very sad in his eyes, even when he smiled. He had the same sadness that you see in some gypsy children – mirth without happiness. There seemed to be a definite tragic air about him, as if he were conscious of his destiny. Jackie was all alone in the world. His parents had divorced and had started other families. He was living with his grandmother over a bar called “Slugger Ann’s” on 13th Street and Second Avenue. He was very conscious of the fact that he had to make his own way in the world.

George Abagnalo

Jackie told me that when he was about twelve years old he would spend the summer in Tennessee with his father and stepmother. He told me that during one of these visits they must have needed a break from taking care of him so they dropped him off at the house of an Aunt and Uncle where he was to spend a week. Jackie did not like these relatives. He said his Aunt and Uncle were not friendly at all and acted put-upon and his cousins were mean and wouldn’t play with him and he wanted to leave after the very first day. He said spending a week with them would have been an eternity.

On the second morning his Aunt came back from the supermarket and asked Jackie to go to the car and unload the groceries. This was a big family so there was a lot of food. And in one bag he noticed a lot of delicatessan coldcuts and cheese, about pound each of ham, turkey, swiss cheese, and baloney. The Aunt told Jackie to put away the things that belonged in the refrigerator and went down to the basement to start the laundry. Jackie told me while she was down there he opened up all of the packages. He wrote his name in very huge letters on the kitchen floor using the sliced coldcuts. He took the pound of ham and made a very large “J,” the pound of turkey became the “A” and so on all the way through to the “IE” on the end. Of course his Aunt walked in the room and just went crazy. Jackie said she immediately telephoned his father and stepmother and said, “you have to come and get Jackie right away, we just can’t tolerate this!”

Rev. Tim Holder

I’m Jackie Curtis’s brother. Jackie used to talk about having family in Buladine, Tennessee. He was a member of the Buladine Citizen’s Club, which he joined one summer he spent there with us. Dad could not live in the big city so the family moved to Tennessee. Jackie’s mother could not live in Tennessee, which meant that they could not be together. So they divorced and Jackie went with his mother to live in New York.

I remember being in study hall in the library of my high school one day and
was reading
Newsweek
magazine because I was interested in politics. I turned the
page and there was a theater review with the headline “Ridiculous” which turned out
to be a not very favorable review of Jackie Curtis’s new play
Heaven Grand in
Amber Orbit
. But as they say, any kind of news can be good news because here
was a review of his play in a national magazine.

Gretchen Berg

Jackie really wanted to break out and be on his own after high school, but he became frightened a lot. Life was very scary to him. Jackie tried living with friends many times during his life, but he always went back to Slugger Ann’s. He never really had his own home. You need a place of your very own. You need a place where you can go and just shut the door and the whole world is outside. He didn’t really have that. He didn’t really have a father or mother in his life. He managed to bury that, but it came up later in his twenties and thirties in alcohol and drug abuse.

He once confided to me that he was still a virgin at 18 and that he was scared to have sex with anybody. He said that when he was told ‘the facts’ as he called them, he said to the other kids without thinking, ‘My mother and father never did that!’ and he was subjected to much merciless ragging. He almost never mentioned his family (I didn’t even know he had a brother) and the only time he mentioned his mother was once when he spoke of leaving high school: “I knew my mother wouldn’t have served another plate of food to me, so I got that high school diploma!”

Jackie once said to me, “Girls really have it good because they can dress in skirts or they can dress like a boy.” He would often make statements that were really questions. It was really as if he was asking me is this right? Should I think these things? Is it right to feel this way? Jackie didn’t have anyone to show him what a man is in this society. He didn’t know if he should be straight, bisexual or homosexual – it was all very confusing to him as an adolescent, and it wasn’t something I could help him with.

Lily Tomlin

I relate to Jackie because of my own background in Detroit. I lived in a working class neighborhood that was very mixed racially and ethnically. I grew up living in a very old apartment house that was filled with all kinds of people. And I can imagine what it was like for Jackie hanging out at Slugger Ann’s when he was young. My dad was also a big drinker and a gambler and I went to all the bars and the bookie joints with him. And I was just kind of in love with everybody, and all the different classes and education levels and politics and all I ever really saw was how alike they were – how elevated and grand they could be and how low and base they could be at another time, each one of them. And I could imagine Jackie seeing people at Slugger Ann’s through similar eyes.

On my Edith Ann album, I have Edith yelling into Parr’s bar “Hey Ed, is my dad in there?” And we had a soundtrack of a bar and a gregarious old woman talking in the background “Hey what’re ya doin’ Ed?” – you hear pool cues cracking and balls breaking and it probably was just like Slugger Ann’s.

Jackie on Slugger Ann:

My Grandmother Slugger Ann used to read palms, cards, tea leaves, bumps on heads and hold séances, She taught me about reincarnation and astrology and gave me a book on superstitions.

One of the greatest things my Grandmother ever told me was: “Don’t cut your
hair—your ears will show. Don’t ever let anybody tell you you’re handsome—because
you’re too tall, gaunt, awkward and scary looking. But you’re lucky. Be nice but
beware. Believe in yourself and everyone else will believe. I think it’s fine to be
considered strange because you’re certain to be noticed. An individual is
remembered.”

Styles Caldwell

Jackie came from a very colorful background. His grandmother was very nice, but she was a very tough lady too – she had to be, she ran a bar in a very rough working class neighborhood. I mean there were prostitutes who hung out at Slugger Ann’s bar, and there was a whorehouse right upstairs at one point. For years there was a numbers racket going on out of the place too. Jackie told me all of this. In the early 1930s during prohibition his grandmother Slugger Ann ran a New York speakeasy, so you can imagine there was probably Sicilian Mafia involvement from way back.

Jackie had a couple of Uncles who had been Marines in World War II. They were Slugger Ann’s sons, Jack and Tony. Uncle Jackie, he was really nice but he had shell shock or some nervous or psychological disorder from the horrible experiences he had in the war. Uncle Tony was not nice at all. He was really macho and bullheaded and when Jackie started running around in a dress Uncle Tony chased him around the city with a gun. He wanted to beat Jackie up because he said he was a disgrace to the family name. For years Jackie had to always watch out for him, so he wouldn’t go into the parts of the city where Uncle Tony worked or hung out. It sounds unbelievable but it’s true. Jackie talked about it on the David Susskind show in the early seventies and that was when the whole family was still alive and they were all watching it in Slugger Ann’s bar so you know it’s true. When Uncle Tony died of a heart attack in his car with his girlfriend everybody was very relieved.

Sasha McCaffrey

Jackie Curtis told me that her grandmother Slugger Ann had been a Burlesque Queen, a Vaudeville stripper. She was also the mistress of former New York Mayor Jimmie Walker. Walker bought her the Slugger Annie’s bar so she could retire from stripping. She encouraged Jackie to get into show business. Slugger had enormous breasts and sometimes would wear this low-cut dress. Believe it or not, she would occasionally come into the bar with her seven tiny Chihuahuas inside her dress. She would have them perched on top of her once voluptuous breasts, hanging out of the top of her dress for laughs!

Everyone in the bar would just flip out. Just imagine these seven little glaring doggies yipping and yapping like the medusa’s head of snakes. No one could go near Slugger – imagine she is standing there sporting seven live Chihuahuas, perched on top of her breasts! There was a little black one with evil eyes that never stopped staring at you and barking. You wanted to murder it. You would put a pump down its throat or your foot if she would just turn her head for a minute. They were like vipers, or a school of piranhas. A very strange woman, Slugger Annie.

Joey Preston

Curtis was one of my dearest family members. As early as I was doing my first communion Curtis had been in drag the night before for the first time. He shocked my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt – needless to say. But the next morning, he was bright and early in St. Anne’s Church, being my godfather.

My first memories of Curtis dressed in drag are when he came up to the house with Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling. We lived in a railroad apartment and I would sit in my room and the three of them would go back and forth from the bathroom fixing their makeup, with the feather boas, the glitter all over the place. I actually had no clue that this was Curtis dressed up as a woman. I’m ten years old sitting on my bed looking up at these tall drag queens with feather boas flying behind them, they’re all looking at me as they’re passing. It was quite a novelty for me. I knew the life way before I grew up.

Curtis was always at odds with our Uncle Tony. The first time Uncle Tony saw him in drag they had a few choice words, and Tony chased him out of the bar and right down 12th Street. Imagine Curtis with the feathers and the high heels running down the block with this angry macho street man chasing after him! Uncle Tony never caught up with him. Curtis was fast enough, thank god.

Jackie on Sexual Ambiguity:

It is very strange, but I only seem to get into trouble when I’m a boy. The worst was when the cops found a gun in my studio. It was inoperable and a prop, but they arrested me anyway. I feel somehow the trouble I have as a boy compensates for the sensational time I have as one of the girls just sitting around.

You might think that being a gay boy would be more liberating – but for me it’s not. Because I feel trapped as a boy. But you must understand that I don’t feel like a woman trapped in the body of a male. Candy and Holly take female hormones and talk about having sex change operations. That is not for me at all, because my body is my body, and my sex is my sex and my ambiguity is my ambiguity. And I cling to that, fervently.

Gretchen Berg

There was a small theatre group putting on a production of
A Midsummer’s Night Dream
and Jackie came over once with a copy of the play in a small paperback book and said that he wanted to study the part of Puck and that he knew he could do it. ‘Puck is like me, you know, I know just how he feels: the fairies don’t trust him because he spends so much time with humans and Oberon doesn’t even totally trust him and the humans don’t want him and where can he go? So, he makes mischief.’

Then Jackie composed himself on my bed and recited Puck’s last speech as the dying rays of the sun (I faced West) came in my window. That’s how I like to remember Jackie, reciting, ‘If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear …’ I will never forget that as he spoke the last line of ‘Give me your hands, if we be friends and Robin shall restore amends!’ he flung out his arms towards me and tears came from his eyes and ran down his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking for a Kleenex, ‘I’ve been feeling peculiar all day. Let’s go down to that Deli downstairs and get a roast chicken and bring it up here and I’ll read you the role of Puck like you’ve never heard Puck!’