Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (15 page)

Jackie had advertised
Vain Victory
in the
Village Voice
with a list of practically everybody who was anybody in New York, and Jackie was powerful enough and liked well enough by everybody that everybody she had advertised was in the show, showed up. They may have just stood there in the background of a scene, or did like Andy Warhol as the winged avenger – all he did was stand up and take photographs during the play every so often. It was really a who’s who of the underground at the time. I remember peeking into the lobby at one point and being tickled pink because not only was the lobby packed with people, and the street outside, but Marion Javits who was the wife of then Senator Jacob Javits. She was standing there with a big party screaming “I’m Marion Javits, what do you mean I can’t get in?” We were that sold out.

The opening of the show was like a twenty minute rant by Ondine to a pair of legs on a couch. All you see is the legs and feet and Ondine screaming, “Look at those feet, look at those goddamn feet! Those feet once tread the highwire. Now look at those filthy feet. You’re going to go back where you once started – washing out elephant’s assholes!” The language – I just couldn’t believe it, but the audiences ate it up.

The show was an enormous hit, we ran sold out for weeks and weeks. But you know we never actually got to the end of act three and nobody ever missed it. The first act took place in a Circus. It was originally going to be a ship, the S.S. Vain Victory. The second act was an underwater ballet, which lasted about five minutes. Clarice Rivers, the artist Larry Rivers wife was the lead chorus girl in that scene. The third act took place in Lana Turner’s bedroom in Peyton Place.

Candy Darling was the leading lady and Dorian Grey was the nearest thing to a leading man we had except for Ondine who came and went depending upon the drugs. He was brilliant when he was there, but one night he came in and walked onstage after Douglas Fisher had been doing his part for some time. Douglas was afraid to tell him he had been fired, so they both performed the part in tandem. Jackie let it happen, but the rest of us were terrified because Ondine was dangerous. He never attacked Jackie. Like two scorpions, they were wary of each other.

Styles Caldwell

One night Paul Ambrose and I were walking home from a gay dance somewhere in the Village and Paul was wearing a black leotard with pearls and a fur hat, and Jackie Curtis came up to us and said I’m doing a play at La Mama called
Vain Victory
do you want to be in it? And before I knew it we were both over there at La Mama rehearsing.

Originally Jackie was going to play the female lead, but he changed his mind and decided to play the male lead Blue Denim and he had Candy Darling play the female lead Donna Bella Beads. Each act of
Vain Victory
was several hours long – the complete script was never performed. It takes place in a high school, at a carnival, and on a ship called the S.S. Vain Victory. It’s a wild script.

A 1950s high school graduation opens the show and Mario Montez came out in a fabulous gown as the valedictorian and made a speech. At one point there were two guys in leather jackets simulating jerking off with their backs to the audience. And there was this actual shell of an old car on stage that represented the James Dean death car and Jackie perched in it and sang one of his musical numbers. Believe me we did
Grease
before they did it on Broadway.

Then the play transitions into this story line about Candy Darling who plays a mermaid. She and mama mermaid were in a lagoon over in one corner of the stage. They amputated Paul Ambrose’s legs and gave them to Candy so she could become this glamorous movie star. Paul spent the rest of the play rolling around in a wheelchair. He played a character called Marie Nemo. She came to just hate that name because for many years whenever people saw Paul on the street they would scream, “Oh MARIE!” whether he was in drag or not. It got on his nerves because even strangers did it – people he didn’t know who had been in the audience. Marie Nemo was some Italian woman, during rehearsals we were walking around one night and Jackie saw this building in Little Italy “The Marie Nemo Building” and he made that the name of Paul’s character, he was good at coming up with fabulous names. Jackie was brilliant at putting shows together. Before we opened he found this shop with all these incredible old costumes that went back to the Ziegfield Follies and for a hundred dollars we got about two dozen gorgeous outfits including the mermaid costume.

In the show Steven Holt played a character called “Nunca the Divine,” he was brought out on a litter and sang a song “I am Nunca the Divine,” I think Nunca means “Never” in Spanish so he’s singing “I am never the Divine”! He played a lot of parts including Mama Mermaid in the lagoon and Jackie had him wear a white wig and sunglasses, made up so he looked like Andy Warhol. It was kind of a tribute to Warhol. The character was a stage mother like Mama Rose in
Gypsy
screaming things at Candy like, “Go on honey, push your way in there honey, get right in the spotlight, you can be a big star!”

One of the characters I played in
Vain Victory
was a cigarette girl like they used to have in night clubs, you see them in some of the old movies from the 1940s. I came out in drag carrying this box hanging around my neck filled with absurd things. I walked right across the stage interrupting the play and walk right out into the audience screaming, “Cigars, cigarettes, rubber dollies, French letters, hair burgers!” just bringing the show to a halt and offering all these insane things for sale. It drove Paul Ambrose crazy because this was during his most dramatic scene, but the audience just loved it.

We were packed every single performance; this was the big downtown hit in the summer of 1971. Every night was wonderful and unique and sometimes Andy Warhol would bring friends and Jackie would have him stand up and take Polaroid photographs during the play. One night Silva Thin, one of the performers tossed a lighted cigarette and it landed on Steven Holt’s litter, which had all these ribbons and colored paper fringe and during the play it suddenly caught on fire. Of course everybody screamed and carried on and all the actors and the audience ran out into the lobby and the street until a couple of stagehands dragged it outside and put it out with a fire extinguisher. It was like it was part of the show.

Agosto Machado

At the very end of the run pretty much the entire in crowd had seen the show. The big celebrities came very early in the run. Here it was just a week before closing and Dotson Rader brought Tennessee Williams to see
Vain Victory
. So all during the show we were all sneaking peeks out into the audience to look at Tennessee. I guess he was a little parched because he took out a pocket flask of something and was sipping at it every now and then during the first act. Slowly, during the second act I noticed his eyes close. I thought oh he’s listening to the text, listening. But then he slouched down in his seat with his head slumped to one side. I thought maybe his neck is sore so he’s resting it. But he was there in the audience! For the entire show. Okay, maybe he was asleep during the second half, but he did wake up at the curtain call and applauded. Tennessee Williams applauded
Vain Victory
. And we all came down and thanked him for coming, and he was so kind and generous with his praise and chatted with Jackie and Candy and all of us.

Then later Tennessee Williams was so generous, helping Candy Darling by casting her in
Small Craft Warnings
which debuted at the Truck and Warehouse Theater across the street from La Mama. During that run Tennessee had to fill in for an actor that had to drop out of the show and he had difficulty memorizing his part so he had to have script pages all over the set on the furniture, and the bar. And sometimes he got mixed up or missed a cue. It was downtown theater. It didn’t matter if he got lost. It didn’t matter if he demanded a real drink from the bar. You keep the play going. It’s what we all did in Jackie’s plays. You work around it. There were times Tennessee sat down and there would be an incredibly long pause while he had a drink and someone from the cast would bring him a script page, and he’d take it and brush them away saying, “I know, I KNOW! I wrote it!” And by the end of the performance he was inebriated, but it was Tennessee Williams! It was downtown New York Theater and it was art.

Holly Woodlawn

I was in
Vain Victory
for part of the run in 1971. Nobody ever knew what the story was about because everyone was so bombed and high. Miss Candy Darling was a mermaid named Donna Bella Beads and every night the play changed because nobody ever remembered their lines. So finally Miss Darling quit the show. She said, “I refuse to work with non-professionals.” So Jackie had me take over her role and the next night Miss Darling came with a rich society boyfriend and sat right in the front row because she wanted to see what a disaster I would be playing her role, Donna Bella Beads. Backstage we were crockola honey, the vodka and the speed were rampant.

So here I was in Candy’s mermaid costume in a wheelchair and it was my first time making the entrance and I started rolling the wheelchair and I didn’t know how to make it stop! So the wheelchair rolled right over the footlights and the little front wheels went off the stage! I fell screaming right into the front row of the audience and landed literally in Miss Darling’s lap – and she leapt up, pushing me off of her. She was screaming blue murder accusing me of doing it deliberately! This absolutely brought the house down. Both the cast and the audience were completely hysterical. Here I was stuck in this mermaid outfit with my legs strapped together, and I was seriously drunk and I could not get up so everybody picked me up and reseated me in the wheelchair on stage while Miss Darling and her date just stormed out of there cursing and ranting. The audience loved it and applauded. They thought it was part of the show. People came the next night and were disappointed I didn’t catapult into the audience.

Paul Ambrose

During
Vain Victory
Jackie was doing so much speed that he got quite thin and he became absolutely demented. He believed that the spirit of Gary Cooper had possessed him, or he had taken over whatever powers Gary Cooper had and Gary Cooper’s daughter who was a friend of Jackie’s did not discourage him from believing this.

Styles Caldwell

Being in
Vain Victory
was the most exciting time of my life. All of these fabulous people were in it. Eric Emerson was one of the stars. I remember Eric would stand in front of us nude backstage and we had to grease his entire body with petroleum jelly and then cover him with glitter from head to toe. I remember putting pink glitter on the head of his penis.

Eric played an angel cowboy and came out wearing chaps and a cowboy hat – that’s all he wore! He was so cute and nice. He was coming on to everybody. He had about five illegitimate children and a hundred boyfriends. He was very busy. I used to see him going down Christopher Street. Eric took ballet classes and he’d do these leaps and pirouettes down the street wearing only a pair of cutoffs in the summer. He had an incredible body. No wonder Jackie Curtis wanted to get married to him the summer of 1969.

We opened
Vain Victory
at La Mama and people were fighting to get in, we had to turn away dozens and dozens of people without tickets. Marion Javits (the senator’s wife) pulled up in a limousine with a party of five and they couldn’t get in. Andy Warhol was there opening night in the audience and so were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. After the performance we all went to Phoebe’s and hung out until dawn with John and Yoko. All these fabulous people from society and the arts came down to see the show.

Paul Serrato

Joe Franklin was a very famous TV personality here in New York City and a very good friend of Jackie’s. He had a program called
Down Memory Lane
and nostalgia was his stock in trade. Jackie of course loved old movies, old movie stars, and old music, contemporary though he was. This is one of the crazy contradictions about Jackie but it also makes him very interesting. Joe Franklin decided to have Jackie and Candy on his show the summer that
Vain Victory
was such a hot thing downtown.

Jackie and Candy went on the program and Joe introduced them as the new romantic couple from the downtown theatre scene. Joe, god bless him, did not know that Candy Darling was not a woman. When he found out afterwards, after the program, he was very upset with Jackie and I think it might have ended the relationship. But it was very difficult to think of Candy as a man. I remember when Jackie’s play
Glamour, Glory, Gold
was first presented, off Broadway, the
New York Times
reviewer said of Candy Darling, hers is the first female impersonation of a female impersonator that I have ever seen. Think about that.

Joe Franklin

Nobody discovers anyone, but I gave the first exposure on TV to Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Bette Midler, Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Murphy, Bruce Springsteen – the list is endless. Among those that got their first exposure on my show was Jackie Curtis. When I think back on some of my all time highlights I remember one particular show with Jackie and Candy Darling. They were doing a show downtown called
Vain Victory
. And they were so lovey-dovey on the show, I thought that Candy was a lady because she was so beautiful and I really thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

You’ve got to believe me out of a half a million interviews, I’m in the Guinness Book of World Records with the longest running talk show, twenty-eight thousand episodes of the Joe Franklin Show – I look back at that one with Jackie and Candy and scratch my head and say it really couldn’t have been – but it was!

Joey Preston

Curtis was our nucleus; he was our star in the family. I worked with Curtis as a stage manager and business manager for most of his productions during the 80s and I just loved working with him. But my curtain went up on time. Sometimes Curtis was half dressed, and I’d say ‘Curtis, get dressed, the curtain is already up’ and he’s screaming ‘What’re you doing to me, what’re you doing to me’ – as he’s trying to get his hair up and his makeup on. But we had a very good working relationship and I love him dearly.