4/28/2024 0 Comments Divine drag queen heightBut she called him right after, they cried, and were fully reconciled until he died. Belatedly suspecting her son Glenn might be this “Divine” she’d seen on gay magazine covers, she rushed to see the first of his movies she could find: Female Trouble, which took a flamethrower to every last one of Frances’s treasured suburban ideals. My favourite detail comes from his mother Frances. Here’s that shy, overweight suburban gay kid with a predilection for dressing up as Vivien Leigh or Liz Taylor, thrown out by his parents on coming out, fully come into his own at last. We see Divine performing with the acid-casualty San Francisco theatre troupe the Cockettes, pushing a shopping cart full of mackerel onstage and pelting the audience with them. I had forgotten Divine’s career as a raspy singer-rapper who somehow conjoined punk with disco, and provoked disgust on Top Of The Pops with her proudly flexed gut and horrorshow makeup. They proudly called themselves “cinematic terrorists” even as the Weather Underground were busy bombing stuff nationwide, and Divine once proudly and loudly claimed responsibility for the still unsolved Manson murders onstage in San Francisco in 1969.ĭivine’s sudden death on the brink of success in 1988, and Waters’s subsequent (and gratifying) elevation to quasi-official National Weird Old Uncle Emeritus status have left Divine’s story somewhat in the shadows since. ![]() We call it “Disgraceland.” So we’ll all be together.Where the acid-drenched, “freaks not hippies” hard outer edge of the counterculture met the gathering wave of post-60s revolutions in gender and sexual identity, there they built their merry little parallel universe of beautiful insane misfits, innocents and oddballs, Egg Ladies, singing assholes and dog shit-gargling 300-pound drag queens. “So did Pat, so did Mink Stole, so did Dennis Dermody. “We’re going to spend eternity with him because I bought a gravestone where Divine’s buried,” he explained. Such a defining part in fact, that Waters wants them to be together forever – literally. And also, when you have your first success, which we did with those first movies basically, it’s incredibly exciting, and he was a huge part of it.” It’s just that he was in our personal lives. “I’m shocked every day still he’s dead because he had been such a big part of my life. It’s been 27 years since Divine died and Waters still thinks of him often. They were square then, they wanted to be Miss America and be their mothers.” His legacy was that he made all drag queens cool. His legacy, according to Waters, was that he made drag “cool”. He is so iconic that he’s almost mainstream. And now every drag queen, every one that’s successful today is cutting edge.”Ībsolutely no one can question the influence he had on the drag world. “Divine frightened drag queens because he would show up with a chainsaw and makeup artist Van Smith would put fake scars on his face, wearing mini skirts when you’re 300 pounds. That didn’t stop the character terrorising the other queens. At least half his friends were definitely straight, and he got along with everybody. ![]() He didn’t just have gay friends - he lived with a gangster once. ![]() “He was a quiet gentleman who liked to eat and smoke pot, and was very loyal to his friends. “Divine was not at all like the character Divine,” he reminisced. To commemorate him, Waters – as well as fellow Dreamlander Pat Moran – gave an interview to Baltimore magazine about who Divine was.Īs such good friends, Waters knew the real Divine intimately, not just the brassy queen who stole the screen. Sadly, Divine died of a heart attack at the age of 42 and next week, on October 19, it would have been his 70th birthday. Fabulously attired, bold, and deliciously vile, the drag queen was the unquestioned star in some of Waters’ most celebrated and career defining films early on. Or you’ve at least got the mental image stored in there. If you’re clued up on John Waters’ legacy you may have heard of Divine.
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