“Little Richard scared my grandmother in 1957. I was eleven years old, and on my way to her house for dinner with my parents and had just shoplifted a record in the five-and-dime. Mom and dad hadn’t even noticed. Easy pickings – the 45 of “Lucille” on the Specialty label. My favourite tune. I felt happily defiant in the backseat of the car with the sharp edge of the single jabbing my stomach beneath the sweater. Once inside Mama’s, I made a beeline to her out-of-date hi-fi and let it roll. “Lu-CILLE! You won’t do your sister’s will!” came blaring through the house like a rabid pack of dogs. It was as if a Martian had landed. My grandmother stopped in her tracks, face ashen, beyond comprehension. The antiques rattled. My parents looked stunned. In one magical moment, every fear of my white family had been laid bare: an uninvited, screaming, flamboyant black man was in the living room. Even Dr Spock hadn’t warned them about this.”
/ From the book Role Models (2010) by John Waters /
Remembering his royal highness, the undisputed Kween of Rock’n’Roll, the divine Little Richard (aka Richard Wayne Penniman, 5 December 1932 - 9 May 2020) on the second anniversary of his death. I saw the flamboyant “Bronze Liberace” give one of his final concerts at Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender in 2013 (he retired from performing shortly afterwards). I won’t lie – the Georgia Peach was a hot mess, but a fascinating, charismatic and regal hot mess. The man was magnificent! We’ll never see Little Richard’s like again. Pictured: a portrait of Richard by Gilles Petard, 1965.
Attention, Leather Jacket Lovers! Born on this day 102 years ago: fetishistic and homoerotic beefcake illustrator Tom of Finland (aka Touko Valio Laaksonen, born 8 May 1920! His gloriously brazen “dirty drawings” fired the imagination of generations of leather men! Do something extra kinky in his memory!
Great reunion last Sunday when my old Carleton University buddy and housemate, punk photographer and promoter Shawn Scallen was passing through London. He took this shot of me in Haggerston (we were en route to The Glory – which was shut, even though Google insisted it was open. Groan!). I rarely get my photo taken anymore, but it’s flattering to think Shawn has also photographed the likes of Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins and The Cramps!
To my shame, this is a day late, but it’s too significant not to commemorate! Yesterday represented the 80th birthday of the undisputed “First Lady of Country Music” with the big hair and the heartbroken throb in her voice, Miss Tammy Wynette (born Virginia Wynette Pugh; 5 May 1942 – 6 April 1998). The Nashville Nefertiti’s music was like an aural backdrop to my 1970s childhood in rural Quebec. My favourite Wynette songs: “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”, “I Don’t Wanna Play House” and particularly “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad.” Which reminds me: I really need to read the biography Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen by Jimmy McDonough.
“If we had to invent someone to be the ideal woman … we would have to invent Marlene Dietrich.” Billy Wilder
Died on this day 30 years ago: incomparably sultry, throaty-voiced and world-weary German actress, chanteuse and international glamourpuss Marlene Dietrich (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) aged 90. I moved to London on 2 May 1992 - so the thirtieth anniversary of thathistoric occasion has been and gone too. (I remember on my first week in London passing a newsstand and seeing Dietrich’s face plastered across the front cover of every newspaper and instantly knowing: that must mean she’s died!). Pictured: the diva photographed by Milton H Greene in 1952. Remember! The Lobotomy Room film club is commemorating Dietrich on 19 May with a screening of her 1933 film The Song of Songs! Attendance is mandatory! Details here.
Born on this day: happy 69th birthday to actress, singer, sex kitten, queen of terrible, terrible movies (like Santa Claus Conquers the MartiansandVoyage of the Rock Aliens)and beloved kitsch icon turned credible and resilient jazz chanteuse Pia Zadora (née Pia Alfreda Schipani 4 May 1953)! For John Waters aficionados, Zadora will always be “Beatnik Girl” in Hairspray(1988): “I play my bongos, listen to Odetta, and then I iron my hair. Dig?” Every time I attend the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender I endeavor to make a religious pilgrimage to see Pia’s one-woman cabaret revue in an Italian restaurant called Piero’s, where she sings jazz standards in front of a giant Warhol portrait of herself. In April 2019, my friend Kevin and I even got to hang out with her, and she was an adorable, down to earth blast! Pictured: Zadora and Andy Warhol circa 1980.
Born on this day 93 years ago: definitive snarling and menacing rock’n’roll guitarist – and perennial Lobotomy Room favourite - Link Wray (2 May 1929 – 5 November 2005). That quiff! Those sideburns! Those shades!
“By 1959 Jayne probably meant it when she said there was an overemphasis on sex. This overemphasis, which she had made a bargain with, had left her surrounded by people who didn’t know her, people who wanted her without knowing who she was. Jayne was sitting by the pool one day with her mother. She was hugging and kissing a Chihuahua with great ardour. “I just love him, Mama,” she said. “He’s the only one who doesn’t want anything from me.”
From:Jayne Mansfield and The American Fifties by Martha Saxton. 1975. Pictured: Mansfield sunbathing in 1959.
Died on this day 48 years ago: consummate character actress (and scene stealer par excellence) - Agnes Moorehead (6 December 1900 – 30 April 1974)! Moorehead significantly improves every film she appears in simply by virtue of her presence. Off the top of my head, some of my favourite Moorehead performances would include: the 1947 film noir Dark Passage – ostensibly a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but it’s Moorehead in a secondary role (a vision in leopard print!) who makes the indelible impression; as the compassionate superintendent of a women’s prison in Caged (1950); as Jane Wyman’s bitchy socialite friend and neighbour in Douglas Sirk’s masterpiece All That Heaven Allows (1955); and as the tough-as-nails bleached blonde brothel madam (and Jane Russell’s employer) in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956). But even in her ignominious final feature film – the low-budget hagsploitation horror flick Dear Dead Delilah (1971) – Moorehead is majestic. And her status as a beloved camp icon is forever assured from her stint as the drag queen-like Endora in the TV series Bewitched!
“Vampira was the first exaggerated woman I ever yearned to meet. As a child, she never looked scary to me; I thought she was pretty.” John Waters
The Vampira Show - starring original wraith-like glamour ghoul Maila Nurmi (11 December 1922 - 10 January 2008) - premiered on this day [30 April] on KABC-TV in 1954. Read my further reflections on Vampirahere.
Farewell to suave rhythm and blues musician Jimmy Thomas (20 January 1939 – 24 April 2022), who was a featured vocalist in Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm and then the early line-up of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. His death aged 83 was announced this week. Here is Thomas absolutely ripping it up onstage with Tina Turner at Lovall’s Ballroom in Dallas, Texas in 1964 – what a joyous way to remember him! (Thomas is prominently featured on the 1965 album Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show).
Today should be a religious holiday: Swedish-American triple threat (actress, singer, dancer) and quintessential sex-kitten-gone-berserk the fabulous Ann-Margret (born 28 April 1941) turns 81! Pictured: the devilish redheaded vixen in her 1977 TV special Ann-Margret: Rhinestone Cowgirl. (Her slinky Western outfit is by “rajah of rhinestones" Bob Mackie, natch!). A-M’s ultra-hip cutting edge guest stars on Rhinestone Cowgirl included Bob Hope, Perry Como and Minnie Pearl!
Born on this day: happy 74th birthday to the fabulous Kate Pierson (née Catherine Elizabeth Pierson, 27 April 1948), one of the founding members of essential post-punk band the B-52’s! For me, Pierson’s dissonant science fiction anti-harmonies with co-vocalist Cindy Wilson are one of the defining sounds of American New Wave music! She also, of course, has exemplary taste in beehive wigs. (Pictured: Pierson in red wig, Wilson in pink wig in 1983).
Born on this day ninety years ago: the most feline and inscrutable of mid-century French actresses, the sublime Anouk Aimée (née Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus, 27 April 1932). She’s a haunting, sensual and Garbo-like presence in the glory days of European art cinema. My favourite performances by Aimée: Les Amants de Montparnasse(1958),La Tête contre les murs(1959),La Dolce Vita (1960) – unforgettable as the most elegant jaded rich nymphomaniac in cinema history! – Lola (1961) and Model Shop (1968). But hell, I also love Aimée as the cruel lesbian queen in trashy swords’n’sandals biblical epic Sodom and Gomorrah (1962). It’s fascinating to contemplate that at the height of her fame in the sixties, Hollywood considered Aimée for two high profile roles: the part played by Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair – and The Baroness in The Sound of Music!
