April 27, 2009

I realized I hadn't put the publicity photos from "Legends!" on this blog. The photos are by Timothy White.










And in this Patrick McMullan shot, taken during the performance, "Leatrice Monsee" makes her grand entrance. It's fake fur, everybody!



I also happened upon this page the other day. Someone figured out that I had a birthday.

April 22, 2009

The "Legends!" event pops up in the May issue of Instinct magazine, thanks to my friend Sean Krebs.

April 12, 2009

I know I posted the Ken Fallin caricature of myself, but I never posted Charles, so they haven't been seen together here. They were displayed onstage at Town Hall at the "Legends!" event as the audience was filing in. Here are me and Charles as Leatrice and Sylvia.





Unrelated to "Legends!" but not unrelated to my writing career, in today's New York Times there was a feature about Nancy Opel who is currently Off Broadway in "The Toxic Avenger" musical and there is accompanying the article a slide show of Nancy in various productions including this photo of her and Maxwell Caulfield in "My Deah."

April 4, 2009

Thanks to Google alert, I happened upon this sour "report" about the "Legends!" event. It's from The Advocate, of all things. I know I should take the high road and not even take time to acknowledge this article. So I think I'll pull the nice quotes from the article and put them here:

"I wouldn't have missed this for the world!"

"Busch was a radiant vision!"

"Stunning! Impressive!"

"A stroke of metatheatrical genius!"

"...Epperson's admirable adaptation efforts..."

I must point out here that in this article, the writer assumes that I went easy on Kirkwood's play because he died of AIDS. His death, and whatever its actual cause, had no influence on me, except for the fact if he were still alive I probably wouldn't have gotten the okay to put my "admirable adaptation" onstage.

Also, the scene where Charles took my line and I called him on it was NOT staged. Although it may be someday!

A blogger has mentioned that he finds "Legends!" to be internally homophobic (see post below). I think this article - from The Advocate! - is internally homophobic, and, believe me, I know from internalized homophobia. I also find it age-ist.

I took "Child, please," from my friend Jenifer Lewis, but it would have fit well on Whoopi too. I'm sorry it didn't occur to me to - after Whoopi cancelled - to change the Barbara Walters line to what I really wanted it to be.

In the original published version of "Legends!" the two women pull each other's wigs off. That old joke has been done to death, so we did some butt-slapping and got in a reference to the Shirley MacLaine/Anne Bancroft movie "The Turning Point," that was a big influence on me to move to NYC in 1978.

The writer of The Advocate article says he's not familiar with a recording played during the show. Too bad someone isn't familiar with Cole Porter's great song "Just One Of Those Things!" I never heard of Flavor Of Love!

What some people call stealing focus, others call showmanship planned in advance.

The writer says that "Legends!" should be dead. So does the tacky Provincetown drag queen mentioned below in another post. Apparently these minds think alike. Relax, girls, and just have a good time. Really, I think The Advocate wants to drum up controversy by being negative. I call this kind of thing an offshoot of what I refer to as Bushism (as in the effects of the W. administration and its ensuing negativity that we are stuck with, for now). But cynicism about the media (and the media's own cynicsm) goes back at least to 1967 when Neely O'Hara said in the movie "Valley of the Dolls": "Even the bad publicity helps when you get to be as big as I am. And, boy, am I getting the bad publicity."

Here's a link from Patrick McMullan's site with photos I hadn't seen before. I'm pleased to see Peter Rogers and Elizabeth Peabody were there. Elizabeth is Sam and Judy's daughter and Peter created the Blackglama ad campaign that inspired the "Legends!" event poster. I used to know them, but haven't seen them in a long time.

April 3, 2009

I called Lisa Estridge to thank her for saving the day at the "Legends!" performance. I had been emailing her but hadn't heard back. So I left her a voicemail message and she called me back saying that the event and its subsequent press had been great for her. That an agent had signed her because of it and she has been very busy going to auditions. And nothing has come of it for me! But that's not unusual. I am rarely asked to audition because I'm thought of as an "exotic." Probably most of the people in the audience at the "Legends!" event had never even heard me speak onstage, even though I have, a lot!

When I was visiting Scott Wittman up in Salisbury Mills the other day, we watched a bit of the Al Jolson movie "Mammy" c. 1931. Then I noticed a friend had sent me this photo of Al checking out the two dancing men in the movie "Wonder Bar."



Here's a photo of me with Lily Tomlin and another Al -- Alexis Del Lago. Taken at Akbar in Silverlake (Los Angeles).



How about a photo of 1970s NYC disco diva Rollerena? The old gal is still around; I saw her on Christopher St. a few months ago.



Here I am with Fabio, the night of "Legends!" You can see how nutty my wig was in the shot. It was nuttier in the second act than the first!

April 2, 2009

Here's another photo article about the "Legends!" event, with photos not previously seen.