Jackie Curtis: Pioneer Without a Frontier

There are a number of people on my calendar to write about today; with the government currently attempting to erase LGBT community, trans people in particular, I figure I’d better go with celebrating Jackie Curtis (John Curtis Holder, Jr. Sr, (1947-1985).

The heyday of the Warhol Superstars was before my time. I imagine that I was slower to get interested in Curtis than the likes of Candy Darling,Holly Woodlawn, Penny Arcade, Viva, Ultra Violet, et al, because of her fairly quotidian stage name, as compared with theirs. Out of context, when I initially encountered the name I probably would have mistaken her for a black soul singer, mixing up Jackie Wilson and Curtis Mayfield or something. In 2014 there was a tribute show at LaMama called Jukebox Jackie starring Justin Vivian Bond, Cole Escola,Bridget Everett, and Steel Burkhardt, and the press surrounding that finally embedded who she was in my mind. Prior to to that there was the 2004 documentary and book Superstar in a Housedress, and of course that verse in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”:

Jackie is just speeding away Thought she was James Dean for a day Then I guess she had to crash Valium would’ve helped that bash

And of course she co-starred with Darling and Woodlawn (both mentioned in Reed’s song) in the Morrissey/ Warhol film Women in Revolt (1971) which I first saw about five years ago.

Something about the lyric will stick in the craw of anybody who pays attention. “James Dean? James DEAN? How ya figure?” Another quote from Warhol sheds light: “Jackie Curtis is not a drag queen. Jackie is an artist. A pioneer without a frontier.” Curtis is an early public example of how gender is a spectrum. I think it would be fair to call her non-binary. If she were alive now she might choose to use “they/their”, but it wasn’t in currency when she was alive. The internet tells me she preferred the female pronoun. But, she was biologically male, and in drag her tendency was to be somewhat androgynous. She tended not to go the whole route in pursuit of the illusion of feminine beauty like Darling. She might leave whiskers, or acknowledge the wig she was wearing. Her clothing was shabby-chic, and seemingly careless. And there were stretches, especially towards the end, when she didn’t present in drag at all, going au naturale as it were, as a gay man.

Curtis’s brand of glam androgyny, glitter and feather boas, and bright red hair, and sometimes dandyish men’s suits, and so forth was especially influential in the music world in the early ’70s, especially glam rockers like David Bowie, Elton John, Gary Glitter, The New York Dolls, Mott the Hoople, and those who dabbled in it as a phase like Reed, Iggy Pop, and even the Rolling Stones. Here’s Curtis with Bowie at the Mudd Club in 1979:

Curtis’s background is the stuff of legend. She was raised by her grandmother, an East Village character named Slugger Ann (Ann Uglialoro, 1906-1980), who got her nickname as a taxi dancer in the ’20s and ’30s with a reputation for clocking clients who got too fresh. Said to resemble Mae West, she owned a popular bar near St. Mark’s Church on the present site of the 12th Street Ale House. Opened in the early ’50s, it was a frequent locations for movies and tv shows. Other than a beauty parlor in her hometown, Slugger Ann’s is also remembered as one of the few places Candy Darling ever held down a legit job.

Curtis was only 18 when she appeared at LaMama in Miss Nefertiti Regrets, an early play by Tom Eyen, later known for Women Behind Bars (1975) and Dreamgirls (1981). Also in that play: a young unknown named Bette Midler! Two years later, Curtis wrote her own play about the rise and fall of a Hollywood star called Glamour, Glory and Gold, which starred Darling, a then-unknown Robert DeNiro, and my internet pen pal Melba LaRose. Curtis never formed her own company but from this stage, her work moves in tandem with, and parallel to, the dueling Ridiculous companies of John Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam, and others of the day. Subsequent Curtis plays included Lucky Wonderful (1968) with Darling, Woodlawn, LaRose, and Paul Serrato; Amerika Cleopatra (1968) with a young Harvey Fierstein, and Agosto Machado; Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit (1970) with Woodlawn and Ruby Lynn Reyner of Ruby and the Rednecks; Femme Fatale: The Three Faces of Gloria (1970) with Patti Smith, Jayne County and Penny Arcade; Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes Of The Damned (1971) with Darling and Mario Montez; and Champagne (1985). Curtis also teamed with Woodlawn for the show: Cabaret in the Sky: An Evening with Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis.

Curtis also acted in other people’s projects such as the Morrisey/ Warhol films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971), plays like Tom Murrin’sCock-Strong (1969) with Arcade; and Nick Markovich’sI Died Yesterday (1983); and movies like W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) with Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs et al; and Eric Mitchell’sUnderground U.S.A. 1980) with Cookie Mueller, John Lurie,Rene Ricard,Taylor Mead, and my late friend Tom Wright.

Curtis died unexpectedly in 1985, only 38 years old. The cause was not the scourge of the day, AIDS, but a heroin overdose. It’s amazing how productive some addicts can manage to be.