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R.I.P. Bette Bourne
Got the word from Ms. Eve Golden that Bette Bourne (Peter Bourne, b.1939) passed away last month. It being just a few weeks prior to his natal day, I opted to wait to do a tribute. How I wish I’d seen him perform. He’s but one degree of separation from me on several fronts, but timing and distance prevented that happiness.
A working class kid from London, Bourne studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He was acting regularly on British television by 1963, appearing on such shows as The Avengers, The Saint, andThe Prisoner, as well as the movie Quatermass and the Pit (1967). From 1969 to 1970 he appeared in a double production of Marlowe’s Edward II and Shakespeare’s Richard II with Sir Ian McKellen which was shown on BBC. Not long after that, he dropped out of acting for a time, becoming deeply involved in Gay Rights activisim, while keeping his hand in the theatre as a stage manager.
In the mid ’70s Jimmy Camicia’s Hot Peaches company came to London on tour. Bourne was so entranced that he joined the troupe for its continental junket. He was thus inspired to start his own company Bloolips in 1977. Bloolips productions merged elements of drag, clown, vaudeville, music hall, musical comedy, and burlesque (the parodistic kind), with titles like Lust in Space, Gland Hotel, and Get Hur that plainly announced what they would be lampooning. There would be tap dancing, singing, and slapstick as his faux chaotic company seemingly scrambled around to put the show on. They clearly had much in common with U.S. troupes like the Ridiculous Theatre (both the Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam incarnations) and The Cockettes. His stage name obviously comes from that leading muse of the drag cult, Bette Davis. As for “Bloolips”, use your imagination. You might be wrong, but use it anyway.
Bourne performed often in New York, both with Bloolips and with other companies and productions such as Split Britches (he’d met Peggy Shaw on the Hot Peaches tour). He performed at familiar downtown haunts like Theater for the New City and New York Theatre Workshop. A great account by Bourne himself on his time in New York is here.
After Bloolips had run its course, Bourne continued to play a wide variety of enviable straight and drag roles throughout the nineties up until about a decade ago, include roles in Shakespeare, Noel Coward, Joe Orton. He was Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, Esmerelda in The Skin of Our Teeth, Queen Victoria in Ripper. He may be best known for playing Quentin Crisp in Resident Alien. And he starred in a musical version of one of my favorite movies Theatre of Blood.
In 2013, Mark Ravenhill immortalized Bette Bourne in the documentary Bette Bourne: It Goes With the Shoes.
With the recent passing also of Dame Edna and Everett Quinton, it seems like we are in the midst of a die-off of drag’s Old Guard. Take care of that ticker, Charles Busch!
There are lots and lots of great oneline articles about Bette Bourne and Bloolips. Here are some:
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