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Chapter 1 The Roots

Baltimore. The story of begins here, as does the story of its director. John Samuel Waters, Jr was born in ’s largest municipality on April 22, 1946. He was raised in suburban Lutherville, in an upper-middle-class Catholic home. His parents, Patricia Ann Whitaker and John Samuel Waters, a successful manufacturer of fire- protection equipment, provided him with a happy and conventional childhood despite recognizing early on that their eldest child was “an odd duck” (Waters, 2004b).1 For example, he was obsessed with cata- strophic automobile wrecks, fires (an interest he shared with his father), hurricanes, and disasters in general, all of which fed the grisly fantasies of his precocious imagination. He was drawn to stagecraft, costuming, and showmanship, always with an entrepreneurial edge. Neighborhood children paid a nickel for admission to his family’s garage, which Waters transformed into a “horror house.” He staged puppet shows for local birthday parties at US$20 a pop, presenting hyper-violent versions of Cinderella and Punch and Judy. He devel- oped a particular fascination with the stage , Cyril Ritchard’s portrayal of Captain Hook, so much that the young Waters attempted to imitate him by scotch-taping his fathers’ neckties to his head to cre- ate the appearance of long, pirate locks. Growing COPYRIGHTEDup, Waters loved the movies. He especiallyMATERIAL enjoyed horror films, films with evil villains, or anything involving a gimmick. In the late 1950s, he became a fan of the director , the “King

Hairspray, First Edition. Dana Heller. © 2011 Dana Heller. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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of the gimmicks,” who aggressively promoted his low-budget horror films with sensational stunts such as “Emergo” (glow-in-the-dark skeletons attached to wire were floated over the audience during House on Haunted Hill (1959)), “Percepto” (joy-buzzers attached underneath movie-goers’ seats were activated synchronously with the attack of the creature, The Tingler (1958)), and “Illusion-O” (audi- ences were given cellophane “ghost-viewer” lenses to look through during climactic moments of 13 Ghosts (1960), which enabled them to see spirits or, if they became too frightened, make them disappear). In 1960, Mike Todd, Jr. introduced the short-lived gimmick, “Smell- O-Vision” with the release of the film Scent of Mystery (1960). This technique made it possible for movie audiences to smell what charac- ters in the film smelled by releasing odors through theater seats in sync with the film’s projection. For good or ill, technical and aesthetic limitations plagued “Smell-O-Vision” from its inception, and it met with an abrupt end. However, Waters’ 1981 film, Polyester (starring and ), a satirical homage to the women’s melodra- mas of , paid tribute to the great film gimmicks of the director’s youth through the introduction of “Odorama.” Viewers were provided with numbered scratch-’n’-sniff cards that were used with corresponding numbers on the screen to enliven the olfactory dimensions of the plot. An aspiring , Waters rebelled against the rigid moral and aesthetic principles of the post-World War II era. In addition to the popular horror and novelty films of the day, he was irresistibly drawn to forbidden movies that were labeled “dirty” or sinful by the nuns at his Catholic Sunday school. He was fascinated by cultural objects and behaviors that were considered “criminal,” “filthy,” or offensive to middle-class taste. In Junior High School, he became fascinated by the tough girls who were regarded as “skags” or cheap. He studied their risqué manner of dress – their hair, make-up, and cha-cha heels – and marveled at their catfights and brazen disregard for authority. When he entered Catholic High School, Waters was unable to find many kindred spirits so he befriended kids from his own neighborhood who were similarly inclined to challenge social decorum, polite man- ners, and the law. With buddies such as (who

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would eventually become a “Dreamlander,” one of his regular cast of ), Waters discovered the delights of shoplifting and alcohol. Drugs – mainly marijuana, LSD, and speed – would come later. He quickly learned that films, foreign films, and above all Swedish films were simply synonyms for “dirty” films. “I was interested in how the taboos would fall,” he explains, recalling the thrill of discov- ering the hidden world of cinematic garbage (Waters, 2004b). Waters began reading Variety in his early teens, clipping out the ads for movies that sounded particularly lurid, sneaking outside with a pair of binoculars to watch from a nearby hill the distant drive-in show- ings of sensational “adult-only” exploitation features. At school, and among his friends’ parents, he established a reputation as a trouble- maker. Waters eventually lost interest in academics, preferring instead a program of self-education that included the writings of the , William Burroughs, , Theater of the Absurd, and Sigmund Freud’s case studies of abnormal psychology. He began cutting classes in order to attend sleazy downtown movie theaters that showed B films. Later, he would cut entire days of school to hitch- hike with friends to City’s Greenwich Village, where Waters discovered the burgeoning scene and the iconic directors whose work would eventually inspire his own, directors such as , Jack Smith, , and the Kuchar Brothers. Meanwhile, back home in , Waters’ grandmother gave him an 8mm Brownie movie camera for his seventeenth birth- day. By then he already knew what he wanted to do with his life: his goal was to create “the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history” (1981, p. 34).

The Nicest Kids in Town

Not all of Waters’ youthful fixations were so scandalous. In fact, among the many obsessions, squalid or otherwise, that would ultimately work their way into his films, perhaps the most innocent was The Buddy Deane Show, the televised dance party that was Baltimore’s own local answer to the nationally-syndicated, , and the principal

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plot backdrop of Hairspray. The Buddy Deane Show (which Waters renames The Corny Collins Show) began airing in 1957 on WJZ-TV. The show was hosted by Winston “Buddy” Deane, who first established his reputation as a radio disc jockey and dedicated rock-and-roll enthusi- ast. Deane’s televised dance party also featured local teenagers known as “the committee” (Waters renames them “the counsel”). Billed as “the nicest kids in town,” the young people who were selected to appear as regular “Deaners” were catapulted to instant celebrity as a result of their dancing ability, fashion sense, rumored on/off screen romances, and – above all – their unrelenting penetration into Baltimore’s living rooms. The Buddy Deane Show aired for two and a half hours a day, six days a week (on Saturdays it would run even longer). Indeed, the show became a fixture of Baltimore’s youth culture, and for a brief time, it was the most popular local television show in the nation. Waters was a self-confessed “groupie” of the show. Passionately, he followed the gossip, studied the dance moves that were introduced every week, and lusted after the clothing and hairstyles, although much to his disappointment his parents forbid him to have a “drape,” or greaser haircut. He also entertained himself by constructing wicked fantasies about the television teens whose names became household words as a result of their celebrity status. Waters playfully imagined them “committing crimes; robberies, burning down schools” (O’Donnell, 1988, p. 12). Above all, he loved the rhythm and blues music that was so frequently featured on the program. This was the music that was considered indecent and corrupting “race music” by White defenders of youth morality (typically code for pro-segregation and anti-miscegenation views), and which was “whitened” by chart- topping teen idols such as Elvis Presley. Baltimore’s African-American community was home to many great R&B musical performers, and the city could boast of some of the best R&B music stations in the country. The music was inseparable from the life of Baltimore itself, and Waters recalls hearing from his bedroom on still summer nights the lilting a cappella voices of Black men walking home alone in the neighborhoods that bordered on his.2 However, Baltimore was a racially turbulent city, and tensions ran very high in the years before and during the Civil Rights Movement. “It burned,” Waters recalls, in

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describing the late-1950s racial atmosphere and Baltimore’s centrality to Hairspray’s story of integration. “It’s the South here” (2001, 2007). The Buddy Deane Show featured musical acts that were both Black and White. However, unlike American Bandstand, which allowed Black teenagers to appear on the program so long as they only danced with one another, The Buddy Deane Show prohibited White and Black teens from appearing together on the floor. Instead, the last Thursday afternoon of every month was set aside as “Black Only” day, where Black teens were permitted to dance without the participation of any Whites. The core committee members remained all White, and WJZ fiercely resisted growing pressures to integrate the show. In fact, the station refused to broadcast American Bandstand, substituting Deane’s show instead, precisely because of Bandstand’s policy of allowing Black teens to mix with Whites on the floor. Such staunch opposition to changing times and attitudes would eventually be the show’s down- fall. In 1964, WJZ decided to cancel the show rather than yield to mounting calls for integration. In this sense, as we shall discuss subse- quently at length, Hairspray revises the past and imagines a just ending to the Buddy Deane saga where actually there was none.

Midnight Madness

By 1964, however, Waters was preparing to leave his teenage years and his hometown behind. Despite his spotty academic record, he was accepted into New York University to study film-making after earning good grades for one year at the . His NYU experience did not last very long, however, as once again Waters found himself far less interested in the highly formalistic, academic study of film – the endless viewings of the Odessa Steps sequence from Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin – than in the grittier cinematic attractions of the city. He discovered the underground and exploita- tion theaters, which he bought admission into by stealing textbooks from the college bookstore and then selling them back as used. After three months, he was expelled after complaints that he and others were smoking marijuana in their dormitory.

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Returning to Baltimore, Waters reconnected with the core group of friends that would constitute, for most of his career, his cast and crew. This group would come to be known as “The ” after his production company, Dreamland Studios. Over time the group came to include, but was not limited to, , , Harris Glenn Milstead (aka Divine), Pat Moran (his casting director), Mary Vivian Pearce, (his production designer), (his costumer and hairdresser), Maelcum Soul, and . During the ensuing years, Waters moved frequently around the , finding temporary work and living arrangements in Baltimore, , Provincetown, New Orleans, and . He also began making movies in earnest, a process he had earlier initiated with his first project, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), a 15-minute film shot with his grandmother’s 8mm camera. In 1966, he followed up with Roman Candles, a 40-minute film inspired by Andy Warhol’s . A moving-picture triptych, Roman Candles was com- posed of three synchronized movies projected by three adjacent 8mm projectors. Billed as a “trash epic,” the film was never commercially released, and is perhaps most memorable for Maelcum Soul’s strung- out performance as a lascivious nun (Waters, 1981, p. 50). Waters next complete project was Eat Your Makeup (1968), a 16mm film that also starred Maelcum Soul as a maniacal governess who kid- naps fashion models and tortures them by forcing them to model in front of a crazed audience until they drop dead from exhaustion. Not long after the film’s opening Soul died of a drug-overdose at the age of 28, thus opening the way for Waters’ friend and future muse, Divine, to take center stage in the next Dreamland project. That project was (1969), Waters’ first feature-length film.3 It was financed by Waters’ father, who loaned his son US$2000 to make it. It starred Divine as a trashy blond-bombshell, a gum-chewing look-alike. Filmed without dialogue or discernible plot, but only a musical soundtrack comprised of unlicensed original tracks, Mondo Trasho was notable for a brief outdoor nude scene that got Waters, along with several of his cast and production crew, arrested for “indecent exposure” and “conspiracy” to commit indecent expo- sure. The charges were eventually dropped, but the coverage of the

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scandal in the press turned out to be great publicity for the film, which sold out for its gala world premiere at Emmanuel Church in Baltimore. When it was screened in , Variety’s A.D. Murphy assessed it as: “A very amusing satire on films that exploit sex, violence, and seaminess. Should give pause to some established film makers who think they have their fingers on the pulse of the film-going public” (quoted in Waters, 1981, p. 61). Waters’ reputation was beginning to take shape. Next was (1970), a work Waters refers to as his “celluloid atrocity” (1981, p. 62). It was his first “talkie,” shot on a budget of US$5000, with another loan from his father. Like many of Waters’ early films, the plot of Multiple Maniacs defies easy descrip- tion – suffice it to say that its central themes are insanity, , betrayal, and Catholicism, and it all ends with the of Divine’s character by a 15-foot shellfish named “Lobstora.” Otherwise, it is worth noting that the making of the film was framed by the grisly and sensational 1969 murder of Sharon Tate, the actress and wife of film director, Roman Polanski, by the Charles Manson “family” in Southern . The Tate-LaBianca , which occurred just as pro- duction of Multiple Maniacs began, and the arrest of the Manson family members, which took place near the completion of the project, obsessed Waters. That obsession has lasted throughout his career, evi- denced by the fact that most of his films contain some reference to the Manson crime. He remains, to this day, a dedicated follower of true crime in general, an expert on the Manson case in particular (he is a longtime friend of former “family” member, ), and a frequent attendee at celebrity trials wherever and whenever he can gain admittance.4 More to the point, one of the central preoccupa- tions of Waters’ work – which ultimately informs Hairspray – takes on definition at this stage of his developing creativity: the glamour of notoriety, or the celebrity status that American culture lavishly con- fers on the (typically female) taboo-breaker. Perhaps nowhere is this theme more extravagantly exploited than in Waters’ next film, (1972). If Hairspray is the film that made famous, Pink Flamingos is the film that made him infamous. A venerable staple of the 1970s midnight

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Divine from Pink Flamingos (1972).

movie circuit, described in 1973 by Inter/View’s Fran Lebowitz as “one of the sickest movies ever made. And one of the funniest” (quoted in Hoberman and Rosenbaum, 1983, p. 154), it is also the film that made Divine an international underground star and a legend in her own time. This was the result in no small part of the film’s notorious final segment – shot in one continuous take, with no editing, special effects, or cut-away – of Divine eating dog feces. It happens quickly – it’s a small piece of fecal matter from a small poodle – and without great fanfare. After that, the rest was cine- matic bad-taste history. On this, Waters has been remarkably articulate: “To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about,” he explains. “If someone vomits watching one of my films, it’s like getting a standing ovation (1981, p. 2).5 Considering these words, it comes as little surprise that as a film director Waters considers himself a “carny,” or a promoter of the lost art of cinema showmanship, particularly cinema involving the exces- sively twisted or freakish. Take, if you will, Pink Flamingos. The story involves two families who become locked in deadly competition to win the title “The Filthiest People Alive.” On one side, there is Divine and her cohort, which includes her psychotic, son (Danny

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Mills) and her deranged 250-pound mother (Edith Massey) who remains in a playpen throughout the film, wearing nothing but a bra and girdle, eating eggs. On the other side, there are the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole), a couple who make their living by kidnap- ping runaway girls, inseminating them with their man servant’s sperm, and then selling the offspring to couples. In their unstoppable quest for glamour and fame, the Marbles believe that they have been wrongly denied the title of “The Filthiest People Alive” by Divine. They declare war – a war that they will ultimately lose – by sending Divine a bowel movement in the mail and by setting fire to her trailer. Pink Flamingos was made on a budget of US$10 000 and filmed over a six-month period on location in Baltimore. Waters took it upon himself to rate the film “X,” not because it contains scenes of any explicit sex but because it contains scenes that are explicitly dis- gusting. It premiered in late 1972 on the campus of the University of Baltimore and was eventually picked up for distribution by , which at the time was a fledgling New York City firm with a reputation for supporting unconventional material. The film proved difficult to market, until Waters suggested to New Line that they book it for one night at as a midnight feature at the , a haven for offbeat film aficionados. Through word of mouth alone, the film began to cultivate an audience. In time, Waters’ “exercise in poor taste” (the film’s tagline) became a hit, one that would acquire an even wider audience following its release on VHS. Although a full critical discus- sion of Pink Flamingos lies beyond the scope of this book, it needs to be said that this film – more than any other John Waters work – set the standard according to which all of his future films would be received and judged. Understanding this helps set the stage for the great leap that Hairspray will represent – both critically and popularly – in the underground school of American film-making that Waters had now come to uniquely emblematize. Of course, we could say that the subject of class competition between rival families in Pink Flamingos anticipates the Miss Auto Show contest in Hairspray and the class- inflected warfare between the bourgeois Von Tussles and the working class Turnblads. However, Pink Flamingos remains a one-of-a-kind

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movie, for which no equal or sequel could ever be attempted.6 Why? According to Waters, simply “because it would have to end with Divine taking a shit and the dog eating it” (1981, p. 22). Although Pink Flamingos was a tough act to follow, Waters’ next project turned out to be the one that many critics and fans – includ- ing myself – still consider the finest of his raw, exploitation films: (1974). The idea for the film came to Waters while he was visiting one of the Manson family convicts, Charles “Tex” Watson at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obisbo. During these visits, Waters became fixated on the criminal “celebrities” and their fawning groupies who flitted around the prison visiting room as if it were the lobby bar of the Kodak Theater. He decided that the theme of his next film would be Jean Genet’s idea that “crime is beauty” (Waters, 1981, p. 94).7 Divine, enjoying her newfound post-Pink Flamingos celebrity on the San Francisco theater stage, returned to Baltimore, along with the rest of the Dreamland Crew, to begin shooting the film. As in Hairspray, Divine plays two roles in Female Trouble, a female and a male (in one scene that was especially difficult to shoot, these charac- ters have sexual intercourse). The lead role is the part of Dawn Davenport, a delinquent, suburban teenager who desperately wants cha-cha heels for . When she does not get them, she throws a violent tantrum on Christmas morning – knocking the yuletide tree over on her mother in the process – and runs away from home. The plot follows her development from petty thief and unwed mother, to unhappy wife of a philandering hippie beautician, to fashion model and lab rat for the maniacal experiments of fascist beauty salon owners, Donald and Donna Dasher (David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pearce). This sinister couple seduces Dawn with the promise of achieving unparalleled beauty and fame through crime. Brain-washed by the Dashers and violently disfigured by her vengeful mother-in- law, Dawn’s trampoline performance at a local nightclub ends in trag- edy when, in the name of “art,” she goes on a shooting rampage and murders her audience. She dies in the electric chair, deliriously con- vinced that she has at last reached the pinnacle of stardom. Her final words before she is electrocuted approximate an Oscar-acceptance speech: “Please remember, I love every fucking one of you.”

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“Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down? Isn’t there a law or something?” (quoted in Hoberman and Rosenbaum, 1983, pp. 156–7). These rhetorical questions, posed by Rex Reed in his histrionic review of Female Trouble, come across in a tone that is almost as campy as the film itself. However, Reed’s outcry does reflect the widely held opinion of the time that Waters was taking film audiences to a place they had not been before, a place where many were not inclined to go. Almost methodically, he was trans- forming the city of Baltimore into a cinematic trope, an exuberant Rabelaisian idiom, an imaginary receptacle for the unabashed, American grotesque. Like his previous works, Female Trouble glee- fully demands that movie-goers confront uniquely American aes- thetic contradictions and cultural values, that are – if you will forgive the understatement – not very pretty. Above all it was becoming apparent that Waters films were purposefully forcing audiences to confront their own limitations and gross social hypocrisies. “All my humor is based on nervous reactions to anxiety-provoking situa- tions,” Waters claims (1981, p. 94). Although shot on a much larger budget than any of his previous films, and although far superior to any previous work in terms of production value, Female Trouble sealed Waters’ reputation as, in William Burroughs’ famous tribute, “the Pope of Trash.”8 (1977) was the final installment of what has been dubbed Waters’ Exploitation Trilogy, which also includes Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. Notably absent from this film is Divine, who at the time was touring in the stage production of Tom Eyan’s Women Behind Bars, and David Lochary, who had been fatally injured while under the influence of PCP, or “Angel Dust.” However, Desperate Living nevertheless continues in the Dreamland tradition of outrageous sleaze, pushing at the outer limits of censorship. Production drew on the talents of some new cast and crew members, some new financial backers, and a hefty new budget of US$65 000. Most famously, the film features former Mafia moll, convicted felon, and burlesque performer, Liz Renay. Waters had become an admirer of Renay’s after reading her memoir, My Face for the World to See, so much that he traveled to where she was performing in a strip

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club in order to invite her to make a film with him. Following sub- sequent negotiations in Los Angeles, where Waters agreed to all her terms over lunch at the legendary Brown Derby restaurant, she agreed to play the role of Muffy St Jacques, the voluptuous lesbian partner of Mole McHenry, played by longtime Dreamlander, . According to Waters’ own summation, Desperate Living is “a lesbian melodrama about revolution” (1981, p. 158). The twisted plot cent- ers on Peggy Gravel (played by Mink Stole), a neurotic and hysteri- cal housewife who, after her release from a mental hospital, returns to her upper class home, her oafish husband, and her 400-pound maid, Grizelda (). After murdering the husband, Peggy and Grizelda run away only to be captured by a policeman who offers them a choice between prison and exile to the squalid, rat-infested town of Mortville, a place populated by social and sexual deviants and run by the tyrannical and abusive Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey). Peggy and Grizelda move in with the self-loathing butch lesbian, McHenry, and her 50-year old lover, accused murderess and nymphomaniac, St Jacques. They are soon joined by the Queen’s daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (played by Mary Vivian Pearce), who has outraged her mother by having an affair with a nudist janitor. Fearing for her own life, Peggy betrays the Princess’ whereabouts to the Queens’ thuggish guards, who kill Grizelda and destroy the house. Peggy then rushes to the side of Queen Carlotta, pledging her allegiance in hopes of benefiting from her power. Meanwhile, in a stroke of good fortune, Mole wins the Maryland lottery and secretly absconds to purchase firearms and get a sex change. In her absence, the maltreated women of Mortville, led by Muffy, plan a coup d’état to overthrow the Queen. When Mole returns, proudly displaying her new penis, she is distraught to discover that Muffy does not like it, so she cuts it off and throws the severed member outside, where a dog sniffs it out and eats it. The revolution pro- ceeds successfully, with Peggy Gravel killed by a shotgun inserted through her anus, and Queen Carlotta skewered and roasted on a pit, then served with an apple in her mouth for the liberated Mortvillians to feast upon.

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“It isn’t very pretty,” read the tagline on the posters that were plas- tered around Baltimore and New York City in preparation for the grand premiere of Desperate Living. Indeed, things did get ugly, especially when word began to spread within lesbian-feminist circles that Waters had negatively portrayed in his latest film and had appropriated the title from a Baltimore periodical for lesbians that had already ceased publication. For Waters, a gay man, their protests were nonsensical and even ironic. “[W]hat makes lesbians immune from satire? […] Everybody knows that all people look terrible in my films; I’m not prejudiced against any single group” (1981, p. 173) Film critics, who by now knew very well what to expect from any work that carried Waters’ stamp, were not much kinder to Desperate Living than they had been to Female Trouble. “No other contemporary filmmaker has presented the human race in so disgusting a light,” proclaimed The Sun. “Waters’ characters are not simply hideous, they affront the soul” (quoted in Waters, 1981, pp. 173–4). However, responses to the film were sharply divided, as it tended to evoke extreme reactions on both sides of the aesthetic divide. For example, The Village Voice reviewer praised the work as “a triumphant example of the most vital bad taste in America” (quoted in Waters, 1981, p. 176). Even lesbian culture would eventually embrace Desperate Living, as it has since been featured at Gay and Lesbian film festivals and has become a camp staple of post-feminist cinema. Polyester (1981), in addition to being Waters’ only “gimmick” film, has the distinction of being the film that marked the end of Waters’ gross-out, exploitation cycle. Made on a budget of US$300 000, it received an “R” rating. Indeed, with Polyester, Waters comes very close to making a mainstream movie, while nevertheless retaining the con- trolled satirical outlook that would inform his next project, Hairspray. He also restores Divine to star billing as Francine Fishpaw, a middle- aged suburban housewife whose life falls apart when she discovers that her husband, Elmer (David Samson) who runs a local porn theater, is having an affair with his secretary. Broken-hearted, Francine demands a divorce. At home, her two children offer her little comfort. Lu-Lu, her daughter is a promiscuous brat who gets knocked up by

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her punk-rocker boyfriend (real-life punk musician, Stiv Bators), and her son, Dexter, is a glue-sniffing foot-fetishist known as the “Baltimore foot stomper” because of his pathological urge to stamp on women’s feet in public. Francine’s mother, La Rue, is a conniving cocaine- addicted shopaholic whose only interest is in swindling her daughter. Francine succumbs to hopelessness and alcoholism, but her life begins to turn around when she meets the handsome Todd Tomorrow (former film idol, Tab Hunter) and falls madly in love. They become engaged and one by one Francine’s problems seem to resolve them- selves. However, all is not well, as Francine soon learns that Todd and La Rue are secret lovers who plan to embezzle her divorce settlement and leave her penniless. Meanwhile, Elmer and his lover return to the house with the intention of murdering Francine, although they themselves are killed in the process by Lu-Lu and Dexter, who rush to defend their mother. Todd and La Rue are accidentally run over by Francine’s wealthy best friend, Cuddles Kovinsky (Edith Massey) who happens to drive up in her chauffeur-driven car just in time. The film ends happily, with Francine’s family, settlement, and integrity restored. Through it all, audiences are treated to the smell of flowers, feet, glue, and a fart, through the scratch-’n’-sniff technology of “Odorama.” As mentioned above, Polyester was influenced – not only in terms of the plot, but in the lighting and cinematography – by the popular 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, a director whom Waters greatly admires. Although Sirk’s films were largely dismissed by 1950s critics because of their excessive emotionality and superficial focus on wom- en’s lives, by the 1970s his work had begun to be reevaluated for its ideological undercurrents that suggested something more going on beneath the surface, a subtle satirical critique of US gender and sexual norms.9 We can see this in Polyester as well. Free of the shocking and distracting excesses of his exploitation films, Polyester highlights Waters’ skill as a satirist and critic of American social and political trends, in particular the rise of the conservative right and the feckless hypocrisy, sexism, homophobia, and priggishness of the so-called “moral majority.” Moreover, by casting Divine in the lead female role, Waters gave his “muse” the chance to play a real female character for

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the first time – to act, in other words, rather than reproducing the outrageous Divine persona of their earlier collaborations. In Polyester, Divine plays it “straight,” without the monstrous makeup and hair- style of Pink Flamingos. As Waters explains in the director’s commen- tary for the film, Francine Fishpaw is really the only “normal” person in the story. Reviewers responded to this transformation, many observing Divine’s natural gifts as a comedic performer and her effec- tive onscreen chemistry with Tab Hunter. By strategically casting Hunter, an actor whose career had been checkered with scandal, in large part due to his closeted , Waters galvanized his reputation for being able to enlist the participation of real-life celebri- ties and edgy pop culture icons. Waters’ work was maturing. In his next film, all of the elements that had marked his evolution as a film- maker and entertainer would come together in a surprisingly new configuration: a satire about the civil rights movement.

“Good Morning, Baltimore!”

The idea for Hairspray came to Waters after he attended the third reunion of The Buddy Deane Show. The reunion was held in an East Baltimore banquet hall, and in attendance were Buddy Deane himself, many of the original regular dancers from the committee, and 500 of the show’s most diehard fans from its 1957–1964 run. Of course, Waters was one of those fans who had helped keep the memory of “the nicest kids in town” alive. At the reunion, more than 20 years after the show had gone off the air, he interviewed the surviving “roy- alty”: Joe Cash, Joan Teves, Gene Snyder, Linda Warehime, Helen Crist, Sharon Goldman (“Peanuts”), Evanne Robinson, Kathy Schmink, Marie Fischer, and Mary Lou Raines. By and large, they were all happy and healthy, and they recalled their involvement with The Buddy Deane Show as the best years of their lives. Waters wrote a brief article about the reunion, which was published in Baltimore magazine in April, 1985.10 However, he saw the potential for something more in the reunion piece, a full-scale treatment, a big story about the show that had changed so many peoples’ lives and

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significantly influenced his own. Perhaps it was not enough to say that The Buddy Deane Show taught Waters, and the youth of Baltimore, how to be American teenagers, or how to imaginatively negotiate and integrate the racially-segregated fashions, hairstyles, musical idioms, social rituals, dance movements, and consumer practices of the time. Of course, it did all this, but there was more: the show provided young people from all walks of life in Baltimore with a template for fantasiz- ing new social possibilities. It did so at a particularly mercurial moment in history, the late 1950s and the early 1960s. This period, as Waters understands it, was “a little time-warp,” (Waters, 2007) a tran- sitional link between the conservative Eisenhower years and the explo- sive social, cultural, and political movements that would eventually redefine the racial, gender, and sexual landscape of the nation. In other words, the 1960s had not yet begun, but the 1950s were definitely over. Even though “every cool white kid I knew listened to all black radio,” the races in Baltimore still lived separate and unequal lives (Waters, 2003, p. 169). The Buddy Deane Show would eventually become a casu- alty of that inequality, but while the show lasted it managed to harness the energies of a burgeoning youth culture that was already looking beyond the segregationist status quo of the post-war United States. Hairspray’s main title sequence points decisively to this. The film opens onto a media landscape where young people are the new taste- makers and social lightening rods. As the main titles of the film appear against a dark, empty backdrop, we hear the opening drum beat of the original theme song (sung by Rachel Sweet), which recalls the classic girl group sound of the late-1950s and early-1960s. The establishing shot of the entrance to television station WZZT appears. Cut to a long shot of the interior set of The Corny Collins Show, where council members enter through the side stage door and begin dancing. A medium shot of Corny Collins (Shawn Thompson) shows him scrutinizing the front and back sides of a Pat Boone album. In a slap- stick gesture meant to signal his disdain for the conservative “clean teen” pop image (and his allegiance to the integrationist cause) he chucks the record over his shoulder and out of range of play. This is followed by a medium shot of his assistant, Tammy, (a character mod- eled on Buddy Deane’s real-life production assistant, Arlene Kozack,

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and played in the film by Dreamlander, Mink Stole), who gives busi- nesslike instructions to a deferential cameraman. As the titles continue to flash in bright, fluorescent colors, a comical sequence shows the council members primping, bra-stuffing, and grooming in preparation for the day’s broadcast. Consistent with Waters’ unfailing faithfulness to period details, one of the girls, Carmelita, (Kim Webb) assiduously applies white lipstick, a fleeting fad of the early-1960s. (“White Lipstick” was Waters’ original working title for the script). In sum, the sequence is marked by intimations of style, romance, longing, com- petition, and above all copious exhalations of aerosol hairspray –“the one magical potion that keeps it all together,” according to the film’s promotional tagline. The storyline gets underway as a school bus comes to a stop on an ordinary Baltimore street lined with row houses. Tracy Turnblad and her best friend, Penny Pingleton (Leslie Ann Powers) exit the bus and make a bee-line for the Turnblad’s home, which is located above the Hardy-Har joke shop run by Tracy’s father, Wilbur Turnblad (). The girls explode through the front door and race past Tracy’s mother, Edna Turnblad (Divine), who, bent over her ironing board, contributes to the family’s income by taking in neighbors’ laundry. As Tracy and Penny head for the television to watch The Corny Collins Show, Edna chides her daughter for not saying hello to Mrs. Malinski, who has stopped by to pick up her laundry. She excuses Tracy’s rude- ness as a product of her enthusiasm for the television program. “Delinquents if you ask me,” complains Mrs. Malinski. “It ain’t right to be dancin’ on TV to that colored music.” Edna politely dismisses her comment as unreasonable. “She’s just a teenager.” However, the film establishes early on Edna’s concern – and irritation – with her daughter’s loud, screeching music and wanton hairstyle. Like the authorities at school, Edna regards her daughter as a “hair-hopper,” a derogatory term for a girl who invests too much of her self-worth in her hair. She reprimands her for appearing “all ratted up, like a teenage Jezebel,” to which Tracy moans, “Oh, mother, you’re so fifties.” This exchange prompts Penny to come to her friend’s defense. “Tracy’s flamboyant flip is all the rage,” she claims. “Jackie Kennedy, our first lady, even rats her hair.”

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“But Tracy ain’t no first lady, are you, Tracy?” Edna taunts in response. “No siree, she’s a hair-hopper, that’s what she is.” Corpulent, unpopular, and constantly reminded of her low standing on the social ladder, Tracy Turnblad appears an unlikely candidate for celebrity of any kind. However, this all changes when she and Penny agree to lie to their parents about spending a studious evening in the library so as to attend the Corny Collins record hop at the VFW Hall. There, Tracy wins a dance contest judged by the self-appointed “mother of black Baltimore” and host of the monthly “Negro Day” on The Corny Collins Show, Motormouth Maybelle (). Tracy’s dancing skills are so impressive that Corny invites her to audition for a regular spot on the show. She appears at the studio the next day in a new blond hairdo with Penny and Nadine, an African-American girl who wants the show to be integrated every day of the week. Her appeal gets an approving nod from Corny and Tammy, although the show’s council members, who play a central role in the interviewing process, skepti- cally question Nadine’s ability to relate to White music. They haugh- tily dismiss Penny’s awkward lack of sophistication (which Waters establishes through the prop of an Atomic Fireball candy, which she constantly pops in and out of her mouth), and they laugh in her face when she admits that she owns only “four or five sweaters.” Tracy refuses to be cowed by the council’s interrogation, going so far as to proudly admit that she supports racial integration when asked if she would ever swim in a pool with Blacks. Tracy’s progressive views win approving nods from Tammy and Link Larkin (Michael St Gerard), one of the most handsome and pop- ular boys on the show. However, it sparks a venomous response from Tracy’s arch-nemesis, the spoiled and malevolent Amber Von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick), who accuses Tracy of simply being too fat for television. Even here, Tracy remains unperturbed. “I would imagine many of the home viewers are pleasantly plump or chunky,” she rea- sons. “Oh, c’mon,” says Amber, “The show’s not filmed in cinemascope.” With this, Corny cuts in and rebukes Amber for her insolence. He sus- pends her from the show, and sends her home for the day. Amber’s suspension affords Tracy the opportunity to make a grand debut on The Corny Collins Show. She is nominated to lead the “Ladies

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Choice,” and she selects as her partner none other than Link, who is Amber’s regular dance partner and boyfriend. Back in her garish upper-middle class home, Amber seethes with anger and jealousy as she watches the show with her indulgent parents, the meddlesome and pretentious former beauty pageant winner, Velma Von Tussle () and Franklin Von Tussle (), the ineffec- tual owner of a segregated amusement park, Tilted Acres. They assure Amber that while she may have lost Link she will retain her popular- ity and her status as heir apparent to the crown of the upcoming Miss Auto Show competition. Meanwhile, at the Turnblad residence, Penny arrives to alert Tracy’s parents to their daughter’s television stardom. Edna is alarmed by the sight of her on screen, although Wilbur admits, “I think she looks pretty.” Tracy’s popularity is instantaneous. Almost immediately, the Turnblad’s phone begins to ring with fans, well- wishers, and requests for product endorsement, including one from Mr. Pinky’s “Hefty Hideaway” dress shop. Edna cleverly comprehends the opportunity at hand, and when she picks up the phone introduces herself as Tracy’s mother … and her agent. Tracy returns home triumphant and in love with Link. “Finally all of Baltimore knows,” she proclaims, “I’m big, blond, and beautiful.” However, at school Tracy is victimized by Amber’s slur campaign against her and punished by school officials for her immoderate hair- style. The principal, having already given her “hair-do detention,” decides to switch her homeroom to special education where she will study among the “retards” and the African-American kids whom the school holds back. Here Tracy meets Seaweed (Clayton Prince), who turns out to be Motormouth Maybelle’s son. He and Penny fall in love-at-first-sight during a dodge ball game, where Link asks Tracy to go steady with him. Tracy’s meteoric rise to popularity on The Corny Collins Show appears unstoppable, and her parents, too, become caught up in the excitement. “She’s prettier than !” Edna boasts. Meanwhile Seaweed invites Penny, Tracy, and Link to the Black side of Baltimore to his mother’s record shop, where there is music and new dances to learn. Here they meet Seaweed’s sister, Little Inez, who longs to dance on The Corny Collins Show (Waters claims to have based her

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character on Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old African-American girl who was escorted by federal guards in the famous photograph of school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas, and on Gloria Lockerman, a 12-year-old whose spelling abilities won her US$32 000 on the popu- lar game show, The 64,000 Question). The dance party at Motormouth Records is grossly interrupted when Penny’s hysterical, racist mother, Prudence Pingleton (Joann Havrilla), barges into the shop after fol- lowing the kids to the “native” part of town in order to save her daugh- ter from “voodoo.” At Pre-Teen Day on The Corny Collins Show, Tracy, Penny, Link, and Seaweed stage an impromptu protest when Little Inez is forbid- den entrance. Corny and Tammy plead with the station’s owner, Arvin Hodgepile (played by Divine, who, like in Female Trouble, takes on a dual role playing both male and female characters) to integrate the show, but he adamantly refuses, insisting that “Baltimore is not ready for integrated dancing.” That night at a dance in the African-American section of the city, Motormouth Maybelle calls upon all of Black Baltimore to defy segregation and attend the special Corny Collins live broadcast to be held the following day at Von Tussle’s Tilted Acres amusement park. Penny, Seaweed, Link, and Tracy express their soli- darity with the cause (“Our souls are black, even if our skins are white,” says Link), and retreat to an alley to make-out. Edna and Wilbur Turnblad appear, driving down the street and searching for their daughter. Making their escape, the four teens slip into the nearby home of a beatnik couple (played by and ), whose invitation to “get naked,” iron their hair, and smoke reefer scares the foursome back out onto the street and into the hands of their worried parents.11 The outraged Pingleton’s instantly wrap Penny in a straitjacket. They lock her in her bedroom with prison bars on the windows, and hire a psychiatrist (Waters himself) to adminis- ter aversion therapy to keep her away from Black boys. The next day at Tilted Acres, protestors arrive at the scene as planned and a race riot breaks out.12 Link is critically injured by a handbag- wielding protestor, and Tracy is arrested and taken to the women’s reformatory. Much to the Von Tussles’ delight, this appears to clear the way for Amber to reclaim her place as most popular girl and

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immanent winner of the following day’s Miss Auto Show contest. However a storm of protests and picketers demand Tracy’s release. The Turnblads appear on television to plead for Tracy’s freedom and announce that they have joined the NAACP in sympathy with the integrationist movement that has led to their daughter’s unjust incar- ceration. As the Auto Show gets underway, with a ribbon cutting cer- emony officiated over by the Governor of Maryland, Seaweed rescues Penny from her bedroom prison, and they disguise themselves as nuns. Motormouth Maybelle and Little Inez take the Governor hos- tage in his own mansion when he arrives home from the Auto Show to a mass of protestors, reporters, and television cameras. Appearing as if they only intend to escort him safely inside the house, they hand- cuff themselves to him, bombard him with kisses, and refuse to unlock the cuffs until he pardons Tracy. As the 1963 Auto Show proceeds, the Von Tussle’s arrive after plant- ing a bomb in Velma’s wig, to be deployed only in the event of Amber’s failure to win the Miss Auto Show title. With all the votes tabulated, Arvin Hodgepile announces that the winner is technically Tracy Turnblad, although her arrest and incarceration has made her ineligi- ble to accept the crown. The runner-up is then announced to be Amber Von Tussle, the winner in Tracy’s stead. With this, the crowd breaks into a torrent of boos and hisses as Amber giggles and preens before her beaming parents. Taking to the floor, she spitefully intro- duces a new dance that she dedicates to Tracy Turnblad, called “The Roach” (referring to a rumor she’d started that Tracy’s hair was roach- infested). However, as she performs the dance the Governor concedes to protestors’ demands and frees Tracy. She is seen exiting the reform- atory leading a conga line of triumphant dancers, Black and White, young people and police officers, into the Grand Armory in time to claim her rightful crown. Sporting a new “1960s” straightened hair- do, and a fabulous roach-printed gown, Tracy is proclaimed the winner of the contest, and The Corny Collins Show is itself proclaimed to be officially integrated as Whites and Blacks take to the dance floor together to do a new step that Tracy has introduced, “The Bug.” Outraged by their sudden reversal of fortune, Velma and Franklin insist that Amber surrender the throne and accompany them home,

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The Senator Theater. Photograph by Dana Heller.

but she refuses to move. At that moment, Velma’s wig-bomb acciden- tally explodes, which sends her hair soaring across the hall like a mis- sile only to land directly on top of Amber’s head. The Von Tussles are lead away by the police, and Tracy takes the throne, joyfully proclaim- ing, “Let’s Dance,” to end the film. Hairspray had its world premiere at the magnificent Senator Theater on February 16th, 1988. An architectural and historical landmark, this 1939 art deco theater has been host to some of Baltimore’s most gala film openings, including Gone With the Wind, Diner (directed by Baltimore’s own ), and Waters’ films, Cecil B. Demented and . Outside the theater, along the colorful “walk-of- fame,” the block commemorating Hairspray’s opening bears the etched signatures of Waters, Divine (who attended the premiere out of drag persona, dressed in a smart tuxedo), and Kurt Schmoke, then Mayor of Baltimore. Looking back on that evening, Waters claims to have sensed that the film would be well received. However, the growth of its popularity and its enduring appeal in American mass cultural consciousness could never have been predicted. Something else Waters could never have guessed was that less than three weeks after the premiere his friend, star, and muse would collapse in a hotel room in Los Angeles and die of heart failure at the age of 42.

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Glenn Milstead’s death on March 7, 1988 came just as he was pre- paring to begin rehearsals for a dual-role on the successful FOX tele- vision sitcom Married with Children, which would probably have made him a national star. It is tragic and in no small sense ironic that sweeping fame – so fiercely sought after by the characters Divine had played in Dreamland films over the years – would finally elude him. By his own admission, Waters has never completely recovered from the shock of Divine’s death, and he speaks of it still with a sense of disbelief. In 1988, when he first heard the news, the trauma was so intense that it wiped out most of Waters’ memories of the first weeks of Hairspray’s theatrical run, a time that should have been for both director and star a period of vindication and triumph. Hairspray was a vindication because in the unremittingly ordinary character of Edna Turnblad – a frumpy but caring working class mom – Divine found the ideal vehicle for his extraordinary talents as a comedic character actor. His performance would so gracefully estab- lish the film’s queer sensibility that every future iteration and adapta- tion of Hairspray would be obliged to carry its trace; fittingly it was the last film in which Waters would ever cast a male actor in drag. Hairspray was also a triumph, especially considering that back in the late 1960s, when Dreamland began making trashy “stoner” films steeped in all manner of satirical violence and goofy perversion, none of the Dreamlanders really believed the films would ever amount to anything.13 With the achievement of Hairspray, however, the long- time collaboration of John Waters, Divine, Mink Stole, Pat Moran, Vincent Peranio, and Van Smith became iconic in American film cul- ture. At its center is the partnership of Waters and Divine. However, Hairspray is more than a mere coda to this remarkable working friend- ship. Indeed, the film is a reminder that great movies are often the products of our most cherished social and personal relationships. However, movies are also inescapably the products of other movies, or movies that influence our sense of what a movie is, or might be. In the next chapter, I will examine Hairspray’s fundamental relationship to one very particular type, or genre of popular movie: the American teenpic.

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