Stories of Artistry

My name is Seán Curran, and back in the 1980s, my last best friend Demian Acquavella and I were dancers in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company.  One day out on the road, we were rehearsing in a gymnasium, and at the end of that long rehearsal, Demian and I decided to go and take showers before the van came to pick us up to take us out for dinner.

We were in the shower together, and Demian very nonchalantly picked up his left arm and pointed to a big splotch on his inner bicep and said, “Hey, Seán, what do you think this is?”

I knew exactly what it was – it was a Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion.  But I took a deep breath and said, “Wow, Demian, I don’t know, it looks like a bruise … Did somebody grab your arm or were you doing a duet with somebody?”

We got dressed and went out to wait for the van, but I said, “I think I forgot something.”

I ran back into the gym, I found a pay phone and I called Arnie Zane back in New York, collect, and I told Arnie that Demian had just shown me his first KS lesion. Arnie sprung into action and made a couple of appointments with doctors for Demian for when we returned back from the tour.

But then when I went back outside to wait with the dancers for the van to go to dinner, I noticed the other dancers were standing around talking, but that Demian had laid down on the very cold marble steps of this gymnasium building and he had fallen fast asleep. I thought to myself, there’s kind of a fork in the road for Demian and me today. And I don’t know why, but I took out my Instamatic camera that I had in my dance bag and I took a photograph of Demian asleep on the steps. After I got it developed, I put it in a frame and it’s been in my bedroom ever since and it’s a tribute to Demian and it’s a way for me to remember him.

I really miss Demian desperately and I also miss dancing the Bill T. Jones master work, D-Man in the Waters.  It was a tribute to Demian and to so many of the other people we lost.

The epigram for Bill T. Jones’ piece is a truism by artist Jenny Holzer: “In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were filled with joy.”

My friend Michael Carmine (March 6, 1959 – October 14, 1989) was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn. His mother was the daughter of a Portuguese sales clerk at Tiffany’s on 5th Avenue and her mother was Jamaican. Michael’s father was a blond Northern Italian. He took on the stage name of Michael Carmine while he attended the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan

Being light skinned, Michael found himself being cast as Puerto Rican. He became involved with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater company. His big break was a national Levi’s commercial and then guest starred in shows such as MASH, Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. He also appeared on screen in films including Scarface, Turk 182, Batteries Not Included and Leviathan.

Michael’s last appearance was in the film Longtime Companion, where he played Alberto, a home-bound AIDS patient. The film was completed not long before he passed. The interesting part about that scene was that it was rewritten to reflect the argument Michael and I had only the day before.

Michael and I had met right after he had completed Band in the Hand. We were introduced by Keith Haring at Paradise Garage. We hit it off immediately. Although I was a struggling artist, he hired me as his personal assistant, so that I could create and paint with a bit more ease. He got me involved with La Familia Theater Company, where I directed him in two plays.

We did a great deal of work with the late poet/playwright Miguel Pinero. In fact, Michael would be playing the narrator (a part based on Pinero) in Reinaldo Povod’s play Cuba and His Teddy Bear and playing opposite actors including Robert De Niro, Burt Young and Ralph Macchio. It was at this time, Michael Mann approached him and I about an idea and he wanted me to shadow Pinero for six months to write a script for a film. The project never came to fruition because of Michael’s deteriorating health.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you, my creative brother from another mother. Peace. You went too soon but you left a legacy.

Hi, I’m Cindy Crawford. Before the word “supermodel” was coined, there was Gia Carangi.

From her first major modeling job with Versace, she was catapulted to the covers of Cosmopolitan and Vogue magazines, and became a favorite model of many of the world’s best-known fashion photographers, including Helmut Newton, Francesco Scavullo and Arthur Elgort.  Arthur first saw photos of Gia in 1978, when she worked behind the counter at her father’s restaurant, Little Hoagie, in Philadelphia.

Gia brought a new dark, edgy, moody look — and an “I don’t give a damn” attitude to American fashion modeling that had been dominated by smiling, blonde, blue-eyed beauties.  She was a rebel who unabashedly posed nude when most American models shied away from nudity. She was also a troubled young woman who had been sexually abused at five years old and whose mother abandoned her, her father and siblings for another man.

She was a lesbian who wore black motorcycle jackets, no makeup, and vintage men’s clothing in an era when being homosexual was an act of defiance; a heroin addict who used drugs to deal with her loneliness as a famous young model in New York City with few friends.

The drugs made it harder and harder for her to work. She fell asleep or walked out on jobs. But she was in such high demand that those hiring her would look the other way or enable her behavior rather than helping her or forcing her to deal with her drug addiction.

As former girlfriend Elyssa Stewart told the UK newspaper The Independent: “The problem was that people were more interested in hiding the marks than helping her.”

In 1984, she entered rehab for six months at the insistence of her family, but was soon back on heroin, and by 1985, she was in the hospital with pneumonia. She was sleeping on the streets, she was bruised, had been raped, and was reportedly doing sex work.

She died in November 1986, the first famous woman to die of AIDS and a warning that AIDS was not just a disease that took the lives of gay men.  Her death brought attention to the risk of needle-sharing and the benefits of needle-exchange programs and AIDS education rather than demonizing drug users.

Even as troubled as she was, her exit from the fashion industry left a gaping hole and people longed for her dark-haired, brown-eyed beauty.  So much so, that when I first came to New York as a young model, my agent sent me out to some of those same photographers, saying they had “baby Gia.”  I will forever be grateful to her for opening so many doors for me.

Francesco Scavullo, the photographer who adored Gia even as he hid the sores and track marks on Gia’s arm in a photo shoot late in her life, explained her allure: “Gia is my darling – old, young, decadent, innocent, volatile, vulnerable, and more tough-spirited than she looks. She is all nuance and suggestion, like a series of images by Bertolucci.”

“I never think of her as a model, though she’s one of the best,” he said.  “She doesn’t give you the Hot Look, the Cool Look, the Cute Look.  She strikes sparks, not poses. She’s like photographing a stream of consciousness.”

Rest in peace, Gia.

Howard Ashman was a masterful writer, lyricist and director, in my opinion the greatest of our generation, who died of AIDS on March 14, 1991, at the age of 40.  My name is Alan Menken.  In a collaboration that lasted 12 years, Howard and I wrote the stage and movie musical Little Shop of Horrors and won two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards for Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.

We forged a collaboration that was intense, creative and supremely effective. Each moment I spent in the creative space with Howard Ashman remains with me every day of my life.

With our first project at Disney, Little Mermaid, some studio executives resisted using the song “Part of Your World,” for fear we would lose some of the younger audience members. But Howard insisted that our audience had to know what our little  mermaid Ariel wanted. She needed to have what he called an “I want” song.

I think that as a gay man, Howard grew up knowing what it felt like to be on the outside, wanting to be a part of the world that he saw around him but somehow not able to fully take part.

For two years, while Little Mermaid was being made, Howard knew he had HIV but he hid his illness from everyone on the movie, including me. We found out later that, during the press junket for Little Mermaid at Disney World in Orlando, Howard wore a catheter in his chest so that he could get medicine intravenously at night. When he saw the parade of Little Mermaid characters at the park, he burst into tears.

Later, those of us who worked with Howard realized why he cried: It was the idea that those characters would live on long after he was gone.

The night we both won our Oscars for Little Mermaid, Howard said he and I needed to have a serious talk, and after we got back to New York, Howard revealed to me that he was sick with AIDS. We had just reached the pinnacle of our careers in both theater and the movie business, and we had worked side-by-side for 11 years, yet my dear friend kept it a secret from everyone he worked with that he had an incurable fatal disease. That’s the kind of fear people lived with back then: fear of rejection, of death, of a fatal illness with no cure, and there was so much stigma and discrimination.

But Howard wouldn’t let AIDS keep him down. He was so determined to keep working, to keep creating magical song moments and unforgettable characters. I think AIDS spurred him on to work even harder because he knew he was living on borrowed time.

Howard and I were brought in to fix Beauty and the Beast while it was being developed. But Howard was too sick to commute back and forth to LA, so he finally had to tell Jeffrey Katzenberg that he had AIDS.  Katzenberg agreed that the production would travel from LA to meet with Howard and me in upstate New York.

At the same time, we were also working on Aladdin, which Howard had initially developed. Because of AIDS, Howard was suffering neuropathies, began losing feeling in his fingers, losing his voice and much of his eyesight, all the while we were collaborating on joyous, incredible songs. Howard was determined to keep working as long as he could.

Towards the end of his life, Howard and I wrote “Prince Ali” from his hospital bed. He was down to 80 pounds. He couldn’t see and could barely speak.

Howard and I won an Oscar for Best Song for Beauty and the Beast. And the movie was the first animated picture ever nominated for Best Picture. Howard had passed before ever experiencing the movie’s success.  The award was accepted by his companion of seven years, Bill Lauch.

Patricia Arquette:

We are honored to be asked to memorialize our sister Alexis Arquette.  You’ll first be hearing me, Patricia, then our brother Richmond, then David, then our sister Rosanna.

I would like to highlight what an incredible artist Alexis Arquette was.  As an award-winning actor, her works spanned the screen, theater and cabaret.  As a cabaret singer and M.C. performing at top-level nightclubs, Alexis was a powerhouse, often performing as her self-invented alter ego “Eva Destruction.”

On stage, she starred in Libra with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company for director John Malkovich.  Alexis received praise in VH1’s reality show The Surreal Life in 2005, embodying a strong trans role model at a time when transgender representation was literally non-existent.

Her long career in film began with her widely heralded performance as Georgette in Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn.  She continued with notable performances in Terminal Bliss, American Playhouse, Hollow Boy, Of Mice and Men, Threesome, Jumpin’ at the Boneyard, Grief, Jack Be Nimble, Pulp Fiction, The Wedding Singer, Bride of Chucky, Killer Drag Queens on Dope, and Wigstock, among many others.

Alexis studied Fine Arts at Otis Parsons.  Like her, her paintings are beautiful, evocative, strong, uninhibited, and spirited, encompassing diverse themes such as fantasy, other-worldliness, religious struggle, and erotic art.

Her series of video compilations from local television documented societal norms of the time, capturing blatant anti-LGBT bias.  These works also examine human sexuality, desire and desirability through her observing gaze.

When Alexis was dying, she said about her nephew’s work as an artist, “You signed your name on the tree of life.”  But I want to say, “Alexis, that you are Darling, you are Brave One, you signed your name on the tree of life, and you will never be forgotten.”

Richmond Arquette:

Alexis was an original, wildly creative, fun and funny, every bit her own person.  Her absence continues to be deeply felt.  The world is missing out and I wish she were still alive.

Alexis grew up with a president who refused to even mention AIDS by name, let alone take any measures to prevent its spread.  She heard the blowhards who judged, criticized and condemned her entire life.  I believe the insensitivity in our culture is part of what wore her down.

Death is often reduced to statistics, as if each number isn’t a complete life, intricately interwoven with the lives of those who love them.  The recent worldwide effort to address COVID begs the question, why is it not always this way?  Why are we not as a species more reverent of life?  

I promise you that humanity would be richer if Alexis were still around, and I’m sorry for those of you who never got to be around her.

David Arquette:

Alexis was always ahead of her time.  I shared a room growing up with Alexis.  He taught me everything I knew about art, Hollywood, fashion, music.  She would turn me on to bands years before they became popular.

I’m going to bounce back and forth between pronouns, because that’s what Alexis did.

She was a fighter, always standing up for herself and others.  Anyone who knew Alexis loved her.  The gangsters, the skaters, the club kids, the runaways.  She was a Pied Piper wherever she or he went.

When Alexis decided to live fully as a woman, she also decided to only play female or trans roles as an actress.  Again, she was ahead of her time.  Despite her career suffering because of that decision, she taught us to stay true to ourselves and fought for us to see a world that we had just not caught up to yet.

Rosanna Arquette:

Alexis passed away before we had today’s language around respectful gender identity.  There was no “They/Them” yet.

In this moment of reflection on who our sister was, I’m reminded of just one of the many moments with her where her individuality was crystalized for me.  It was a conversation we had in the hours before she left this life.   I asked Alexis what clothes she wanted to be dressed in before her cremation.  Alexis had every kind of outfit, every type of fluid expression.  Fashion was one of the many ways that she shared her creative voice.  And Alexis answered, “It doesn’t matter!  Me!  I’m just me!”  We didn’t have the pronouns “They/Them” yet, but that was her message in her final moment with me.

It’s important to recognize and memorialize when any artist breaks new ground.  Our sister Alexis Arquette was a pioneer.  She was compelling, hypnotic, she drew you in.  And she knew she had this power, whether with an individual friend or an endless audience of strangers.  She could instantly hold you in the palm of her hand.  And when she did, she showed you, me, us, all how to live a life fully self-expressed.  She showed us where our own power resides.

Alexis challenged me to be who I am in every moment that I live with fearlessness and pride.  In this moment of reflection on who was Alexis Arquette, they were a bad-ass!

I’m Tai Babilonia.  When my ice skating partner Randy Gardner and I turned professional after the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980, we had a new family called the Ice Capades — which at that time was the number one touring ice show in the country.

In 1983, after we completed our three-year contract with the Ice Capades and started touring with other shows, I started hearing that some of the guys that Randy and I toured with from the Ice Capades chorus, a.k.a. “Ice Cadets,” were suddenly dying from this mysterious disease called GRID (gay-related immune disease), which would later be named AIDS.

It seemed like we were losing someone every month. I started keeping a list of our friends from our beloved skating family, and also started including friends from the dance and entertainment world.

My list was getting long. It was at least 62 friends that had died by the early ’90s.

Because it was getting too emotional and heartbreaking for me, I stopped adding names of loved ones that we had lost. I was numb. That list is now tucked away in a very special place, and I honor the beautiful friends that we have lost by sharing my story and bringing awareness to this horrific disease.

Talking through all of this, it reminded me of a very special show we were in.  Randy and I performed in the first AIDS-related skating benefit in 1989 called “Skating for Life” at the New York State Armory.  The show benefitted the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS (or DIFFA) and the St. Vincent’s Hospital Care Program, as well as a fund for skaters and other athletes with AIDS.

There are two notable skaters, and the dearest of friends, that I’d like to remember now.

Robert Wagenhoffer was a national-level medalist in the late ’70s who competed in both singles and pairs.  In 1979, he won the silver medal at the U.S. Nationals and was on two World Teams.  He retired from amateur competition in 1982.  He then joined Ice Capades, participated in many professional events, and became a two-time World Professional Champion in Jaca, Spain.

Robert was known for his innovated skating, the height of his jumps, and entertained thousands.  Randy and I knew Robert since we were all kids, as we took from the same coaches. He was like family to us.  Robert died from complications of AIDS in December 1999.

And of course, there’s the legendary John Curry, of Great Britain.  John was a five-time British Champion, and the 1976 European and World Champion.  In one of the most memorable free skates in history, he won the 1976 Olympic Gold Medal.  He is remembered as one of the greatest stylists and artists in figure-skating history.

Following the 1976 World Championships, John turned pro and founded a touring skating company that mirrored the same lines as a traditional dance company.  He even expanded his repertoire to choreography in both skating and dance, and appeared in two shows on Broadway as an actor.

In John’s last professional appearance in 1989, we worked together on a CBS televised special called the “Ice Stars’ Hollywood Revue.”  It was the last time we saw John.

John’s legacy remains strong even today, as the Ice Theatre of New York and the next Ice Age have both been greatly inspired by John’s Olympic status to elevate figure skating as a legitimate performance art.

John Curry died from complications of AIDS in April 1994.

Hey, I’m Whoopi Goldberg.  Did you know that Emile Ardolino directed me in Sister Act?  You remember that movie where I play a nightclub singer who witnesses a murder, hides from the mob in a convent, and turns the dreary choir into singing and dancing sensation.  You know the movie, it was released in 1992 and was a huge hit.  At the 1993 Golden Globe awards, I was nominated for best actress, and the picture was nominated for best comedy or musical.  But in November of that same year, Emile Ardolino passed away from AIDS at the age of 50.

It’s really interesting, no one on the set knew Emile was ill so his passing came as a shock.  And if you’ve ever been on a set and you watch actors and directors talk about what they think needs to happen, it can be very animated and sometimes it seems a little combative.  And so I had to really wrack my brain to see if I had, you know, exacerbated everything, I don’t think I did. But I have to tell you, we did a good film, we made a good film, he was really a good director.

Making movies about dancing, however, was Emile’s passion.  Dirty Dancing, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, was perhaps Emile’s best-known picture featuring dance.  But it was for his documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’ about ballet dancer Jacques D’Amboise’s work with children that he won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award in 1983.

According to his New York Times obituary, he loved capturing dance on film because when you’re watching dance on television, “you can be in five seats at the same time — every time you change an angle.”

Emile produced and often directed the acclaimed television series Dance in America from 1975 to 1983.  For that series, he received a Director’s Guild award and three DGA nominations, and won another Emmy award.  Over the course of his career, Emile was nominated for over a dozen Emmys.  His documentary of George Balanchine’s Nutcracker was released just days after his death.

The other films directed by Emile include Chances Are, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Cybil Shepherd, and Three Men and a Little Lady, starring Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg.  His last picture, Gypsy, starring Bette Midler, was released after his passing.  He won an Emmy as best director, the picture was nominated for best TV movie or mini-series, and Bette won the Emmy for best actress.

The thing about Emile was, he was a gentle soul, he was a gentle soul who loved the idea of being able to move your arms, and move your feet, and to bring joy.  I have a vision of Emile reunited with all the dancers we’ve lost to AIDS and dancers we’ve lost over the eons, and I think to myself, my goodness, what a gorgeous performance that would make.  I’m in no rush to see it now, but maybe just thinking about it is enough.

Introduction:

Keith Haring’s art is immediately recognizable.  Keith was inspired by cartoons, and by the graffiti and murals on the streets and in the subways of New York City, where he moved in the late 1970s.  His work is known for the thick lines that define his crawling, dancing or barking figures and by clear messages about universal topics such as love, birth and death, sex, drugs, and war. 

Keith’s career took off in the early 1980s and became known worldwide, visible in major museums, in over 100 solo and group shows, and in public art in dozens of cities across the globe.  There’s the “Crack is Whack” mural on FDR Drive in Manhattan, the mural for the Statue of Liberty’s 100th anniversary, a mural on the western side of the Berlin Wall just a few years before the wall came down, and even the interior of the Palladium nightclub. 

Keith made his art more accessible and available to the public by opening the Pop Shop, a retail shop in SoHo that sold merchandise displaying Keith’s art.  The whole inside of the shop was a giant mural he painted.

He loved to create art in public, like a public performance, often with hip-hop playing as he painted.  He could watch his audience and their reactions.  He created art for regular people, not for the critics, and so when prices for his art sky-rocketed, Keith wanted regular people to be able to own his art, even if it was just on a t-shirt.

Keith found out he had AIDS in 1988 when he was only 29.  I’m Irwin Rappaport, chair of the Board of Directors for the Foundation for The AIDS Monument.

The following is taken from an interview with artist Kenny Scharf, who met Keith in art school and quickly became one of Keith’s best friends:

I met Keith in 1978.  I had just arrived from LA to New York, and I was at the School of Visual Arts.  

I remember feeling a little let down that my idea of what New York City art school students would be like.  Oh, they look the same, kind of suburban kids just like back here … and then I heard some Devo music blasting, and I’m following it.  And I come to this room, and there’s Keith, alone, painting himself in — literally — into a corner. 

And I just sat there and looked at him, and I thought, “Oh, well, that’s what I was looking for when I wanted to meet artists in New York City.”

Well, you know, we didn’t have him for very long, so luckily, at that moment, we became instant friends.  And we hung out quite a bit, and we ended up actually being roommates for some time, which was also a quite amazing moment in his career, when he started doing his drawings — his chalk drawings — in the street. 

We shared a loft near Times Square, so he used to go down in the subway on 42nd Street.  You would instantly be hit by his magic.  And he had this amazing drive and ability to get himself out there.  And I remember he irked a lot of the other students, because they would say, “Oh, he’s so self-promoting” — like it’s a bad thing.  And we were like, “Yeah, he’s self-promoting. That’s the idea!”  There’s nothing shameful about it, when you have a message. 

So, it was amazing how he did that, and how it caught on so quick when he found that niche — which was basically every single black paper in the subways of New York City before they got an ad on them.  It’s pretty amazing and ingenious, you know?

His ability to draw and his language that he made up – basically, his symbols are language.  So, he created his own language and a universal language … he crossed boundaries and barriers.  Every stroke is there for a reason, and there’s no waste.

I used to call him the Mayor — he should be the Mayor of New York City – because everywhere he went, he’d have his chalk, of course, in his pocket.  And it wasn’t only for drawing on the subways, he would draw all the time on the sidewalk.  All of the sudden, he’d just get down and just start drawing, and instantly there would be a crowd around him.  And then he would give out all his buttons to all the crowd.  Everyone loved him.

And so when I heard about these symptoms of the swollen glands, I [long pause and exhale] I immediately thought of the time probably four years prior, his neck was like that and we had no idea what it was.  And all of the sudden he got better and he was back, he was Keith.

It was around the time that Klaus Nomi died, before AIDS had a name, they were starting to talk about some of the things, the signs that meant, you know, you were carrying this.  But we didn’t really talk about it, because it was so scary as a subject.  

Believe it or not, way before AIDS existed, way before he had that swollen gland, he used to say to me that he was going to die young.  He had that urgency way before any, any of that existed and that’s part of it.  Like, there was something he knew.  He was like a flaming star.

What really was hard was, well, around the time he came out – which was so brave — about his diagnosis in Rolling Stone magazine, and nobody was doing that — there was such a stigma of shame — and I just thought, “Wow.”  He was so brave.

And then sadly, a lot of the invitations dried up, parties and things like that that he was so into, and what was left was, you know, people that, you know, really cared.

Everything he did had meaning behind it.  He wasn’t just taking the rage and, you know, internalizing it and make a crazy Rashomon.  He would spend his money and make a stack of posters and be giving them out with the buttons.  Not dogmatic at all.  He was full of life and art and generosity, you know, of giving to people.

He created this language now that everybody reads — that’s huge.  All over the world, everyone knows those images, and it’s just kind of amazing.  The way he went about himself as an artist in the public, in so many ways, he was way ahead of his time.  He didn’t get to see the whole explosion of social media, but I can imagine he would’ve taken it to a level that we don’t understand and that we’ll never know.

He was a very important person in my life – still is, obviously.  The generosity that he had of himself was pretty inspiring.  So, I try to keep that up.

The last thing I said to him, I basically told him that I would do what I can to help him keep his legacy alive.  And I do whatever I can, so I’m happy to do this.

Paul Monette was my mentor. We met in 1990 when I first moved to Los Angeles.  It was the height of the AIDS epidemic and PauI was one of the era’s most insightful and accomplished voices. I was just beginning my academic career.  Mutual friends in the arts and AIDS activist communities introduced us.  While we were a generation apart we were kindred spirits and forged a quick and easy friendship that lasted until his death in 1995.

I was the first scholar to take his work seriously, something that came easy to me given the beauty and power of Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog and Borrowed Time: an AIDS Memoir, his late 1980s masterpieces, books I would teach in my undergraduate courses and write about in academic journals.

Here’s an excerpt from his memoir Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, which he wrote during the AIDS years.  It gives you a sense of his passion and purpose:

“But the fevers are on me now, the virus mad to ravage my last 50 T-cells.
It’s hard to keep the memory at full dazzle with so much loss to mock it.
Roger gone, Craig gone, Cesar gone, Stevie gone.
And this feeling that I’m the last one left in a world where only the ghosts still laugh.
But at least they’re the ghosts of full-grown men,
proof that all of us got that far, free of the traps and the lies.
And at that moment on the brink of summer’s end,
no one would ever tell me again that men like me couldn’t love.”

Paul was full of passion and immensely loyal to those he befriended.  He was drawn to my commitment to his legacy and to AIDS awareness in general, and grateful for my efforts to make his work accessible to a younger queer generation.  He was funny, smart, gossipy, flirtatious, curious, fully present in the moment — which is to say that he was fully alive except, of course, that he was living with AIDS.  He looked out for me, affirming my life choices in ways I very much needed at the time.  I saw him as a tribal elder, some full of wisdom, experience and generosity.

His triumphant moment, when his memoir Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award, remains a milestone in LGBTQ history. I will always remember the joy the recognition offered him and the pride he felt for the various communities he was honored to represent.

We had a very tender inter-generational dynamic, made all the more immediate given his health challenges.

Were we friends? I wasn’t inner-circle by any means, but we spent time together during his final years.  He single-handedly took it upon himself to help me get hired at Yale University, his alma mater, for the first-ever LGBT studies position through The Larry Kramer Initiative.  He advocated for me with letters and phone calls that almost certainly were the reasons I got the job. I owe him everything for that alone.

He died the first year I was teaching at Yale.  Along with David Groff, his editor and friend, I organized his New York City memorial, which we hosted at the Public Theater.  It was essential for us to gather together and celebrate Paul’s life and legacy.

My name is David Roman. Paul Monette was an important figure in my life and the lives of so many others. I loved him for his passion and authenticity and I remember him for his deep love for queer people everywhere, especially those living with HIV.

The great male ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev arrived in this world with a grand cinematic gesture on a train speeding across the Soviet Union, and departed having changed what it is to be a man in a female-dominated art form.

His onstage presence personified a marriage of masculinity and femininity combined. A panther and an exotic rose, magnetic and indisputably singular.  In 1961 and already an established young star in Russia, Nureyev risked his life in a stand off with the KGB and French authorities at Paris’ Orly Airport. This defection to the West from the USSR made him a subject of world television news, and perhaps the first internationally-renowned name in ballet. His subsequent relationship with London’s Royal Ballet and his famed partnership with Margot Fonteyn, who was remarkably 20 years his senior, further cemented Nureyev as an almost godlike figure on the international stages of the ballet world. 

Rudolf Nureyev’s life and career were wrapped in a blanket of excess and luxury, often reflected in his unique stagings of classical ballets, largely for the Paris Opera, where he served as Artistic Director until his death in 1993. 

His voracious sexual appetite for young men was renowned, and tightly woven through the more permanent romantic relationships of his life.  Ex-lovers putting up with short-lived dalliances with men understanding that even this fueled his artistic creativity and translated into the stage creature that his audiences adored. 

When I was a young ballet student at The Royal Ballet School, Nureyev was at the top of my list of influences. Never feeling particularly unique as a dancer myself, I marveled at his ability to transcend technique and exist onstage in a cloud of sensual perfume.

It was 1989, I was 16 and at lunch break, I was passing the company canteen. I glanced in and to my surprise there sat Rudolf Nureyev alone.  He signaled for me to come in.  I got closer and he spoke to me in an accent still rich with his homeland. 

“Carry me to studio, boy.”  That’s all he said. 

I recall thinking at the time that I wasn’t the strongest of young men, a bit of a late developer, but there was no way I wasn’t going to oblige him. Wrapped around my shoulders, cradled like a baby and weak with the AIDS virus that was draining away the life force from this indisputable poet of movement, I carried the great Nureyev up to the Covent Garden Studio. Three flights of stairs, praying that my knees wouldn’t buckle.

At this very moment in time, I was struggling to come to terms with my own sexuality. So afraid to come out to my parents who would fear my contracting the very illness that was already raging through this great man’s body. I left him in a chair at the front of the studio and said goodbye.

Three or four days later, he performed the role of Mercutio in a gala performance celebrating the 70th birthday of his most famous onstage partner Dame Margot Fonteyn.  His performance somewhat diminished, but still there were Tartarian flashes of the fire that had ignited the world stages.

Four years later, he would be carried once again. This time out onto the stage of The Palais Garnier in Paris to receive rapturous applause on the opening of his sumptuous production of La Bayadere and to receive France’s highest cultural honor, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.  This was his final curtain call. 

Every young man in ballet for future generations will be indebted to the mark that Rudolf Nureyev made on the art form. He has shaped the way we will craft our art forever.

Brad Davis shot to instant stardom one night in 1979 in the south of France at the Palais theater.  It was the night the movie Midnight Express premiered at Cannes International Film Festival.  Before that, Brad had worked as an actor in some prestigious TV shows like Sybill with Sally Field and the mini-series Roots.  But, that night before the premiere, no one knew who Brad Davis was.

I’m Susan Bluestein; I was Brad’s wife.  I realized then that the experience of a five-minute standing ovation and the commotion that followed would be forever etched in my memory.  It was shocking and thrilling to see this short, skinny kid from Tallahassee, Florida and this middle-class Jewish girl from New York frozen in time amongst the movie elite.  It was like a dream, not real or tangible, but wonderful.  Brad won a Golden Globe award for that performance.

However, around the same time, Brad’s life changed in a very different way, and it wasn’t like a wonderful dream.  Brad had just finished a movie, A Small Circle of Friends.  His IV drug use and alcohol addiction were at their height.  After that movie, he went to visit a friend on the set of the film Heaven’s Gate.  He came down with the worst case of shingles and swollen lymph nodes the doctor had ever seen.

Today, they probably would have tested him for HIV immediately, but no one knew this in 1979-1980.  Through a miracle and much hard work, Brad got sober in 1981 and tried very hard to repair his reputation in the industry.  We were overjoyed to have our baby, Alex, in 1983.

In 1985, Brad went to Cedars Sinai hospital to donate blood, as he always did after Alex was born.  He had gotten an acting job in Italy for a few months.  Cedars Sinai sent a letter to the house informing him that he was HIV positive.  Brad had just finished starring in Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart at the Public Theater in New York.  This, of course, turned out to be very prophetic.

At first we didn’t really believe it or know what to think. We had so many questions. Was I infected? Was Alex? What should we do and how should we live going forward?

Fortunately, Alex and I tested negative.  We decided to keep Brad’s diagnosis secret so Brad could work as long as possible.  It had been hard enough for him to resurrect his career.  We didn’t think much about it at the time.  Brad looked and felt good, but a light had gone out of him, carrying this burden of his past.  By then, he had been infected at least five years, maybe more.

He refused to get any medical care for fear of discovery.  But in 1989, he wasn’t feeling well and knew he needed help from a doctor. Luckily, he was able to reach out to his friends Larry Kramer and Rodger McFarlane.  By then they were major AIDS activists in New York.  They sent him to a wonderful doctor, who agreed to see him in secret along with many other actors we found out later.

After his last job, A Habitation of Dragons, he picked up a parasite and couldn’t recover.  It was 1991.  He didn’t want Alex, who was 8 years old, to see him die a horrible death.  He took his own life while he was still able, on September 8, 1991.

Brad’s death shocked Hollywood.  Brad had wanted to tell the truth of how he died and what he had been through hiding the truth that he had AIDS.  There were many differing opinions as to whether he would have been hired if producers and directors had known.

The truth is he did some of his best work during that time, a mini-series, Robert Kennedy and His Times, being his favorite.  He loved that show and felt it was his first really adult role.  Brad wrote a proposal exposing the fear and discrimination at the time in the Hollywood Industry about anything related to AIDS.  It later became a book.

We made the most of the years we had together with Brad.  There was always music, lots of laughter and wonderful friends.

Brad’s motto was always “Don’t postpone joy.”  He never did!

Hi, I am Adam Lambert, and I am so honored to tell Freddie’s story and to bring the music of Queen to audiences around the world.

Rock legend Freddie Mercury was a singer, songwriter and pianist who is best known as the front man for the band Queen. Freddie was born in Zanzibar on September 5, 1946. He grew up in India and moved to the UK in 1964.

Early in his music career, he sold second-hand clothing and was an airport baggage handler while singing with a series of bands until forming Queen in 1970 with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor.

Praised by Roger Daltry, lead singer of The Who, as “the best virtuoso rock ‘n roll singer of all time,” Freddie Mercury was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal
range. As a songwriter, he wrote 10 of the 17 songs on the band’s Greatest Hits album, including “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Somebody to Love,” the rock anthem “We Are the Champions,” “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and the rockabilly hit “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”  Other Queen hits include “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Under Pressure,” a collaboration with David Bowie.

The band was famous for its live concerts, including an unforgettable performance at Live Aid in 1985, and broke records with the size of its audiences.  Queen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. The band sold over 300 million records.

The citation for Queen in the Rock Hall of Fame proclaims that, “In the golden era of glam rock and gorgeously hyper-produced theatrical extravaganzas that defined one branch of ’70s rock, no group came close in either concept or execution to Queen.”

Freddie publicly admitted to having gay sexual experiences and had a series of romantic relationships with both men and women, and described himself as bi-sexual. His larger-than-life stage persona contrasted with a shy, sensitive personality when not performing.  And he rarely granted interviews.

Rumors that Mercury was sick with AIDS began in 1986 and dogged him for the rest of his life, although his HIV positive diagnosis was actually in 1987. He became increasingly thin, and the band stopped touring. His final performance with Queen was in 1986, and his last public performance was in Barcelona in 1988.

In 1990, the band was in Switzerland recording Innuendo, their last album with Freddie. Freddie was committed to recording as many vocal tracks as possible while he still had the energy to do so – an incredible feat of creativity and powerful vocals, even as his body was failing.

In an interview with Express, Brian May recalled Freddie’s recording of the song “The Show Must Go On”:

“When I gave him the final version to sing, it was like taking the lid off a bottle that was about to explode.”

The song includes these haunting lyrics:

“I’ll soon be turning, round the corner now
Outside the dawn is breaking
But inside in the dark I’m aching to be free
The show must go on
The show must go on
Inside my heart is breaking
My makeup may be flaking
But my smile, still, stays on.”

On November 23, 1991, he issued his first public admission of his illness:

“Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with me, my doctors
and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease.”

Freddie Mercury died the very next day, at age 45.

“I hated all authority,” said Tony Richardson to a magazine interviewer in 1963.  So, he was a perfect fit to be a director.  I’m Jessica Lange.

In 1991, Tony directed me in Blue Sky. Blue Sky was his final film. Tony died of AIDS on November 15 of that same year at the age of 60, never publicly revealing his bisexuality until he was diagnosed with HIV in 1990.

Although he may have hated authority, you wouldn’t know it from the way he talked with his actors as we collaborated in the art of movie-making.  Tony was and will always be one of my very favorite directors. He taught me so much about filmmaking and acting.

Tony, an Englishman born in Yorkshire, directed 23 films.  The first, written by John Osborne and starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom, was Look Back in Anger, which Tony also directed as a stage play in London before it moved to Broadway and won the Drama Circle Critics Award.  Other plays he directed and adapted into film were The Entertainers starring Sir Laurence Olivier and written by John Osborne, and A Taste of Honey about an inter-racial love affair.

His film adaptation of Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney, was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Score and Best Director.  Tony is credited with launching the careers of Finney as well as Alan Bates and Tom Courtenay.

Tony was among the directors associated with the British “New Wave” of filmmakers whose films in the late 1950s and early 1960s had a documentary style and often used real locations and untrained real people as background actors.  Their social realism approach tended to focus on the lives of working-class people or challenged the dominance of the upper classes.  They wanted to make films of substance, as a reaction against the lightweight comedies and horror films that characterized popular mainstream movies at the time.

In 1960, Richardson explained:

“It’s impossible to make films that appeal to everyone, and the only solution is to make them at a non-prohibitive cost, and to try to adhere to a strong, independent point of view that will appeal to at least one body of customers: the ones who want to be stimulated by provocative ideas.”

It was a great tragedy to lose Tony so early in his life. He was only 60 years old. We can only imagine the amount of work that he would have still done had he still survived, and the art he would have brought to all of us.

Tony was survived by daughters Natasha Richardson and Joely Richardson, from his marriage to actress Vanessa Redgrave, and his third daughter, Katherine Grimond.  After her father’s death, Natasha joined the boards of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amFAR, and God’s Love We Deliver, which provided meals for people with HIV and AIDS.  She supported the organizations until she passed away in 2009.

Herb Ritts’ photography began when he and his good friend Richard Gere — then an unknown actor — did a photo shoot in 1978 in front of a vintage jacked-up Buick.  That got both of them some attention and led to Herb’s October 1981 cover photo of Brooke Shields for Elle magazine, and the cover of Olivia Newton-John’s album, Physical, in 1981.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Herb photographed some of the biggest celebrities of those decades.  Madonna, Denzel Washington, Cher, Tom Hanks, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Johnny Depp, Courtney Love, Elizabeth Taylor, and many more. Herb directed 14 memorable music videos for major performers including Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Chris Isaak, Jon Bon Jovi and Mariah Carey, and won 2 MTV video awards.   I’m Erik Hyman, the President of the Herb Ritts Foundation and I was Herb’s partner when he died in 2002.  Here is Herb’s good friend Richard Gere with a tribute to Herb …

* * * * *

Oh, how do I even start with Herb Ritts?  Herb was one of my closest and dearest friends.

I met him in L.A … Hollywood. We had mutual friends and Herb was just the nicest human being. He was sweet, and he was generous and curious and didn’t have a mean bone in his body.  He was kind of extraordinary that way.  He really stood out.

He decided to become a photographer and, through very hard work, he became one of the top fashion photographers in the world.  I was just looking through his stuff.  I mean, it is amazing.  It is classic.  He always wanted to be classic, he didn’t want to be a flavor of this month or year, he really wanted something that lasted.  I think those of us who were photographed by him felt that, that he was he was looking for something real and authentic.

And he was a warm photographer who people relaxed around, he made everyone look great.  I look at his photographs and I see where a lot of them came from, but they have his creativity, and his eye and his heart in them.

When he found out that he had HIV, I think I was one of the first people he told, and we just wept like babies.  He had the best healthcare one could get, but he just weakened.  He was having trouble, but I still remember how shocked I was when I got that call December 26, 2002, that he had passed away, it just didn’t seem possible.

Herb, up to the last moment, really helped a lot of people.  AMFAR … he and I worked on a couple of off-shoots from AMFAR, fast-track kind of scientific medical explorations.  He was always donating his time, energy and photographs to help.  He donated cameras to Africans who were going through this to document what they were experiencing with HIV and AIDS.  And his foundation is very focused on that.

So I think besides his own human legacy to his friends and the people who loved his art, I think his brothers and sisters who succumb to HIV have benefited so much from his willingness to put himself out there and embracing everyone who was touched by this disease that fractured all of us.

Herb was the best!

It’s fair to say that Paul Jabara wrote some major chapters of the Gay American Songbook.  Paul was the songwriter for mega-hits.

“Last dance, last chance …” — that’s Donna Summer.  He also wrote “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls — two girls who were in my weight class — and with his co-writer Bruce Roberts, “No More Tears,” (singing) “Enough is enough is enough); a duet by, yes, Donna Summer and uh, Barbra Streisand — that’s the woman.  Paul and Bruce Roberts also co-wrote “The Main Event” from the movie The Main Event starring Ryan O’Neal and uh, Barbra Streisand — yes, that’s the woman.

I am Bruce Vilanch.  Paul was a dear friend of mine for 25 years.  I met him … actually, I didn’t meet him the first time I met him.  The first time I met him was at the Billboard Theatre in New York.   He was in the original cast of Hair, and as part of the opening number “Aquarius,” he crawled from the stage over the seats.  He crawled the entire length of the orchestra, going – stepping on seats as he went, and people ducking and all of that, you know.  And he passed right over me, and he was wearing bell bottoms and no underwear.  And I was immediately interested in him as a performer … [lecherous laugh] … of course.

And some years later, he did a musical called Rachael Lily Rosenbloom and Don’t You Ever Forget It, and it was written for Bette Midler, who was a creative collaborator of mine of long-standing.  And she didn’t do it; Ellen Greene did it.   And it came to Broadway, but it never actually opened.  It was a way over-the-top disco musical.  It was insane.

Ellen was in it with André De Shields and Paul and a bunch of other people.  The producer was Robert Stigwood.  As it got closer and closer to opening night and previews, Stigwood decided it was never really going to happen.  And the word got out that he was going to close it on Saturday night.  So it was the must-see event of the season.

I was in New York with Bette and her piano player Barry Manilow — music director, I should say — and we went.  We got tickets and it was like going to the Academy Awards.  It was spectacular.  And the show was insane, ridiculous and awful — and Paul was brilliant.  And that was the second time.

And years later, a few years later, we were both in Hollywood, and we collaborated on a couple of musical projects that never happened, but we became very close friends.  And I remember having dinner at his house.  In the living room, he had a huge picture of himself.  It was a replica of Barbra Streisand’s first album, called My Name is Barbra, and her picture on the cover.  And instead of her, it was Paul, who had been photo-shopped in.  And above it, in the same font, it said My Name is Jbara — and he had removed the first a from his last name, as she had removed the middle a from her name — so it was My Name is Jbara.

And at the time, I said, “You know, Paul, you have proven my theory about every gay man in Hollywood: They either want to be Barbra Streisand or have dinner with Barbra Streisand.  And you have managed to do both.”

So for “The Last Dance,” the Donna Summer tune, Paul won a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues song, and an Academy Award — yes, he won the Oscar — and a Golden Globe — which, of course, is much more valuable — from the film Thank God It’s Friday.  You remember that one; it was set in a disco.  He wrote songs for other major artists, including Bette Midler, and Diana Ross, Billy Preston, Julio Iglesias — even Raquel Welch sang one of Paul’s songs.  Of course, no one heard her — they were too busy watching her lungs.

Paul was also an accomplished actor and singer.  He was one of the original cast members of Hair, as I mentioned, and Jesus Christ Superstar — two Tom O’Horgan shows.  He replaced Tim Curry in the role of Doctor Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles stage production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Roxy when Tim went to England to do the movie.

Paul and John Schlesinger were good pals, and he appeared in some hilarious roles in a few of John’s movies, including his Oscar-winning 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, in which Paul played a hippie handing out pills and asking partygoers if they wanted to go “up or down” — [laughs] an elevator operator!

In Schlesinger’s movie The Day of the Locust, Paul appeared in drag singing a cover of the Marlene Dietrich song “Hot Voo-Doo,” which you’ll remember is the one she sang dressed as a gorilla.  In 1981, Paul starred in another John Schlesinger film, the comedy Honky-Tonk Freeway, as a songwriter named T. J. Tupus whose day job was as a truck driver hauling lions and a rhino.  In the 1978 film Thank God It’s Friday, which featured “Last Dance,” he played Carl, the near-sighted disco patron blindly looking for love.  Paul also sang two tracks on the original soundtrack album. 

If you had to choose one of Paul’s songs to define his life, it might be his duet with Donna Summer, which is aptly entitled “Never Lose Your Sense of Humor.”  Paul may have lost his battle with AIDS in 1992 at age 44, but he left us with a treasure trove of hits that you still cannot help but hear at your local dance club or bar, especially if you stay until closing and shake your money-maker to “Last Dance” — which has become the anthem of closing time at every disco in the world.

If you look up one night and see a flash of light across the sky, no doubt it’s a reflection from Paul’s disco ball, up there in gay heaven.

Charles Ludlam was the king — and sometimes queen — of downtown theater. As founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York City, Ludlam was an actor, drag artist, writer and director – and one of the most prolific artists on the off-Broadway scene in the 1970s and ’80s.

I’m Jackie Beat, and I want to say right here and right now that drag artists and writers such as myself would not exist were it not for Charles Ludlam.

For nearly 20 years, Ludlam drew dedicated fans to a small basement theater in Greenwich Village for parodies that included Bluebeard, Reverse Psychology, and the Maria Callas spoof Galas. Although Ludlam’s plays were characterized by cross-dressing, free use of double-entendre and comic exaggeration, he resisted attempts to categorize his work as camp. He explained it this way:

”If people take the time to come here more than once, they see I don’t have an ax to grind – even though I do have a mission. That mission is to have a theater that can offer possibilities that aren’t being explored elsewhere.”

The Ridiculous Theatrical Company toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe, and Ludlam received a Drama Desk award and six Village Voice Obie awards. He made forays beyond his own company, as well.

In 1984, he played the title role in the American Ibsen Theater production of Hedda Gabler; and in 1985, he staged the American premiere of The English Cat by Hans Werner Henze for the Santa Fe Opera. Ludlam received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford and Rockefeller foundations and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In early 1987, Ludlam was retained by producer Joseph Papp to direct the production of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park. But in March of that year, Ludlam was diagnosed with AIDS and, a month later, he was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Ludlam called Papp from his hospital bed to say he couldn’t direct Titus for him. Papp promised to reserve the play for him, perhaps for next season, in a space at the Public Theater. Ludlam’s condition quickly worsened, and he died on May 28, 1987. He was 44 years old.

His obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times, the first obituary that directly named AIDS as the cause of death. His sixth Obie award, the Sustained Excellence Award, was presented two weeks before his death.

In 2009, Ludlam was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. The street in front of his theater in Sheridan Square was renamed Charles Ludlam Lane.

Sylvester, sometimes known as the Queen of Disco, was famous for an androgynous look and a fierce falsetto voice.  Born in the Watts section of Los Angeles on September 6, 1947, he grew up singing in a Pentecostal church but left the church at age 13 and soon after left home after being shunned by the congregation and his mother for being gay.

Refusing to bow to pressure to conform, for his high school graduation photo Sylvester wore a blue chiffon prom dress and his hair in a beehive.  He moved to San Francisco in 1970, where he performed for a couple of years with the infamous group of drag performers “The Cockettes.”

He released in a solo album in 1977, performed regularly in gay bars in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, and was cast in a cameo singing role in the Bette Midler film, The Rose.  It wasn’t until his third album in 1978 that Sylvester found success including his best-known hit “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”.  That album, with background vocals from the Two Tons of Fun, Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes, went gold, topped the dance charts in the U.S., and led to major talk show performances and promo tours in the US.

On March 11, 1979, while Sylvester recorded his Living Proof live album in a sold-out show at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein awarded him the key to the City and proclaimed it “Sylvester Day.”

Never forgetting his community roots, Sylvester performed at gay pride festivals that year in San Francisco and London.  Another dance hit, “Do You Wanna Funk,” released in 1982, was co-written with Sylvester’s frequent collaborator, writer-producer Patrick Cowley, who died of AIDS that year when the disease was still known as GRID.

Sylvester, along with Joan Rivers and Charles Nelson Reilly, did the first-ever AIDS fundraiser at Los Angeles’ Studio One nightclub in 1982.  He called his 1983 song “Trouble in Paradise,” an AIDS message to San Francisco, and performed benefit concerts to raise awareness and money about the epidemic.

Sylvester’s boyfriend at the time died of AIDS in 1987, and Sylvester’s own health began to decline later that year.  In the spring of 1988, Sylvester was hospitalized with pneumonia but managed to attend the Gay Freedom Parade in June in a wheelchair.

The Castro Street Fair in October of that year was dubbed “A Tribute to Sylvester.”  Although he was too ill to attend, he heard crowds schanting his name from his bedroom and continued to give press interviews, openly stating that he was dying of AIDS and trying to highlight the impact of the disease on African-Americans.

Sylvester James, Jr., died on December 16, 1988 at age 41.  At his direction, his body was dressed in a red kimono in an open casket.  In his will, he bequeathed all future royalties to two AIDS charities.

In 2005, Sylvester was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame and in 2019 the Library of Congress chose “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” to be preserved in the National Recording Registry.

Wayland Flowers, who became famous on TV for creating and voicing the sassy puppet Madame, was one of the first openly gay entertainers to find acceptance in mainstream America. When breaking into show business as an actor proved unsuccessful, Flowers began performing in bars and clubs as a puppeteer and comedian. It was during this time he created the now legendary and influential character “Madame.”

I’m Mario Cantone from Sex and the City and Just Like That, and I know a little something about sassy comedy.

After refining his cabaret act throughout the 1960s, Flowers – and Madame – debuted on The Andy Williams Show, a long-running TV variety hour. From there, Flowers became a regular presence on network TV — although it was not unusual for Madame to get more closeups. Madame was gaudy, glamorous, and bitchy… a queer icon. With an act that included edgy jokes and social commentary, Flowers began to garner mainstream success with appearances on hit TV shows such as Laugh In, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Johnny Carson Show. When Paul Lynde left Hollywood Squares in 1979, Flowers and Madame took over the center square.

Flowers offered prime-time television audiences the attitudes of 1970s-era gay men taking their first steps towards Gay Liberation, a point of view that could have been regarded as controversial and provocative to mainstream audiences. Flowers managed to do it without worrying about the network censors, because the dialogue was coming from a dummy.

By the end of his career, Flowers had won two Emmy awards, and had played such venues as the Radio City Music Hall, the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. In 1983, he authored the book Madame: My Misbegotten Memoirs.

Sometime in the early 1980s, Flowers was diagnosed with HIV. His performing career came to an end on September 2, 1988, when he collapsed during a show at Harrah’s resort in Lake Tahoe. Several days later, Flowers was flown by air ambulance to make one last visit to his hometown of Dawson, Georgia. Then he returned to Los Angeles, where he checked into the Hughes House, an AIDS palliative care facility.

Flowers died on October 11, 1988 at the age of 48. His publicist originally reported the cause of Flowers’ death as cancer. In keeping with his request, Flowers was cremated and his ashes were interred with his dummy, Madame, in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Georgia.