Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

With Yul Brynner in The King And I (1951)

July 4, 1898– Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen, or as we fans like to call her, Gertrude Lawrence, had hordes of adoring audiences in both Britain and the USA. She was the first true international superstar, a Cockney who conquered adoring audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lawrence’s appeal went far beyond the sophisticated international show biz elite. She lived in the USA for most of her career and toured the country so widely that she became a front-page celebrity from coast to coast. George and Ira Gershwin wrote Oh, Kay! (1926) for her, where she was the first to sing Someone To Watch Over Me. Noel Coward wrote one of the greatest comedies of the 20th century, Private Lives (1930), especially for her and together they created the sparkling characters of Elyot and Amanda. Kurt Weill and Moss Hart wrote Lady In The Dark (1944) for her; Rogers and Hammerstein wrote The King and I (1956) for her. Most theater people agree that Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote the film All About Eve (1950) about her.

But, by the time of her death at just 54-years-old, Lawrence had made only a handful of films, now seldom seen, in which the camera failed to capture her bright, shining, special allure. Those of us who never saw her brand of charisma light up a stage are left with only the press clippings, the interviews, and the recordings of her haunting, but precarious singing voice as proof to her greatness.

Lawrence was a lifelong friend and a frequent collaborator with comic genius (and lesbian) Beatrice Lillie. She was Noël Coward’s BFF for 40 years. Coward, who met her when they first worked together on stage when she was 14-years-old, described her face as:

“Far from pretty, but tremendously alive”.

Without her theatrical make-up, Lawrence was quite plain, probably the reason why her great success was on the stage and never repeated on screen. When the curtain went up, she possessed that unexplainable “it factor” that transformed her into a most glamorous star. Coward:

“Sometimes, in Private Lives, I would look at her across the stage and she would simply take my breath away.”

With Noel Coward in Private Lives (1930)

At their first meeting, Lawrence told the 13 year old Coward a few “mildly dirty stories” and later took him into a bedroom and showed him the ropes. It is very probable that Lawrence was the gay Coward’s single heterosexual experience. Coward denied this anecdote vehemently and once told Gore Vidal that he had never had sex with a woman.

Vidal: “Not even with Gertie Lawrence?”

Coward: “Particularly not with Miss Lawrence.”

Lawrence had one short-lived marriage that produced a daughter, but there was a long succession of lovers, male and female, including the married actor/manager Sir Gerald du Maurier. His daughter, novelist Daphne du Maurier, bitterly resented Lawrence’s role in her father’s life because of the distress it caused her mother. Miss du Maurier had her revenge by becoming another of Lawrence’s lovers, then using her and tossing her aside.

Another Lawrence love affair was with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. who wrote:

“She was very temperamental, very jealous, could be exhausting, moody, difficult… but also enchanting and alive and very funny.”

But, her most controversial relationship of all was her fling with the Prince Of Wales, the future Edward VIII, later Duke Of Windsor. Their affair infuriated his mother, Queen Mary, who disapproved of Lawrence happily ever after.

At the height of her fame in the 1930s, Lawrence was massively in debt. Her NYC lawyer observed that she spent money “like an entire fleet of drunken sailors”. To the astonishment of her friends, she married the wealthy American impresario and theatre owner, Richard Aldrich. Coward disliked Aldrich, but sent a telegram with his customary wit:

“Dear Mrs. A,

Hooray Hooray. At last you are deflowered. On this as every other day I love you.

Noel Coward”

Like her other friends, Coward doubted she actually loved Aldrich, but the marriage gave her financial security. Lawrence continued to have affairs with members of both sexes while a married woman.

One of her last lovers was Yul Brynner, then 35-years-old and married. Brynner was virtually unknown when he was cast in The King and I, with the 52-year-old Lawrence’s name above the title and his listed below it and in smaller lettering.

Throughout rehearsals, there were many complaints from songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein about her singing off-key. She became increasingly temperamental and the director, the very gay John Van Druten, was not strong enough to handle her.

As you well know, Brynner exuded real masculine authority and tremendous sexual heat. When Brynner spoke, Lawrence listened. The director would give notes to Lawrence via Brynner. Partly because of his influence, The King And I received rave reviews and became a huge hit. But, the complaints about Lawrence’s singing never stopped. Rodgers and Hammerstein wanted her out of the show, even though she had won the Tony Award for her performance.

Lawrence, who was head-over-heels for Brynner, had no intention of quitting the show, but 18 months into the run, during the heat of a NYC summer, she collapsed after a perforamnce. She was diagnosed with that damn cancer. She told her lawyer from her hospital bed:

“I don’t think I’m going to get out of this place. See that Yul gets star billing. He has earned it.”

And she wasn’t just talking about his acting.

When Lawrence took that final curtain call in early autumn 1952, the lights on Broadway and on London’s West End were dimmed in her honor.

When Oscar Hammerstein told Brynner he would at last receive the top billing, he began to cry. Hammerstein:

“He told me, and I believed him, that losing Lawrence was a too tremendous a price to pay for advancement. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.”

6,000 fans gathered outside the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, while 1,800 guests attended Lawrence’s funeral, including: Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Phil Silvers, Luise Rainer, Moss Hart and his wife Kitty Carlisle. Oscar Hammerstein II did the eulogy. Lawrence was buried in the champagne-colored gown that she had worn for the Shall We Dance? number in the second act of The King And I. She was the first person for whom lights were dimmed on Broadway theatres due to the passing of a member of their community.

There is a rather good, if slightly messy, film based on the life of Gertrude Lawrence that is filled with first rate musical numbers, Star!, with Julie Andrews as Lawrence. The 1968 film, directed by Robert Wise, mostly gets it right.

cock

July 5, 1889– Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau:

“Life is a horizontal fall.”

I am a hyphenate: ne’er-do-well-bon-vivant-hedonist-reluctant-star-cultural icon-star fucker. My husband is a hyphenate also. Most people in Portland are. As an artist-designer-business owner, he is a bit of an overachiever, but not when compared with poet-artist-playwright-actor-designer-photographer-filmmaker-boxing manager Jean Cocteau.

While still in his teens, Cocteau began to date older, well-connected men including the famous actor Eduard De Max. De Max introduced Cocteau to the all the important figures of the Paris art scene. He also used his considerable influence to organize a poetry reading of the work of young Cocteau, that was hailed as a great success in literary circles. Cocteau soon had his first poem published and began contributing more poems and drawings to literary magazines. Cocteau published his first volume of poems when he was just 19 years old. He became a celebrated artist and popular boy-about-town in Paris, with the success of several ballets and plays that he wrote while still in his 20s.

In the early 1920s, Cocteau’s lover, writer Raymond Radiguet, died of typhoid fever. A despondent Cocteau escaped the pain of his loss with a little help from opium.

In 1927, Cocteau began living with the poet Jean Desbordes. Desbordes’ J’Adore (1928), is a 200 page love letter to Cocteau:

“I come everywhere, in the gardens and on my body; it is a carnal prayer.”

This was pretty dirty stuff for the 1920s and caused a sensation. Desbordes and Cocteau spent summers in the French countryside along with Gertrude Stein and Coco Chanel. Chanel was pissed when the two men spent most the day locked in their room smoking opium. Desbordes went on to become a Resistance leader during WW II. Tragically, the nasty Nazis captured him, plucked his eyes out and then murdered him.

In 1930, Cocteau tried filmmaking as the medium best suited for his very individual artistic expression. Cocteau’s stylized homoerotic films are taken from his own drawings: bold, simple strokes, accentuated eyes, minimalist outlines and profiles, along with the erotic, surrealistic portraits that dominate the sets of his films. In his later films, Cocteau included bits of his poetry written in his distinctive handwriting, samples of his drawings and paintings, voice-over narration, and he even casts himself in some of the roles.

Cocteau and Marais on the set of La Belle Et La Bête (1946)

Cocteau’s work is marked by themes of narcissism punctuated by whimsical special effects, exotic landscapes, the Orpheus myth, mirrors, passage ways to secret worlds, fairy tales, flowers, and beautiful people in iconic settings.

In 1937, Cocteau met Jean Marais, the most famous of his many lovers. He helped mold this talented, handsome, athletic young man into one of France’s most beloved movie stars. Cocteau and Marais made such classic films as La Belle Et La Bête (1946) and Orphée (1950) together and they changed filmmaking forever.

Cocteau and Marais decided to stay in Paris during the Nazi occupation in spite of the great danger; everyone knew that they were a gay couple. Cocteau had some powerful admires who protected the two of them, even when Marais punched a collaborationist critic for writing a bad review of one of Cocteau’s plays. Both men were ridiculed and threatened in the Nazi controlled press, but somehow they were never arrested or sent off to a concentration camp. Marais claimed that when he tried to join the Resistance that he was rejected for being gay. The rejection had more to do with his reputation for speaking candidly, an attribute that might have had deadly consequences for other members of the Resistance movement.

Cocteau always believed that artists should speak out against unjust political domination although he was burdened by the barely hidden secrets of his opium use and his gayness which made him particularly vulnerable to attack by France’s Right-Wing government. During the Nazi Occupation of Paris, his plays were banned and Cocteau became a victim of intimidation, physical violence and homophobic insults at the hands of those nasty Nazis and their sympathizers. Still, Cocteau continued to write, make films, travel, and attract famous friends, patrons, and protégés throughout the rest of his life. Cocteau even managed to be elected to the prestigious Académie Français.

Cocteau was friends with the most important figures of the Parisian Avant-Garde, including writer Guillaume Apollinaire and artists Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso. He was so taken with gay ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky of the celebrated Ballets Russes that he asked the company’s gay founder, Sergei Diaghilev, to collaborate on a project for them. Cocteau designed posters for the Ballets Russe, and in 1917 he helped to produce the theatrical spectacle Parade, writing the libretto, convincing Erik Satie to compose the musical score, and engaging Picasso designing the set and costumes. The results were revolutionary.

Cocteau left this world in 1963, taken by a heart attack just an hour after learning of his muse Édith Piaf‘s death. A classic overachiever, during his long life Cocteau wrote more than 30 volumes of poetry, seven novels, 24 plays, 11 ballets, six operas, six full length films, and he produced thousands of drawings and photographs. He made major contributions to the worlds of publishing, graphic design, clothing design, and interior design. He managed and was the lover of professional boxer, Alfonso Teofilo “Panama” Brown (they shared a birthday), the sport’s first Hispanic world champion. Cocteau had affairs with lots of men, plus a few women. Where did he find the energy and time? I am exhausted after writing a #BornThisDay column and walking my terriers.

Cocteau With Brown (center)

After Cocteau’s passing, Marais, his partner of a quarter century, remarked:

“I bitterly regret not having spent all of my life serving Cocteau instead of worrying about my career…”

Jean Cocteau remains one of France’s most famous and most adored cultural icons. For me, he is one of the most fascinating gay men of the 20th century. How about his life story as a film starring Adrian Brody directed by Wes Anderson?

“Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”

Happy Independence Day!

BOOM!

Latest Images