Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

2017 Tony Awards, CBS via YouTube

April 18, 1976– Gavin Creel

As if everything about the current Tony Award-winning revival of the musical Hello, Dolly! isn’t delicious enough: Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, David Hyde Pierce, Victor Garber; it also has featured hottie Gavin Creel as Cornelius Hackl, a role originated by gay actor Charles Nelson Reilly, and smashingly played by Michael Crawford in the film version and Anthony Perkins in the film of The Matchmaker, the source material.

Creel writes of Cornelius Hackl’s own fearlessness:

“Cornelius is at a breaking point. He is thinking, If I don’t live now, I’m never going to live. So he decides to make that snap decision to disobey his boss and give himself one great day. And he has probably never disobeyed his boss in his life. It all goes a little bit haywire. But in the end he stands up for himself and says, ‘This has been the greatest day of my life and even if I am poor and broke and never work again, I’ll know I at least had one great day’. I love that! What are we waiting for? If you want that great day, go and get it.”

Cutie pie Tony Award nominee Santino Fontana, has stepped into the role while Creel, who won a 2017 Tony for the role, recovers from back surgery.

Creel also really lit up the 2016 Broadway revival She Loves Me, a perfect bon-bon show first produced in 1963. She Loves Me has a score by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, the team the brought us Fiddler On the Roof, among other great musicals. It is an adaption of the play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo, which had already been made into the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner (1940) starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.

Creel and Jane Krakowski in “She Loves Me” via YouTube

It had already been given the musical treatment with the Judy Garland and Van Johnson vehicle, In the Good Old Summertime (1949). It came around again with Nora Ephron‘s You’ve Got Mail (1998) with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The plot revolves around two Budapest retail clerks who, despite being consistently at odds with each other at work, are unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal met through a newspaper personal ad. She Loves Me had a great run last year on Broadway, winning terrific reviews and sold-out houses, and a bunch of Tony Award nominations.

I love this show so much. It is in my Top Five Musicals Of All Time. I have seen it several times and I was tantalizingly close to being in a Seattle production in 2001. I was cast, to my shock, not as the older shopkeeper, the role I aggressively auditioned for, but as the roué and cad Steven Kodaly, the role Creel played. I ended up not accepting the role. The Husband and I, in a collective nervous breakdown, suddenly departed Seattle for Portland, Oregon, and I let this one get away.

I don’t know about where you live, but nearly everyone I know in Portland is a hyphenate (lawyer-farmer, author-chicken wrangler), even I am writer ne’er-do-well. Creel is most certainly a many word hyphenate: Activist-actor-singer-songwriter. He is also one of founders of Broadway Impact, an organization of theatre professionals fighting for LGBT Equality. Plus, nearly every summer for the past seven years, he drops everything to teach vocal interpretation and help students develop original material at The Performing Arts Project (TPAP). The not-for-profit performing arts training program draws young people from around the world from the United States to New Zealand to Switzerland. In addition to Creel, TPAP has drawn some of Broadway’s biggest, brightest stars including: Steven Pasquale, Kelli O’Hara, and Kristin Chenoweth. TPAP alumni have gone on to Broadway roles in The Lion King, Hamilton and Once On This Island.

Creel came out of the closet publicly in a 2009 interview in The Advocate. He has been honored as one of Out Magazine’s “OUT 100”. He has performed and given speeches at events benefiting The Human Rights Campaign. Creel toured with Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors concert series and he sang on the Capitol lawn at the 2009 National Equality March.

He is a frequent contributing performer for MCC Theater’s annual Broadway Miscast Benefit, where Broadway stars sing numbers from roles in which they would never be cast to amazing results. He also performs for Bernadette Peter’s Broadway Barks, the star-studded dog and cat adoption event benefiting NYC animal shelters and adoption agencies.

Check him out in this video from last year’s Broadway Miscast with hearthrob Aaron Tveit singing Take Me Or Leave Me from Rent:

Last May, the Broadway Cast recording of this new Hello, Dolly! was released. It is a real treat to hear Creel’s crystal clear tenor doing those songs.

Creel was in the cast of the terrific revival of Hair on both Broadway (2009) and The West End (2010). He earned Tony Award nominations for Hair and his Broadway debut, Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002). He has also appeared on Broadway in La Cage Aux Folles (2004) and the West End production of Mary Poppins (2007). He’s come a long way since his first stage appearance when, as a high school sophomore, Creel played Sir Sagamore in Camelot; speaking just two words: “and mine”. Although I appreciate him shirtless in Hair, Creel had to wear a white shirt and black tie as Elder Price in the London production of The Book Of Mormon, for which he won the Olivier Award in 2014.

in “The Book Of Mormon” (2014) via YouTube

In “Hair” (2009) via YouTube

Out and proud Creel says:

“Talking about sexuality, sexual orientation and understanding how sexual identity factors into all of our thinking, is a conversation that I believe everyone should fearlessly enter into. It drives me crazy how “gay issues” so often appear to be just for the gays and are therefore relegated to the outside edges of a newspaper or newscast or even election, except when it is conveniently spun into the hot topic to help mobilize people against us for the sake of “morality”. I love who I am, but I don’t see me and my gay friends as a bunch of homos who should be set apart from the rest. I don’t agree with those in our community who think that as gay people we are special and should therefore keep ourselves isolated from certain straight-associated thinking or conventions. If I really am special, I don’t need to separate myself to stand out (yet another thing I would say to the pimple-faced, show-choir-obsessed, teenage version of me). I hope the words are call to everyone: sexy straights, bi beauties, terrific trans people and, of course, us gorgeous gays.”

My sources tell me that Creel, who is single, has dated fellow Broadway Babies Andrew Rannells (who originated the role of Elder Price in The Book Of Mormon) and the adorable Jonathan Groff. Too bad that I am married; I could be Creel’s daddy.

Photo via WikiMedia Commons

April 19, 1933 – Jayne Mansfield

“You gotta have a body.”

Jayne Mansfield was already a Gay Icon when she died tragically in 1967. She was married three times, had five children, made 29 films and was an international star, all before she left this world at just 34-years-old.

Mansfield was an actor, singer, and stage performer who had an enormous impact on popular culture despite her limited success in Hollywood. Although most people have never seen her in a film, Mansfield is still one of the most recognizable icons of the mid-20^th century.

Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were the bad girls, with Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds and Natalie Wood as the good girls. Billy Graham wrote:

“This country knows more about Jayne Mansfield’s statistics than the Second Commandment.”

Although Mansfield’s film career didn’t last long, she did have a few box-office hits and she won a Theatre World Award and a Golden Globe. Her biggest success was playing the fictional actor Rita Marlowe, in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? on Broadway in 1955–1956 and in the 1957 Hollywood film version. Her wardrobe, mostly a bath-towel, caused a sensation.

Audiences appreciated her unique gifts in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), The Wayward Bus (1957), and Too Hot To Handle (1960). In Promises! Promises! (1963), not to be confused with the Burt Bacharach musical five years later, Mansfield became the first major American female star to have a nude starring role in a Hollywood motion picture.

Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer, and took her professional name from her first husband, P.R. representative Paul Mansfield. In 1956, Mansfield met her second husband, Mickey Hargitay, at the Latin Quarter where he was performing in Mae West‘s club act. Hargitay was a bodybuilder who was Mr. Universe in 1955.

Mansfield’s publicity antics live on in popular culture. There is that famous 1957 photograph of Sophia Loren staring at Mansfield’s chest at Romanoff’s, the place to be seen on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Mansfield was grabbing all attention from Loren during a dinner party in the great Italian star’s honor. The picture shows Loren raising a contemptuous eyebrow at the American star who was sitting between Loren and her dinner companion, Clifton Webb. Mansfield had leaned over the table, allowing her breasts to spill over her low neckline exposing one nipple. The photo inspired other photographs too. In 1993, Anna Nicole Smith paid homage to the picture, posing as Mansfield for a Guess Jeans campaign.

Mansfield appeared at a press event promoting the film Underwater! (1955) starring Jane Russell, purposefully wore a too-small red bikini. When she dove into the pool for photographers, her top came off, creating a buzz in the media. The same year, her dress fell down to her waist twice in a single evening, once at a movie party, and later at a nightclub, while photographers just happened to be crowded around her. In February 1958, she went topless at a Mardi Gras party in Rio de Janeiro. She was caught on camera as she shimmied out of her polka-dot dress in a Rome nightclub in June 1962.

Via YouTube

The meeting between Mansfield and Anton LaVey, the founder and high priest of the Church of Satan, is still being written about today. Mansfield 66/67 (2017) is about the last two years of her life, and the rumors swirling that her untimely death was caused by a curse, after her alleged romantic dalliance with LaVey. Check out this post from World of Wonder writer Trey Speegle from last year.

With LeVey, photo from FilmBuff Productions via YouTube

In June 1967, Mansfield was in Biloxi, Mississippi, performing in her club act. After two appearances on the evening of June 28, Mansfield, her boyfriend Sam Brody, their driver, and three of her children: Miklós, Zoltán and Mariska Hargitay, left Biloxi for New Orleans, where Mansfield had a show the next day. Their Buick crashed at high speed into the rear of a tractor-trailer that had slowed behind a truck spraying insecticide. The three adults in the front seat died instantly. The children were asleep in the rear seat, and only had minor injuries.

The urban legend that she was decapitated is untrue. It started when police photographs of a crashed car with its top virtually sheared off, and what resembled a blonde-haired head tangled in the car’s smashed windshield was published. However, it was the wig Mansfield was wearing.

Still, the rumor has stuck. In the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Miss Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze) remarks while trying out a vintage yellow convertible: “I feel like Miss Jayne Mansfield in this car!” Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) answers: “Uh oh, Jayne Mansfield, not a good auto reference.”

In David Cronenberg‘s film Crash (1996), a male stunt driver dressed as Mansfield recreates her fatal accident, killing himself in the process. His partner, a fellow celebrity-crash aficionado, comes across the scene of the wreck and says: “You did the Jayne Mansfield crash without me?”

Her boobs were so much a part of her persona that talk-show host Jack Paar once introduced her on The Tonight Show saying:

“Here they are, Jayne Mansfield!”

The 1950s were a decade for worshiping big-breasted women, a phenomenon celebrated by Playboy Magazine with Mansfield and Monroe featured in the magazine, along with Anita Ekberg and Bettie Page. She was featured in 30 issues of Playboy. The magazine’s pictures of Mansfield began the phenom of large-breasted feminine ideal and men’s magazines with titles such as Rogue, Nugget and Dude. Mansfield made the cover of main stream magazines featured: Hollywood Studio Magazine, LIFE Magazine (April 23, 1956), and Look (March 1957).

Mansfield’ nude pics in the February 1955 issue of Playboy, launched her career and doubled the magazine’s circulation. Playboy had begun in Hugh Hefner’s kitchen the year before. The first Mansfield issue of the magazine was banned, and publisher Hefner was arrested by the Chicago police, the only time in his life that Hef was ever arrested. Copies of the issue sold for as much as $10 each. After the first Mansfield issue, Playboy was scrutinized by the U.S Customs Department issue-by-issue until 1967, and they found 51 issues out of 51 objectionable.

In 1964, Mansfield was chosen to replace the recently deceased Monroe in Kiss Me, Stupid, with Dean Martin. She turned down the role because she was pregnant with daughter Mariska Hargitay and was replaced by Kim Novak.

With Hargitay and Baby Mariska 1964, via YouTube

She made a few more films, all duds, and continued to work on stage, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Bus Stop, co-starring her Hargitay.

When her film career dried up, Mansfield had her greatest successes in nightclubs. In 1958, she debuted her striptease revue The Tropicana Holiday at the Tropicana Las Vegas, co-starring Hargitay. She was paid $25,000 per week for her performance as Trixie Divoon in the show ($215,000 in 2018 dollars), while her contract with 20th Century Fox was still paying her $2,500 per week ($21,000 in 2018 dollars). She was insured by Lloyd’s Of London for $ one million in case Hargitay dropped her as he whirled her around for the show. In 1960, the Dunes Hotel produced Mansfield’s revue The House Of Love, staged by the great Jack Cole, for $35,000 a week ($291,000 in 2018 dollars), the highest in her career. She was a skilled classically trained pianist and violinist, and played as part of the act.

Her wardrobe for the shows at Tropicana and Dunes shows featured a gold mesh dress with sequins to cover her nipples and lady parts. The controversial dress was referred to as “Jayne Mansfield and a few sequins”.

Suddenly, she was busier than ever, with her act, recording albums, and making personal appearances at $10,000 a pop.

In November 1957, shortly before marrying Hargitay, Mansfield purchased a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion, formerly owned by Rudy Vallée, at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Vallée bought the house in the 1930s but, for one reason or another, never lived in it. It has 25 rooms, including eleven bathrooms. She paid $76,000 dollars for it; a fortune at the time. It is still there; I drove where it standing proudly pink on Super Bowl Sunday in 2015. It was torn down in 2016. It should have been landmarked and made a museum.

Photo credit: WordPress.com

Mansfield had the house painted pink, with cupids surrounded by pink fluorescent lights, pink fur in the bathrooms, a pink heart-shaped bathtub, and a fountain spurting pink champagne; she then dubbed it the “Pink Palace”. Hargitay, a plumber and carpenter before bodybuilding, built the pink heart-shaped swimming pool. Mansfield would drive around Los Angeles in her pink Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible, the only pink Cadillac in Hollywood.

Hargitay was the only ex-husband to attend her funeral.

Loni Anderson plays Mansfield in the television movie The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980); Hargitay is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.