Harris Glenn Milstead, also known by his stage name Divine, (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988) was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, he was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical appearances, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career; People magazine described him as the "Drag Queen of the Century".
Born in Maryland to a conservative, middle-class family, he embraced the counterculture of the 1960s and became involved with Waters's acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, starring in early Waters films Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). Hits on the U.S. midnight movie circuit, the films became cult classics. In the 1970s, Divine moved to theater, appearing with The Cockettes before performing in Women Behind Bars and The Neon Woman. Continuing cinematic work, he starred in Polyester (1981), Lust in the Dust (1985) and Hairspray (1988). In 1981, Divine embarked in the disco industry, producing Hi-NRG tracks that were mostly written by Bobby Orlando. He achieved global chart success with hits like "You Think You're a Man", "I'm So Beautiful", and "Walk Like a Man".
Although Divine died in Los Angeles, California from cardiomegaly in 1988, he has remained a cult figure ever since, particularly within the LGBT community, and has provided the inspiration for fictional characters, artworks and songs. Various books and documentary films devoted to his life have also been produced, including Divine Trash (1998) and I Am Divine (2013).
Harris Glenn Milstead was born on October 19, 1945, at the Women's Hospital in
Baltimore,
Maryland.His father, Harris Bernard Milstead (May 1, 1917 – March 4, 1993),
after whom he was named, had been one of seven children born in
Towson, Maryland to a plumber who worked for the Baltimore City Water Department.
Divine's mother, Frances Milstead (née Vukovich; April 12, 1920 – March
24, 2009), was one of fifteen children born to an impoverished Serbian
immigrant couple who had grown up near to
Zagreb,
Yugoslavia, before moving to the United States in 1891.
When she was 16, Frances moved to Baltimore where she worked at a diner
in Towson, here meeting Harris, who was a regular customer. Entering
into a relationship, they were married in 1938 before both gaining
employment working at the
Black and Decker factory in Towson. Due to his problems with
muscular dystrophy, Harris was not required to fight for the U.S. armed forces in the
Second World War, and instead Harris and Frances worked throughout the war in what they saw as "good jobs". Attempting to conceive a child, Frances suffered two miscarriages in 1940 and 1943.
By the time of Divine's birth in 1945, the Milsteads were relatively wealthy and socially conservative, adhering to the
Baptist denomination of
Christianity.
Later describing his upbringing, Divine would recollect: "I was an only
child in, I guess, your upper middle-class American family. I was
probably your American spoiled brat."
His parents lavished almost anything that he wanted upon him, including
food, and he became overweight, a condition he lived with for the rest
of his life.
Divine preferred to use his middle name, Glenn, to distinguish himself
from his father, and was referred to as such by his parents and friends.
At age 12, Divine and his parents moved to
Lutherville, a Baltimore suburb, where he attended
Towson High School, graduating in 1963. Bullied because of his weight and perceived effeminacy, he later reminisced that he "wasn't rough and tough" but instead "loved painting and I always loved flowers and things." Due to this horticultural interest, at 15 he took a part-time job at a local florist's shop.
Several years later, he went on a diet that enabled him to drop in
weight from 180 pounds to 145 pounds (80 to 65 kg), giving him a new
sense of confidence. When he was 17, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist, where he first realized his
sexual attraction to men as well as women, something then taboo in conventional American society. He helped out at his parents'
day care business, for instance dressing up as
Santa Claus to entertain the children at
Christmas time.
In 1963, he began attending the Marinella Beauty School, where he
learned hair styling and, after completing his studies, gained
employment at a couple of local salons, specializing in the creation of
beehives and other upswept hairstyles.
Milstead eventually gave up his job and for a while was financially
supported by his parents, who catered to his expensive taste in clothes
and cars. They reluctantly paid the many bills that he ran up financing
lavish parties where he would dress up in
drag as his favourite celebrity, actress
Elizabeth Taylor.
John Waters and Divine's first films: 1966–68
Milstead built up a large collection of friends, among them
David Lochary, who became an actor and costar in several of Divine's later films. In the mid-1960s, Milstead befriended
John Waters
through their mutual friend Carol Wernig; Waters and Milstead were the
same age and from the same neighborhood, and both embraced Baltimore's
countercultural and underground elements. Along with friends like Waters and Lochary, Milstead began hanging out at a
beatnik bar in downtown Baltimore named Martick's, where they associated with
hippies and smoked
marijuana, bonding into what Waters described as "a family of sorts".Waters gave his friends new nicknames, and it was he who first called
Milstead "Divine". Waters later remarked that he had borrowed the name
from a character in
Jean Genet's novel
Our Lady of the Flowers
(1943), a controversial book about homosexuals living on the margins of
Parisian society, which Waters – himself a homosexual – was reading at
the time.
Waters also introduced Divine as "the most beautiful woman in the
world, almost", a description widely repeated in ensuing years.
"Divine. That's my name. It's the name John [Waters] gave me. I like
it. That's what everybody calls me now, even my close friends. Not many
of them call me Glenn at all anymore, which I don't mind. They can call
me whatever they want. They call me fatso, and they call me asshole, and
I don't care. You always change your name when you're in the show
business. Divine has stuck as my name. Did you ever look it up in the
dictionary? I won't even go into it. It's unbelievable."
— Divine, 1973.
Waters was an aspiring filmmaker, intent on making "the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history". Many of his friends, who came to be known as "the
Dreamlanders" (and who included Divine, Lochary,
Mary Vivian Pearce and
Mink Stole), appeared in some of his
low-budget productions, filmed on Sunday afternoons.Following the production of his first short film,
Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Waters began production of a second work,
Roman Candles (1966). This film was influenced by the
pop artist Andy Warhol's
Chelsea Girls (1966), and consisted of three 8-millimeter movies played simultaneously side by side.
Roman Candles
was the first film to star Divine, in this instance in drag as a
smoking nun. It featured the Dreamlanders modeling shoplifted clothes
and performing various unrelated activities. Being both a short film and of an avant-garde nature,
Roman Candles
never received widespread distribution, instead holding its premier at
the annual Mt. Vernon Flower Mart in Baltimore, which had become popular
with "elderly dames, young faggots and hustlers, and of course a whole
bunch of hippies". Waters went on to screen it at several local venues alongside
Kenneth Anger's short film
Eaux d'Artifice (1953).
Waters followed
Roman Candles with a third short film,
Eat Your Makeup (1968), in which Divine once more wore drag, this time to portray a fictionalized version of
Jackie Kennedy, the widow of recently assassinated U.S. President
John F. Kennedy. In the film, she turns to kidnapping models and forcing them to eat their own makeup.
Divine kept his involvement with Waters and these early underground
films a secret from his conservative parents, believing that they would
not understand them or the reason for his involvement in such
controversial and bad-taste films; they would not find out about them
for many years.
Divine's parents had bought him his own beauty shop in Towson, hoping
that the financial responsibility would help him to settle down in life
and stop spending so extravagantly. While agreeing to work there, he
refused to be involved in owning and managing the establishment, leaving
that to his mother. Not long after, in the summer of 1968, he moved out of his parental home, renting his own apartment.
The Diane Linkletter Story, Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs: 1969–70
Divine appeared in Waters's next short film,
The Diane Linkletter Story (1969), which was initially designed to be a test for a new sound camera. A
black comedy that carried on in Waters's tradition of making "bad taste" films to shock conventional American society,
The Diane Linkletter Story was based upon the true story of
Diane Linkletter, the daughter of media personality
Art Linkletter,
who had committed suicide earlier that year. Her death had led to a
flurry of media interest and speculation, with various sources
erroneously claiming that she had done so under the influence of the
psychedelic
LSD.
Waters's dramatized version starred Divine in the leading role as the
teenager who rebels against her conservative parents after they try to
break up her relationship with hippie boyfriend Jim, before consuming a
large quantity of LSD and committing suicide. Although screened at the
first Baltimore Film Festival, the film was not publicly released at the
time, largely for legal reasons.
Soon after the production of
The Diane Linkletter Story, Waters began filming a full-length motion picture,
Mondo Trasho, starring Divine as one of the main characters, an unnamed blonde woman who drives around town and runs over a hitchhiker.
In one scene, an actor was required to walk along a street naked, which
was a crime in the state of Maryland at the time, leading to the arrest
of Waters and most of the actors associated with the film; Divine
escaped, having speedily driven away from the police when they arrived
to carry out the arrests. In their review of the film, the
Los Angeles Free Press exclaimed that "The 300-pound (140 kg) sex-symbol Divine is undoubtedly some sort of discovery."
In 1970, Divine abandoned work as a hairdresser, opening up a vintage clothing store in
Provincetown, Massachusetts using his parents' money. Opening in 1970 as "Divine Trash", the store sold items that Divine had purchased in
thrift stores,
flea markets and garage sales, although had to move from its original
location after he had failed to obtain a license from the local
authorities.
Realizing that this venture was not financially viable, Divine sold off
his stock at very low prices. In the hope of raising some extra money,
he sold the furniture of his rented apartment, leading the landlady to
put out a warrant for his arrest.He evaded the local police by traveling to
San Francisco,
California, a city which had a large gay subculture that attracted Divine, who was then embracing his
homosexuality.
In 1970, Divine played the role of Lady Divine, the operator of an
exhibit known as The Cavalcade of Perversion who turns to murdering
visitors in Waters's film
Multiple Maniacs. The film contained several controversial scenes, notably one which involved Lady Divine masturbating using a
rosary
while sitting inside a church. In another, Lady Divine kills her
boyfriend and proceeds to eat his heart; in actuality, Divine bit into a
cow's heart which had gone rotten from being left out on the set all
day. At the end of the film, Lady Divine is raped by a giant lobster
named Lobstora, an act that drives her into madness; she subsequently
goes on a killing spree in
Fell's Point before being shot down by the
National Guard.
Due to its controversial nature, Waters feared that the film would be
banned and confiscated by the Maryland Censor Board, so avoided their
jurisdiction by only screening it at non-commercial venues, namely
rented church premises.
Multiple Maniacs was the first of Waters's films to receive widespread attention, as did Divine;
KSFX remarked that "Divine is incredible! Could start a whole new trend in films.
Rise to fame
Pink Flamingos: 1971–72
Following his San Francisco sojourn, Divine returned to Baltimore and participated in Waters's next film
Pink Flamingos. Designed by Waters to be "an exercise in poor taste,"
the film featured Divine as Babs Johnson, a woman who claims to be "the
filthiest person alive" and who is forced to prove her right to the
title from challengers, Connie (Mink Stole) and Raymond Marble (David
Lochary).
In one scene, the Marbles send Babs a turd in a box as a birthday
present, and in order to enact this scene, Divine excreted into the box
the night before.
Filmed in a hippie commune in Phoenix, Maryland, the cast members spent
much of the time smoking cigarettes and marijuana and taking
amphetamines, although all of the scenes had been heavily rehearsed beforehand. The final scene in the film proved particularly infamous, involving
Babs eating fresh dog feces; Divine later told a reporter, "I followed
that dog around for three hours just zooming in on its asshole," waiting
for it to empty its bowels so that they could film the scene.
The scene became one of the most notable moments of Divine's acting
career, and he later complained of people thinking that "I run around
doing it all the time. I've received boxes of dog shit – plastic dog
shit. I have gone to parties where people just sit around and talk about
dog shit because they think it's what I want to talk about." In reality, he remarked, he was not a
coprophile but only ate excrement that one time because it was in the script.
The scene at the end of
Pink Flamingos, in which Divine (in
character as Babs Johnson) consumes fresh dog feces, became a
significant part of American cinema history and dominated discussion of
Divine and Waters' films for decades to come.
The film premiered in late 1972 at the third Annual Baltimore Film Festival, held on the campus of the
University of Baltimore,
where it sold out tickets for three successive screenings; the film
aroused particular interest among underground cinema fans following the
success of
Multiple Maniacs, which had begun to be screened in New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Being picked up by the small independent company
New Line Cinema,
Pink Flamingos was distributed to
Ben Barenholtz, the owner of the
Elgin Theater in New York City. At the Elgin Theater, Barenholtz had been promoting the
midnight movie scene, primarily by screening
Alejandro Jodorowsky's
acid western film
El Topo (1970). Barenholtz felt that being of an avant-garde nature,
Pink Flamingos would fit in well with this crowd, screening it at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.
The film soon gained a cult following at the Elgin Theatre. Barenholtz
characterized its early fans as primarily being "downtown gay people,
more of the hipper set," but after a while he noted that this group
broadened, with the film becoming popular with "working-class kids from
New Jersey who would become a little rowdy".
Many of these cult cinema fans learned all of the film's lines,
reciting them at the screenings, a phenomenon which became associated
with another popular midnight movie of the era,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
While keeping his involvement with Waters's underground filmmaking a
secret from his parents, Divine continued relying on them financially,
charging them for expensive parties that he held and writing bad checks.
After charging them for a major repair to his car in 1972, his parents
confiscated it from him and told him that they would not continue to
financially support him in such a manner. In retaliation, he came by
their house the following day, collected his two pet dogs and then
disappeared, not seeing or speaking with them for the next nine years.
Instead, he sent them over fifty postcards from across the world,
informing them that he was fine, but on none did he leave a return
address.
Frances and Harris Milstead retired soon after and moved to Florida at
the advice of Harris's doctor, who prescribed the southern state's
warmer weather as being beneficial for Harris's muscular dystrophy.
Theater work and Female Trouble: 1973–78
When the filming of
Pink Flamingos finished, Divine returned
to San Francisco, where he and Mink Stole starred in a number of
small-budget plays at the Palace Theater as part of drag troupe
The Cockettes, including
Divine and Her Stimulating Studs,
Divine Saves the World,
Vice Palace,
Journey to the Center of Uranus and
The Heartbreak of Psoriasis. It was here that he first met androgynous performer
Sylvester. Divine purchased a house in
Santa Monica, which he furnished to his expensive tastes.On visits to
Washington D.C. during the early 1970s, Divine and Waters attended the city's
balls
that were frequented by LGBT African-Americans. Here, Waters encouraged
Divine's drag persona to become more outrageous, exposing her
overweight stomach and carrying weapons. He later commented that he
wanted Divine to become "the
Godzilla of drag queens", a direct confrontation with the majority of Euro-American drag queens who wanted to be
Miss America.In his private life, Divine became the
godfather of Brook Yeaton, the son of his friends Chuck Yeaton and Pat Moran; Brook and Divine remained very close until Divine's death.
In 1974, Divine returned to Baltimore to film Waters's next motion picture,
Female Trouble,
in which he played the lead role. Divine's character, teenage
delinquent Dawn Davenport, embraces the idea that crime is art and is
eventually executed in the
electric chair for her violent behavior.
Waters claimed that the character of Dawn had been partly based on the
mutual friend who had introduced him to Divine, Carol Wernig, while the
costumes and make-up were once more designed by Van Smith to create the
desired "trashy, slutty look." In the film, Divine did his own stunts, including the
trampoline scene, for which he had had to undertake a number of trampolining lessons.
Divine also played his first on-screen male role in the film, Earl
Peterson, and Waters included a scene during which these two characters
had sexual intercourse as a joke on the fact that both characters were
played by the same actor.
Female Trouble proved to be Divine's
favorite of his films, because it both allowed him to develop his
character and to finally play a male role, something he had always felt
important because he feared being typecast as a female impersonator. Divine was also responsible for singing the theme tune for
Female Trouble, although it was never released as a single. Divine remained proud of the film, although it received a mixed critical reception.
Divine was unable to appear in Waters's next feature,
Desperate Living
(1977), despite the fact that the role of Mole McHenry had been written
for him. This was because he had returned to working in the theater,
this time taking the role of the scheming prison matron Pauline in
Tom Eyen's comedy
Women Behind Bars. Performed in
New York City's Truck and Warehouse Theater, the play proved popular and was later taken to
London's Whitehall Theater next to
Trafalgar Square. Containing a new cast, it proved less successful than it had in New York. It was in this city that Divine met a group of people whom he would come to know as his "London family": fashion designer
Zandra Rhodes, photographer Robyn Beeche, sculptor
Andrew Logan and the latter's partner, Michael Davis.
While in London in 1978, Divine attended as the guest of honour at the
seventh annual Alternative Miss World pageant, a mock event founded by
Logan in 1972 in which drag queens – including men, women and children –
competed for the prize. The event was filmed by director Richard Gayer,
whose subsequent film, entitled
Alternative Miss World, premiered at the
Odeon in London's
Leicester Square as well as featuring at the
Cannes Film Festival, both events which were attended by Divine.
Impressed with Divine's performance in
Women Behind Bars, playwright Tom Eyen decided to write a new play that would feature him in a starring role. The result was
The Neon Woman,
a story set in 1962 featuring Divine as Flash Storm, the female owner
of a Baltimore strip club. It played at the Hurrah! club in New York
City before moving on to the
Alcazar Theatre
in San Francisco. Divine would remain very proud of the work, seeing it
as evidence that his acting skills were coming to wider recognition,
and his performances were attended by such celebrities as
Eartha Kitt,
Elton John and
Liza Minnelli.
It was during the New York leg of the play's tour that Divine
befriended Jay Bennett; they subsequently began renting an apartment
together on 58th Street. In the city, Divine assembled a group of
friends that came to be known as his "New York family": designer Larry
LeGaspi, makeup artist Conrad Santiago, Vincent Nasso and dresser
Frankie Piazza. While there, he frequented the famous club
Studio 54, having a love of partying and club culture.
Early disco work and Polyester: 1979–83
Divine eventually decided to abandon his agent, Robert Hussong, and
replace him with his English friend Bernard Jay. Jay suggested that with
his love of clubs, Divine could obtain work performing in them; as a
result, Divine first appeared in 1979 at a
gay club in
Fort Lauderdale,
Florida,
where his unscripted act included shouting "fuck you" repeatedly at the
audience and then getting into a fight with another drag queen, a
gimmick that proved popular with the club's clientele. Subsequently, he
saw the commercial potential of including disco songs in with his act
and, with Tom Eyen and composer
Henry Krieger, created "Born to be Cheap" in 1981. In 1981 Divine appeared in John Waters's next film,
Polyester,
starring as Francine Fishpaw. Unlike earlier roles, Fishpaw was not a
strong female but a meek and victimized woman who falls in love with her
dream lover, Todd Tomorrow, played by
Tab Hunter. In real life, tabloid publications claimed a romantic connection between them, an assertion both denied. The film was released in "Odorama," accompanied by "scratch 'n' sniff"
cards for the audience to smell at key points in the film. Soon after
Polyester, Divine auditioned for a male role in
Ridley Scott's upcoming science-fiction film
Blade Runner.
Even though Scott thought Divine unsuitable for the part, he claimed to
be enthusiastic about Divine's work and was very interested in
including him in another of his films, but ultimately this never came
about.
That same year, Divine decided to get back in contact with his
estranged parents. His mother had learned of his cinematic and disco
career after reading an article about the films of John Waters in
Life magazine, and had gone to see
Female Trouble
at the cinema, but had not felt emotionally able to get back in contact
with her son until 1981. She got a friend to hand Divine a note at one
of his concerts, leading Divine to telephone her, and the family were
subsequently reunited.
The relationship was mended, and Divine bought them lavish gifts and
informed them of how wealthy he was. In fact, according to his manager
Bernard Jay, he was already heavily in debt due to his extravagant
spending. In 1982, he then joined forces with young American composer
Bobby Orlando, who wrote a number of
Hi-NRG singles for Divine, including "
Native Love (Step By Step)," "
Shoot Your Shot", and "
Love Reaction".
To help publicize these singles, which proved to be successful in many
discos across the world, Divine went on television shows like
Good Morning America,
as well as on a series of tours in which he combined his musical
performances with comedic stunts and routines that often played up to
his characters' stereotype of being "trashy" and outrageous.
Throughout the rest of the 1980s, Divine took his musical performances
on tour across the world, attaining a particularly large following in
Europe.
Later life
Later disco work, Lust in the Dust and Hairspray: 1984–88
Divine's career as a disco singer continued and his records had sold
well, but he and his management felt that they were not receiving their
share of the profits. They went to court against Orlando and his
company, O-Records, and successfully nullified their contract. After
signing with
Barry Evangeli's company, InTune Music Limited, Divine released several new disco records, including "
You Think You're A Man" and "
I'm So Beautiful", which were both co-produced by
Pete Waterman of the then-up-and-coming UK production team of
Stock Aitken Waterman.
In the United Kingdom, Divine sang his hit "You Think You're A Man" – a
song which he had dedicated to his parents – on BBC television show
Top of the Pops.
He gained a devout follower, Briton Mitch Whitehead, a man who would
declare himself to be Divine's "number 1 fan", tattooing himself with
images of his idol and eventually aiding Bernard Jay in setting up for
Divine's show onstage. In London, Divine also befriended drag comedy act
Paul O'Grady, with Jay helping O'Grady obtain his first bookings in the U.S.
The next Divine film,
Lust in the Dust (1985), reunited him with Tab Hunter and was Divine's first film not directed by John Waters. Set in the
Wild West
during the nineteenth century, the movie was a sex comedy that starred
Divine as Rosie Velez, a promiscuous woman who works as a singer in
saloons and competes for the love of Abel Wood (Tab Hunter) against
another woman. A parody of the 1946 western
Duel in the Sun, the film was a moderate critical success, with Divine receiving praise from a number of reviewers. Divine followed this production with a very different role, that of gay male gangster Hilly Blue in
Trouble in Mind
(1985). The script was written with Divine in mind. Although not a
major character in the film, Divine had been eager to play the part
because he wished to perform in more male roles and leave behind the
stereotype of simply being a female impersonator. Reviews of the film
were mixed, as were the evaluations of Divine's performance.
After finishing his work on
Trouble in Mind, Divine again became involved with a John Waters project, the film
Hairspray (1988). Set in Baltimore during the 1960s,
Hairspray
revolved around self-proclaimed "pleasantly plump" teenager Tracy
Turnblad as she pursues stardom as a dancer on a local television show
and rallies against racial
segregation. As he had in Waters's earlier film
Female Trouble,
Divine took on two roles in the film, one of which was male and the
other female. The first of these, Edna Turnblad, was Tracy's loving
mother; Divine would later note that with this character he could not be
accurately described as a drag queen, proclaiming "What drag queen
would allow herself to look like this? I look like half the women from
Baltimore."
His second character in the film was that of the racist television
station owner Arvin Hodgepile. In one interview, Divine admitted that he
had hoped to play both the role of mother and daughter in
Hairspray, but that the producers had been "a bit leery" and chosen
Ricki Lake for the latter role instead.
Divine went on to state his opinion on Lake, jokingly telling the
interviewer that "She is nineteen and delightful. I hate her." In reality they had become good friends while working together on set.
Reviews of the film were predominantly positive, with Divine in
particular being singled out for praise; several commentators expressed
their opinion that the film marked Divine's breakthrough into mainstream
cinema.He subsequently took his mother to the film's premier in the Miami Film
Festival before she once more accompanied him to the Baltimore premier,
this time also with several of his other relatives. After the
screening, a party was held at the
Baltimore Museum of Art, where Frances Milstead granted an impromptu interview to the English film critic
Jonathan Ross, a friend and fan of Divine's.
Divine's final film role was in the low-budget comedy horror
Out of the Dark, produced with the same crew as
Lust in the Dust.
Appearing in only one scene within the film, he played the character of
Detective Langella, a foulmouthed policeman investigating the murders
of a killer clown.
Out of the Dark would be released the year after Divine's death. Divine was also originally cast as an airplane passenger in the film
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, but died before the film was in production. Divine had become a well-known celebrity throughout the 1980s, appearing on American television chat shows such as
Late Night with David Letterman,
Thicke of the Night, and
The Merv Griffin Show to promote both his music and his film appearances. Divine-themed merchandise was produced, including greeting cards and
The Simple Divine Cut-Out Doll Book. Portraits of Divine were painted by several famous artists, including
David Hockney and
Andy Warhol, both of whom were known for their works which dealt with popular culture.
Death: 1988
On March 7, 1988, three weeks after
Hairspray was released nationwide, Divine was staying at the Regency Plaza Suites Hotel in
Los Angeles. He was scheduled to film a guest appearance the following day as Uncle Otto on the
Fox network's television series
Married... with Children in the second season wrap-up episode. After spending all day at
Sunset Gower Studios
for rehearsals, Divine had returned to his hotel that evening, where he
dined with friends at the hotel restaurant before returning to his
room. Shortly before midnight, he died in his sleep, at age 42, of an
enlarged heart. His weight at his demise was about 370 pounds (170 kg). Glenn Milstead's health deteriorated due to his obese frame, and he passed away in his sleep from
cardiac arrest through
sleep apnea. Divine was told by his doctor, that he wasn't to sleep on his back; he did this anyway, ignoring the physician's advice.
His body was discovered by Bernard Jay the following morning, who then
sat with the body for the next six hours, alongside three of Divine's
other friends. They contacted
Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Coroner for the
County of Los Angeles,
who arranged for removal of the body; Divine's friends were able to
prevent the press from taking any photographs of the body as it was
being carried out of the hotel.
Divine's body was flown back to Maryland and taken to Ruck's Funeral
Home in Towson, where an extra-large coffin was obtained for him. The
funeral took place at Prospect Hill Cemetery, where a crowd of hundreds
had assembled to pay their respects. The ceremony was conducted by the
Reverend Higgenbotham, who had baptized Divine into the Christian faith
many years before. John Waters gave a speech, and was one of the
pallbearers who then carried the coffin to its final resting place, next
to the grave of Divine's grandmother. Many flowers were left at the
grave, including a wreath sent by actress
Whoopi Goldberg, which bore the remark "See what happens when you get good reviews." Following the funeral, a tribute was held at the Baltimore Governor's Mansion. In the ensuing weeks, the
Internal Revenue Service confiscated many of Divine's possessions and auctioned them off, as restitution for unpaid taxes.
Drag persona and performance
Divine: "How much did you pay to get in tonight?"
Audience: "Ten dollars."
Divine: "Well now, that's eight dollars to see the show – and two
dollars to fuck me right after. All line up outside the dressing room
and I'll be here till Christmas!"
An example of Divine's banter with his audience
After developing a name for himself as a female impersonator known
for "trashy" behavior in his early John Waters films, Divine capitalized
on this image by appearing at his musical performances in his drag
persona. In this role, he was described by his manager Bernard Jay, as
displaying "Trash. Filth. Obscenity. In bucket-loads". Divine described his stage performances as "just good, dirty fun, and if you find it offensive, honey, don't join in." As a part of his performance, he constantly swore at the audience,
often using his signature line of "fuck you very much", and at times got
audience members to come onstage, where he would fondle their buttocks,
groins, and breasts.
Divine and his stage act proved particularly popular among gay
audiences, and he appeared at some of the world's biggest gay clubs,
such as Central London's
Heaven.
According to Divine's manager Bernard Jay, this was not because Divine
himself was gay, but because the gay community "openly and proudly
identified with the determination of the
female character Divine".
Divine became increasingly known for outlandish stunts onstage, each
time trying to outdo what he had done before. At one performance in
London's
Hippodrome coinciding with
American Independence Day,
Divine rose up from the floor on a hydraulic lift, draped in the
American flag, and declared: "I'm here representing Freedom, Liberty,
Family Values, and the fucking American Way of Life." When he performed at the
London Gay Pride parade, he sang on the roof of a hired pleasure boat that floated down the
Thames past
Jubilee Gardens.
At a performance Divine gave at the Hippodrome in the last year of his
life, he appeared onstage riding an infant elephant which had been hired
for the occasion.
Divine was nevertheless not happy with being known primarily for his
drag act, and told an interviewer that "my favorite part of drag is
getting out of it. Drag is my work clothes. I only put it on when
someone pays me to", a view he echoed to his friends.
Personal life
During his childhood and adolescence, Divine was called "Glenn" by
his friends and family; during his adult career, he used the "Divine" as
his personal name, telling one interviewer that both "Divine" and
"Glenn Milstead" were "both just names. Glenn is the name I was brought
up with, Divine is the name I've been using for the past 23 years. I
guess it's
always Glenn and it's
always Divine. Do you
mean the character Divine or the person Divine? You see, it gets very
complicated. There's the Divine you're talking to now and there's the
character Divine, which is just something I do to make a living. She
doesn't really exist at all."
At one point he had the name "Divine" officially recognized, as it
appeared on his passport, and in keeping with his personal use of the
name, his close friends nicknamed him "Divy".
Divine considered himself to be male, and was not
transgender or
transsexual. He was
gay,
and during the 1980s had an extended relationship with a married man
named Lee, who accompanied him almost everywhere that he went. They later separated, and Divine went on to have a brief affair with
gay porn star
Leo Ford, something that was widely reported upon in the gay press
According to his manager Bernard Jay, Divine regularly engaged in
sexual activities with young men that he would meet while on tour,
sometimes becoming infatuated with them; in one case, he met a young man
in Israel whom he wanted to bring back to the United States, something
his manager prevented him from doing.
This image of promiscuity was disputed by his friend Anne Cersosimo,
who claimed that Divine never exhibited such behavior when on tour.
Divine initially avoided informing the media about his sexuality, even
when questioned by interviewers, and would sometimes hint that he was
bisexual, but in the latter part of the 1980s changed this attitude and began being open about his homosexuality. Nonetheless, he avoided discussing
gay rights, partially at the advice of his manager, realizing that it would have had a negative effect on his career.
Divine's mother, Frances Milstead, remarked that while Divine "was
blessed with many talents and abilities, he could be very moody and
demanding."
She noted that while he was "incredibly kind and generous", he always
wanted to get things done the way that he wanted, and would "tune you
out if you displeased him." She noted that in most interviews, he came across as "a very shy and private person". Divine's Dutch friends gave him two
bulldogs in the early 1980s, on which he doted, naming them Beatrix and Claus after
Queen Beatrix and her husband
Prince Claus of the
Netherlands.
On numerous occasions he would have his photograph taken with them and
sometimes use these images for record covers and posters.Divine suffered from problems with
obesity
from childhood, caused by his love of food, and in later life his
hunger was increased by his daily use of marijuana, an addiction that he
publicly admitted to.
According to Bernard Jay, in Divine's final years, when his disco
career was coming to an end and he was struggling to find acting jobs,
he felt
suicidal and threatened to kill himself on several occasions.
Legacy and influence
The New York Times
said of Milstead's 1980s films: "Those who could get past the
unremitting weirdness of Divine's performance discovered that the
actor/actress had genuine talent, including a natural sense of comic
timing and an uncanny gift for slapstick." In a letter to the newspaper, Paul Thornquist described him as "one of
the few truly radical and essential artists of the century... [who] was
an audacious symbol of man's quest for liberty and freedom."
People magazine described him as "the Goddess of Gross, the Punk Elephant, the Big Bad Mama of the Midnight Movies... [and] a
Miss Piggy for the blissfully depraved."
Following his death, fans of Divine visited Prospect Hill Cemetery to
pay their respects. In what has become a tradition, fans have been known
to leave makeup, food, and graffiti on his grave
in memoriam; Waters claims that some fans have sexual intercourse on his grave, which he believes Divine would love.
Divine has left an influence on a number of musicians. During the
mid-1980s, the androgynous performer Sylvester decorated the powder room
of his San Francisco home with Divine memorabilia.
Antony Hegarty of the band
Antony and the Johnsons wrote a song about Divine which was included in the group's
self-titled debut album,
released in 1998. The song, titled "Divine," was an ode to the actor,
who was one of Antony's lifelong heroes. His admiration is expressed in
the lines: "He was my self-determined guru" and "I turn to think of
you/Who walked the way with so much pain/Who holds the mirror up to
fools."In 2008, Irish
electronic singer
Róisín Murphy paid homage to Divine in the music video for her song "
Movie Star" by reenacting the attack by Lobstora from
Multiple Maniacs.
Divine was the inspiration for the design of
Ursula the Sea-Witch, the villain in the 1989
Disney animated film
The Little Mermaid. Due to Divine's portrayal of Edna Turnblad in the original comedy-film version of
Hairspray, later musical adaptations of
Hairspray have commonly placed male actors in the role of Edna, including
Harvey Fierstein and others in
the 2002 Broadway musical, and
John Travolta in
the 2007 musical film. A 12-foot (4 m) tall statue in the likeness of Divine by Andrew Logan can be seen on permanent display at The
American Visionary Art Museum in Divine's hometown of Baltimore.
I Am Divine, a feature documentary on the life of Divine, was premiered at the 2013
South by Southwest film festival, and had its Baltimore premiere within
Maryland Film Festival. It is produced and directed by
Jeffrey Schwarz of the
Los Angeles-based production company
Automat Pictures.
Publications
Divine's manager and friend Bernard Jay wrote a book titled
Not Simply Divine!, published in 1992 by
Virgin Books.
Admitting that he was "immensely proud" of Divine and the cause which
he "strived for", Jay noted in the book's introduction that he wrote the
work because he felt that Divine deserved a "memorial" that would act
as a "record for posterity". He insisted that
Not Simply Divine!
was "not the bitter revenge of an unappreciated manager, eager now to
get his share of his praise", but that equally it was not "a gushing
homage" designed to paint Divine as "both saintly and legendary."
He expressed his hope that the book shines light on the "shades of
grey" between the man and his female persona, portraying a "warts and
all" picture.
The book was criticized by Divine's mother, Frances Milstead, who
accused Jay of writing a "mean-spirited" work that provided an incorrect
image of her son.
Not Simply Divine!
was also criticised by Divine's friend Greg Gorman, who remarked that,
"there was so much hostility and so much meanspiritedness in the way
Divine was portrayed in the book, that it was just 180 degrees from who
he was."
Frances Milstead subsequently cowrote her own book about Divine, entitled
My Son Divine, with Kevin Heffernan and Steve Yeagar, which was published by Alyson Books in 2001. His mother's continued relationship with the gay community was later documented in a film
Frances: A Mother Divine (2010), directed by Tim Dunn and Michael O'Quinn.
Postcards From Divine,
a book made of over 50 postcards Divine sent to his parents while
traveling the world between 1977 and 1987, was released by the Divine
estate on November 5, 2011.
Postcards From Divine
also includes quotes and stories from his friends and colleagues,
including Waters, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce, Channing Wilroy, Susan
Lowe, Jean Hill, Tab Hunter,
Lainie Kazan, Alan J. Wendl, Ruth Brown,
Deborah Harry,
Jerry Stiller, Ricki Lake, Silvio Gigante and others.