Virgin Queen – Quentin Crisp
25 December 1908 – Birthday of Quentin Crisp – – “Do not fade, do not whither, do not grow old” commands Queen Elizabeth I, played here—in an amusing but appropriate gender-bending twist—by Quentin Crisp. (via Reverseshot)
At the root of Crisp’s act was a kind of radicalism: Mocked and brutalized for his flamboyant effeminacy, he nonetheless chose to live, beginning in the London of the 1930s, “not merely as a self-confessed homosexual, but a self-evident one.” He tinted his hair lilac, wore eye shadow, pert scarves and silk blouses, and transformed himself into a walking, quipping objet d’art. It was this feat of defiant self-invention that eventually brought him celebrity. He wrote several wonderful books and at least one famous one, his 1968 memoir “The Naked Civil Servant.” But Quentin Crisp’s masterpiece was, emphatically, “Quentin Crisp.”
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Photo of Quentin Crisp by Paul Waldman
He lived on the same block as the NYC Hell’s Angels club house. He always answered his phone with “Oh yes!”
we became friends. He lived across 2nd Ave. on 3rd St. On the west side of 2nd Ave & 3rd is where Philip Glass lived. Quentin always said when he walked past the club house he’d lower his head in reverence. – Paul Waldman (via email)
English man in New York – John Hurt as Quentin