Divine
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Glen Milstead caught the eye of John Waters the first time he saw Glen walking around their middle-class Baltimore neighborhood. Waters was a budding filmmaker who used all of his friends as cast and crew for his early films. Naming Milstead “Divine,” Waters put his new diva in a series of roles in drag. In the late 1960s the troupe (now called the “Dreamlands”) offended the mainstream by taking notes and ques from pornography and other “midnight movie” tropes (biker movies, extreme violence and gore) that drew curious crowds in big cites on Friday and Saturday nights. Reaching the pinnacle of their fame, “Pink Flamingoes” (1972) became one of the classic midnight movies (along with Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show ) and made Divine a star. By the time he starred in Polyester, it was apparent that Milstead was as brilliant as a sympathetic housewife as he had been playing “the filthiest woman alive.” Because both Waters and Milstead identified as gay, the films and the culture around the Dreamlanders appealed to the LGBTQ+ community from the beginning, and the films became “happenings” unlike anything before them.
Divine, like many of the Dreamlanders, made the move from Baltimore to Provincetown, where they were treated like queens (while causing a modicum of trouble from time to time,.) Milstead was thrilled that Divine was able to break out of the movies, touring the country in theatrical productions (The Neon Woman) and with the Cockettes, and even released several singles of disco tracks that became hits, especially “her” cover of “Walk Like a Man.” His nightclub performances became as legendary as the films, and other directors, recognizing his versatility, cast him in the mainstream film Lust in the Dust. He returned to Waters to play the supportive mother in Hairspray, a film that broke Waters, Divine and all the Dreamlanders into the mainstream. (In it, Milstead plays a male character as well, much as he had done in Female Trouble where he plays both a man and a woman in a disturbing and hysterical sex scene. Milstead identified as gay, but didn’t like the moniker of “drag queen". He was "an actor and not a drag queen,” he would say in interviews, “Divine" was a character playing a different role every time. Milstead finally seemed to get the recognition he deserved as an actor with a significant part in Married with Children (one of the most popular mainstream TV shows of the late 1980s and the incredible reviews he received in Hairspray. Tragically, he passed away in 1998, just three weeks after the release of Hairspray, His power lives on, however, as “Divine” has been canonized in our culture, and we are all the better for it. Photo by Philin Phlash - David Bieber Archives |
