By Vivica Vial
Hey, Worms n’ Germs! Welcome to our first Eccentrica blog post. Eccentrica is a place where the real and unreal collide, the borders of fantasy and reality. Posts under Eccentrica will explore a variety of topics outside of the mainstream. For our first trip to Eccentrica, I invite you to step back in time to the late 1960s San Francisco, a place that embraced the bizarre and eccentric.
At the dawn of the 1970s, New Year’s Eve 1969, a troupe of unique performers took the stage at the Palace Theater in San Francisco. They performed the can-can dance, followed up with an encore, during which they stripped to The Rolling Stones’s Honky Tonk Woman. They were The Cockettes, a group of glittery drag queens who would leave an indelible mark on LGBTQ+ history. Their anarchic performances blazed a trail for future drag queens. They introduced the term genderfuck which influenced a scene in which future drag icon RuPaul got her start. If you love drag and don’t know who The Cockettes are, I suggest you pull up a seat and learn about these innovative performers.
Hibiscus of Kaliflower
The Cockettes were the brainchild of Hibiscus, formerly George Edgerly Harris III, an actor from New York. Harris moved to San Francisco in 1967. His entire family was involved in the theater. In New York, Hibiscus was involved in the counter-culture, hanging out with experimental filmmaker, Jack Smith, who was known for his controversial film, Flaming Creatures. As an actor, he performed at avant-garde theaters in downtown New York. In 1967, he left the Big Apple to move to San Francisco.
In the streets of San Francisco, Harris immersed himself in the thriving hippie culture. He took LSD, grew his hair long, changed his name, and began to adopt a unique style of genderfluid dress. He wore skirts, floral headdresses, kimonos, and lots of glitter. Harris walked the streets dressed in drag and sometimes wore nothing at all in Golden Gate Park.
It was the late 1960s and San Francisco was the eccentric capital of the U.S. A new consciousness was awakening. People were beginning to experiment with sexuality and gender-bending. Hibiscus was in the center of it all. For a time, he lived in a commune called Kaliflower, a group who made their home in a refurbished Victorian-style house. A notable figure from the Beat generation and previous editor for William Burroughs, Irving Rosenthal, managed the commune. Kaliflower distributed free food to neighboring communities. Hibiscus didn’t care for life in Kaliflower, which was operated under stringent rules, mandating that all residents contribute through chores and participate in communal meetings. He didn’t like the constrictions and left. Hibiscus found another group in the city, people who he thought were of like mind.
Dressed in Dreams
Fayette Hauser, one of the founding members of the Cockettes, recalls the first time she saw Hibiscus. She was walking with one of her housemates. They looked down the hill and “[…]in the distance was coming this creature that was so colorful that the two of us stopped in our tracks and just stared […] and this was beyond anything that, even at that point, that I had seen anyone express at all. It was this combination of robes and great headdress, and all these colors moving in profusion coming up the street, and we just stood there and looked, and that was Hibiscus, and he was coming to see us.” (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002)
Hibiscus had seen and heard about Hauser and her group. He was on his way to see them. After crossing the street and introducing himself, he moved in the next day. “He said, ‘This is where I belong. I’m a dancer, I’m an artist, and I want to be with the artists, and so can I live with you?’” Hauser recalled. (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002)
A Catholic high school graduate from suburban New Jersey, Hauser attended art school in Boston. A photo spread in Life magazine of Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and others inspired Hauser to go west. Her first stop was Aspen, Colorado. Living in a tent in the woods, she spent most of her time painting. Then, she crossed paths with Nancy Gurley, wife of James Gurley of the band Big Brother and the Holding Company. Gurley was riding along in a van with friends when she picked Hauser up hitchhiking. Amazed by Gurley’s decked-out van and Gurley’s tales of her various adventures, Hauser headed out to San Francisco with her.
Like Hibiscus, Hauser became immersed in the dreamlike world of San Francisco. Always an adventurous person, San Francisco’s laid-back and supportive atmosphere loosened her up more. Growing up in a repressive environment, Hauser went to San Francisco looking for something.
“I was the same person in my head, but I think the most important thing about San Francisco was that people were allowed to live at the end of their imagination, and not only be in their head with their imagination,” Hauser recalled. (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002)
Hauser’s commune was the opposite of Kaliflower with a very laid-back, relaxed, and supportive atmosphere. “Our collective goal was to reinvent ourselves, embodying a New Myth by showcasing our innermost fantasies, dreams, and desires visually,” Hauser recounts in her online chronicle of The Cockettes. “Clad in the most flamboyant attire we could find, we roamed the city in a tight-knit group, frequenting concerts at various dance venues.” (Goodman, E., 2018)
Hibiscus found life with Hauser and her group inspirational. The group was mostly gay men and women. Besides the commune’s dreamlike atmosphere, Hibiscus also found inspiration in avant-garde theater collectives such as John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatre and The Living Theatre, the work of Jack Smith, and his LSD-induced experiences.
One day, Hibiscus proposed an idea to the group. He said that they should take what they do in everyday life to the stage. He got a large scrapbook and encouraged the group to fill it with images of fantasies and dreams and create performances out of them. He had a timeline in mind, a date for their first performance–New Year’s Eve 1969. “…so that we could show the new theater for the new decade for 1970,” Hauser said. (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002)
Birth of The Cockettes
Originally called the Angels of Light Free Theatre, their vision began to take shape. The group was inspired by an eclectic mix of vintage Hollywood, Eastern and Western deities, and more. The name Angels of Light didn’t seem to fit their vision, this vibe they wanted to send. Someone said perhaps they should choose a name similar to The Rockettes and another member quipped, “No, the Cockettes!” (Goodman, E., 2018).
The newly-born Cockettes booked their first gig opening the Palace Theater’s “Nocturnal Dream Show” which featured midnight movies or cult films. The group was right on schedule as their first performance was set for New Year’s Eve in 1969. Kaliflower commune’s drag room provided the costumes. For their debut, the group performed the can-can dance. For an encore, they stripped to Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones.
The Cockettes became a regular feature at the Palace’s midnight movies. They were the hottest ticket in town, attended by prominent figures among San Francisco’s free spirits. “People gravitated toward Hibiscus and the Cockettes. “It was like a snowball going downhill,” said former Cockette Pam Tent aka Sweet Pam. (Ruminations, 2018). “We were at the Palace Theater every day at 10:00 drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, smoking joints, and on the stage sewing costumes and building sets,” Reggie, another former Cockette, recalls. (Ruminations, 2018)
Hibiscus’s words about introducing the dawn of a new era in theater were prophetic. The Cockettes introduced the term genderfuck, defined as a form of gender expression that blends characteristics of traditionally masculine and feminine presentation (ie. someone who has a beard and wears a dress).
At the time, drag queens were pretty and elegant and presented as strictly female. Before The Cockettes, bearded drag queens did not exist. Filmmaker John Waters said the following in an interview with Baltimore Magazine, as quoted in a Them article: “They [drag queens] were square then, they wanted to be Miss America and be their mothers.” If you watch the 1968 documentary, The Queen, you’ll see vintage drag queens in action.
“Transexual dressing is a gay contribution to the realization that we’re not 100% masculine or feminine. The Cockettes brought out into the street what was in the closet in terms of theatric dress and imaginative theater,” said the late Rumi Missabu, co-founder of The Cockettes and later, archivist. (Ruminations, 2018)
Cockette co-founder, the late Rumi Missabu, born James Bartlett, was a California native who described having a violent dysfunctional home life. His mother went out to California to have a music career. She cut a demo but abandoned her musical ambitions to have a family. When Bartlett was 16, his family decided to move to Iowa, but he stayed behind in southern California. He became friends with Cindy Williams, future star of the TV sitcom, Laverne & Shirley. The two met in theater arts class. Williams was a struggling actress working as a server at the International House of Pancakes. She supported herself and Bartlett.
One fateful night, Bartlett attended a showing of the cult film She Freak on LSD and describes having a mental breakdown upon returning home. He felt he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. He wrote Williams a goodbye letter and boarded a bus for San Francisco. He joined the spiritual revival of the time and studied the teachings of the Persian poet and mystic Rumi. “I took what I needed to make myself complete,” he recalled. (Ruminations, 2018)
“We weren’t just a bunch of swishy faggots which young people to this day who don’t do their homework think we were,” said Missabu. “The Cockettes also were not just gay men. The group included women, straight guys, a baby, everything, and everyone under the kitchen sink. Anyone could be a Cockette. All you needed to do was to show up in the audience and jump on stage. We resented all the theatrical law, we resented direction, we resented choreography, and we resented charging money.” (Ruminations, 2018)
The Cockette’s first shows were non-narrative and evolved into themed revues. The audience could join in the show if they wanted to. As Missabu said, anyone could be a Cockette— a fourth wall didn’t exist between the eccentric troupe and the audience. New shows would be performed every few weeks with titles such as Paste on Paste, Gone with the Showboat to Oklahoma, and Tropical Heatwave/Hot Voodoo. The Cockettes made their own costumes, especially after being barred from Kaliflower’s drag room for taking too many costumes. They combed the racks of thrift stores to create the most stunning and outrageous ensembles they could dream up.
The Cockettes eventually produced their first scripted show with music and lyrics called Pearls Over Shanghai. When they heard that President Nixon’s daughter, Tricia, was getting married, The Cockettes produced a film called Tricia’s Wedding “[…] featuring a transvestite Tricia, a drunken Mamie Eisenhower, a party crashing Lady Bird Johnson, and a drag Eartha Kitt spiking the punch with LSD, resulting in a mad orgy.” (History: The Cockettes)
“In their cardboard-studded productions, with names like Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma and Pearls Over Shanghai, the Cockettes sang their own amusing lyrics to melodies by Cole Porter and Noël Coward. Their greatest invention, however, occupied the realm of fashion: Without them, thrift shop chic would not exist. The Cockettes decorated their bodies with eclectic, multilayered displays that make last year’s Met Costume exhibit, ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion,’ look drab by comparison. Not surprisingly, the Cockettes were natural magnets for famous photographers including Peter Hujar, Mary Ellen Mark, Bud Lee, and Gilles Larrain.” (Orth, M., 2020)
The Cockettes were a hit with underground San Francisco and even attracted more talent such as future disco icon Sylvester and John Waters’s muse, Divine. “The shows were known for their raucous energy, beloved by fans as much for their glamour as their sweet awkwardness and unpredictability.” (Goodman, E., 2018)
The Cockettes also attracted an eclectic group of well-known fans such as Truman Capote, film critic Rex Reed, Iggy Pop, and Alice Cooper. Reed wrote a glowing review of The Cockettes in his nationally syndicated column, calling them “ a landmark in the history of new, liberated theater.” Annie Leibovitz shot a Cockette wedding for a spread published in Rolling Stone.
John Waters & Divine
Filmmaker John Waters headed to San Francisco in 1969 with friend and member of Waters’s troupe, The Dreamlanders, John Lochary. “The first thing I heard about was the Summer of Love, which sounded horrible to me. You know, I was a yippie, not a hippie,” Waters said. “To me, I liked to go to the riots because all the boys looked cute throwing bombs and stuff.” (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002) Waters and Lochary got a roommate who told them about the midnight movies at the Palace Theater which had shown Waters’s movie, Mondo Trasho. That night, he first saw The Cockettes “[…they were the first kind of like bearded drag queens. They were like hippie acid freak drag queens which was really new at the time,” Waters recalled. “It still would be new but it was at the same time they showed great midnight movies. It was usually a Cockettes show and a midnight movie. The audience was what I remember even more than any of them, every person was tripping, stoned, it was completely the end of the love movement and here it was. It was really kind of punk before punk ever happened, except they were hippies.” (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002)
Palace Theater manager Sebastian would find the strangest films he could for the Nocturnal Dream midnight movie shows. The Palace was one of the first theaters outside of Baltimore to show Waters’s’ films. Waters credits them with helping his career. They showed Waters’s Mondo Trasho and The Diane Linkletter Story as a double feature and also showed Multiple Maniacs. The Cockettes were impressed by Waters and Divine. Hauser says they thought Waters and Divine were “soul mates.” (I Am Divine, 2013) Tent recalls begging Sebastian to bring Divine to San Francisco to be part of the show.
Sebastian contacted Waters and Waters called Divine. Back home, Divine was in a bind. He was penniless and living with fellow Dreamlander Cookie Mueller. “They didn’t have money for a Christmas tree so Divine chopped down the one in the sheriff’s front yard. Divine needed to get out of town,” Waters recalled. (Weber, B., Weissman, D., 2002) Divine got on the flight to San Francisco, penniless and in full drag, and met the Cockettes at a big media event.
Before Divine got on the plane, Waters asked makeup artist Van Smith to do something with Divine’s hairline. Smith asked Divine to shave off his eyebrows and heighten his forehead by shaving his head halfway back. When he got off the plane, Divine was surprised by an adoring crowd of fans. “[…] I got off and then people rushed me and then flashbulbs were going off and it was just like all those stories I read about Marilyn Monroe… it was so perfect,” Divine recalled. (I Am Divine, 2013)
Divine meeting with The Cockettes was a turning point in his career. “He never took it seriously until he came to California and saw fans,” Waters said. “and then, in his mind, he never ever went back to being Glenn Milstead. And he realized it could be true and he could have a career doing this and he could live his life as Divine.” (I Am Divine, 2013)
Waters and Divine performed with The Cockettes before a showing of Mondo Trasho. Dressed as a hippie pimp, Waters introduced Divine as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Divine then came out pushing a shopping cart filled with dead mackerels that he threw into the audience. Divine then delivered a speech Waters wrote for him. “The first thing she said was ‘I give blow jobs to serial killers!’” Cockette Ida recalled. “and but then she said ‘I eat white sugar!’ and there was a shudder through the whole audience. The fact that she ate white sugar was, to us, completely shocking.” (I Am Divine, 2013)
“It was very confrontational, in that way, but everybody loved it,” Hauser said. “Divine was just a ball of energy on stage. People just ate it up,” said Cockette Richard “Scrumbly” Koldweyn. Divine moved to San Francisco after. “Divine came to perform with us there was no question about it. We wanted Divine and Divine wanted to be with us,” Hauser said. (I Am Divine, 2013)
Divine went on to perform in a series of shows with The Cockettes including Divine Saves the World and Journey to the Center of Uranus.
The Big Apple
Rex Reed’s review of The Cockettes’ performance landed them a gig at The Anderson Theater in New York. This booking reportedly caused a rift in the group. Some Cockettes objected to going commercial and wanted performances to remain free and others wanted to get paid for their work. Hibiscus maintained his antimaterialistic views and left the group, taking some original members with him. The rest of The Cockettes went to New York.
Many celebrities were in the audience on opening night, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Angela Landsbury, Anthony Perkins, and Gore Vidal. Unfortunately, the New York audience didn’t appreciate The Cockettes as much as the San Francisco audience. Critics panned the performance.
“How they were anticipated! How they were wined and dined! But oh, then, how they bombed! Not enough rehearsal time and too many nights eating on Robert Rauschenberg’s tab and rolling under the tables at Max’s Kansas City. The producers were so cheap that the Cockettes never even had a chance to rehearse with the venue’s inferior sound equipment. Already sleep-deprived, they foolishly stayed up all night building a new cardboard set to fit the Anderson stage, and they had no idea how to project their voices to fill the much larger theater. The anticipation was such that everyone from Anthony Perkins and Nora Ephron to John Lennon and Yoko Ono were angling to get in on opening night, so the disappointment at what they delivered was harsh. ‘Having no talent is not enough!’ Gore Vidal declared.” (Orth, M., 2020)
While New York’s prominent artists didn’t appreciate The Cockettes, the underground did. After their brief appearance in New York, The Cockettes returned to San Francisco where they resumed their regular performances until completely disbanding in 1972.
“Counterculture is a term made up by the press. For the Cockettes, this was their reality and they thought it would be that way forever. Then, in 1972, everything came to an abrupt end when they realized they had to move on and start making a living,” Missabu recalled. (Ruminations, 2018)
The Cockettes scattered and Missabu disappeared off the grid completely for many years. In later interviews, Missabu recalled that he had a small business, and worked as a freelance housekeeper “off the books.” For many years, his only form of identification was a library card he had since he was in his 20s. As the years wore on, some former Cockettes succumbed to drug abuse and others passed away from AIDS-related causes.
Missabu finally re-emerged in 1995, when he showed up for the final day of a three-day 25-year Cockettes reunion. Once reunited with his old friends, he jumpstarted his career again. Missabu even hosted the 30-year reunion. He finally got an official ID, traveled, and began doing shows again with other former Cockettes. First with the Thrill Peddlers and then went on to direct his own shows, dance attractions, and variety shows in the tradition of The Cockettes. The performances were free but not shared on social media—only live in person. He described these performances as a “labor of love.” During his years underground, Missabu amassed a collection of Cockettes memorabilia which would eventually be archived in the New York Public Library. Diagnosed with emphysema from years of smoking, Missabu still took to the stage. He was eventually diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away in April 2023.
The Cockettes are an important part of LGBTQ+ history. The group of acid-tripping drag queens hanging around the streets of San Francisco let nothing stand in the way of living their dreams. It was but for a few years but The Cockettes never faded away, inspiring queer artists for generations. Their influence can be seen in the innovative looks of contemporary drag queens today.
Sources:
Orth, M. (April 16, 2020). Remembering the Cockettes, Trailblazing, Trendsetting 1970s Drag Queens. Vanity Fair. Read here.
Goodman, E. (April 12, 2018). The Cockettes Started a Queer Theater Revolution. Them. Read here.
thecockettes.com. History: The Cockettes. Read here.
James, R. (Director). (2018) Ruminations. [Film]. NuReality Productions.
Weber, B., Weissman, D. (Directors) [UCLA Film & Television Archive] (July 12, 2023). The Cockettes (2002): Interview with Fayette Hauser. YouTube. Watch here.
Weber, B., Weissman, D. (Directors) [UCLA Film & Television Archive] (November 16, 2022). The Cockettes (2002): Interview with John Waters. YouTube. Watch here.
Provenzano, J. (April 7, 2024). Rumi Missabu: Original Cockettes Member and Performing Artist, Nov. 14, 1947-April 2, 2024. Bay Area Reporter. Read here.
Schwarz, J. (Director). (2013). I Am Divine. [Film]. Automat Pictures.
Merrick Mysteria's House of Horror, Oddities and Other Madness 
3 responses to “Eccentrica: The Cockettes”
[…] The Palace Theater’s midnight showings also featured performances by a troupe of drag queens, The Cockettes, who wanted Waters and Divine to join the show. Waters was out west with Lochary at the time. He […]
LikeLike
[…] went on to collaborate in performances with the San Francisco drag queen troupe, The Cockettes. Waters described Divine’s meeting with the Cockettes as a turning point at which Divine fully […]
LikeLike
[…] I discussed previously in my posts on The Cockettes and Divine, drag was a world populated by mostly elegant queens who, as John Waters put it wanted […]
LikeLike