Jackie Curtis (born John Curtis Holder Jr.; February 19, 1947 – May 15, 1985) was an American underground actor, singer, and playwright best known as a Warhol superstar. Primarily a stage actor in New York City, Curtis performed as a man and also performed in drag.
Curtis made his stage debut as Nefertiti's brother in Tom Eyen's play Miss Nefertiti Regrets (1965). He subsequently wrote several off-off Broadway plays, including Glamour, Glory and Gold (1967), Amerika Cleopatra (1968), and Vain Victory: Vicissitudes of the Damned (1971). Curtis appeared in the film Andy Warhol's Flesh (1968), directed by Paul Morrissey, and starred in Women in Revolt (1971), a comedic spoof of the women's liberation movement.
While performing in drag on stage and screen, Curtis would typically wear lipstick, glitter, bright red hair, ripped dresses, and stockings. Curtis pioneered this combination of camp trashy glamour as a style that inspired many entertainers, including Jayne County, the New York Dolls, and glam rock performers such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Gary Glitter, and Mott the Hoople.
Early life
Jackie Curtis was born John Curtis Holder Jr. in New York City to singer John Holder and Jenevive Uglialoro and had one sibling, half-brother Timothy Holder, who is an openly gay Episcopal priest. Their parents divorced and Curtis was mostly raised by maternal grandmother Slugger Ann (Ann Uglialoro), an East Village bar owner.
Curtis reportedly graduated from Hunter College in 1975, but this cannot be confirmed because no diploma has been found. Curtis reprised the role as Ptolemy II.
Curtis' play Glamour, Glory and Gold, which chronicled the ascent and decline of a female film star, debuted in an East Village basement in 1967. The play starred Candy Darling, Melba LaRose Jr., and Robert De Niro in his first appearance on stage, playing several roles. Curtis played a supporting part as a witty chorus dancer. The program notes explained that Curtis was an emergency fill-in since the girl cast in the part had abruptly quit.
The play Amerika Cleopatra (1968) featured Agosto Machado and Harvey Fierstein and ran at the WPA Theatre. In 1969, Curtis performed with the Playhouse of the Ridiculous in Tom Murrin's Cock-Strong alongside Penny Arcade, Anthony Ingrassia, and others. Music for the production was written by Ralph Czitrom and performed by the Silver Apples.
In 1968, Curtis was cast in the Warhol-produced film Flesh, which was directed by Paul Morrissey.
Curtis then starred in Women in Revolt (1971) with fellow Warhol superstars Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, which satirizes the Women's Liberation Movement and alludes to Valerie Solanas and her SCUM Manifesto. Richard Avedon photographed Curtis with Woodlawn and Darling for the June 1972 issue of Vogue magazine.
Warhol said of Curtis: "Jackie Curtis is not a drag queen. Jackie is an artist. A pioneer without a frontier." Years later, when Warhol attended a Boy George concert, he remarked, "I just couldn't like him because it reminded me of what Jackie Curtis could have been."
In between filming with Warhol and Morrissey, Curtis continued to write plays. The play Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit (1970) with Ruby Lynn Reyner and Holly Woodlawn ran at the Playhouse of the Ridiculous for weeks. Another play, Femme Fatale (1970) starred Patti Smith, Jayne County and Penny Arcade. The play starred Candy Darling and Mario Montez, amongst others.
Curtis's poem "B-Girls", much of which is based on observations of people who visited grandmother Slugger Ann's bar, was included in the 1979 book The Poets' Encyclopedia. At eight pages long, it was the longest poem in the book.
Curtis directed and performed in Nick Markovich's I Died Yesterday at La MaMa in 1983. Curtis portrayed a nurse in the documentary film Burroughs (1983).
Curtis's final play Champagne ran at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club January 3–27, 1985 and featured George Abagnalo as the male lead.
In 1985, Curtis used the name Shannon Montgomery and started going to the HB Studio for acting classes. Photographer Francesco Scavullo took new headshots of Curtis and he began to audition for male parts in soap operas and plays in New York.
Personal life
Relationships
Curtis had numerous non-legal marriages between 1969 and 1984.
Curtis had arranged to marry Warhol superstar Eric Emerson as a publicity stunt on July 21, 1969. When Emerson failed to show up, Curtis married a wedding guest, Stewart Eaglespeed (Stuart Lichtenstein), on the roof at 211 East 11th Street, where Curtis was living. The mock wedding was covered by The Village Voice. In the year of his death, he had assumed a male persona and was auditioning for male roles. Photographer Peter Hujar documented this complexity in a posthumous image showing Curtis in his casket wearing a suit, placed beside a photograph of himself in drag.
In a November 1969 interview with The New York Times, Curtis rejected fixed labels, stating, "Not a boy, not a girl, not a faggot, not a drag queen, not a transsexual—just me, Jackie… I’m not trying to pass as a woman." His wake was held at the Andrett Funeral Home, while the funeral service took place in St. Ann Church in New York. Curtis was laid to rest as a man wearing a suit, with a white flower on his lapel and his hair slicked back. A plaque bearing the words "John Holder, a.k.a. Jackie Curtis" and show business mementos were placed inside his coffin. Photographs of Curtis in drag were displayed on poster boards.
Upon hearing news of Curtis' death, Warhol recorded in his diary, "It was an awful day... somebody called and said that Jackie Curtis O.D.'d. He's gone. And that wasn't something I wanted to hear". The following week, Warhol said, "Somebody told me that Jackie Curtis had a long obituary in The New York Times. I still keep wanting to think it was a put-on like his weddings".
In pop culture
Curtis appeared on the cover of Gay Power in 1969, "New York's first homosexual newspaper."
Curtis is a subject of the painting, Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd (1970) by artist Alice Neal, which is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1972, Neal also painted the portrait Jackie Curtis as a Boy, which is in the collection of Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins in Mougins, France.
Legacy
In 2004, a documentary Superstar in a Housedress exposed some little-known facts about Curtis to a wider public. Curtis's influence on a number of people, including friends and associates such as Holly Woodlawn, Joe Dallesandro, and Penny Arcade, and observers such as David Bowie, are noted in the film. Jayne County writes of Curtis as being "the biggest influence on me at this time."
An album by Paul Serrato collecting songs from the Curtis works Lucky Wonderful and Vain Victory, including the love ballad "Who Are You", which Curtis sang to Darling, was released in 2004.
Works
Stage Plays
- Glamour, Glory and Gold (1967)
- Lucky Wonderful (1968)
- Amerika Cleopatra (1968)
- Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit (1970)
- Femme Fatale: The Three Faces of Gloria (1970)
- Vain Victory: Vicissitudes of the Damned (1971)