DIVINE
Harris Glenn Milstead (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988), better known by the stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Closely associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a conservative middle-class family, Milstead developed an early interest in drag while working as a women's hairdresser. By the mid-1960s, he had embraced the city's countercultural scene and befriended Waters, who gave him the name "Divine" and the tagline of "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost". Along with his friend David Lochary, Milstead joined Waters's acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, and adopted female roles for their experimental short films Roman Candles (1966), Eat Your Makeup (1968) and The Diane Linkletter Story (1970). Again in drag, he took a lead role in both of Waters's early full-length movies, Mondo Trasho (1969) and Multiple Maniacs (1970), the latter of which attracted press attention for the group. Milstead next starred in Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972), which was a hit on the U.S. midnight movie circuit, became a cult classic and established Milstead's fame in the American counterculture. 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 tape 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 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 a heart attack.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. 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.[163] 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 criticized 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.
