logo
livingroom

decorative bar

biographies


corner Last update of this page: August 10th 2017 corner
Quentin Crisp
(December 25, 1908 - November 21, 1999) U.K.

Quentin Crisp

Writer, film critic, humorist, and actor

separator

Quentin Crisp

"A Stately Old Homo Of England"

Born Denis Charles Pratt in Carshalton, Surrey, England, on Christmas Day, he suffered a difficult childhood in a then much more homophobic society.

Around his late teens, or perhaps his early twenties, he began to accept his sexuality more easily until finally he decided to state it to the world with his mode of dress, trowelled on make-up, long fingernails, and henna'd hair. Crisp described himself as exceedingly effeminate from a young age. By the age of twenty, he started wearing make-up and traditionally-female clothing.

Quentin CrispBetween 'legitimate' jobs he earned money as a male prostitute until he became a nude model for a government supported art school. At the outbreak of World War II, Crisp attempted to join the British army but was rejected on the grounds of his "sexual perversion". He stayed in London during the 1941 Blitz, cruising through the black-outs and picking up American G.I.s who, Crisp later said, inspired his love of all things American.

His autobiography The Naked Civil Servant (made into a film starring John Hurt, 1975) gains its title from this time. He also wrote How to Become a Virgin, and New York Diaries. After he published his autobiography, Crisp became the most visible - and therefore the most despised, beaten and spat-upon - gay man in Britain.

Following the film's good reception in America in 1976, Crisp later moved to New York, living on Lower East Side and becoming a 'resident alien' (another title) by keeping his British passport. In 1978 he staged the first An Evening with Quentin Crisp. The reviews were excellent and it won a special Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. He appeared in Sting's videoclip for An Englishman in New York and in the film Orlando (1992), as Elisabeth I.

Quentin CrispWhile Crisp was openly homosexual and helped bring visibility to queer culture in the mid-twentieth century, he grew increasingly hostile to gay rights activists as the years went on.

By the 1970s, according to pioneer Peter Tatchell, "Crisp had become... an often self-hating, arrogant, homophobic gadfly. He denounced the gay rights movement and slammed homosexuality as 'a terrible disease'."

In the 1980s, Crisp again drew condemnation when he referred to AIDS as "a fad". Why did he grow so bitter?

"Jealousy," according to Tatchell. "He resented the fact that he was no longer unique - no longer the only visible queer in town... Put bluntly: Crisp disliked being overtaken and overshadowed by other gays."

Quentin died of natural causes at a friend's house on the outskirts of Manchester, England, on November 21st. 1999, the eve of the opening night of yet another run of (updated) An Evening with Quentin Crisp.

separator

Sources: http://lgbt-history-archive.tumblr.com/ - et alii

Click on the letter C to go back to the list of names

corner © Matt & Andrej Koymasky, 1997 - 2017 corner