Glenn Milstead – the man behind the makeup

How did an ordinary Baltimore hairdresser, Harris Glenn Milstead, become the sleazy cross-dressing superstar, Divine, whose film and singing career encompassed some extraordinary highs (chart hits such as ‘You Think You’re A Man’) and lows (eating fresh poodle poo in the film, ‘Pink Flamingos’)? Read on…

I met Glenn in the bedroom of the fashion designer, Zandra Rhodes. Reclining in Imperial splendour, on mounds of satin cushions, he told me how he made the break into show business, with the help of his friend and would-be film director, John Waters…

Divine: We had already been making movies but it wasn’t a money-making proposition. We just did it for fun. The first film I made was called ‘Roman Candles’. In that I played a drag queen. I was obviously a man in drag – I wore a dress, high heels, a full face of makeup, but no wig. Then, in the next movie, ‘Eat Your Makeup’, it developed a bit more. In the movie after that, ‘Mondo Trasho’, I had a blonde wig for the first time and I wore a two-piece, bare midriff gold-lamé outfit. It was when the look really started to get underway. And I drove a ’59 red Cadillac convertible with fins at the back. I was a hit and run driver. In ‘Multiple Maniacs’ I’m in the perverted circus. I went over to black hair. That’s when the pouting lips came in. Then ‘Pink Flamingos’ came along and the makeup really took off! Beauty gone berserk! Since then it’s been toned down a bit. The character was Babs Johnson, a criminal hiding out from the police. That was in 1969.

But the films never made us any money – not even ‘Pink Flamingos’. And they were banned in Britain. Back in the ‘70s, ‘Pink Flamingos’ was confiscated and burned. Then some cinemas started showing them late night. They put them all together in all-night showings. Well, if you can sit through that you can sit through anything!

People say our films were trash but I don’t think they are really. To me a trash film is a porno’ film – and they are so clinical, with all those close-up shots. Some of them go a bit too far – and for me to say that, believe me, they’ve gone too far!

Huw: Are the characters you play anything like you in real life?

Divine: Oh, God! I hope not! The character of Divine is like Joan Collins or Bette Davis – the kind of woman you love to hate, who’d think nothing of shooting men across the breakfast table. Divine was to be the most hateful of all those women. As an actor (though a lot of people would disagree with me on that!) I think the vicious characters are the most fun. When I’m in costume I feel I can get away with almost anything short of murder and robbing banks.

Divine stripped bare!

Huw: Do people expect you to be outrageous all the time these days?

Divine: Oh yes! When I get hired for a job, people say, “Well, Divine is going to talk dirty and wear tight dresses, I hope.”

"People come onto me and proposition me in dressing rooms..."

Huw: Do people get obsessed with the Divine character?

Divine: You bet! I’m having a problem with a fan in Germany at the moment. I woke up in my hotel room one day and she was standing over my bed. She’d bribed the hotel porter to let her in. It scared me half to death to wake up and find her staring at me. She wants to sleep with me. She calls my manager’s office in New York three times a day from Germany, so I don’t know what her ‘phone bill must be! She doesn’t speak English so she finally got somebody who does speak English to come and tell me that she loves me and wants to marry me and she wanted to know why I wasn’t responding? She showed up at every show I did in Germany. It was weird!

Huw: Is she in love with you or the character you play?

Divine: Well, she’s seen me out of costume and obviously she decided I was her type.

Huw: Do a lot of people find you sexy?

Divine: Extremely so. People come onto me and proposition me in dressing rooms after shows when there are lots of people standing around listening. I find that when I’m dressed as a man a lot of women come onto me. I’m not saying I’m any Valentino but nevertheless they seem to find me quite attractive.

Huw: I don’t mean to be rude, but aren’t you a fairly improbable sex symbol?

Divine: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

"Most of the people who’ve really come on to me have been straight, married men"

Huw: Do people find your character sexy? Or do they find you sexy as a man?

Divine: I’ve been propositioned by guys and by girls, both on and off stage, in and out of costume. More do when I’m in costume. Straight men too. Most of the people who’ve really come on to me have been straight, married men. One was in a club with his wife. She was drunk. He came over and started fondling my leg. I said, ‘Excuse me, but what you see is not necessarily what you’re going to get.’

He said, ‘Oh, yeah? So what? I think you’re a really wild looking broad,’ and he continued to put his hand up my dress so I slapped it, as any young lady would do, and I said, ‘I think you should stop and go back to your table.’ He said, ‘No. By the way, what are you doing when you’re finished?’

I said, ‘But, darling, I’m a man. Don’t you think you’d better go back to your wife?’

He said, ‘No. I want you. If you’ll leave the dress on, it’d be great.’

One man kept putting his hand up my dress. I almost broke his arm. Finally he put hand up and grabbed. I said ‘Now you’ve got it what are you going to do with it?’ He was just holding on while I was talking to him. He was so shocked he couldn’t let go. Finally I got his hand out of there and got rid of him.

Huw: And have these encounters led to serious love affairs?

Divine: I like to keep my private life private. If I have love affairs, who or what I jump into bed with is my own business. There’s no reason why a hundred and fifty thousand people should know about it.

Divine dominatrix!

Huw: After all the films you made, it was quite a change to break into the pop music business. How did that come about?

Divine: Sometimes it can be years between movies and stage shows. I was looking for something else to do as a way of making money. So Tom Eyen, the man who wrote ‘Women Behind Bars’ and ‘The Neon Woman’ – which are the two plays I acted in – wrote a song for me called ‘Born To Be Cheap’, which I call my autobiographical song. And so I sang that.

At first I would go to clubs to do Personal Appearances and it would last three hours. I’d change costumes every hour. I wasn’t doing anything except sitting down, doing autographs and having my picture taken with people. I felt like an expensive ‘B Girl’ because I wasn’t doing anything and people were giving me money for it.
(Note: ‘B-Girl’ or ‘bar girl’ – a dance hall hostess who tries to sell booze to the clientele)

I was a bit like Santa Claus – having all these people sit on my lap to have their pictures taken. But once I’d done that in a club there was no reason for them to hire me to come back. So Tom wrote me this song and I wrote some material about things that had happened to me mixed in with a bit of fantasising. Then I went to Bobby Orlando, who was the big disco record producer at that time. We cut a record called ‘Native Love’. Then we did ‘Shoot Your Shot’. Those records never did anything in America. Then we got a call from Holland saying ‘You must come over here. Native Love is just entering the Top Ten and Shoot Your Shot is also in the charts.’

I went over and then we got calls from Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland. The records had suddenly become a big success in all those places. Shoot Your Shot was even number one in Mexico for a while. I ended up doing a three month tour.

"They think I’m going to stand on my head in vomit"

Huw: Are you deliberately sexy when you perform?

Divine: Oh, yes. That’s the image of Divine. Sexy, but over-the-top sexy. But that’s not me in real life. A lot of people confuse me with the character. I mean, I don’t sit here thrusting my pelvis into your face while you’re trying to talk to me (Note: I can confirm that this is true - Huw). It’s just not me. I wasn’t brought up that way. And in my own conversation you’ll hardly ever hear me say a four letter word. But the character Divine will say anything! I was always taught that only very cheap people spoke like that. I was brought up in an upper middle-class family. If I said ‘Hell’ or ‘Damn’ I was slapped across the mouth.

Huw: When you perform on TV are the producers ever frightened of what you might do?

Divine: They think I’m going to stand on my head in vomit. But I wouldn’t do anything shocking because I’d like to be asked back.

Huw: Would Divine have the same appeal if she was thinner?

Divine: I don’t think so.

Huw: Are your dresses specially made?

Divine: Oh yes. They don’t sell them of the rack at Harvey Nichols. Most women that size wear navy blue or black kaftans. The character Divine was always very big but considers herself very sexy. And, to a lot of men, big women are extremely sexy. I think I can look quite glamorous as a matter of fact. I have one silver dress, all sequins, and I feel like a mirrored ball when I wear it.

But, for health reasons, I must lose some weight. I don’t want to drop dead on stage because I’d hate to deny any of my fans my presence for as long as I can. I ate my way up to 400 pounds (28.5 stone) and now I’m trying to get down to 220 to 250 pounds (16 stone), the same as I was in ‘Pink Flamingos’ I had a sexier figure in those costumes.

"I was shocked to hear bad language on British television"

Huw: Is there anything that shocks you?

Divine: I was shocked to hear bad language on British television. I don’t object to it, though if Mary Whitehouse had been watching she’d have fainted.

Huw: Have you ever been shocked by somebody else’s act?

Divine: Lena Horne. I was expecting to see this glamorous and beautiful lady. She came on stage and she started talking about how she sweats and she was rubbing her belly and her bosom. I thought, ‘What is this vulgar old woman doing?’ To me she was always on a pedestal. For her to bring herself down to that level – which would be nothing for my character to talk about – I couldn’t listen to her. I thought that was more vulgar than if someone had had sex on stage.

Huw: What did your family think about your career?

Divine: They didn’t respond at all at first. It didn’t go down very well at all. They’re the type of people that think you should only be in the newspaper when you’re born, when you get married and when you die. Showbiz was, to them, just vulgar and they didn’t approve. But as I became more popular they started collecting my press cuttings and I think they’re now quite proud of me. Other members of my family – aunts, uncles an so on – think I’m terrible, a pervert, a hermaphrodite. So I don’t see any of them.

Huw: You mean you’ve become the black sheep of the family?

Divine: For sure. My parents have become very open and sophisticated though.

Huw: Are you very self-confident in ordinary life?

Divine: I think so. I don’t think I always was. There was a point when I was very uptight about being fat and I would always wear a coat and stand in dark corners and I didn’t go out because people would call me names. I’ve tried to go on diets. I did get very thin – I weighed about 140 pounds. And then my popularity grew and I said, ‘Well, hey, wait a minute, I’m still the same person that I was and it didn’t make sense to me. I never had all these prejudices when I was young. My grandmother was a very large woman and I adored her. Everybody else did too. I couldn’t understand why my size should make any difference.

People used to make jokes. Sometimes I can laugh but sometimes I think ‘Now please, that really isn’t funny.’ And the people who make the jokes are always the people who should look in the mirror themselves.

The girl can't help it

Huw: Do you think you are very shocking?

Divine: Not really. The shocking things in the world are the politics, pollution and wars. The last thing that’s shocking is a man in a dress!

Huw: What’s the most revolting thing you’ve ever done in a film?

Divine: Eating doggie dirt in ‘Pink Flamingos’. Believe me, it wasn’t my idea of a good time! I’d never do it again. I spat it out just as soon as the camera was off me.

Huw: What would you like as your epitaph?

Divine: I certainly don’t want anything about dog shit! Please let me live it down before I die. Maybe it would be nice just to have “He made people laugh” written on my gravestone. Yes, I’d like to be remembered for that.

Footnote
The inscription on Divine’s gravestone actually reads:
Harris Glenn Milstead
“Divine”
October 19, 1945
March 7, 1988
Our Loving Son
The grave is in the Prospect Hill Park Cemetery, Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland, USA