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Divine’s Lost Underground Baltimore Movie-“Vacancy”
Glenn Milstead, aged 12 years old, before his transformation into “Divine.” Photo from Dreamlandnews.com. My book, “Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters” tells only parts of the story of my movie making adventures in the 1970s and 80s. This story tells of an attempted underground movie made by two academic Baltimore filmmakers shortly after the release of “Pink Flamingos” in 1972, in which Divine played a supporting role. Though, tragically, never
Liz Renay: The Star Who Would Replace Divine
Divine would have been the logical star choice. He had been his star on at least three of his earliest black and white movies, but the history of his not doing Desperate Living is murky. Some say Divine was busy performing live on tour. Others say that he and Waters were on the outs over money, and Waters wanted to prove he could do a successful movie without Divine. In either case, Waters went on a star search to replace Divine. He found Liz Renay, who was a minor ce
A Rare Envelope from Divine to John Waters- 1980
The stationary design was so hip and cool. It’s not clear, but Divine holds a straight razor in his right hand as an icon of his “dangerousness.” I don’t remember, but the absent-minded doodles on the stamp and around John’s address, probably means I was on the phone with Bernard Jay questioning some of the receipts, and was constantly being put on hold. I eventually delivered the approved receipts to New Line Cinema”s Chelsea office. They no doubt groaned at having to
Divine Mauled by Press in Violent Scene Cut from Polyester
This cut scene from Polyester (1981) occurred during the riot on Francine Fishpaw’s (Divine) front lawn. Divine, already close to mental collapse from a severe drinking problem and mental cruelty inflicted by her husband and his mistress (Mink Stole), tries to escape the chaos by fleeing out the back door. George Stover, who played one of the reporters (seen on left above; the other was Steve Yeager, filmmaker of the Waters bio-doc Divine Trash), was devastated that th
Divine- The First Rapper c.1974 (Accidentally)
Charles Roggero (the film’s editor) offered one of the many songs he had produced when he was in Los Angeles, trying to break into the record business. He still had reels of high-budget, professionally written, arranged, and recorded music tracks stored in an LA studio, and agreed to give John a song for free, if John wrote the lyrics, and they would equally share any royalties. Divine was in LA at the time, and took a taxi one afternoon to the studio to overdub the vocals.
