NOTES ON RECENT
READING
Charles Busch’s LEADING
LADY: A MEMOIR OF A MOST UNUSUAL BOY (2023)
By Samuel L. Leiter
Julian Eltinge (1881-1941) and Charles Busch (1954- ) are the names of popular actors who bookended the 20th century as America’s leading drag actors on the legitimate stage, both of them admired for offering uncannily convincing performances in female roles, which they took seriously rather than as burlesques. Scholars still debate whether Eltinge—whose offstage persona is said to have been decidedly masculine—was gay or not, but there’s never been any doubt about Busch’s preferences. As would be expected, they’re on full display in his amiably amusing, beguilingly bawdy book, Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy (Dallas, TX: Smart Pop Books, 2023, 271 pp.).
Busch’s memoir, a page turner account of his upbringing and
prolific stage (mainly) and screen career, is crammed with entertaining, and sometimes
touching, anecdotes about his family, friends, and productions, much as you’d
expect from so clever, diverting, and unpretentious a personality (assuming, of
course, you’ve seen a sampling of his work). A girlish boy raised by a middle-class,
nonobservant, Jewish family in Hartsdale, a suburban town near New York City,
he lost his beloved mother when he was not yet eight, and had a strained
relationship with his father (with whom, however, he shared a fondness for vintage
Hollywood cinema).
He was fortunate to have the love and support of his Aunt
Lil, a wealthy Park Avenue matron. Much of Leading Lady is practically a
paean to this nurturing woman. In one of his surprising revelations Busch says
that, despite all the financial, psychological and emotional care she provided as he struggled
to find his way, she could never bring herself to visit any of his performances,
even though she was a theatre lover who often had taken him to Broadway shows.
Busch details the various paths he explored as he tried to discover
his personal key to opening the doors to a theatre career. He swiftly takes us
from his childhood through his teenage years at theatre camps and Manhattan’s
High School of Music and Art, to his tenure as a theatre major at Northwestern
University (where getting cast was impossible), to his off-campus stage and
life experiences in Chicago, and then on to New York’s Lower East Side’s
Off-Off Broadway scene and elsewhere. As he matured, he nourished his proclivity
for campy comedy, often showing the influence of his lodestar, Charles Ludlam, doyen
of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, to whom he pays reverent tribute. And, of
course, he dutifully notes the many close friends, lovers, teachers, costars, techies, producers, directors, and assorted enablers who helped along the way.
Busch’s many non-theatre-related side hustles before he became
a celebrity get plenty of page space, as well, most impressively his activity
as a quick-sketch artist, which included stints at the Renaissance Faire in
Tuxedo, New York. Crossing to the blue side, and definitely worthy of a true
confessions memoir, is his frank and funny account of working in the gay sex trade. That last job was in the pre-AIDS days, but he thanks his lucky stars for surviving the AIDS crisis, which he writes about with compassion, having lost many friends; surprisingly, the one he most endearingly memorializes is not a gay man, but an offbeat actress named Meghan Robinson.
One of Charles Busch's Off-Off efforts, a 45-minute, one-act called Vampire
Lesbians of Sodom, created for a low-rent Alphabet City group called
Theatre-in-Limbo, was so well liked by audiences and critics (especially D.J.R.
Bruckner of the Times), it earned a full Off-Broadway production in what
became a record-busting multi-year run; the first Busch play I ever saw, it was
a crucial gamechanger in his budding career.
From then on, there was little—apart from cardiac issues
encountered in his 40s—to stop Busch, who made a specialty of writing plays
(and screenplays) inspired by noirish Hollywood B-movies, with glamorous femme
fatales on whom he could base the fabulously costumed and bewigged screen
queens for which he became famous. But he didn’t appear in all his plays, as,
for example, his devilishly funny Broadway hit, The Tale of the Allergist’s
Wife, which starred Linda Lavin (later replaced by Valerie Harper), Michelle
Lee, Tony Roberts, and a delightfully perfect, little-known octogenarian named
Shirl Bernheim.
Busch captures the highs and lows of a rambunctious theatrical
career that also includes several films based on his stage plays, like Psycho
Beach Party and Die Mommy Die! He is very selective in choosing
which of his works to discuss, so don’t expect an exhaustive exhumation of a prolific
career that includes not only Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium, Times
Square Angel, The Lady in Question, and Red Scare on Sunset, but
Olive and the Bitter Herbs, The Tribute Artist, and even the relatively recent The
Confession of Lily Dare, which I raved about here.
Busch is self-deprecating enough to dig into his less
successful work, like his book for the musical Taboo!, starring Boy
George. While happy to explain how he conceived his shows and what he considers
their strong points, he’s not shy about confronting his shortcomings, both as a
writer and performer. He knows how to tell a story simply, without unnecessary
flourishes, and with good humor. Even when he has reason to, he never nastily trashes
those who disappointed him, his critiques always being more understanding than bitchy,
although his frustrations don’t go undetected.
Theatre fans will relish his descriptions of how some of Busch’s
most significant work was developed, with all the backstage angst (and first-night
chaos) that often goes into doing theatre. Starry names he places in the spotlight
for great backstage stories, some briefly, others at some length, include,
among others already named, Claudette Colbert, Joan Rivers, Raúl
Esparza, Milton Berle, Rosie O’Donnell, Patrick Swayze, Bea Arthur, Kim Novak, Angela
Lansbury, and Carole Channing, with cameos by the likes of Stephen
Sondheim and Greta Garbo. Admirers of comedienne Julie Halston, a hilarious
mainstay of many Busch extravaganzas, will cherish the stories he tells of her before
she became well known.
As his memoir declares, Charles Busch is, regardless of his
birth-assigned gender, a true leading lady. While his book may not have the
heft and detail found in such recent theatrical memoirs as Barbra Streisand’s
or Patrick Stewart’s, both to be discussed in coming Notes, it’ll be much
easier to read on the beach. It also contains a photo section on glossy paper,
many of the pictures in color. Given its fondness for namedropping, however, it’s
a crying shame that Leading Lady doesn’t have an index.
