Musicals

All posts in the Musicals category

Hopelessly Devoted To: Gwen Verdon

Published March 9, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

One-of-a-kind Broadway diva Gwen Verdon’s work was, primarily, centered around her graceful onstage antics. Thankfully for devoted fans everywhere, she occasionally engaged in performances of the celluloid variety as well.

Most importantly, genre-wise, she gave a sexy yet sorrowful performance in 1973’s Deadly Visitor, part of ABC’s very popular The Wide World of Mystery film series. Based on a story by Fitz James O’Brien, a 19th Century fantasy author from Ireland, this particular episode focused on a young writer named Jamie (Perry King) who discovers that his room at a boarding house is haunted by a mysterious presence.

As Mrs. Moffat, the landlady of the specter ridden establishment, Verdon smartly uses her considerable training to sensitively illustrate the monologues she delivers to King’s Jamie. Widowed and lonely, she seduces the lad with a heartfelt need. Of course, when the driven & curious Jamie manages to capture and begins to experiment on the invisible entity, her character’s hysteria slowly builds. Like many a frightened heroine before her, Verdon excels in these moments of increasingly nervous activity, as well.

Interestingly, this teleplay was produced by Jacqueline Babbin, an entertainment juggernaut who gained fame for her work on All My Children. She is joined, behind the scenes, by another powerful woman, Lela Swift, who directs. Swift, who made a name for herself as one of the top directors of the original version of Dark Shadows, surely knows the atmosphere needed to make this story successful and several of the scenes here are truly chilling. In particular, Swift should be commended for the visceral moments where the audience can actually see the ropes, which are wrapped around the titular invisible creature, move up and down as it breathes.

Of course, fans of musicals probably aren’t too surprised by Verdon’s success here. As Lola in 1958’s Damn Yankees, she is the slippery incarnation of lustful evil. There, as the devil’s favored assistant, she tries to lead a troubled baseball player to the dark side forever.

Continuing this trend in the ’80s, but at a slight angle, she played a number of attention-stealing, nearly evil mothers in episodes of such shows as Fame and Hotel.

Of course, even though the theatrical lights dimmed, deeply, with her death at the age of 75 in 2000, she lives on in her excellent work, happily viewable with the simplest (yet incredibly effective) google search.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Death Becomes…Us!

Published June 3, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

In her 2010 documentary I Am Nancy, actress Heather Langenkamp examined why the male monsters in horror, specifically Freddy Krueger, receive the lion’s share of fandom, including merchandising, while iconic heroines, such as the character she portrayed, are often given short shrift. As a gay horror fan, who definitely feels intense kinship with the sensitive yet thrifty survivors of these bloody epics, I have often felt the same sort of dejected curiosity. It’s definitely a straight ghoul’s world. Even when there is alternative abundance, it is often tempered. As part of the writing team of McFarland’s upcoming Queer Horror: A Film Guide, I excitedly found gay characters and lavender subtext throughout decades of film, but overwhelmingly, the LGBTQIA characters were often not at the forefront of the action.

There are victories, though. 1992’s diva-licious, camp-tastic Death Becomes Her, a favorite among queer horror fans and creators, has recently been adapted into a musical, with a Broadway opening slated for the fall of 2024. It’s pre-White Way try-out in Chicago, garnered enthusiastic reviews & fueled awareness that the book writer (Marco Pennette) and the lyricists (Julia Mattison & Noel Carey) are well attuned to what crowd has kept this thirty some year old cult property in the public consciousness. From the jokes to the musicalized rhymes, this is a show for every queen who worshipped at the fabulously catty altar laid out by Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in the Robert Zemekis film.

Anyone who feels like they missed out by not witnessing the glories bestowed on the theatrical world by such age-old Tony winning powerhouses as Ethel Merman, Mary Martin and Pearl Bailey will find much satisfaction here, as well. From the opening moments of the show, Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams electrifies, bringing a Diahann Carroll meets Eartha Kitt energy to the stage. As Viola Van Horne, a more prominent take on the film’s Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), she emerges from glittery cocoons and ancient sarcophagi, compelling viewers to follow her every magical move.  Megan Hilty, taking over as Streep’s self-indulgent Madeline Ashton, and Jennifer Simard, doing a crisp take on Hawn’s Helen Sharp, meanwhile, bring out all the delightful, irreverent, vengeful and awesomely (aka DIVA) fun aspects of the script. Their 11 o’ Clock duet, Alive Together, is a phenomenon – easily achieving and/or surpassing the heights reached by similar female-centric songs in shows like Wicked and Side Show.

So, yes, there may be 12 celluloid variations of Friday the 13th without a single fey gent in sight – but we do finally have this potion-perfect example of a musical to call our very own!

More information on the production and it’s upcoming run in New York City can be found at http://www.deathbecomesher.com.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Va-Va-Villainess: Monica Lewis

Published June 18, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

Sybil Meriden. If you guessed that might be the name of a cinematic troublemaker – then you’d be correct! As enacted by vivacious singer-actress Monica Lewis in the 1952 MGM musical Everything I Have is Yours, Sybil was definitely the type of woman that no self-aware wife would trust. Vixenish to the extreme, this slinky contender not only gladly eclipsed Marge Champion’s devoted Pamela professionally, but she decided she also wanted her husband, played by Marge’s real life spouse Grover, as well. Naturally, as in all feel good entertainment, her plans were vanquished by the final sequence. Lewis, herself, soon realized that Metro, to whom she was signed, wasn’t going to promote her adequately. Thus by 1953, much like Meriden, she took the proverbial A-Train, hightailing it back to the glamourous nightclubs of NYC.

Nicely, decades later, Lewis would regain her celluloid grounding by appearing in number of the disaster flicks being produced by the legendary Jennings Lang, her husband. The most popular of those appearances include Earthquake, where her resolute secretary is lowered from a destroyed building via her own pantyhose, and Airport ’79. In the latter, she essentially played herself, a successful jazz singer traveling with her famed accompanist, played by Good Times’ popular Jimmy Walker.

Remaining active until her death at the age of 93 in 2015, Lewis’ eclectic career is properly memorialized at https://truecompassdesigns.com/monica-lewis/.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Hopelessly Devoted to: Jeanne Crain

Published February 1, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

Jeanne Crain spent her primary Hollywood years portraying cinematic sweethearts. She was everyone’s faithful sister (Leave Her to Heaven) or the ingénue who bloomed when romance arrived, fully collared, at her door (The Model and the Marriage Broker). Nicely aging into roles in a series of mild noir films like Vicki and Dangerous Crossing, wherein she played elegant, frightened women facing deadly circumstances with trembling aplomb, she wound up her career, as many movie queens before her, in genre films.

She had to do little but look pretty in the midrange disaster epic Skyjacked. Her primary function there, in her final screen role, being to serve up devoted energy as a proud doctor’s spouse. Immediately before that less showy part, though, she proudly enacted a heavily utilized terror stereotype – the woman on the verge of emotional collapse. As the headliner of the cast of The Night God Screamed, playing a preacher’s wife stalked by a Manson-like cult, she fully committed to the disheveled, wide-eyed histrionics necessary for the undertaking.

Sure gold as the melodramatic heroine, a duo of guest shots on Burke’s Law in 1964 nicely confirmed her eclectic talents to the world. There she played against type as egocentric ladies of leisure and highly emotional murderesses. Despite these feats, she retired from the screen thirty years before her death. (She passed away in 2003 at the age of 76.) Thankfully, as night bleeds regularly into dusk, celluloid insomniacs can still discover her work on various media platforms, experiencing her never-ending magic as if anew.

Fun Fact:  Crain had the less-than enviable task of replacing Marilyn Monroe opposite Jane Russell in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, the cinematic quasi-sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Even Russell was rumored to have felt that her very quiet, dignified costar was miscast. Still, Crain, whose vocals were mainly handled by the oft utilized Anita Ellis, proves that she was in on the fun via her enjoyable take on I Want To Be Loved By You on the film’s soundtrack LP.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Va-Va-Villainess: Dolores Gray

Published June 13, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

The sultry Dolores Gray (1922-2002) had a unique career. She will probably go down in history as the only actress to win a Tony Award for a show that lasted only 6 performances (1954’s Carnival in Flanders). She also lit up the MGM Studios in the mid-fifties with her personal brand of glossy sophistication, but, ultimately, only had major roles in four films.

Thankfully, those celluloid adventures offered her the chance to often play game seductresses and extremely glamourous, catty rivals to her (generally more innocent and trustworthy) female co-stars.

She, perhaps, made her most significant performing mark as the vindictive, backstabbing Sylvia Fowler in 1956’S The Opposite Sex, a remake of Clare Booth Luce’s zing worthy The Women. This project found her going arched eyebrow to arched eyebrow (with some exuberant fisticuffs thrown in for good measure) with such cinematic notables as June Allyson, Ann Sheridan and Ann Miller.

Her most popular public offering, though, was perhaps 1957’s Designing Woman, directed by the diva loving Vincente Minnelli. Here, as theater starlet Lori Shannon, Gray provided competition for Lauren Bacall’s sensitive fashionista Marilla. While her character is more of a victim of circumstance here than in the previous effort, Gray still puts in a good show as a majorly distracting influence upon the whirlwind romance and marriage of Bacall’s fashion queen and Gregory Peck’s beleaguered sports writer, Mike Hagen.

While Gray was quoted, by certain sources, as wishing that she had a more extensive filmography, one cannot deny the quality of the cool charm that she provided in the credits that she did have.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Hopelessly Devoted To: James Mitchell

Published March 14, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan


Not only did the handsomely eclectic James Mitchell enact one of soap opera’s most hiss worthy villains for decades, but this lucky performer was also one of the cast of thousands, as that film’s tag line so boldly highlighted, to appear in the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera. 


Granted, in Phantom, the always attention stealing Mitchell appears for mere moments as a reporter logging the details of the catastrophes that have haunted a local music hall. Thankfully, his turn as the diabolical Palmer Cortlandt on All My Children was a bit more substantial. There, his character continually made life hell for his often revolving spouses and judiciously tender offspring – all storyline subtext that Mitchell fully embraced, resulting in 7 Emmy nominations for the dedicated actor. 

Mitchell, who seemingly never hid his devotion to costume designer Albert Wolksy, his romantic partner for 39 years, also held dear his substantial pedigree as a theatrical artist. Humbly describing himself as an actor with strong movement skills, he actually was one of the Broadway stage’s most powerfully athletic dancers. Those who saw him perform never forgot it and his close collaborators included such mavericks as Agnes DeMille, Jerome Robbins and Gower Champion.

With DeMille, he famously essayed Dream Curly in the ballet sequence of 1955’s Oklahoma, where one of his partners was the beefy, animated character actor Rod Steiger. 

Thankfully, just like in that particular scenario, Mitchell always seemed to come off as unique and individualistic. So, while his one Gothic credit might only encompass a couple of minutes of screen time, the breadth of his career definitely speaks to the multiple achievements that one of our queer brothers could make – justifiably earning him a place in every gay horror lover’s heart forever. 

Until the next time, SWEET love and PINK Grue, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Hopelessly Devoted to: Larry Kert

Published February 6, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

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The irreplaceably talented Larry Kert definitely knew the glaring disparities involved with a career in show business. Exploding into the pubic consciousness as Tony in the original Broadway production of West Side Story, he ultimately found that role would be the one that he was best known for despite decades of fine portrayals and other significant career highs.

Truly eclectic, he counterbalanced the glaring romanticism of his most famous work as the heavy drinking, casually seductive acrobat George in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, an enjoyable 1962 horror outing from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Written by terror wunderkind Robert Bloch and featuring a notorious shock ending, this outing has a lot in common with such carnival themed shockers as Circus of Horrors and Berserk.

Paired with the voluptuous Diana Dors, who also played a similar role in the previously mentioned Berserk, Kert radiates with a subtle cockiness and bravado here. But as he discovers that Dors’ schemes contain an inherently murderous malice, this musically toned pro shows his character’s true humanity and concern, creating a complex portrait of a tortured soul.

While winning further acclaim for his work in such theater projects as Cabaret and Company, replacing both male leads in their initial runs to great renown, Kert was also spoken about highly by colleagues who admired his courage in being openly gay in a period of time when that was considered unacceptable. Although, it has been noted that he was called out by some closeted gay creatives for being too carefree and obvious about his orientation, a double-edged sword that he seemingly rode with great finesse and steely resolve.

Sadly, this strong willed and courageous performer lost his life to AIDS at the age of 60 in 1991. His memory, though, lives on through all the proud gay horror fans who appreciate his small contribution to the art of fear and the even bigger ones he made to our visibility in the fields of creativity and beyond.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Hopelessly Devoted to: Patti LaBelle

Published January 1, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

I have been binging the CW’s Supergirl lately. Now beginning Season Four, I think I am proficient enough in the world of otherworldly heroine-based antics to propose that if there truly were a magnificent extraterrestrial creature living among us in real time – it would most definitely be the divine Patti LaBelle.

From her electric ‘70s space age costuming to her otherworldly soprano accented vocalizing, she can even take such iconic performer identified songs like Somewhere Over the Rainbow and make them totally her own.

It’s also been rumored that countless hardcore rock ‘n roll mommas have bowed down and backed ass first out of grungy nightclubs upon hearing Labelle’s raucous Love Symphony piped over the jukebox.

Indeed, I’d place my money on Patti being the only diva that could cancel out the shitstorm of 2020 with one energetic, elastic note, ringing in 2021 with resounding, enthusiastic might.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Peter Lorre

Published December 13, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

I have mad love for all those quirky character actors from the ‘30s and ‘40s. Often cast as ne’er do wells and sophisticated villains, their talents were often broader than they were given credit for.

For example, even though he was best known for his sinister turns in M, The Stranger on the Third Floor, The Beast with Five Fingers and The Raven, the unforgettable Peter Lorre truly shone as a comic impresario. In particular, he excelled in the glorious MGM musical Silk Stockings, a reworking of Greta Garbo’s famed comedy Ninotchka.

Here, Lorre gamely attacked clever lyrics by Cole Porter…

…and even engaged in a dance specialty or two!

Now, one has to wonder what Boris Karloff and Vincent Price might have added to the mix here.

Ponder that…and until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Va-Va-Villainess: Janis Paige

Published December 12, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

Whether it’s a glossy MGM musical like Silk Stockings or a detective show where she plays a bedraggled housing project alcoholic, the divine Janis Paige always gives her all. This eclectic nature has brought her to Broadway, where she was in the original cast of the beloved Pajama Game, variety shows, where she excelled in dozens of intricately choreographed production numbers, and eventually to the ecstatic criminal bounties of Charlie’s Angels.

Here as part of the ensemble of the third season Angels Ahoy episode, Paige vibrantly enacts Joan Sayers, a personable widow who catches the eye of David Doyle. Doyle, as series’ regular Bosley, is busy helping his beautiful cohorts investigate a shipboard murder, but he gladly takes a little time out for romance with this beautiful stranger.

Of course, warning signals go off for audience members when it is casually revealed that Sayers has buried four husbands. Indeed, a late-night costume party ultimately reveals that this friendly cruise goer is the most accomplished of black widow murderers. Ever the pro though, Paige believably connects with Doyle’s congenial creation here and the sorrow she feels upon the revelation of her dirty (and very dangerous) secret allows a bit of sympathy to register on her behalf.

Nicely, decades after this episode first aired, Paige is still allowing her charms to be appreciated by the world. At 98, she performs occasionally at cabarets across the country and has recently released her very highly praised memoir, Reading Between the Lines.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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