Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A young drag queen goes from Audrey fan to Kate devotee.
Oct 6, 1999 | The telephone just rang. It was my friend Valerie, spurred on by some new observation she just had to share. It's nearly 2 in the morning, but does she care?
"Freak out, baby," she said, not even waiting for a hello. "Audrey Hepburn kicks Kate Hepburn's bony white ass. Her style soars! She's a Skyblazer! A Thunderbird! She Is My Queen!" And with those words she hung up.
She'd been watching "Funny Face" (1957), which I'd insisted she rent after learning she had never seen it. (Imagine that! A drag queen who had never seen "Funny Face"!) While I'm delighted by her enthusiasm for Audrey, her spiteful comment about Katharine, to whom I am eternally devoted, upsets me greatly. To take a jab at my most beloved heroine is to skewer my very heart.
Why did she do it? Revenge, probably. I think I touched a sore spot with her when I described the role Katharine Hepburn has played in my life. As I have explained to Valerie, it was when I discovered Katharine's films that I started to grow out of my Audrey phase. Katharine's fearless, quick-witted manner was a revelation to me. Her strength strengthened me and I became more self-reliant and courageous.
Katharine Hepburn made a man out of me.
Like Valerie, I too was once a young drag queen in love with Audrey Hepburn. I was drawn to her more than to any other figure in Hollywood. "Funny Face," where she plays a drab, boyish creature who's transformed into a supermodel, was the only film for me. The scene where she glides down the stairs before the Nike of Samothrace in a stunning red dress, chiffon "wings" trailing behind her, is masterful, uniting in just a matter of seconds 2,000 years of art, fashion and all the glory of feminine glamour. When I saw it, I knew my life would be forever changed, and it was.
Audrey played a pivotal role in my life. As a fashion student, trophy boy and sometime "escort" in San Francisco, I spent time between classes flitting through the department stores and chic boutiques of Union Square. Making it a point to peruse Tiffany's weekly, I thought of myself as a kind of male Holly Golightly. And I wasn't the only one who thought so. I acted like a princess and was treated like one. After about eight months of this, however, I was sick of acting coy to get what I wanted. I no longer wanted to be someone's prize, no matter how "golden." So I gave it up. I packed my Louis Vuitton bags, left my Nob Hill lover and set out on my own.
Audrey is a joy to look at, but watching Katharine's powerful physical presence on-screen is an invigorating experience. While Audrey pranced through Paris en pointe, a '50s Cinderella in Givenchy haute couture, Katharine Hepburn was an athlete who tramped around the globe like a fire horse in khakis and clogs. She was a force majeure, definite and swift in her movement. She never studied ballet, but she did move with a dancer's intelligence. She had, as one biographer remarked, an "oddity of gesture," performing the simplest of actions, such as picking up a glass, in unexpected, visually enticing, ways.
I've been talking with all sorts of people about Katharine and Audrey Hepburn these days. Writers. My mother. Even my masseur. I've been trying to understand why they are so popular. In recent months, two beautiful books celebrating the women and their individual styles have been published. In May it was "Audreystyle," by Pamela Clarke Keogh; it was followed this month by "Katharine Hepburn: A Stylish Life" by Joal Ryan. A movie about Audrey's life has just been made for ABC television. And in a Zogby/Reuter poll conducted this year, Americans selected Katharine as the greatest film actress of the century. Related through a distant ancestor, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell (the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots) Katharine and Audrey were kissing cousins in style who, in their own ways, helped create the look and feel of 20th century womanhood.
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