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Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt; – ) was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of her life and various media appearances. Before becoming well known, she was an artist's model, hence the title of Crisp's most famous work, The Naked Civil Servant. She afterwards became a gay icon due to her flamboyant personality, fashion sense, and wit. Her iconic status was occasionally controversial due to her remarks about subjects like the AIDS crisis, inviting censure from gay activists including human rights Peter Tatchell.
During her teen years, Crisp worked briefly as a rent boy. She then spent thirty years as a professional model for in art colleges. The interviews she gave about her unusual life attracted great curiosity, and she was soon sought after for her personal views on social manners and the cultivation of style.
Her solo stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America, and she also appeared in films and on television. Crisp defied convention by criticising both gay liberation and Diana, Princess of Wales.
By her own account, Crisp was "effeminate" from an early age, resulting in her being teased while at Kingswood House School in Epsom, Surrey, from which she won a scholarship to Denstone College, Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, in 1922. After leaving school in 1926, Crisp studied journalism at King's College London, but failed to graduate in 1928, going on to take art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
Around this time, Crisp began visiting the cafés of Soho, her favourite being The Black Cat in Old Compton Street, meeting young gay men and rent boys, and experimenting with make-up and transvestism. For six months, she worked as a prostitute; "Crisp: The naked civil servant", BBC News, November twenty-first, 1999 in a 1998 interview, she said she was looking for love, but found only degradation, a reflection she had previously expressed in the 1968 World in Action interview, which aired on television in 1971.
Crisp left home to move to the central London at the end of 1930, and after dwelling in a succession of flats, found a Bedsit room in Denbigh Street, Pimlico, where she "held court with London's brightest and roughest characters." Her 'outlandish' appearance—she wore bright make-up, dyed her long hair crimson, painted her fingernails and wore sandals to display her painted toe-nails—brought admiration and curiosity from some quarters, but generally attracted hostility and violence from strangers passing her in the streets.
Crisp left her job as an engineer's tracer in 1942 to become a model in in London and the Home Counties. Crisp wanted to call her book I Reign in Hell, a reference to John Milton's Paradise Lost ("Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven"), but her agent insisted on The Naked Civil Servant, an insistence that later gave her pause when she offered the manuscript to Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape on the same day that Desmond Morris delivered The Naked Ape. The Naked Civil Servant was published in 1968 to generally good reviews, although it initially only sold 3,500 copies. Crisp was then approached by the documentary film maker Denis Mitchell to be the subject of a 1968 short film in which she discussed her life and lifestyle. The documentary aired on British television in 1971.
After the success of the film, her autobiography was reprinted; Gay News commented that it should have been published posthumously (Crisp said that this was their polite way of telling her to drop dead). Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said he had met Crisp in 1974, and alleged that she was not sympathetic to the Gay Liberation movement of the time. Tatchell said Crisp quipped: "What do you want liberation from? What is there to be proud of? I don't believe in rights for homosexuals."
By now, Crisp was a theatre-filling humourist; in 1978, her one-man show sold out London's Duke of York's Theatre. She then took the show to New York. Her first stay in the Hotel Chelsea coincided with a fire, a robbery, and the death of Nancy Spungen. Crisp decided to move to New York permanently and, in 1981, found a small apartment at 46 East 3rd Street in Manhattan's East Village.
As she had done in London, Crisp allowed her telephone number to be listed in the telephone directory. She saw it as her duty to converse with anyone who called her, saying "If you don't have your name in the phone book, you're stuck with your friends. How will you ever enlarge your horizons?" Her openness to strangers extended to accepting dinner invitations from almost anyone. While she expected that the host would pay for dinner, Crisp did her best to "sing for her supper" by regaling her host with various stories and yarns, much as she did in her theatrical performances.
Crisp continued to perform her one-man show, published books on the importance of contemporary manners as a means of social inclusion (as opposed to etiquette, which she claimed is socially exclusive), and supported herself by accepting social invitations and writing film reviews and columns for UK and US magazines and newspapers. She said that provided one could exist on peanuts and champagne, one could quite easily live by going to every cocktail party, premiere and first night to which one was invited.
Crisp also acted on television and in films. She made her debut as a film actress in the Royal College of Art's low-budget production of Hamlet (1976). Crisp played Polonius in the 65-minute adaptation of Shakespeare's play, alongside Helen Mirren, who played both Ophelia and Gertrude. She appeared in the 1985 film The Bride, which brought her into contact with Sting, who played the lead role of Baron Frankenstein, and who in 1987 wrote the song "Englishman in New York" for and about Crisp. Crisp also appeared on the television show The Equalizer in the 1987 episode "First Light", and as the narrator of director Richard Kwietniowski's short film Ballad of Reading Gaol (1988), based on the poem by Oscar Wilde. Four years later, she was cast in a lead role, and got top billing, in the low-budget independent film , playing the door-man of a flea-bag hotel in a run-down neighbourhood, quite like the one she lived in. Director Thomas Massengale reportedly said that Crisp was a delight to work with.
The 1990s was her most prolific decade as an actress, as more and more directors offered her roles. In 1992 she was persuaded by Sally Potter to play Elizabeth I in the film Orlando. Although she found the role taxing, she won acclaim for a dignified and touching performance. Crisp next had an uncredited cameo in the 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia. She accepted some other small bit parts and cameos, such as a pageant judge in 1995's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Crisp's last role was in an independent film, American Mod (1999), while her last full-feature film was HomoHeights (also released as Happy Heights, 1996). She was chosen by Channel 4 to deliver the first Alternative Christmas Speech, a counterpoint to the Queen's Christmas speech, in 1993.
Crisp was a stern critic of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her attempts to gain public sympathy following her divorce from Prince Charles. She stated: "I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana, so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die." Following her death in 1997, she commented that it was perhaps her "fast and shallow" lifestyle that led to her demise: "She could have been Queen of England – and she was swanning about Paris with Arabs. What disgraceful behaviour! Going about saying she wanted to be the queen of hearts. The vulgarity of it is so overpowering." Atlanta Southern Voice, 1 July 1999
In 1995, she was among the many people interviewed for The Celluloid Closet, a historical documentary addressing how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality. In her third volume of memoirs, Resident Alien, published in the same year, Crisp stated that she was close to the end of her life, though she continued to make public appearances, and in June of that year she was one of the guest entertainers at the second Pride Scotland festival in Glasgow.
In 1997, Crisp was crowned king of the Beaux-Arts Ball run by the Beaux Arts Society. She presided alongside Queen Audrey Kargere, Prince George Bettinger and Princess Annette Hunt.
In December 1998, she celebrated her ninetieth birthday, performing the opening night of her one-man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, at The Intar Theatre on Forty-Second Street in New York City (produced by John Glines of The Glines organisation).
At the age of 90, Crisp said in her book The Last Word that she had come to the conclusion that she was transgender.
ISBN 978-0692968482
She bequeathed her rights in three books to her respective collaborators: Phillip Ward for Crisp's final book The Last Word and the book And One More Thing (formerly titled Dusty Answers); Guy Kettelhack for The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp and John Hofsess for Manners from Heaven. From her remaining literary estate (including The Naked Civil Servant), she bequeathed all future UK-only income (but not the , which are managed by Ward, and belong to Ward, literary agent Stedman Mays, and writer Mary Tahan) to the two men she considered to have had the greatest influence on her career: her long-time agent Richard Gollner, and her first agent Donald Carroll.
On 21 November 2017, MB Books published The Last Word: An Autobiography, written by Crisp's friend, Phillip Ward, on the basis of tape recordings made of Crisp's dictations, and edited by Ward and Watts. Whereas The Naked Civil Servant made Crisp famous, and How To Become A Virgin detailed that fame and her life in New York, The Last Word was written as a goodbye to the world, with Crisp knowing the end was near. In it she recounts several previously untold stories from her life, walks the reader through her journey from obscurity, reflects on her philosophy and gender identity.
In January 2019, MB Books published And One More Thing, a companion book to The Last Word: An Autobiography, again edited by Ward and Watts. This book contains material that the editors believed did not fit into The Last Word. In And One More Thing, Crisp primarily shares her views on other people, their lives and their opinions, from flapper girls to Monica Lewinsky, and from the British royal family to Walt Disney. Also included are her collected poems, the script for her Alternative Christmas message broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 in 1993, and the script of her one-man show An Evening With Quentin Crisp.
Sting says, "Well, it's partly about me and partly about Quentin. Again, I was looking for a metaphor. Quentin is a hero of mine, someone I know very well. Quentin is gay and she was gay at a time in history when it was dangerous to be so. She had people beating up on her on a daily basis, largely with the consent of the public." MR. STING ON ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK, THE QUENTIN CRISP ARCHIVES: Crisperanto.org. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
Crisp was the subject of a photographic portrait by Herb Ritts and was also chronicled in Andy Warhol's diaries.
In his 1995 autobiography Take It Like a Man, singer Boy George says he felt an affinity towards Crisp during his childhood, as they faced similar problems being gay and growing up in homophobic surroundings.
In 1991, a documentary about Crisp, Resident Alien, was released by Greycat Films. Crisp was then the subject of the play Resident Alien, by Tim Fountain, which starred her friend Bette Bourne. The play opened in 1999 at the Bush Theatre in London; in 2001, it transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop where it won two Obie Awards (for performance and design). In 2002, it won a Herald Angel (Best Actress) at the Edinburgh Festival; subsequent productions have been seen across the US and Australia.
The 1981 synthpop song No G.D.M by German Electropop band Gina X Performance is dedicated to Crisp. The song The Ballad of Jack Eric Williams (and Other Three-Named Composers) from William Finn's 2003 song-cycle Elegies refers to her.
In 2009 a television sequel to The Naked Civil Servant was broadcast. Entitled An Englishman in New York, the production documented Crisp's later years in Manhattan. Thirty-four years after his first award-winning performance as Crisp, John Hurt returned to play her again. Other co-stars included Denis O'Hare as Phillip Steele (an amalgam character based on Crisp's friends Phillip Ward and Tom Steele), Jonathan Tucker as artist Patrick Angus, Cynthia Nixon as Penny Arcade, and Swoosie Kurtz as Connie Clausen. The production was filmed in New York in August 2008 and completed in London in October 2008. The film was directed by British director Richard Laxton, written by Brian Fillis, produced by Amanda Jenks and made its premiere at the Berlinale (the Berlin International Film Festival) in early February 2009, before being shown on television later that year.
That same year, Crisp's great-nephew, academic and film-maker Adrian Goycoolea, premiered a short documentary, Uncle Denis?, at the 23rd London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. The film uses interviews with family and previously unseen home movie footage. In collaboration with Crisperanto (The Quentin Crisp Archives) curator Phillip Ward, Goycoolea also created an installation entitled 'Personal Effects' at the 2010 MIX NYC, New York City, which recreated Crisp's New York apartment using her personal effects and included home video footage.
In 2013, with curator Ward, the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan staged a three-month retrospective on Crisp, entitled Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Quentin Crisp. The retrospective consisted of free screenings of interviews, one man shows, documentaries and other recorded media.
In 2014 Mark Farrelly's solo performance Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope debuted at the Edinburgh Festival, before transferring to the St. James's Theatre in London and subsequently touring. It depicts Crisp at her Chelsea flat in the 1960s and performing her one-man show thirty years later.
In the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, Bill Murray explicitly based the dress style of his character (Martin Heiss) on Crisp.
In his 2020 autobiography Confess, Rob Halford of Judas Priest identifies Crisp as having been a hero of his. When the then closeted Halford had first seen The Naked Civil Servant in 1975, he had been impressed by the film and Crisp. Halford came out, in an MTV interview, on 4 February 1998. In 1999, Halford attended San Diego Pride with his partner, Thomas. While there, Halford met Crisp, and got a book signed by her ('To Rob, from Quentin'). According to Halford, he continues to treasure the signed book. Halford views himself as a rock version of Crisp, and refers to himself as the "stately homo of heavy metal".
Biography
Early life
Denis Charles Pratt was born at Wolverton, Egmond Road, Sutton, Surrey, on 25 December 1908, the fourth and youngest child of "feckless and frequently unemployed" solicitor Spencer Charles Pratt, and former governess Frances Marion, née Phillips. She changed her name to Quentin Crisp in her twenties after leaving home, and expressed a feminine appearance to a degree that shocked contemporary Londoners and provoked "gay-bashing" assaults.
Middle years
Crisp attempted to join the British army at the outbreak of the Second World War, but was rejected and declared exempt by the medical board on the grounds that she was "suffering from sexual perversion". In 1940, she moved into a first-floor flat at 129 Beaufort Street, Chelsea, a bed-sitting room that she occupied until she emigrated to the United States in 1981. She remained in London during The Blitz, stocked up on cosmetics, purchased five pounds of henna and later paraded through the streets during the black-out, picking up G.I.s. In the intervening years, she never attempted any housework, writing famously in her memoir The Naked Civil Servant: "After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."Crisp, Quentin. The Naked Civil Servant. Penguin Press, 1997, p. 102.
Fame
In 1975, the television version of The Naked Civil Servant was broadcast on British and US television, making actor John Hurt, and Crisp, into stars. This success launched Crisp in a new direction: that of performer and tutor. She devised a one-man show and began touring the country with it. The first half of the show was an entertaining monologue loosely based on her memoirs, while the second half was a question-and-answer session with Crisp picking the audience's written questions at random and answering them in an amusing manner.
Last years
Crisp remained fiercely independent and unpredictable into old age. She caused controversy and confusion in the gay community by (perhaps jokingly) calling AIDS "a fad", and homosexuality "a terrible disease". She was continually in demand from journalists requiring a sound-bite, and throughout the 1990s her commentary was sought on any number of topics.
Gender identity
In an interview with CBC in 1977, upon being queried about whether she desired to be a woman, Crisp stated: "Well, I suppose when I was a child, when I lived almost entirely in a dreamworld, I suppose I thought of myself as a woman. But, later on, you realise that you have to live in the real world, and that you are not a woman. You are only in some senses 'effeminate', or 'feminine', and you must learn to make this compromise – to live in a world where, statistically, you are a man, whatever you may think about yourself."
"Having labelled myself homosexual and having been labelled as such by the wider world, I have effectively lived a 'gay' life for most of my years. Consequently, I can relate to gay men because I have more or less been one for so long in spite of my actual fate being that of a woman trapped in a man's body. I refer to myself as homosexual without thinking because of how I have lived my life. If you are reading this and are gay, think of me as one of your own even though you now know the truth. If it's confusing for you, think how confusing it has been for me these past ninety years.
The only thing in my life I have wanted and didn't get was to be a woman. It will be my life's biggest regret. If the operation had been available and cheap when I was young, say when I was twenty-five or twenty-six, I would have jumped at the chance. My life would have been much simpler as a result. I would have told nobody. Instead, I would have gone to live in a distant town and run a knitting wool shop and no one would ever have known my secret. I would have joined the real world and it would have been wonderful."Crisp, Quentin and Ward, Phillip (2017). The Last Word: An Autobiography. MB Books LLC. pp. 15-16.
Death
Crisp died of a heart attack on 21 November 1999, at age 90, while staying at the home of a friend in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, on the eve of a nationwide revival of her one-man show. She was cremated with a minimum of ceremony as she had requested, and her ashes were flown back to her personal assistant and travel companion Phillip Ward in New York.
Posthumously published works
In the two years before her death (1997–1999), Crisp had been compiling a work that was initially to be titled The Dusty Answers with Phillip Ward. Crisp and Ward developed material for this book through many hours of recorded interviews, which was necessary because Crisp had lost the use of her left hand and she was unable to use a typewriter or computer. The resulting manuscript remained unpublished for eighteen years after Crisp's death, because Ward found it emotionally difficult to transcribe Crisp's words. A chance meeting with Laurence Watts, who interviewed Ward for Pink News, led them to co-edit Crisp's remaining work.
Influence and legacy
Sting dedicated his song "Englishman in New York" (1987) to Crisp, who had jokingly remarked "that he looked forward to receiving his naturalisation papers so that he could commit a crime and not be deported." In late 1986, Sting visited Crisp in her apartment and was told over dinner, and over the next three days, what life had been like for a homosexual man in the largely homophobic Great Britain of the 1920s to the 1960s. Sting was both shocked and fascinated and decided to write the song. It includes the lines:
Works
Filmography
Discography
See also
Notes
Biographies
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1908 Births, 1999 Deaths, 20th-century English Lgbtq People, 20th-century English Male Actors, 20th-century English Male Writers, Actors From The London Borough Of Sutton, Alumni Of King's College London, Alumni Of The Regent Street Polytechnic, English Socialites, English Artists' Models, English Calligraphers, English Designers, English Expatriate Male Actors In The United States, English Gay Actors, English Gay Writers, English Graphic Designers, English Lgbtq Broadcasters, English Lgbtq Models, English Male Film Actors, English Male Prostitutes, English Male Stage Actors, English Male Television Actors, English Models, English Transgender Actors, English Transgender Writers, Male Actors From Manhattan, Male Actors From Surrey, People Educated At Denstone College, People Educated At Kingswood House School, People From Sutton, London, People From The East Village, Manhattan, Transgender Memoirists, Transgender Models, Writers From Manhattan
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