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Camp David

CAMP DAVID SEPTEMBER 2007: MICHAEL GREER

By • Sep 23rd, 2007 • Pages: 1 2 3 4

Now before Michael made the aforementioned film he first appeared in what can only be described as a gay version of the blacksplotation films that were so popular at the time like BLACULA or COFFY… THE GAY DECEIVERS hit the drive-in circuit around 1969 when the Vietnam War had the youth market up in arms with the draft. So this film addressed the situation by suggesting that if the going gets really rough, forget a student deferment, just pretend to be gay and avoid the draft permanently. (Popular entertainment and gay sensibilities don’t seem to have progressed as far as one would have hoped when the big summer hit of 2007 is a comedy with Adam Sandler pretending to be gay to receive domestic partnership benefits.)

THE GAY DECEIVERS was at best a minor affair except for the performance of Michael Greer as Malcolm. Greer played the well-meaning landlord of a West Hollywood apartment complex that was so over the top it ventured on occasion into Barbara Cartland territory. Our faux gay couple sleep in a pink heart-shaped bed with even hotter pink silk sheets. Michael was more than aware of the stereotype he was asked to play, so he went about rewriting his dialogue and in the process making his character into a sympathetic, caring man who just happed to be a screaming queen.

Michael’s legacy for all the openly gay actors that followed in his wake would always be his tour de force on stage and screen as “Queenie”. I cannot think of another performance of its kind to match it and I am including William Hurt’s much praised Oscar winning turn in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN. Michael was focusing the real thing and audiences knew they were in the presence of a damaged soul, whereas with Hurt’s performance you were never really convinced for a moment that William Hurt was this character and, like most straight actors playing gay, he did enough bits of camp business with his acting to let the audience know he really was just acting.

That is the crucial difference between acting the truth and acting what you hope looks like the truth. In spite of Harvey Hart’s misjudged interpretation of John Herbert’s play, Michael Greer was that character; he could sense-memory the hell out of the role because he knew what being an outcast was all about, allowing him to reach deep down into his gut and channel that instinct right back into his acting.

At this point I think it is important to back up a bit and discuss the sexed-up and sensational Sal Mineo version of FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES that Mineo produced and directed at the Coronet Theater in Los Angles. This version featured the debut of the relatively unknown Don Johnson playing innocent young Smitty, with Mineo himself playing the role of the predatory Rocky. Michael was the definitive “Queenie” for anyone lucky enough to see his performance on stage. He would continue to play the role over four hundred times, bonding with both Sal Mineo and Don Johnson for life. (Other actors did play the role as well during the long run of the play on both coasts.) Michael even appeared in one of Johnson’s earliest films, THE MAGIC GARDEN OF STANLEY SWEETHEART, in a small but showy role.

Al Pacino was a major supporter of FORTUNE in its early stages and had at one time hoped to act in it as well. Sal staged the play with a daring, no-holds-barred approach involving nudity, with the sexual content front and center for the first time. The infamous rape scene where a naked Don Johnson is taken from behind by Mineo left audiences shocked and aroused in a way you weren’t supposed to be in 1969.

Sadly the man behind it all, John Herbert, did not stay true to his convictions, sending Sal a three-page letter denouncing his restaging of the play. This will always remain a mystery to me since he allowed MGM to utterly reinvent his play to make it more acceptable to a homophobic audience. Michael told me the director kept asking him to really play up “the funny drag queen element” in his performance. I mean what film with anal rape and suicide doesn’t need a screaming queen telling you it’s all in the game?

Michael Greer should have been catapulted into the big time with such exposure, plus the rave reviews for this performance. However aside from repeating his work on screen he remained in the shadows of the entertainment world

In today’s Show Business world all it takes is someone outing you during the run of a hit TV series to become openly gay and still work, but one must remember in Michael’s case he was never in the closet in the first place. He was the first to tell you “I was just a gay actor at the wrong moment in time.” It was far safer to behave like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter or Richard Chamberlain and play straight as long as the acting jobs came along.

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10 Responses »

  1. Bill on November 30th, 2008 at 3:10 am:

    Back in the day….somewhere between 1967 and 1968, I spent hour after hour at the Club 524 on Vallejo (below the Coit Tower). Michael’s comedy was so good and so funny that I memorized almost all of it. From Mona between Blue Boy and Whistler’s Mother, to Tallulah’s Toy Box, to Lady Bird, I roared every nite of his act. It was a wonderful time in my life. Michael will be missed. Also saw him in a couple movies. His one line when the woman stepped into his flower garden was classic” BITCH, stay out of my petunias. “She roared back “They’re marigolds you silly queen”. He said..I MAY NOT KNOW MY FLOWERS BUT I KNOW A BITCH WHEN I SEE ONE”. I use some of his lines from time to time.

  2. Joey Riso on April 29th, 2009 at 2:33 pm:

    Michael’s Mona Lisa, aka “Mona the Mouth”, evolved over time. Mona started out as a solo character surrounded by a large gilded frame. In the next incarnation, she was flanked by similar sized reproductions of Lawrence’s “Pinkie” and Gainsborough’s “The Blue Boy”. In the final version, he said Mona had moved to Marin, Calfornia, and Michael had replaced the gilded frame with a redwood hot tub.

    Once, while appearing at The Hayloft in Studio City, California, he asked that all the lights be turned out, and he launched into an impression of Billie Holiday singing “My Man” that was eerily accurate. He wanted the lights out, he said, because he thought it would be too distracting to hear the voice of a small black woman coming out of the body of a very tall white man.

    He spoke very proudly of his role in “The Gay Deceivers”. He said he played his character “like Eve Arden on acid”. He was particularly proud that his character was one of the first gay characters in mainstream cinema who was neither killed nor disgraced nor committed suicide, but instead had a hand in helping the protagonist. He also said that the costume department had turned the costume party scene into something very unflattering, and that he spent a good bit of time early that day bringing the costumes down to a more believable level.

  3. david del valle on April 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm:

    Joey

    Thanks so much for your addtions to the great Michael Greer!!! I nearly fell over at the mention of THE HAYLOFT….as though I would forget a place I had so much fun back in the day…..wish I had this information at hand while I was doing the column.

  4. Leslie Sahlen on May 26th, 2009 at 2:33 pm:

    Thank you for the wonderful article. I first met Michael at the CABARET in S.F. I was a 17 year old budding musician with a fake ID and it was a turning point in my life. He always sweetly endured my gushing silliness at his dressing room door after the many shows I made a point of attending. Charles Pierce, Waylon & Madame and that sweet amazingly talented young man who was tragically killed in Golden Gate park, the CABARET club was a treat always. Michael was the STAR, and rightly so. Let’s not forget Michael’s longtime pianist and musical director, the late Kenny Richardson. Kenny and I actually talked marriage at one point and we all crossed paths over the years in L.A., S.F. snd Dallas. I had the honor of working with Michael and Kenny on stage, one of the girl singers the Killer Tomatahs, at the Bla-Bla club in Studio City. The scratchy, but still hilarious, show tapes are available online as a tribute to Michael. When he passed, I searched to see if any of his show brilliance had been preserved. Nada!!! I felt it important to put it out there. Of course the title of the CD is “Don’t Mess With Mona”

  5. Jon-Jon Stirrat on July 4th, 2009 at 11:34 pm:

    David, Thank you for this wonderful article on Michael Greet, It brought back a lot of memories of the old days. I of course remember Michael from Fortune in Men’s Eyes but I also remember seeing him at a club called After Dark at Beverly and LaCienega in L.A. I remember the Mona bit between Blue Boy and Whistler’s Mother. It was one of the funniest routines I had ever seen. I would go every night he was there just because I could not remember laughing so hard in my life.

  6. RickyB on September 4th, 2009 at 11:34 pm:

    I’m saddened to know that Michael Greer is no longer with us, despite the fact that I hadn’t spoken to him since 1975. He left an indelible impression on me having gotten to know him back in the early 1970′s when he appeared at Reno Sweeney, in New York City. He would pull up to my apartment in a black stretch hearse, driven by his friend Bob Platz. (That was a statement in itself) and off we’d go. We would sometimes have dinner, and go off to the club where he would slay his audiences every night. He loved what he did, and it showed. People, both straight and gay, would often wait in line to get his autograph after the show which he did lovingly as long as they didn’t linger too long (well, SOME of them, he didn’t mind!!!). He was bold, he was talented, he knew his stuff and he was gay. I never gave much thought to his sexuality because I simply took it for granted as, I think, did he. The more I read, and the more I think about it, he was brave beyond comprehension for a performer in that time and place. I can’t imagine that his being openly gay was anything intentional, and I believe he was simply being Michael Greer. Not hiding, showing neither shame nor remorse for who he was or the fact that he was an openly gay man in a covert society. His name may not be a household word but for those of us who knew him and/or experienced one of his shows, he WILL be sorely missed. He fills a void in a time in the early life of a specific type of cabaret in NYC and around the country that can never be duplicated, and a very important time in my life in particular. May he rest in peace.

  7. Lewis Sanders on September 9th, 2009 at 9:36 pm:

    So.. .. I just finished watching the Gay Deceivers… I didnt even realize Michael was in it.. and then suddenly WHAM.. there is my old screaming queen buddy Mona right there on the screen.

    I had the fortune of becoming friends with Michael (and Mona) in the mid-80′s when he would come to Phoenix and perform at Taylors (back then, the best gay eatery and lounge in town). We became fast friends and remained in touch for many years. We lost contact back in the 90′s.. and I think of him often.

    After watching the movie, I decided to do a websearch and find the cantankerous old bastard.. only to find this website and the comments above that he is no longer with us… Well Bless Him and you know that whether he went UP or DOWN.. he and Mona are making them all laugh… because.. as Mona always said, “Just remember in life.. that no matter what you do in life.. no matter who you meet…. no matter where you go……. THERE YOU ARE!” I use that line to this day…

  8. gypsycurse on October 15th, 2009 at 5:26 pm:

    Speaking as one who knew Greer “after the day”, he became quite the opportunist, ultimately taking monetary advantage of an old friend, to whom he owed a great sum after the elderly, star struck man’s passing, then moving in to prey on the VERY elderly woman that the man had daycare for. He was not pleasant to anyone who saw through his little game. His behavior off screen and off stage more closely remembered his “Queenie” in the final cinema product than the fond remembrances posted here !!!

  9. Daryl-Atlanta on April 21st, 2011 at 11:09 pm:

    Ah the memories. Last saw him at a cabaret in Atlanta back in August, 1977. Several friends of mine still quote his “Holden-Holding” and “Oh marone” bits.

  10. Bob on August 21st, 2011 at 10:56 pm:

    I remember seeing Michael at a club on La Brea in Los Angeles back in the 1970′s.. Of course I adored his Mona. I guess many don’t remember that he was also a singer. His song about the woman who jumped from the Hollywood sign was a show stopper. Sadly, he was before his time. God, I wish that his act was available on YouTube!

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