Harris Glenn Milstead (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988), better known by the stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Closely associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a conservative middle-class family, Milstead developed an early interest in drag while working as a women's hairdresser. By the mid-1960s, he had embraced the city's countercultural scene and befriended Waters, who gave him the name "Divine" and the tagline of "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost". Along with his friend David Lochary, Milstead joined Waters's acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, and adopted female roles for their experimental short films Roman Candles (1966), Eat Your Makeup (1968) and The Diane Linkletter Story (1970). Again in drag, he took a lead role in both of Waters's early full-length movies, Mondo Trasho (1969) and Multiple Maniacs (1970), the latter of which attracted press attention for the group. Milstead next starred in Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972), which was a hit on the U.S. midnight movie circuit, became a cult classic and established Milstead's fame in the American counterculture.
After starring as the lead role in Waters's next film, Female Trouble (1974), Divine moved on to theater, appearing in several avant-garde performances alongside San Francisco drag collective, The Cockettes. He followed this with a performance in Tom Eyen's play Women Behind Bars and its sequel, The Neon Woman. Continuing his cinematic work, he starred in two more of Waters's films, Polyester (1981) and Hairspray (1988), the latter of which represented his breakthrough into mainstream cinema and for which he was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. Independent of Waters, he also appeared in several other films, such as Lust in the Dust (1984) and Trouble in Mind (1985), seeking to diversify his repertoire by playing male roles. In 1982, Divine embarked on a career in the disco industry by producing a number of hi-NRG tracks, most of which were written by Bobby Orlando. He achieved international chart success with hits like "You Think You're a Man", "I'm So Beautiful" and "Walk Like a Man", all performed in drag.
Described by People magazine as the "Drag Queen of the Century", Divine has remained a cult figure, particularly within the LGBTQ community, and has provided the inspiration for fictional characters, artworks and songs. Various books and documentary films devoted to his life have also been produced, including Divine Trash (1998) and I Am Divine (2013).
Early life
Divine was born as Harris Glenn Milstead on October 19, 1945, at Women's Hospital in Baltimore. His father, Harris Bernard Milstead (May 1, 1917 – March 4, 1993), after whom he was named, was one of seven children born in Towson, Maryland, to a plumber who worked for the Baltimore City Water Department. Divine's mother, Frances Milstead (; April 12, 1920 – March 24, 2009), was one of 15 children born to an impoverished Serb immigrant couple who had grown up near Zagreb (in today's Croatia) before moving to the United States in 1891. When she was 16, she moved to Baltimore where she worked at a diner in Towson where she met Harris, a regular customer. After marrying in 1938, they were both hired at the Black & Decker factory in Towson. Due to muscular dystrophy, Harris was not required to join the U.S. armed forces in the Second World War; instead, he and Frances worked through the war years in what they considered "good jobs". Frances suffered two miscarriages in 1940 and 1943.
By the time of Divine's birth in 1945, the Milsteads were affluent and socially conservative Baptists. Describing his upbringing, Divine recollected: "I was an only child in, I guess, your upper middle-class American family. I was probably your American spoiled brat." His parents lavished almost anything that he wanted on him, including food, and he became overweight, a condition he lived with for the rest of his life. At his request, his parents and friends called him by his middle name, Glenn, to distinguish him from his father.
At age 12, Milstead and his parents moved to the Baltimore suburb of Lutherville, where he attended Towson High School, graduating in 1963. Bullied by other students because of his weight and effeminacy, he later reminisced that he "wasn't rough and tough" but instead "loved painting and [he] always loved flowers and things." At age 15, Milstead took a part-time job at a local florist's shop. Several years later, he went on a diet and slimmed down from , giving him new confidence. When he was age 17, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist, where he first realized his sexual attraction to men as well as women, something then taboo in conventional American society. He helped out at his parents' day care business, including dressing up as Santa Claus to entertain the children at Christmas time. In 1963, he began attending the Marinella Beauty School, where he learned hair styling and, after completing his studies, gained employment at a couple of local salons, specializing in the creation of beehives and other upswept styles. He eventually gave up the job and for a while was financially supported by his parents, who catered to his expensive taste in clothes and cars. They reluctantly paid the many bills he ran up throwing lavish parties where he dressed in drag as his favorite celebrity, actress Elizabeth Taylor.
Career
John Waters and first film roles: 1966–1968 Milstead developed a large coterie of friends, among them David Lochary, who became an actor and costar in several of Divine's later films. In the mid-1960s, Milstead befriended John Waters through their mutual friend Carol Wernig; Waters and Milstead were the same age and from the same neighborhood, and both embraced Baltimore's countercultural and underground elements. Along with friends like Waters and Lochary, Milstead began hanging out at a beatnik bar in downtown Baltimore named Martick's, where they associated with hippies and smoked marijuana, bonding into what Waters described as "a family of sorts." Waters gave his friends new nicknames, and it was he who first called Milstead "Divine". Waters later remarked that he had borrowed the name from a character in Jean Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), a controversial book about homosexuals living on the margins of Parisian society, which Waters – himself a homosexual – was reading at the time. Waters also introduced Divine as "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost," a description widely repeated in ensuing years.
Waters was an aspiring filmmaker, intent on making "the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history." Many of his friends, a group which came to be known as "the Dreamlanders" (and who included Divine, Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole), appeared in some of his low-budget productions, filmed on Sunday afternoons. Following the production of his first short film, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Waters began production of a second work, Roman Candles (1966). This film was influenced by the pop artist Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966), and consisted of three 8-millimeter movies played simultaneously side by side. Roman Candles was the first film to star Divine, in this instance in drag as a smoking nun. It featured the Dreamlanders modeling shoplifted clothes and performing various unrelated activities. Being both a short film and of an avant-garde nature, Roman Candles never received widespread distribution, instead holding its premiere at the annual Mt. Vernon Flower Mart in Baltimore, which had become popular with "elderly dames, young faggots and hustlers, and of course, a whole bunch of hippies." Waters went on to screen it at several local venues alongside Kenneth Anger's short film Eaux d'Artifice (1953).
Waters followed Roman Candles with a third short film, Eat Your Makeup (1968), in which Divine once more wore drag, this time to portray a flamboyant character who fantasizes about being Jackie Kennedy, during the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the film, he is a friend of a deranged governess who turns to kidnapping models and forcing them to eat their own makeup. Divine kept his involvement with Waters and these early underground films a secret from his conservative parents, believing that they would not understand them or the reason for his involvement in such controversial and bad-taste films; they would not find out about them for many years. Divine's parents had bought him his own beauty shop in Towson, hoping that the financial responsibility would help him to settle down in life and stop spending so extravagantly. While agreeing to work there, he refused to be involved in owning and managing the establishment, leaving that to his mother. Not long after, in the summer of 1968, he moved out of his parental home, renting his own apartment.
The Diane Linkletter Story, Mondo Trasho, and Multiple Maniacs: 1969–1970
Divine appeared in Waters's next short film, The Diane Linkletter Story (1969), which was initially intended to be a test for a new sound camera. A black comedy that carried on in Waters's tradition of making "bad taste" films to shock conventional American society, The Diane Linkletter Story was based upon the true story of Diane Linkletter, the daughter of media personality Art Linkletter, who had committed suicide earlier that year. Her death had led to a flurry of media interest and speculation, with various sources erroneously claiming that she had done so under the influence of the psychedelic LSD. Waters's dramatized version starred Divine in the leading role as the teenager who rebels against her conservative parents after they try to break up her relationship with hippie boyfriend Jim, before consuming a large quantity of LSD and committing suicide. Although screened at the first Baltimore Film Festival, the film was not publicly released at the time, largely for legal reasons.
Soon after the production of The Diane Linkletter Story, Waters began filming a full-length motion picture, Mondo Trasho, starring Divine as one of the main characters, an unnamed blonde woman who drives around town and runs over a hitchhiker. In one scene, an actor was required to walk along a street naked, which was a crime in the state of Maryland at the time, leading to the arrest of Waters and most of the actors associated with the film; Divine escaped, having speedily driven away from the police when they arrived to carry out the arrests. In their review of the film, the Los Angeles Free Press exclaimed that "The 300-pound (140 kg) sex-symbol Divine is undoubtedly some sort of discovery."
In 1970, Divine abandoned work as a hairdresser, opening up a vintage clothing store in Provincetown, Massachusetts using his parents' money. Opening in 1970 as "Divine Trash", the store sold items that Divine had purchased in thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales, although it had to move from its original location after he had failed to obtain a license from the local authorities. Realizing that this venture was not financially viable, Divine sold off his stock at very low prices. In the hope of raising some extra money, he sold the furniture of his rented, furnished apartment, leading the landlady to put out a warrant for his arrest. He evaded the local police by traveling to San Francisco, California, a city which had a large gay subculture that attracted Divine, who was then embracing his homosexuality.