Transcending gender roles
New biography on life of Craig Russell defies convention,
Toronto’s Craig Russell was an internationally renowned female impersonator and star of the classic 1977 movie “Outrageous!” His larger-than-life persona and marriage to his “#1 fan” Lori Russell Eadie became an obsession for writer Brian Bradley, a digital editor at the Star, after a chance conversation. A decade of research revealed their story, one that defied gender conventions even as gay liberation was just opening up. In this excerpt from “Outrageous Misfits,” a young Craig is just beginning to realize what he really wants to do with his life is be a female impersonator.
Craig worked as Mae West’s personal secretary for about six months in 1967, though he said it was longer. He would also have a little more to say about his purpose. He said he was her “secretary-companion-slave and all around general adorer.”
Put up to live in her beach house in Santa Monica, Craig was tasked with handling Mae’s phone calls, organizing and answering fan mail, helping with her writing, transcribing her dictations, and rebuffing media requests. While Mae was reclusive, she liked to appear as if she was still very much involved in Hollywood life. It fell to Craig to act as a buffer to the outside world and push the impression that Mae was just too busy to meet the barrage of requests for her time.
He quickly grew to be pretty savvy in the role. His efforts came to include working with agents, managers, and publishers. One of her biographers says Mae would eventually credit Craig with assuring she got royalties from the publishing of a previously unauthorized book on her.
Working for her was a dream come true for someone so infatuated.
Craig wasn’t punching a time card, though. He simply fell in step with her life. She consumed him. Morning, afternoon, and night, his days were all about Mae, and in that dynamic he was given a key to the door that led to her private world. Few got to go there so intimately.
Mae lived separate from her beach house in an apartment building called the Ravenswood in Hollywood. The decor of her unit was as splashy as she was. The colours of her living room were white, cream, beige, gold, and pale pink, with expansive arrangements of artificial flowers, polar bear rugs, coffee tables with mirrored tops backed in gold, and ornate lamps with bare-breasted women playing lutes.
The pièce de résistance was a nude statue of her likeness atop a white-and-gold piano. Her boudoir had mirrors everywhere, including on the ceiling. Why?
“I like to see how I’m doin’,” Mae said.
For Mae, involvement with her family was a huge demonstration of trust in Craig. She shared her own insecurities, including the fact that she had diabetes, something she painstakingly worked to hide from others; her strained relationship with Beverly; her jealousy of actress Jayne Mansfield when she romanced actor Mickey Hargitay; and her continued grief over the death of her mother, who died in 1930. Craig knew so much about Tillie West that he once considered writing his own book about her.
He equally shared with Mae. He told her of his upbringing, including his adoption; the uncertainty of his parentage; and the rejection by his father. He shared his sensitive and emotional feelings more than he had with anyone. Mae was a good listener and came to see the real Craig, a kid in need of love and confidence, a displaced boy who yearned to belong.
It was in that closeness that Craig admitted his interest in further exploring femininity. It started quite innocently. Mae had rooms full of furs, gowns, outfits, wigs, and accessories at the beach house, and in his off time he couldn’t help but explore and try a few things on, privately and alone. No one would have to know, he thought, but that couldn’t last.
“I was spellbound,” he would say later of that irresistible taste of transformation. “I wasn’t Craig Eadie anymore. I was Mae West. I could walk like her. I could talk like her, and I could look like her. It all seemed like a dream but it was really happening.”
Eventually, Craig confessed — his interest, not his actions — and told Mae that he would love to explore what it would be like to wear her things and impersonate her.
“Oh, you’re into that, are you,” Mae countered, amused and accepting.
She was all too happy to help. That very night she helped him put on a full-skirted, silk dress from one of her nightclub acts and fitted him with a wig that she later said he could keep. Feeling out his new transformation, he sang Mae’s song “Easy Rider” while crudely imitating her voice and gestures as she watched. Mae got a kick out of it.
“Ya know, you’re not a badlooking chick,” she said with a laugh, and they went on to enjoy many evenings with Craig dressing up and performing routines for her.
Craig felt a rush of love he hadn’t felt since he was a little boy who performed and impersonated others to impress his family. But this wasn’t about parental love or the novelty of playing dress-up. It also wasn’t about gender identity or gender expression; Craig wanted to emulate the women entertainers he adored. He wanted to imitate them, entertain like them, perform like them, and pay tribute to them.
Impressionism was the heart of what became his craft. The art of imitation — sound, voice, mannerism, and persona — is a tool in the comedy handbook. It is not hard to get laughs with parody, especially parody of public figures. In the changing social and political climate of the 1960s, impersonation was common on television and the stage in the U.S., Canada, and Britain.
One impressionist Craig admired was Rich Little, a Canadian who had made it big south of the border with his impressions of celebrities and politicians. He got his big break doing impressions on The Judy Garland Show, one of Craig’s favourite TV programs. Rich had a growing career in television on the variety- and talk-show circuit when Craig was living with Mae. Craig was also aware of three other men making names for themselves as female impressionists. Jim Bailey, Charles Pierce, and Lynne Carter had growing careers in the late 1960s. Impersonating women like Phyllis Diller, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and even Mae, they built careers in the gay-bar and nightclub circuits and proved what was possible for budding impressionist Craig.
Craig never lost the uncanny ability he’d had since childhood to impersonate. Performing came to him naturally. He took singing lessons in high school, but just as when he was in the church choir, he didn’t like that he would have to restrict himself.
“Males did not sing with vibrato, and I knew that would blow everything I wanted to do,” he said of his efforts in school. “I wanted to open it up, and they wanted me to confine it.”
Back in school he admitted to his friend Lis Rock that he also felt his style of singing or entertaining made him a target for homophobic bullying. Lis, an artist herself, encouraged him anyway. Craig didn’t find the confidence to truly step into serious performing until he was with Mae. Everything about that environment felt like a safe space to explore his interests and untapped talent. He knew she was the perfect teacher. Mae was willing to open her book of tricks and secrets with him. The first lesson: if he was going to be a performer, he would have to learn about transformation.