Divine
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- Divine was born Harris Glenn Milstead
on October 19, 1945 in Towson, Maryland. His family moved to
nearby Lutherville-outside of Baltimore-when Harris was 12. Six
houses away was another little boy named John Waters. Milstead-who
worked briefly as a cosmetologist-began
doing drag in his teens, encouraged by Waters who in 1966 cast
him in his first movie. Waters and Milstead-now rechristened
Divine-made several films in Baltimore with a small cast of eccentric
performers, culminating in the legendary Pink Flamingos, in which
Divine eats . . .
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OK,
we all know what she eats. And I for one think she ought to have
at least one tribute to her that doesn't talk about it. She was
so much more than that. Of all the drag divas on this site, Divine
is the only one I've ever seen live in concert, and it was a
fantastic time. It was almost 20 years ago, but I remember how
her energy and humor wowed the audience. She may have played
the trashiest woman alive, but she was a class act all the way.
It is virtually impossible to find anyone in Hollywood who has
anything bad to say about her, and that's no small feat. And
if you'll surf the web a little, you'll see that she is the subject
of more fan sites and shrines than all the other performers here
put together.
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- Her days as a disco diva gave her international
status. Her records, many produced by the amazing Bobby Orlando,
were popular in the US, UK, Germany, Netherlands, France and
Japan. It is for this reason that, like Ray Bourbon, creating
an exhaustive discography for her is futile. Very nearly every
one of her recordings appeared in different countries at different
times with different catalog numbers and different covers. I've
divided them here into the singles and the LP's and CD's, but
bear in mind that this listing is by no means definitive.
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- Divine was beginning a new phase of her
career-a guest shot (as a man, no less) on Fox's Married With
Children when he died on the day of taping, March 7, 1988. He was 42.
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- Only the good die young.
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