Desperate Living is also notable in that it is Waters' first major film not to include Divine. This wasn't Waters' choice, as he already had a part ready for him. But Divine had grown in popularity and was in a play when the movie was being filmed, so he could not commit.
Desperate Living is my favorite film because it's just so inventive, and the characters are great. Mink Stole plays Peggy Gravel, a woman who has recently been released from a sanitarium, apparently a bit too early. She can't stand the sound of kids playing outside and basically spends the first few moments of the film yelling like a crazy person, which she is.
She yells at her husband and her maid (Jean Hill) mistakes her cries for cries of help. The maid kills Peggy's husband by sitting on him. (She's like 400 pounds.) Then the two women realize what they've done and try to get the hell out of town.
So they do, to the town of Mortville, a place that houses the dregs of society. It's run by Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey) a maniacal leader who basically treats everyone like shit--including her own daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Marian Vivian Pearce), whom she injects with rabies. But she gets what's coming to her in the end.
Desperate Living was the peak of Waters' film career, at least in my opinion, so there was nowhere to go but down. Polyester, his next, wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. (Though it did introduce the neat concept of odor cards.) In Polyester, Divine plays a housewife whose life is falling apart and Edith Massey is her sidekick.
The film is notable as it was the last time Waters worked with Edith Massey and another regular Cookie Mueller. Massey died of cancer in the mid-80s and Mueller was dying of AIDS when his next film was being made.
Hairspray, Waters' next movie, was undoubtedly his biggest success. It was a family film, yet it was as fun--okay, almost as fun--as the rest of his works. It was Divine's last role for Waters--he died of heart complications shortly after it premiered. But this is really Ricki Lake's movie. (Yeah, she once was an actress, believe it or not.) She plays Tracy Turnblad, a chubby girl determined to dance on a local American Bandstand-like show. The film is fun and wacky and full of great stars--Debbie Harry, Ric Ocasek, Jerry Stiller and even a cameo by Pia Zadora, surely a coup for Waters to get. (He'd been admiring her as an actress in bad films for years.)
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Eric Berlin picked this for an Editors' Pick of the Week. Go find out why here
2 - Natalie Davis
Yay! John is a Bawlmer treasure, hon, a treasure. And in addition to his cinematic art, he is one of the coolest people with whom I am privileged to be acquainted.
Thanks for big-upping him and for tipping the hat to the much-missed Divine and Miss Edie.
3 - marilyn
I wish John would read up on Maryann, the elephant at the Baltimore zoo and how the kids of Baltimore harassed the city fathers for an elephant. They had a club called the Jungle Club. There were over a hundred thousand kids in the club and the issue actually was responsible for causing a dark horse named Jackson to be elected Mayor of the city. This was in the 1920's and Jackson was still Mayor when Maryann died somewhere around 1944. The Pratt library has some articles on Maryann's death and her obituary giving her story. It's purely Baltimore and would make a hell of a Water's movie.