One of my favorite things about Gay Pride Parades are all the sub-sets in
Gaydom: Bears, Twinks, Leather Daddies,
Dykes On Bikes, Gay Parents of Gifted Children, Gay Presbyterians, Gay AA, Gay AAA, Transgendered Employees of The Gas Company, The Polyamorous V-8 Club, Lesbian Librarians, Radical
Faires & The Sprites That Love Them, Butches & Fems, Leather Men That Like To Knit, Faggot Cheerleaders, Bisexual Small People, Senior Lesbian Couples That Raise Chickens, Gay Male Interior Designers With Jack
Russell Terriers, Silver Foxes, Gays Who Watch Fox News, Tweakers Who Twitter, Gay Mayors In A Heap O' Trouble, & Middle Aged Recovering Musical Comedy Queens.... all marching together in pride.
I was a berserk MUSICAL COMEDY QUEEN from the very beginning. When I was 10 years old, I was fascinated, entranced & obsessed with my parents' Original Cast Album of
My Fair Lady. It had a
Hirshfeld drawing of George Bernard Shaw as- God, the puppeteer in the clouds, with Julie Andrews & Rex Harrison as marionettes. To this day my image of God is George Bernard Shaw pulling the strings. I loved the music so much & would come home every day from school, put the album on the stereo & sing all the parts of this amazing musical. I was very effective as Alfred Doolittle, even at 10 years old (a character actor from the start). As a child, I would go to Woolworth's & scour the cut-out bin for obscure Original Cast Albums like
Goldilocks, Salad Days, Greenwillow, Cindy, Henry, Sweet Henry, & the cast albums of the Finnish & Japanese companies of
Hello, Dolly!.After a few decades, I seemed to loose interest in musicals, as my tastes moved to Rock n' Roll & Pop & I opted out of the entire
Miss Saigon, Sunset Boulevard, Le Miz, Cats era of musicals. I still loved performing in musicals, but I no longer spent an afternoon playing & singing along to Original Cast Albums.... until
Little Shop of Horrors in 1982
. This musical sent me over the edge again & I spent the summer of 1983 in our apartment on Capitol Hill in Seattle, singing
Suddenly, Seymour.Howard Ashman was director, lyricist & book writer for the 1980 Broadway musical,
Smile (music by Marvin
Hamlisch). Along with Alan
Menken,
Ashman was the co-recipient of two Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes & two Oscars. His second Academy Award in 1992 was awarded posthumously for Best Song & was accepted by his partner, Bill
Lauch.
The song writing team of lyricist
Howard Ashman & composer Alan
Menken earned their greatest fame scoring animated classics
The Little Mermaid and
Beauty and the Beast. Born in Baltimore on this day-
May 17th 1950, he studied at
Boston University before earning his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974. He then relocated to New York City, accepting a publishing job while moonlighting as a playwright.
Dreamstuff, his musical adaptation of Shakespeare's
The Tempest, was soon produced at the
WPA Theatre, where
Ashman served as artistic director from 1976 to 1982. For 1979's musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater he first teamed with Alan
Menken, also his collaborator on 1982's
Little Shop of Horrors. Based on the 1960 Roger
Corman B-movie cult classic,
Little Shop of Horrors was an unprecedented success; the highest-grossing production in off-Broadway history, it earned the New York Drama Critics Award & the Drama Desk Award. The 1986 film version also earned
Ashman &
Menken an Academy Award nomination for the newly added song
Mean Green Mother From Outer Space. With the Disney release of
The Little Mermaid, they scored an Oscar for
Under the Sea, & won again, two years later with the title song
Beauty and the Beast.
Beauty & The Beast remains the only animated film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Film. It was produced by, screenplay by & lyrics by
Howard Ashman. Sadly,
Ashman died of complications from AIDS on March 14, 1991; prior to his death, he &
Menken completed three songs for the 1992 Disney feature
Aladdin, receiving their final joint Academy Award
nomination for
A Friend Like Me.MY FAVORITE
ASHMAN LYRIC is
Somewhere That's Green:
Seymour's the greatest
But I'm dating a semi-sadist
So I've got a black eye
& my arm's in a cast.
Still, that Seymour's a cutie
Well, if not, he's got inner beauty & I dream of a place
Where we could be together at last
A matchbox of our own
A fence of real chain link,
A grill out on the patio
Disposal in the sink
A washer & a dryer & an ironing machine
In a tract house that we share
Somewhere that's green.
He rakes & trims the grass
He loves to mow & weed
I cook like Betty
Crocker & I look like Donna Reed
There's plastic on the furniture
To keep it neat & clean
In the Pine-Sol scented air
Somewhere that's green
Between our frozen dinner & our bedtime, nine-fifteen
We snuggle
watchin' Lucy
On our big, enormous twelve-inch screen
I'm his December Bride
He's Father, he Knows Best
Our kids watch Howdy
DoodyAs the sun sets in the west
A picture out of Better Homes & Gardens magazine...
Far from Skid Row
I dream we'll go
Somewhere that's green.
