Bowery (, ), commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood's boundaries are East 4th Street and the East Village to the north, Canal Street and Chinatown to the South, Allen Street and the Lower East Side to the east and Bowery Street and Little Italy to the west.

Bowery is an anglicisation of the Dutch ''bouwerij'', derived from an antiquated Dutch word for "farm." In the 17th century the road branched off Broadway north of Fort Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan to the homestead of Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland. As a street, the Bowery was known as Bowery Lane prior to 1807. Today it runs from Chatham Square in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north. After Cooper Square, the street runs north as Third Avenue and to the northwest as Fourth Avenue.

Major streets that intersect the Bowery include Canal Street, Delancey Street, Houston Street, and Bleecker Street. A New York City Subway station named Bowery on the BMT Nassau Street Line (J and Z services) is located at the Bowery's intersection with Delancey Street.

Colonial and federal period

The Bowery is the oldest thoroughfare on Manhattan Island, preceding European intervention as a Lenape footpath, which spanned roughly the entire length of the island, from north to south. When the Dutch settled Manhattan island, they named the path ''Bouwerij road'' — "bouwerij" being an old Dutch word for "farm" — because it connected farmlands and estates on the outskirts to the heart of the city in today's Wall Street/Battery Park area.

In 1654, the Bowery’s first residents settled in the area of Chatham Square; ten freed slaves and their wives set up cabins and a cattle farm.

Petrus Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam before the English took control, retired to his Bowery farm in 1667. After his death in 1672, he was buried in his private chapel. His mansion burned down in 1778 and his great-grandson sold the remaining chapel and graveyard, now the site of the Episcopal church of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.

In her ''Journal'' of 1704–1705, Sarah Kemble Knight describes the Bowery as a leisure destination for residents of New York City in December: :Their Diversions in the Winter is Riding Sleys about three or four Miles out of Town, where they have Houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, and some go to friends Houses who handsomely treat them. [...] I believe we mett 50 or 60 slays that day—they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they'le turn out of the path for none except a Loaden Cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, they'r Tables being as free to their Naybours as to themselves.

By 1766, when John Montresor made his detailed plan of New York, "Bowry Lane", which took a more north-tending track at the rope walk, was lined for the first few streets with buildings that formed a solid frontage, with market gardens behind them; when Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist for Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'', ''The Marriage of Figaro'', and ''Cosi Fan Tutte'', emigrated to New York City in 1806, he briefly ran one of the shops along the Bowery, a fruit and vegetable store. In 1766, straight lanes led away at right angles to gentlemen's seats, mostly well back from the dusty "Road to Albany and Boston", as it was labeled on Montresor's map; Nicholas Bayard's was planted as an avenue of trees. James Delancey's grand house, flanked by matching outbuildings, stood behind a forecourt facing Bowery Lane; behind it was his parterre garden, ending in an exedra, clearly delineated on the map. The Bull's Head Tavern was noted for George Washington having stopped there for refreshment before riding down to the waterfront to witness the departure of British troops in 1783. Leading to the Post Road, The Bowery rivalled Broadway as a thoroughfare; as late as 1869, when it had gained the "reputation of cheap trade, without being disreputable" it was still "the second principal street of the city".

When Lafayette Street was opened parallel to The Bowery in the 1820s, the Bowery Theatre was founded by rich families on the site of the Red Bull Tavern, which had been purchased by John Jacob Astor; it opened in 1826. Across the way the Bowery Amphitheatre was erected in 1833, specializing in the more populist entertainments of equestrian shows and circuses. From stylish beginnings, the tone of the Bowery Theatre's offerings matched the slide in the social scale of the Bowery itself.

Slide from respectability

By the time of the Civil War, the mansions and shops had given way to low-brow concert halls, brothels, German beer gardens, pawn shops, and flophouses, like the one at No.15 in which the composer Stephen Foster lived in 1864 Theodore Dreiser closed his tragedy ''Sister Carrie'', set in the 1890s, with the suicide of one of the main characters in a Bowery flophouse. The Bowery, which marked the eastern border of the slum of "Five Points", had also become the turf of one of America's earliest street gangs, the nativist Bowery Boys. In the spirit of social reform, the first YMCA opened on the Bowery in 1873; another notable religious and social welfare institution established during this period was Bowery Mission, which was founded in 1880 at 36 Bowery by Reverend Albert Gleason Ruliffson. The mission has relocated along the Bowery throughout its lifetime. From 1909 to the present, the mission has remained at 227-229 Bowery.

By the 1890s, The Bowery was a center for prostitution that rivaled the Tenderloin, and for bars catering to gay men and some lesbians at various social levels, from The Slide at 157 Bleecker Street, New York's "worst dive", to Columbia Hall at 5th Street, called Paresis Hall. One investigator in 1899 found six saloons and dance halls, the resorts of "degenerates" and "fairies", on The Bowery alone. Gay subculture was more highly visible there and more integrated into working-class male culture than it was to become in the following generations, according to the historian of gay New York, George Chauncey. From 1878 to 1955 the Third Avenue El ran above the Bowery, further darkening its streets, populated largely by men. "It is filled with employment agencies, cheap clothing and knickknack stores, cheap moving-picture shows, cheap lodging-houses, cheap eating-houses, cheap saloons", writers in ''The Century Magazine'' found it in 1919. "Here, too, by the thousands come sailors on shore leave,—notice the 'studios' of the tattoo artists,—and here most in evidence are the 'down and outs'". Prohibition eliminated The Bowery's numerous saloons: One Mile House, the "stately old tavern... replaced by a cheap saloon" at the southeast corner of Rivington Street, named for the battered milestone across the way, where the politicians of the East Side had made informal arrangements for the city's governance, was renovated for retail space in 1921, "obliterating all vestiges of its former appearance", ''The New York Times'' reported. Restaurant supply stores were among the businesses that had come to the Bowery, and many remain to this day.

Pressure for a new name after World War I came to naught and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was as an impoverished area. In the 1940s through the 1970s, the Bowery was New York City's "Skid Row," notable for "Bowery Bums" (disaffiliated alcoholics and homeless persons).

Revival

However, since the 1990s the entire Lower East Side has been reviving. As of July 2005, gentrification is contributing to ongoing change along the Bowery. In particular, the number of high-rise condominiums is growing. In 2006, AvalonBay Communities opened its first luxury apartment complex on the Bowery, which included an upscale Whole Foods Market. Avalon Bowery Place was quickly followed with the development of Avalon Bowery Place II in 2007. That same year, the SANAA-designed facility for the New Museum of Contemporary Art opened at the corner of Prince Street.

The new development has not come without a social cost. Michael Dominic's documentary ''Sunshine Hotel'' followed the lives of residents of one of the few remaining flophouses.

The Bowery from Houston to Delancey Streets serves as New York's principal market for restaurant equipment, and from Delancey to Grand for lamps.

Notable establishments

Bank buildings

The Bowery Savings Bank was chartered in May 1834, when the Bowery was an upscale residential street, and grew with the rising prosperity of the city. Its 1893 headquarters building remains a Bowery landmark, as does the 1920s domed Citizens Savings Bank.

Amato Opera

This company, which was founded in 1948 by Tony Amato and his wife, Sally, found a permanent home at 319 Bowery next to the former CBGB, and it afforded many young singers the opportunity to hone their craft in full-length productions with a cut-down orchestration. The curtain fell on this well-established opera forum in NYC on May 31, 2009, when Tony Amato retired.

CBGB

CBGB, a club initially opened to play country, bluegrass & blues (as the name CBGB stands for), began to book Television, Patti Smith, and the Ramones as house bands in the mid-1970s. This spawned a full-blown scene of new bands (Talking Heads, Blondie, edgy R&B-influenced; Mink DeVille, rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, and others) performing mostly original material in a mostly raw and often loud and fast attack. The label of punk rock was applied to the scene even if not all the bands that made their early reputations at the club were punk rockers, strictly speaking, but CBGB became known as the American cradle of punk rock. CBGB closed on October 31, 2006, after a long battle by club owner Hilly Kristal to extend its lease.

Bowery Ballroom

The Bowery Ballroom is a music venue. The structure, at 6 Delancey Street, was built just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it became a high-end retail store. The neighborhood subsequently went into decline again, and so did the caliber of businesses occupying the space. In 1997 it was converted into a music venue.

Right in front of the venue's entrance is the Bowery Station ( trains) of the New York City Subway.

The club serves as the namesake of at least one recording: Joan Baez's ''Bowery Songs'' album, recorded live at a concert at the Bowery Ballroom in November 2004.

Bowery Poetry Club

thumb|Bowery Poetry ClubThe Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space. Located at Bowery and Bleecker Street in Lower Manhattan, the BPC provides a home base for established and upcoming artists. It was founded by Bob Holman, owner of the building and former Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Slam MC (1988–1996). The BPC features regular shows by Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman, Taylor Mead, along with open mic, gay poets, a weekly poetry slam, and an Emily Dickinson Marathon, amongst other events.

Famous residents

Among other famous residents, Quentin Crisp lived on Second Avenue, near the Bowery, for the last two decades of his life. Béla Bartók lived in 350 Bowery at the corner of Great Jones Street during the 1940s.

The writer William S. Burroughs kept an apartment at the former YMCA building at 222 Bowery, known as the Bunker, from 1974 until his death in 1997. Mark Rothko, the Abstract Expressionist painter, had a studio on the Bowery.

The artist Cy Twombly lived on the 3rd floor of 356 Bowery during the 1960s.

The founder of the Hare Krishna Movement, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada lived in the Bowery when the movement began in America in 1966.

Punk singer Joey Ramone resided in the area, and in 2003 a part of Second Street at the intersection Bowery and Bleecker Street was renamed ''Joey Ramone Place''.

In popular culture

Literature

The Bowery is the setting for Stephen Crane's first novel, ''Maggie: A Girl of the Streets'' (published in 1893), about a poor family living in the neighborhood

New York School poet Ted Berrigan mentions the Bowery several times in his seminal work "The Sonnets".

The Wild Cards series of books sets the Bowery as Jokertown, the place where the malformed go to live after the Wild Card Virus is released over New York.

Film, stage and TV

''On the Bowery'', an 1894 play starring Steve Brodie, supposed Brooklyn Bridge jumper and Bowery saloonkeeper.

''The Bowery'', a 1933 film about Brodie.

A popular B-movie series made between 1946-1958 featured "The Bowery Boys."

''On the Bowery'', Lionel Rogosin's 1956 film, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

In the 2002 film ''Gangs of New York'', the Bowery is a mentioned territory of the Bowery Boys, a street gang of the late 19th century during the New York Draft Riots.

Music

The 1891 musical comedy ''A Trip to Chinatown'' featured ''The Bowery'', a song that became highly popular in that era.

Over the years, the Bowery has been mentioned in the lyrics of a number of songs, including the Bob Dylan song "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", from the album ''Bringing It All Back Home'' (1965) -- "I walked by a Guernsey cow/Who directed me down/To the Bowery slums/Where people carried signs around/Saying, 'Ban the bums.'"

The street has also been mentioned in songs by Regina Spektor, Dire Straits, Saint Etienne the Vancouver Twee pop band cub, Sonic Youth, Two Gallants, Steve Earle,, Beastie Boys, Paul McDermott, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, The Clash, the Ramones, Jesse Malin and The Foetus All-Nude Revue, among others.

See also

Bowery Mission

Bowery Theatre

The Bowery (song)

References

;Sources

''Fodor's flashmaps New York'', 1991

''Fodor's See It New York City'', 2004, [ISBN 1-4000-1387-9]

''Valentine's Manual of Old New York'' / No. 7, Ed. Henry Collins Brown, Pub. Valentine's Manual Inc. 1922

;Notes

External links

Bowery documentary

East Village History Project Bowery research - in-depth, lot by lot research

New York Songlines: 4th Avenue

The Bowery, from the Little Italy Neighbors Association - stories, photos, etc.

The Bowery by Forgotten-NY - images, descriptions, and history

Bowery Storefronts - photographs of Bowery stores and buildings.

Lyrics of popular 1890s song, ''The Bowery''

Category:Neighborhoods in Manhattan Category:Streets in the Lower East Side of Manhattan

ca:Bowery de:Bowery es:Bowery (Manhattan) fr:Bowery ko:바우어리 id:Bowery it:Bowery ka:ბოვერი nl:Bowery (buurt) ja:バワリー pt:Bowery ru:Бауэри simple:Bowery sk:Bowery

name	Leigh Bowery
birth name	Leigh Bowery
birth date	March 26, 1961
birth place	Sunshine, Victoria, Australia
death date	December 31, 1994
death place	London, England, United Kingdom
occupation	performance artist, fashion designer, club promoter, actor and model
years active	1980–1994
spouse	Nicola Bateman (married 13 May 1994)
awards	}}

Leigh Bowery (26 March 1961 – 31 December 1994) was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer, based in London. Bowery is considered one of the more influential figures in the 1980s and 1990s London and New York art and fashion circles influencing a generation of artists and designers. His influence reached through the fashion, club and art worlds to impact, amongst others, Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Vivienne Westwood, Boy George, Antony and the Johnsons, John Galliano, the Scissor Sisters, David LaChapelle, Lady Bunny plus numerous Nu-Rave bands and nightclubs in London and New York which arguably perpetuated his avant garde ideas.

Early life

Leigh Bowery was born in 1961 in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, Victoria. He often compared his early life there to a cultural wasteland in which he did not fit well. He was a sensitive and multi-gifted child in "macho" surroundings and as a teenager discovered a whole new world by reading about the London new romantic scene from British fashion magazines such as ''i-D''. This inspired him to reinvent himself at the centre of the avant-garde art world in London. His family was conservative and he often reflected on his parents who were actively involved in the local Salvation Army. He was the older of two children, his sister Bronwyn being several years younger. He described his father as kind but macho and had a particularly close relationship with his mother from whom he inherited a love of dressmaking.

London

After attending Melbourne High School, and one year of a fashion course there, he abandoned Australia and moved to London for good in 1980, initially to make his career as a fashion designer. Although this was a financial failure, it did garner him a small cult following and media interest. Eventually he was making a name for himself by dramatic performances of dance, music, and extreme exhibitionism, while wearing bizarre and very original outfits of his own design.

Early career

He befriended two leading clubbers: Trojan (Guy Barnes), later a painter, and David Walls – later of the design team Gallagher Walls. Bowery moved in with them to a houseshare in Ladbroke Grove, and the two men became the first people in London to wear Bowery's creative designs. Collectively they were nicknamed the Three Kings. They were unemployed for several years and living on benefit, which was common in those days, and were eventually rehoused on the Commercial Road in the East End in a three-bedroom flat high on the 11th floor of a council tower block in one of the poorest and bleakest areas of London. All three would experiment with drugs (mainly downers), but within the year and after a huge fallout, David Walls moved out, leaving Bowery and Trojan to live together. At this time Bowery and Trojan briefly became lovers, but split soon after on Trojan's insistence.

At this time, Margaret Thatcher was in power and, although they were making a good living, times were hard for Bowery without a trust fund. The only escape for them was in the secret underworld of often polysexual or gay nightclubs.

Up until 1986 Bowery would describe himself as a fashion designer and club promoter. Although his early fashion career is often ignored, he had considerable artistic success and it included several collections in London Fashion week, shows at the ICA, The Camden Palace, New York, and Tokyo (see below for Fashion Collections and early Leigh Bowery models).

In January 1985 he started the now infamous polysexual Thursday disco club night "Taboo". Originally an underground venture, it quickly became London's ''Studio 54'', only much wilder, extremely more fashionable, and without the masses of celebrities – although these came flocking in later. For everyone stepping through the doors it was a truly unforgettable experience.

Over the coming years he was invited to host numerous club nights in New York, Tokyo, Rome, and elsewhere.

Contrary to popular belief, Bowery was not part of the New Romantic movement that was popular in Britain during the early 1980s. Though perhaps he is more properly placed within the context of early fashion clubs such as Cha Cha's at Heaven and the "Hard Times" movement, he was always at the centre of the pansexual set of young and fashionable Londoners.

From being a plump, studious, and often bullied child, Leigh grew up to often be uncomfortable in his skin, and used his frequently bizarre designs as an armour for his insecurities. As he got larger he used his costumes to exaggerate his size, and the effect was frequently overpowering and unforgettable for those who encountered him, the more so because of his confrontational style. Bowery was not a wallflower.

In the early days Bowery felt comfortable with describing himself as "gay", although he had intense and passionate friendships occasionally of a sexual nature with women, often in the form of a sadomasochistic-type relationship, with Bowery firmly in the role of master puppeteer. With his bizarre looks Leigh often had difficulties attracting the men he was sexually attracted to, and he would often describe having sex in risky underground situations such as "cottaging", with unattractive individuals.

Unlike many of his club contemporaries Bowery was highly intelligent, widely read, and passionate about all forms of artistic expression. While he could be extremely witty and charming, he would often be a malicious fashion bully, intimidating friend and foe alike with his sharp tongue and accusations. These all reflected a sign of the times where "hardness" went hand in hand with the club scene.

Although Taboo was over by early 1987, Bowery was at the very heart of London's alternative fashion movement. But AIDS and hard drugs had influenced the scene, causing the death of his best friend and former lover Trojan, then of Taboo door whore and budding musician Marc Valtier. As a result Bowery experienced severe depression, which manifested itself in abusive unsafe sexual activities, often in cottaging and public cruising grounds. It was probably at this time he contracted HIV, although he kept this a closely guarded secret from most friends until days before his death. Being HIV-positive at this time was seen as a death sentence and there was much fear and discrimination to be faced – Bowery did not want to be described as an artist with AIDS, feeling it would overshadow any of his artistic achievements.

Soon after, he collaborated with the famous 1980s dancer Michael Clark, after having been first his costume-designer before eventually joining the company as a dancer. He also participated in multi-media events like ''I Am Kurious Oranj'' and the play ''Hey, Luciani'', with Mark E. Smith and the band, The Fall and on 15 July 1987 flew to Paris with the cult British band You You You to host their concert at Le Palace. In 1989, he hosted a special one-off Ball held in a massive disused West London warehouse starring Big Bang as part of their Arabic Circus Tour that featured Danielle Dax and Jayne County as supporting artists.

In 1988 he had a week-long show in Anthony d'Offay's prestigious Dering Street Gallery in London's West End, in which he lolled on a chaise longue behind a two-way mirror, primping and preening in a variety of outfits while visitors to the gallery looked on. The insouciance and audacity of this overt queer narcissism captivated gallery goers, critics and other artists. Bowery's exquisite appearance, silence and intense self-absorption were further accentuated by his own recordings of random and abrasive traffic noises which were played for the show's duration. The very intimate and private was flung in the face of the public complete with a "street life" sound track, hinting perhaps at something still darker. In some outfits he appears like some strange roadside creature, like a cat that finally got the cream (of art world attention); in others he is the "Satan's Son" that he would whisper, years later, on his deathbed.

For all his art world exposure and contacts it seems peculiar now that no one suggested to Bowery that he might adopt the very viable strategy of Gilbert and George – an earlier generation's living sculpture – and derive an income from selling images of himself rather than rely on occasional commissions, modeling work for Lucian Freud, or design consultancy for Rifat Ozbek. In the later years of his life the advantages of having an independent income started to become more obvious and Bowery looked to music, in the form of art rock/pop group Minty, to possibly provide this independent income stream. "I have a profile," he confided to former flatmate and fellow Australian Anne Holt, "but I have no money." Minty, he hoped, would provide a solution to this crux, although this wish eventually proved to be unfounded.

He later excited the fashion crowd with a performance at SMact, a short-lived SM Night at Bar Industria. Using Nazi costumes with a lesbian friend named Barbara, they turned concentration camp experimentation into SMart. The readers of ''Capital Gay'', the London weekly newspaper, turned on fellow performer Berkley, who had played the victim, and Barbara and Bowery weathered the storm.

In 1993 Bowery briefly formed the band Raw Sewage with leading clubbers Sheila Tequila and Stella Stein. They performed nude with their faces blacked up, wearing 18" platforms and merkins (pubic wigs), to the bemusement of audiences in London clubs and at the Love Ball in Amsterdam. But the collaboration ended in personality clashes. Bowery went on to appear as the "Madame Garbo" in "The Homosexual (or the difficulty of sexpressing oneself)" by Copi at Bagleys Warehouse in London's King's Cross.

Minty and Freud

In 1993 Bowery formed the band Minty with friend and former 1980s knitwear designer Richard Torry, Nicola Bateman and Matthew Glammore. Their single "Useless Man" "Boot licking, tit tweaking useless man..." which was remixed by The Grid, "Plastic Bag" Which was preserved by the movie I Woke Up Early The Day I Died along with their twisted onstage scatological performances caused ''The Sun'' to describe them as the "sickest band in the world", of which Bowery was very proud. The single became a minor chart hit in The Netherlands, although friends felt that he had lost his true artistic self to cheap and obvious shock horror tactics, none of which were new.

During 1994 Leigh performed the "Fete worse than death" in Hoxton Square. Bowery and Nicola Bateman (later, Nicola Bowery) presented their classic "Birth Show", a homage to John Waters' "Female Trouble", in which Bowery "gave birth" to Bateman, who was held under his costume and upside down using a specially-designed harness. Bowery would appear to enter the stage alone but toward the middle of the song birthed his partner who appeared as a very large baby covered in placenta. The performance was revised for Lady Bunny's Wigstock event and captured in ''Wigstock: The Movie''.

In November 1994 Minty began a two week show at London's Freedom Cafe, including audience member Alexander McQueen, but it was too much for Westminster City Council, who closed the show down after only one night. Minty was a financial loss and represented a low point in his colourful career. A spin-off band called Offest later formed including artist Donald Urquhart.

Bowery was the nude subject of several of Lucian Freud's later portraits, and travelled internationally to the opening events of his exhibitions. This modeling work provided him with a modest income of sorts for a period and he certainly relished Freud's connections to the British establishment.

Influences

Glimmers of the influences of film maker John Waters and artist Andy Warhol can be seen in his keen appreciation of bad taste, truly outlandish self presentation and a deep desire to shock and confuse. "I want to be the Andy Warhol of London" he once said. "Dressed-up," he was obviously "Modern Art on legs" (as Boy George commented), but in daytime attire the badly-fitting, obvious, disturbing wigs are a nod to Warhol's self-presentation strategies that has thus far seemed invisible to both critics and friends alike.

Other art historical parallels include an early 80s attempt at Vincent van Gogh type ear-cutting with friend Trojan (in an attempt to out do nightclub rivals), and as a result inflicted facial perforations that he was warned would not heal (reminiscent of Warhol's weeping wounds). Bowery made a full auto-couture appearance at the 1986 Warhol show ''Success is a job in New York'' at London's Serpentine Gallery with Nicola and an unknown assistant.

He became known to a wider audience by appearing in a Post-Modernist/Surrealist series of television and cinema and commercials for the Pepe jeans company, MTV London and other commissions such as stage work for rock band U2. He also appeared regularly in articles, vox pops and as cover star in London's i-D magazine. Bowery was also Art Director for the famous video for Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy".

As a character he featured in the stage musical ''Taboo'' that was based on the New Romantic movement. It also featured actors playing Marilyn, Boy George, Steve Strange and other stars of the early 1980s. The musical, which was written by Mark Davies with music composed partly by Boy George, was a London West End hit. American media star Rosie O'Donnell financed a much- altered version for Broadway, but this was not successful.

Johnny Rozsa's photographs of Bowery have been exhibited in several museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Kunsthalle in Vienna, and the Kunstverein in Hanover.

Personal life

Although Bowery always described himself as gay he married his longtime friend Nicola Bateman on 13 May 1994, in Tower Hamlets, London, 7 months before his death from AIDS-related illness at the (now closed and redeveloped) Middlesex Hospital, Westminster, London on New Year's Eve 1994, after a five-week battle that only a handful of friends were informed about.

Reportedly one death bed pronouncement "Tell them I've gone pig farming in Bolivia", illustrates the gallows humour and dark irony that can be traced in much of his work. Among his last requests was that his middle name be unknown.

Popular references

The character Vulva in the British TV comedy series Spaced is based on Leigh Bowery.

Boy George recorded a tribute song on his 1995 album, ''Cheapness and Beauty''. The track is called "Satan's Butterfly Ball" and in his ''Taboo'' musical, the Leigh Bowery character sings tracks like "''Ich Bin Kunst''" and "I'll Have You All".

Fashion collections and show information

Fashion collections:

"Hobo": New York Fashion Week. 1982.

"Pakis from Outer Space": Camden Palace for London Fashion Week. 1982/83.

"Mincing Queens": Institute of Contemporary Arts 'Performing Clothes' for London Fashion Week and The Hacienda Club, Manchester. 1984.

"Disease / Spastic": Riverside Studios and Earls Court for London Fashion Week. 1986.

Models: Models for these shows included old friends such as: Trojan (aka Gary Barnes, died 1987), David Walls, Peter Hammond (aka Space Princess, died 1993), Marc Vaultier (Mark Golding, died 1987), George Gallagher, James Payne, David LaChapelle, Jim McGuire, Robert McGuire, Sandra Cosijn, Dezi Campbell and Malcolm Duffy.

Bibliography

''Leigh Bowery Looks'', by Leigh Bowery, Fergus Greer, published by Thames & Hudson Ltd; New Ed edition (2005); ISBN 0-500-28566-7

''Leigh Bowery Looks'' by Leigh Bowery, Fergus Greer, published by: Violette Editions (2006);ISBN 1-900828-27-8

Discography

Minty's discography

Partial videography

"Generations of Love" (1990), Baillie Walsh for Boy George

"Teach" (1992), Charles Atlas

"A Smashing Night Out" (1994), Matthew Glamorre

"Death in Vegas" (1994), Mark Hasler

Performance at Fort Asperen (1994)

"Flour" (single screen version) (1995), Angus Cook

"U2: Popmart - Live from Mexico City" (1997), Dancer during 'Lemon Mix'

"Read Only Memory" (estratto) (1998), John Maybury

References

Posthumous New York exhibition prospectus

Leigh Bowery obituary by Alix Sharkey

(IMDB) ''The Legend of Leigh Bowery'', directed by Charles Atlas. 2002, USA/France, 88 mins duration

Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon by Sue Tilley. Published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1999. ISBN 0-340-69311-8

Leigh Bowery by Robert Violette, published by: Violette Editions (London, July 1998).

Clothing Gandhi's Nation. By Lisa Trivedi

Lucian Freud: Recent Drawings and Etchings

Audio

An extended extract (72 minutes) of a 1989 audio interview

Video

Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art movie

BBC ''Clothes Show'' excerpt with Leigh Bowery

Donut Party hosted by Michael Alig at Twin Donuts with many New York Club regulars including Isaac Mizrahi

Bowery footage by UK fashion photographer Nick Knight on SHOWstudio.com

“The Legend of Leigh Bowery – Full Movie”

External links

The Great Unknown Melburnian

Goodbye to the Boy from Sunshine

Online memorial to Leigh Bowery, Derek Jarman and others

The Legacy of Leigh Bowery by friend Donald Urquhart

Leigh Bowery: the Life and Times of an Icon

''Taboo'' in London

Category:1961 births Category:1994 deaths Category:AIDS-related deaths in England Category:Australian dancers Category:Australian fashion designers Category:Australian emigrants to the United Kingdom Category:Australian male models Category:Gay artists Category:LGBT fashion designers Category:Gay models Category:LGBT people from Australia Category:Australian performance artists Category:People educated at Melbourne High School (Victoria)

fr:Leigh Bowery

bgcolour	silver
name	Bobby Jordan
birth name	Robert Jordan
birth date	April 01, 1923
birth place	Harrison, New York, U.S.
death date	September 10, 1965
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
years active	1929–1961
spouse	Lee Jordan (1946-1957) (divorced)
occupation	Actor
notable role	One of the Dead End Kids }}

Robert "Bobby" Jordan (April 1, 1923 – September 10, 1965) was an American actor, born in Harrison, New York, most notable for being a member of the Dead End Kids, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys.

Biography

Early life and career

Bobby Jordan was a talented toddler and by the time he was six years old, he could sing, tap dance and play the saxophone. At the age of four, he was working in an early film version of A Christmas Carol.

His mother took him to talent shows in and around Harrison, New York. He also modeled for newspaper and magazine advertisements, and appeared in short films and radio programs. In the late 1920s, his family moved to the upper west side of Manhattan. In 1929, he was cast as Charles Hildebrand in the 1929 Broadway play, ''Street Scene''.

Dead End Kids and East Side Kids

Though he was the youngest, Jordan was the first of the boys who made up the Dead End Kids to work in films, with a role in a 1933 Universal short. In 1935, he became one of the original Dead End Kids by winning the role of Angel in Sydney Kingsley's riveting Broadway drama ''Dead End'', about life in the slums of the east side New York City. The play was performed at the Belasco Theatre, and ran for three years with over 600 performances. He appeared for the first season and the beginning of the second, but left in mid-November 1936. He returned in time to join the others in 1937 in Hollywood to make the movie version of the play, starring big names such as Humphrey Bogart, Joel McCrea, Sylvia Sidney and Claire Trevor.

Following the tumultuous making of ''Dead End'', Jordan found himself "released" from his contract at Goldwyn, and subsequently appeared at Warner Brothers with the rest of the Dead End Kids. After one year, Warners released most of them, but kept Leo Gorcey and Jordan as solo performers. Jordan appeared (as "Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom") in Warner's Damon Runyon comedy ''A Slight Case of Murder'' (1938), and at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in ''Young Tom Edison'' (1940).

In 1940, Jordan appeared in the film ''Military Academy'' and accepted an offer from producer Sam Katzman to star in a new tough-kid series called "The East Side Kids." Leo Gorcey soon joined him, then Huntz Hall, and the trio continued to lead the series through 1943, when Jordan entered the military as a foot soldier in the 97th Infantry Division. He was subsequently involved in an elevator accident that forced him to have surgery to remove his right kneecap.

Later career and personal life

When Jordan returned to films in 1945, he found that his former gang-mates Gorcey and Hall were getting the lion's share of both the content and the salary for the new Bowery Boys film series. Dissatisfied with his background status, he left the series after eight entries, and made only a few films thereafter. In subsequent years, he worked as a bartender, which, since he was an alcoholic, proved to be a bad choice.

Jordan worked to support his family as a door-to-door photograph salesman and as a roughneck for an oil driller.

Death

In 1957, he and his wife divorced and, on August 25, 1965, he entered the Veterans Hospital in Sawtelle, California for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver. He died a couple weeks later at the age of 42. Of his former Dead End Kid and East Side Kid co-star, Leo Gorcey once observed, "Bobby Jordan must not have had a guardian angel."

References

External links

Bobby Jordan Tribute Web Site

Category:1923 births Category:1965 deaths Category:American film actors Category:People from Harrison, New York Category:Deaths from cirrhosis Category:Disease-related deaths in California Category:People from the Greater Los Angeles Area

bgcolour	silver
name	Donald Haines
birth date	May 09, 1918
birth place	Sumner County, KansasU.S.
death date	February 22, 1943
death cause	Killed in action
occupation	Child actor
yearsactive	1929-1941
academyawards	}}

Donald Haines (9 May 1918 - 22 February 1943?) was an American child actor who had recurring appearances in the ''Our Gang'' short subjects series from 1929 to 1933.

''Our Gang''

Haines's tenure began during the early talkies up through the "Miss Crabtree episodes," when he would leave for feature films at Paramount only to return a few months later. His tenure continued through 1933.

Haines's first short was ''Shivering Shakespeare'', which featured the youngster giggling his way through his lines. On the next short ''The First Seven Years'', he was a main character, playing opposite Jackie Cooper. After that, he was a recurring character with a few small speaking roles until 1931. At that time he was offered a contract with Paramount, which would begin with a role in a feature called ''Skippy''. Jackie Cooper also was offered a role on that feature and a contract. Both Jackie and Donald are missing from the final scenes of the second to last short made in the 1930-31 season, ''Bargain Day'' to begin work at Paramount.

Cooper would remain at Paramount. Haines, on the other hand, would quickly leave Paramount to return to Hal Roach Studios just in time for the 1931-1932 season. At that point, several major characters left the series because children age and grow up. This left a depleted ''Our Gang'' of only three regulars and a few recurring characters. Haines would resume his role as a recurring character with an occasional speaking role for the next two seasons.

Later career

Haines left the ''Our Gang'' series in 1933, but continued working as an actor at Hal Roach studios on many shorts and features until 1941. This included the East Side Kids films, beginning with ''East Side Kids'', and ''Boys of the City'' as "Pee Wee", then ''That Gang of Mine'', ''Pride of the Bowery'', ''Flying Wild'', ''Bowery Blitzkrieg'' and ''Spooks Run Wild'' as "Skinny". Was Jerry, Jr. in "A Tale of Two Cities", 1935; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation.

World War II and death

Haines enlisted as an aviation cadet in the United States Army Air Forces on December 10, 1941, to serve in World War II. He was killed in action shortly after entering the service. At the time of his death, his rank was First Lieutenant. The exact date and place of his death remain unknown.

External links

Category:Our Gang Category:American child actors Category:1918 births Category:1943 deaths Category:American military personnel killed in World War II

de:Donald Haines

The East Side Kids were characters in a series of films released by Monogram Pictures from 1940 through 1945. Many of them were originally part of The Dead End Kids and The Little Tough Guys, and several of them later became members of The Bowery Boys.

History

When Samuel Goldwyn turned the play "Dead End" into a 1937 film, he recruited the original tough-talking kids from the play (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, and Bernard Punsly) to repeat their roles in the film. This led to the making of six other films starring The Dead End Kids. The most successful of these features were ''Angels with Dirty Faces'' (1938) with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, and ''They Made Me a Criminal'' (1939), starring John Garfield. Universal offered a competing series, under the Little Tough Guys brand name, featuring most of the same kids.

The East Side Kids

In 1940 producer Sam Katzman, noting the financial success of other tough-kid series, made the film ''East Side Kids'' using two of the 'Little Tough Guys', Hally Chester and Harris Berger. He added former Our Gang player Donald Haines, Frankie Burke, radio actor Sam Edwards, and Eddie Brian to round out the new team. Despite its misleading title, ''East Side Kids'' does not contain the actors generally associated with the East Side Kids (Gorcey, Hall, Jordan, et al.). However, it is often lumped in with the subsequent series of 21 films, making the total appear to be 22. The first ''true'' film in 'The East Side Kids' series is ''Boys of the City''.

Katzman hired Bobby Jordan to play leads in his series; he was soon joined by Leo Gorcey. Gorcey's brother David was added, as well as (Ernie) 'Sunshine' Sammy Morrison as "Scruno," the only African-American in the group and a former child actor from the very first cast of the Our Gang comedy team.

In the first few films, Dave O'Brien (familiar from low-budget westerns and serials, and as the accident-prone star of the Pete Smith comedies) played Jordan's older brother ''Knuckles Dolan,'' who always seemed to be getting roped into chaperoning the kids from adventure to adventure. O'Brien appeared in different roles as well—continuity between films was often ignored. As with the Little Tough Guys, the membership of the team changed from film to film, until Huntz Hall joined in 1941, when the lineup was somewhat stabilized. In total, 20 actors were members of the team at one time or another.

Always the outsider, Gabriel Dell drifted in and out of the series as a gang-member, a reporter, or a small-time hoodlum (as in ''Million Dollar Kid''). In ''Smart Alecks'' he's an ex-member who left the gang to pursue a life of crime. Stanley Clements also appeared in ''Smart Alecks'' as well as '''Neath Brooklyn Bridge'' and ''Ghosts on the Loose''. After Gorcey left the subsequent "Bowery Boys" series in 1956, Clements was chosen to replace him in the last seven films.

Monogram (which later became Allied Artists) was notorious for its "Poverty Row" productions, and the East Side films were no exception. With a minuscule budget of around $33,000 per feature and a tight shooting schedule of only 5-7 days, the series churned out three or four movies a year (an astonishing 21 films in less than six years). There was no time or money for subtlety, story development, or more than one or two takes per scene.

The stories always centered around the tough, pugnacious "Muggs McGinnis" (Gorcey) or the more innocent, clean-cut "Danny" (Bobby Jordan). Huntz Hall's "Glimpy" began as a minor character who grew in prominence as he was allowed to do more comedy bits over the course of the series. The loose format proved flexible enough to shift back and forth between urban drama (''That Gang of Mine''), murder mystery (''Boys of the City''), boxing melodrama (''Bowery Blitzkrieg''), and horror-comedy (''Spooks Run Wild''), with the kids confronting various stock villains: gangsters, smugglers, spies, and crooked gamblers, along the way. The East Side films were problem-teen melodramas until 1943, when director William Beaudine joined the series and emphasized the comedy content. He encouraged the actors to improvise freely, adding to the films' spontaneous charm.

The contemporaneous events of World War II had an impact on the series as well as the cast. In 1943 Béla Lugosi (who was in ''Spooks Run Wild'') returned as a Nazi saboteur in the incongruously-titled ''Ghosts on the Loose''; a German-Japanese spy ring was thwarted in the blatantly patriotic ''Let's Get Tough!'' from 1942 (with Gabriel Dell, of all people, as a Nazi spy). At the end of ''Kid Dynamite'' Muggs, Danny, and Glimpy enlist and show off their uniforms. In ''Follow The Leader'' (1944), Muggs and Glimpy appear in uniform as they are on leave from the Army. Offscreen, between 1942 and 1944, cast members Billy Benedict, Morrison, Jordan, Dell, and David Gorcey left the series after being drafted. A few days after receiving ''his'' induction notice, Leo Gorcey suffered a near-fatal motorcycle accident and spent almost a year in recovery. His injuries led to a 4-F classification, rendering him unfit for military service.

During Bobby Jordan's absence, his role in the series was taken by former child actor David Durand. Durand had been the star of Columbia's series of "Glove Slingers" campus comedies, and lent the same earnest sincerity to his East Side Kids appearances. (Jordan returned in 1944, in uniform, for a guest appearance in ''Bowery Champs''.)

Starting with ''Clancy Street Boys'' in 1943, Bernard Gorcey (Leo's father) did various bit parts, playing different characters in a total of seven films. In ''Million Dollar Kid'' he and Leo exchanged banter borrowed from an Abbott and Costello routine. He later became a fixture with The Bowery Boys.

Given the low budgets, simplistic stories, and crude, assembly-line production of the East Side Kids series, its enduring popularity relies on the cast's rambunctious energy, breezy banter (often ad-libbed and containing inside jokes), fast-paced action, and Leo Gorcey's trademark malapropisms ("This calls for drastic measurements").

The East Side Kids series was supplanted by The Bowery Boys in 1946.

Trivia

Gorcey married two of his East Side Kids co-stars: Kay Marvis (1939) and Amelita Ward (1949).

Actor/comedian Morey Amsterdam, best known as "Buddy Sorrell" on ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'', contributed to the scripts for ''Kid Dynamite'' and ''Bowery Champs''.

Filmography

		Title	!Year	Director	Screenplay	Story
		Robert F. Hill	William Lively	William Lively
2. ''Boys of the City''		Joseph H. Lewis	William Lively	William Lively
3. ''That Gang of Mine''		Joseph H. Lewis	William Lively	Alan Whitman
4. ''Pride of the Bowery''		Joseph H. Lewis	George H. Plympton William Lively (adaptation)	Steven Clensos
5. ''Flying Wild''			Al Martin	Al Martin
6. ''Bowery Blitzkrieg''		Wallace Fox	Sam Robins	Brendan Wood Donn Mullahy
7. ''Spooks Run Wild''		Phil Rosen	Carl Foreman Charles R. Marion	Carl Foreman Charles R. Marion
8. ''Mr. Wise Guy''		William Nigh	Sam RobinsHarvey Gates Jack Henley	Martin Mooney
9. ''Let's Get Tough!''		Wallace Fox	Harvey Gates	Harvey Gates
10. ''Smart Alecks''		Wallace Fox
11. '''Neath Brooklyn Bridge''		Wallace Fox	Harvey Gates	Harvey Gates
		Wallace Fox	Gerald SchnitzerMorey Amsterdam (dialogue)
13. ''Clancy Street Boys''		William Beaudine	Harvey Gates	Harvey Gates
14. ''Ghosts on the Loose''		William Beaudine	Kenneth Higgins	Kenneth Higgins
15. ''Mr. Muggs Steps Out''		William Beaudine	William Beaudine Beryl Sachs	William Beaudine Beryl Sachs
16. ''Million Dollar Kid''		Wallace Fox	Frank H. Young	Frank H. Young
		William Beaudine	William Beaudine Beryl Sachs	Ande Lamb
18. ''Block Busters''		Wallace Fox	Houston Branch	Houston Branch
19. ''Bowery Champs''		William Beaudine	Morey Amsterdam Earle Snell	Earle Snell
20. ''Docks of New York''		Wallace Fox	Harvey Gates	Harvey Gates
21. ''Mr. Muggs Rides Again''		Wallace Fox	Harvey Gates	Harvey Gates
22. ''Come Out Fighting''		William Beaudine	Earle Snell	Earle Snell

See also

Dead End Kids

Little Tough Guys

The Bowery Boys

External links

Category:American comedians Category:Film series Category:Articles about multiple people