San Francisco Sentinel
December 14, 1989
The Doris Decade
By Doris Fish
The eighties started for me in 1979 when I met Miss X. With Tippi we formed the Sluts A-Go-Go, did a show and went to Australia for our South Pacific nightclub tour (really one nightclub and one dive). And it’s been downhill from there! Just kidding, but we were so young that it all seemed so much more exciting then, or is it that we just remember the highlights?
We were thrilled when the hideous seventies were over. It seems I spent the best part of the seventies looking for things from previous decades. For the first time in ten years, one could actually go into a shoe store and buy something that wasn’t a great big clunky thing.
Nineteen eighty was our first foray into legitimate theatre, though just on the very edge. We wrote a play with music called “Blonde Sin”, which was a gritty fantasy about showgirls making it on the Bob Hope USO Tour of Afghanistan. Our first review said, “Not bad enough”. As I think about it, I’m surprised and delighted at how great the little show was. What is really astounding is that we did 16 costume changes each, in the ladies’ toilet of the Hotel Utah! Sister Boom Boom started her drag career in that show, donning the guise of a Russian “defective showgirl”, a role later rewritten for the enormous talents of the late Jane Dornacker. Timmy Spence was our resident musical genius with the social graces of a four-year-old, but he did grow up quickly.
Except for last week, the rest of the decade is one long blur. And last week is quickly getting hazy. 1981 and 1982 are almost completely missing from my memory banks. I vaguely remember running a massage parlor for a few years and doing lots of shopping in New York. Lime green fishnets and neon orange stockings were bought in bulk for the troupe, as were rolls of fake fur in every day-glo color they had.
I remember a party. Ginger Quest threw a Vegas party each year and this one was called “Vegas in Space”. I covered the whole house in hot pink fur and silver Mylar. We painted our faces blue or green. There were black lights everywhere and people falling off the piano, pissing in the punch and getting more than their minds blown. We never really cleaned up after, leaving the fur on the ceilings and walls for years, often finding a scrap of tinsel that had been someone’s jockstrap or a broken hat.
But at that party had been Phillip R. Ford. I pointed to the décor and said, “Phil, let’s make a movie!” Phil had a couple of student films under his belt by that time and knew that what I was asking was next to impossible. I had no idea, so I kept insisting. It was very frustrating to be this fabulous movie star with nothing but the publicity photos to show for it.
Three years after we were still filming, and today we’re just finishing up the final touches. I now know you can’t make a movie on a prostitute’s salary. “Vegas in Space”, the movie, will finally hit the big screen in 1990.
Remember when 1984 was the future? I came across a photo of me with a Mohawk ‘do in neon red. I was already too old to do it, but it was for Randy West of West Graphics, the greeting card company. They needed a punk. After doing a bag lady, a Marilyn and several sad housewives, it was no big deal. West gave me a whole new career – comedy modeling. It’s one of the few branches of modeling where aging helps. 100 cards later we’re still finding new looks.
The mid-eighties were plump with artistic triumphs. I was a model and an actress, and actually working. There was “Naked Brunch” with Marc Heustis, and an incredible ensemble of now nearly famous players including Ann Block, Silvana Nova, Arturo Galster, and of course Miss X and Tippi. The “Brunch” series begat the Happy Hour shows at the 181 Club. We were the superstars of the Tenderloin! And our notoriety was duly noted in the Sunday papers.
The final chapter of the Happy Hour story was “Niteclub of the Living Dead”. At last, I looked like one of those fantastic sixties Drag Queens with a Desiree special hairdo tipping the red plush ceiling. Everything else was just right, too. Joan Crawford (Miss X), Tallulah Bankhead (Miss Nova), Billie Holiday (the late Tommy Pace) and other notable decadents all singing, dancing, cussing and fighting for all eternity. And I was Big Bad Brenda, Queen of Limbo, den mother to the outcasts of Heaven and Hell! With a role like that it’s no surprise that “Niteclub” was my favorite.
As Big Brenda was for me so was Rhoda Penmark for Tippi. In 1982 we had already cast our version, but it was not until late 1987 that things seemed just right for the “Bad Seed”. Critics were surprised to find so fine a production from a group known for “Drag shows in the TL”. The Chronicle said it was not “as bad as it sounds.” In fact, “the three stars are terrific,” enthused Mick LaSalle. We’ve managed to hold on to this credibility with our ten-year reunion show last January, and more recently in Leland Moss’ magnificent production of Genet’s “The Balcony”, in which Misha Berson described me as “gorgeous” and “flawless”.
How can I fit ten years of my life into these few paragraphs? I can’t talk about the ones who have died or the ones who should be dead, you know all that yourself. I’ve left out so much, but to go from “not bad enough” to “flawless” is encouraging. In the ‘80s I got glam, I got fame, and I got good. In the ‘90s I get rich.
