Free Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis by Craig B. Highberger Page B

Bastiano’s Theater on Waverly Place. The New York Times reviewer wrote, “It is written and played with the outrageous broadness of a Gay Nineties melodrama, and in its heartless, campy ramshackle way it is fun.” The Daily News reviewer called it “… an amusing spoof of Jean Harlow, the studio chief he-man who is actually effeminate, and all the absurd demi-gods the system created,” and recommended the play as “an excursion in high camp.” The 1974 revival at the Fortune Theater was also applauded. The New York Times reviewer wrote: “Jackie Curtis can write. The star can also act, bruising friend and foe alike with tense credibility.” calling the play “… a savage, wise farce.” The Soho Weekly News called Jackie’s performance “… the performance of the year, in one of the scripts of the year, and Ron Link’s carefully honed direction makes it one of the productions of the year.” The Village Voice had high praise for Jackie’s performance as Nola Noonan: “His talent is ineffable and contradictory – he is somehow truthful and touching even when the material is trashy and patently false; he is graceful in his clumsiness, beautiful in his plainness, in control of his knockabout freedom; he plays a woman without pretending to be a woman.”
    Andrew Amic-Angelo
    The most challenging part of my role as Arnie the director in Glamour, Glory and Gold was an incredible ten-minute monologue, really a long tirade where I criticize my screen goddess Nola Noonan endlessly. I threaten her and lash out at her over and over again enumerating all her failings and she just sits there and absorbs every insult until I finally wind down and then she rises up indignantly. It is a brilliant scene. The power shifts completely to her and it really is a brilliant piece of writing.
    Scene Excerpt – Glamour, Glory and Gold: the Life and Legend of Nola Noonan, Goddess and Star A comedy by
    JACKIE CURTIS
    © 1985 The Estate of Jackie Curtis
    (From Act II – Arnie’s angry monologue after drunk Nola Noonan behaves outrageously on the set during filming of Goddess of the Reich .)
    ARNY
    (Bending NOLA’s arm behind her back.)
    Nola, sweetie, honey, baby, darling, poopie … get this! And get it straight. Your language is costing the studio valuable prestige. This is not the old days, and it’s not like old times when Nola could come in and bitch to just anyone living … no. These are hard times. People are forming bread lines.
    NOLA
    (Breaking free of ARNY’s grasp)
    Let ’em eat cake!
    ARNY
    Look at you! Take a good look at you!!
    (NOLA quietly sits and listens to ARNY.)
    You’re beginning to smell like a rummie … a lush. You already look like an aging character actress on her way to the glue factory. You’ve forgotten what it means to have to have continents at your pretty, pedicured, perfumed little feet. … look at those feet. Look at those fucking feet! If they’re not swollen, they’re black and blued or you got them in ace bandages so tight … I ought to slap the shit out of you and bind those fucking feet!
    You’re amazing … I’ve never seen such a pig! And what do you do, Porky? You sit around on your ass all day watching I Love Lucy . Ah, yes. Stars are stars, and stars will have outrageous private lives … so outrageous that even I can’t keep them out of the newspapers! I warned you once. I warned you twice. I warned you three … four times after that, I remember. And yet, what does the property man find in your purse? Gin, gin, gin! Gin-soaked, rotting, smelly, sweaty Nola Noonan … how does that sound? A diseased camel smells better than you do! But you go right on, pouring that cheap, French perfume allover your clothes. It’s getting so bad I can hardly distinguish the perfume from your unbelievably offensive B.O. And I don’t mean Box Office, bitch! And when was the last time you shaved your legs? Brushed your teeth? Gargled … chewed a piece of sweet smelly tasty chew gum … and