Уэйленд Флауэрс және Мадам: Актер, комедияшы және қуыршақ ойыншының өмірі

American actor, comedian and puppeteer

Wayland Parrott Flowers Jr. (November 26, 1939 – October 11, 1988) was an American actor, comedian and puppeteer. Flowers was best known for the comedy act he created with his puppet Madame. His performances as "Wayland Flowers and Madame" were a major national success on stage and on screen in the 1970s and 1980s. Flowers is frequently cited as a ventriloquist despite the fact that he made no effort to conceal that he was voicing his characters (Madame's infamous opening line was, "You may have noticed Wayland is no ventriloquist and I'm no fuckin' dummy"). He instead preferred to be called an "illusionist," His father soon shipped off to World War II and was killed, leaving him to be raised in a devoutly religious all female household, save for his younger brother. There was a neighborhood girl with whom he liked to play with dolls; however, this was socially unacceptable for a boy in 1940s Georgia, so he would wrap up the dolls in paper bags, bring them to her house, and they would play with them in her garage. As he reached adulthood, his mother pushed him to go to college, and began living the life of a struggling artist.

In a 1982 interview with Armistead Maupin, Flowers remarked that he had never worked with puppets until he landed a job as a puppeteer for Bil Baird's Marionettes show at the 1964 New York World's Fair. noticed Flowers' affection for the toys and gave him a puppet that had been created as The Wicked Witch of the West for a production of The Wizard of Oz.) Bedecked in fabulous evening wear and "summer diamonds" ("Some are diamonds; some are not"), Madame's look was patterned after movie stars such as Gloria Swanson and Tallulah Bankhead. When he was between jobs, Flowers began performing street theater for tips, and that's where Madame began her career. so Wayland quickly concocted an act. He developed double entendres, witty comebacks, and recycled old vaudevillian jokes, which became Madame's schtick. He garnered success in the gay clubs of New York, and eventually debuted Madame Off Broadway at the Village Gate in 1971's Kumquats, billed as "the world's first erotic puppet show," which also included the "notorious ejaculating Punchinello." The show played 53 performances between November 1971 and January 1972. His success in New York led him to get booked into The Pilgrim House in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1972, where he continued to perform nearly every season until his death. He was initially booked as a 15 minute opening lounge act, but within a week, he had attracted massive crowds. Flowers created an elaborate backstory for Madame, which he committed to the page with Gary Simmons in the 1983 book Madame: My Misbegotten Memoirs. In addition to Madame, Flowers featured other puppets in his act that included Crazy Mary (an escapee from Bellevue mental hospital), Jiffy (a Harlem harlot with a heart of brass), Mr. Macklehoney (a crotchety, retired vaudeville comedian), and Michael Honey (a horny old gay man).

Soon after The World's Fair ended, Flowers began dabbling in puppetry on New York television, creating and performing characters on the Aniforms segment of the 1965 series The Surprise Show and Captain Kangaroo. Paul Lynde caught one of his performances in Provincetown and invited Flowers to come to Hollywood, where his career exploded. His first major national TV gig was designing and puppeteering the Baby Smedley puppets (voiced by Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas) for the all star 1974 TV special Free to Be You and Me, a tie in with the successful children's album of the same name. According to various sources, he earned a special Emmy Award for his puppets. In 1975, he and Madame appeared in the sketch comedy show Keep on Truckin'. Debuting as a summer series was enough to prove that the network had little faith in it, but the show was dealt a crippling blow when host Rod Serling died two weeks before the premiere. Serling's segments were removed, and the show lasted a scant four weeks on the air. The duo soon rebounded as regulars on the 1976 series Andy, a syndicated revival of The Andy Williams Show. This cemented their success, leading to talk show appearances, a small role in the Redd Foxx movie Norman Is That You?, a long run on the game show Hollywood Squares (replacing Paul Lynde in The Center Square), a featured role on the 1977 revival of Laugh In, a recurring comedy skit on Solid Gold, TV guest spots, and even regional commercials. Feeling he could take his act further, he began developing the TV sitcom Madame's Place, which debuted in 1982 and costarred Susan Tolsky, Johnny Haymer, Judy Landers, Corey Feldman and Ty Henderson. The show was serialized, following the day to day goings on of Madame and those closest to her, and featuring celebrities, comedians, and musical acts in a show within a show that she hosted nightly from her mansion. Outside of a shot in the opening credits, Flowers only appeared on screen once; in "Comedy, Sex, and Pathos," he popped up in drag as inebriated cooking show host Julia Chives. Production began in August 1982, with the cast and crew working at a breakneck pace to churn out 75 half hour shows in 26 weeks. and that he was often so blitzed that he had to be carried on and off the set of Solid Gold. During an interview on the set of Madame's Place, Armistead Maupin remarked that he'd lost a significant amount of weight. Although he has been posthumously cited as one of the first mainstream entertainers who was openly gay, this is untrue. He was well known for performing on the gay circuit, but feared that publicly saying the words "I am gay" would "cost him a million dollars a year." temperamental behavior, and a snowballing drug habit that led him to alienate friends and associates, and continued to perform. He eventually developed Kaposi's sarcoma, an AIDS related cancer. On September 2, 1988, he collapsed onstage while performing at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. After a brief hospitalization, he returned to his hometown of Dawson, Georgia, where he visited family. Upon returning to Los Angeles, he moved into the Hughes House hospice for palliative care. On October 11, 1988, Flowers died at Hughes House of complications from AIDS related Kaposi's sarcoma at the age of 48. His remains were cremated at Grand View Memorial Park & Crematory in Glendale, California, and shipped back to his hometown of Dawson, Georgia, where they were interred at Cedar Hills Cemetery. He went on to be memorialized on The AIDS Quilt, although his name was misspelled as Waylon Flowers. Following Flowers' death, the Star tabloid reported that Madame was buried with him, a lie that's frequently been repeated. Flowers bequeathed the puppets and his estate to his friend, manager, and ultimately, his caregiver, Marlena Shell. urged Marlena Shell to let another puppeteer take over soon after Flowers' death, but Shell was too devastated to consider it. Shell had been so close to Wayland that she became overprotective of the character who appeared with Madame on a 2003 revival of The Hollywood Squares and at the 25th anniversary of the Center for Puppetry Arts (where one of the Madame puppets has been permanently on display before he had a falling out with Shell, Paquette countered with a $10 million trademark infringement suit against Shell and later toured the US in 2010. In 2013, Madame found herself on the arm of Gary Holland for a "White Carpet Commentary" in Palm Springs, and the live show "Madame's Back." Shell made two attempts at crowdfunding, both of which were dismally unsuccessful. In 2012, she proposed the semimonthly "Madame Show" (AKA "Madame for President"), a YouTube series that was to have featured Madame on the streets of New York, in a studio and on tour. The Kickstarter campaign had a $56K goal but only attained a paltry $345 in pledges. The following year, an IndieGoGo campaign was set up to fund a national tour of "Madame's Back," which fared slightly better but still fell very short, with a $50K goal and $4,855 in pledges. Audience members complained that they preferred Kovacs' interpretation of the character. was staged in July 2022, followed by Madame's Face for Radio Holiday Hootenanny in December.

Flowers spent the end of his life in L. A. 's first AIDS hospice, Hughes House, and left money in his will for another to be opened, called the Wayland Flowers House. The funds went directly to Hughes House, which was renamed and closed a few months later because its county contract was not renewed, although it was briefly reopened in the early '90s. Wayland carried numerous Madame puppets on tour with him in case there was a problem or so he could do a quick costume change. In 2015, a puppet that had been in the care of Flowers' former stage manager sold at Julien's Auctions for $12,500. and sold to an anonymous buyer for $11,000. In 1991, this same puppet went on permanent display at The Museum of Modern Art which featured Madame in an open steamer trunk surrounded by dead flowers. Flowers inspired the first name of Waylon Smithers, a fictional character on the animated TV series The Simpsons, who later came out as gay. American drag queen Raja Gemini performed as Madame on RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars (season 7) on the show's Snatch Game, a game inspired by the TV game show Match Game.