Archive for the ‘Famous Dandys’ Category
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was an 19th century Irish writer whose works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is also one of the Victorian era’s most famous dandies, a wit whose good-humored disdain for convention became less favored after he was jailed for homosexuality.
In 1895, at the height of his popularity, his relationship with the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas was declared inappropriately intimate by Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde sued for libel, but the tables were turned when it became clear there was enough evidence to charge Wilde with “gross indecency” for his homosexual relationships. He was convicted and spent two years in jail, after which he went into self-imposed exile in France, bankrupt and in ill health.
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Boy George
Boy George is an English singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s.
He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s.
His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by rhythm and blues and reggae. His 1990s and 2000s-era solo music has glam influences such as David Bowie and Iggy Pop. He also founded and was lead singer of Jesus Loves You during the period 1989–1992.
In addition to songwriting Boy George spends his time DJing, writing books, designing clothes and photography.
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Truman Capote
Truman Capote was an American writer, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.
Capote was well known for his distinctive, high-pitched voice and odd vocal mannerisms, his offbeat manner of dress and his fabrications. He often claimed to intimately know people he had in fact never met, such as Greta Garbo.
He traveled in an eclectic array of social circles, hobnobbing with authors, critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theatrical celebrities, royalty, and members of high society, both in the U.S. and abroad.
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Rip Taylor
Taylor is known for his high-voiced yells, wacky toupée, and handlebar moustache over a perpetually toothy grin. He often enters a venue tossing handfuls of confetti from a paper bag onto his audience and laughing hysterically, while the band plays his theme song, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Taylor’s comedic style includes puns, often in conjunction with props (for example, holding up a plastic fish full of holes and exclaiming “Holy Mackerel!”) and miming along to novelty records (including the works of Spike Jones). If he gets little or no reaction following one of his jokes, he stops for a moment and yells at the audience: “I don’t dance, folks! This is it!” Or, “Hello? Can you people hear me?”
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