Quentin Crisp; Witty, Flamboyant Gay Writer and Lecturer Was 90

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last chapter missing.

--Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp, the more flamboyant if slightly less eloquent modern-day Oscar Wilde, was better known for his autobiography, “The Naked Civil Servant,” than anything else he ever wrote or uttered from any stage, television set or center of a cocktail party.

The missing last chapter was written Sunday when Crisp died in London’s Manchester Royal Infirmary at the age of 90. He was taken there after he was found unconscious in a private home arranged for him by the Green Room Theater of Manchester, England.

A resident of New York City’s East Village for the past two decades, Crisp was in England to tour his one-man show, “An Evening With Quentin Crisp,” which was to have begun tonight in Manchester and continue to five other cities.

The show stemmed from his autobiography, as did the 1975 television movie starring John Hurt as Crisp. The 1968 publication of Crisp’s autobiography marked a remarkable turning point in Crisp’s life, transforming him from prostitute, artist, artists’ model, critic, actor and writer into the enormously popular, self-described “mother superior of homosexuality.”

Combing his hair into grandiose blue-tinted waves, wearing high heels and “as much makeup as the force of gravity would allow,” Crisp made no secret of his homosexuality even when the topic was taboo in polite society.

“People ask me,” he told The Times in 1993, “ ‘When did you come out?’ I never was in! I was a hopeless case. Long before I plucked my eyebrows or painted my nails and all that rubbish. . . . You have to know who you are and then become it.”

Crisp’s autobiography was a breakthrough in its lucid description of the gay lifestyle in repressed early 20th century Britain. Scholars of gay and lesbian literature regard the book as a bold and singular look at the working classes’ often violent reaction to gays during the Depression, the grim World War II years in London and the postwar recovery.

But perhaps most amazing was Crisp’s extraordinary ability to tell the whole sad tale with little bitterness and with charming wit that indeed can rival that of Wilde. (Crisp was even asked to appear as Wilde in the party scene of Tom Hanks’ 1993 film “Philadelphia.”)

London’s Observer Review marveled when the autobiography was published that “Crisp states his alarming case wittily and gracefully.” The British humor magazine Punch echoed that Crisp “makes his outrageous life sound tremendously amusing.”

Hurt’s television movie enhanced Crisp’s burgeoning fame. The Briton came to America in 1977 at the invitation of “A Chorus Line” director Michael Bennett, who considered doing a musical of Crisp’s life. That didn’t happen, but Crisp discovered that in America “happiness rains down from the skies” and stayed on.

Wisely building on his newfound momentum, Crisp devised and began touring his one-man show around America, including Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theater in 1979.

A Times reviewer evaluated the show then as “a class act,” noting that: “Despite the Crisp-ness of mind and diction, there’s a great kindness in the man, a compassion. The talk is witty and disarming but never frivolous. The banter may be clever, but the intent is original and serious.”

Crisp went on to write other books gleefully poking fun at his own egocentric antics--”How to Have Lifestyle,” “Doing It with Style,” another autobiography in 1981 called “How to Become a Virgin,” and “Resident Alien: The New York Diaries.”

Among his other much-loved books are “The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp” in 1984 and “Quentin Crisp’s Book of Quotations: 1,000 Observations on Life and Love by, for, and about Gay Men and Women” in 1989.

He appeared on talk shows, lectured on cruise ships and was featured in advertisements for everything from Boy George recordings to Calvin Klein perfume and Levi’s jeans.

Crisp became such a well-known character that he often played himself in motion pictures--in the documentary “Resident Alien” in 1990 of course, but also in “Camp Christmas” in 1993, “Naked in New York” in 1994 and “The Celluloid Closet” in 1995.

But he also was memorable in unlikely acting roles, notably as Queen Elizabeth I in the 1992 “Orlando” based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 book. Another favorite was his judge of the New York pageant in the zany 1995 sleeper hit, “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.”

Understandably, Crisp became a poster boy for the gay and lesbian movement. But he also managed to irk most of its leaders because he never believed in militancy and even opined that being gay might be an illness.

“I want to join the real world, and I have made the whole journey from the outer suburbs of ostracism across open country under fire almost to the heart of the world,” he told The Times in 1993. “I live in the most sophisticated city in the world, and I do as I damn well please. What more can you ask?”

Crisp was born Denis Pratt on Christmas Day, 1908, in Sutton, Surrey, England, into a poor and debt-ridden family.

He studied journalism briefly at King’s College but dropped out, said Jon Hodge in “Gay & Lesbian Biography” because he “felt the pressures of both finding a job and confronting his sexuality, two issues that simultaneously found resolution via each other while Crisp was wandering through the streets of London’s West End.” There he found and copied the campy flamboyant dress, makeup and work of the male prostitutes.

Even as Crisp rose through the economic ranks, he continued living his highly touted “style” in a one-room apartment in London’s Chelsea and later in Manhattan.

“Money,” he told The Times, explaining his “nuts and champagne” diet came gratis on the party circuit, “is for saving, not for spending. With luck you only have to pay your rent and your telephone bill.”

Crisp envisioned no elaborate funeral or wake. Only a day before his death he told the Times of London: “No flowers. No candles. No long faces standing around in the rain, staring down into a hole in the ground while someone drones on about how wonderful I was. I’d rather just be shuffled off. Just drop me into one of those black plastic bags and leave me by the trash can.”