She’ll See You in Her Dreams

Constance is a reigning queen in Hollywood, Bar Marmont is her castle, and this is a tale with a happy ending.

It all began in the back of Andre Balasz’s limo in 1994. The hotelier, who owns L.A.’s Chateau Marmont and the Standard, was shuttling around his pals Constance and Joey Arias--two world-class exotics in the mostly underground world of drag. He told them about the bar he planned to build next door to the Chateau on the Sunset Strip, and that’s when Connie sprang it on him: “And of course, I’ll be the hostess.” Constance, a baldheaded queen who’d been supporting herself for a year as a go-go dancer at the dance club Cherry, needed the work. She’d left good gigs in New York to take one last stab at being an actress in L.A.

Voila.

A year later, Constance was starring in her own nightly drama at the bar with the prestigious pedigree and even more prestigious opening party: Leonardo DiCaprio’s star-studded birthday bash, which till this day I’ll always remember as the night even movie stars got turned away.

As hostess, Constance has reigned over a mind-boggling kingdom. In one corner, there’s Joan Collins nuzzling with Billy Wilder. In another corner, there’s Cher. The backdrop for the nightly nookying is the stuff of CinemaScope dreams.

The bamboo-gated bar is a surreal paradise--a cultural fusion of Vietnam and Cuba--with butterflies pinned to the ceiling and a peacock running up a wall. There’s an odd parrot on the bar who seems to be winking at you. Although it’s been open for six years, it seems even more current now.

Quite simply, the venue’s a mind-melding partnership that borders on brilliance. Credit Balasz for teaming Sean MacPherson--a creator of L.A. hip in the ‘90s with such venues as Small’s K.O., Good Luck, El Carmen, Jones, the Olive--with designer Shawn Hausman to create the space, which includes an outdoor patio, an intimate restaurant and a step-down bar.

Although open nightly, on the third Sunday of each month everything gets cranked up to 11. That’s when Connie hosts “The Bad and the Beautiful,” a night with a title copped from an old Lana Turner movie and Coyote Shivers playing DJ. On those Sundays, she gets gussied up to full-glam and “warbles a few tunes,” as she likes to say.

And she gets noticed too. Back in New York, she was one of Robert Mapplethorpe’s favorite models. Here, fans include Val Kilmer and Depeche Mode. The band hired her a few years ago to appear in its music video and gave her full star treatment--including use of the band’s trailer.

On a recent “Bad and Beautiful” night, the A-list crowd was ready. At the stroke of midnight, Connie waltzed down the stairs from the restaurant to the bar and sang the optimistic anthems “The Best Is Yet to Come” and “I’ve Got the World on a String.”

I don’t know--maybe you just had to be there. But what I do know is that for Constance, life truly is a cabaret.

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* Bar Marmont, 8171 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 650-0575. 21 and older. No cover.