Well-made
and very interesting documentary about legendary drag queen (and eventual
transsexual) Candy Darling, most famous as a “Warhol superstar” in some underground
films, but also known for appearances in several mainstream productions,
including a bit part in Klute (1971),
a starring role in a Tennessee Williams play, and as herself in the PBS
documentary series An American Family (1973). Darling – born James Slattery in 1946 – is significant
for being possibly the greatest of all the drag queens of her time and place,
(New York in the late 60s and early 70s), because she was so beautiful and
powerfully feminine that many, if not most, observers would never know she was
really a man. She not only had the look
down, and the manner, but the voice too, which is the hardest part for most
cross-dressers and transsexuals. Beautiful Darling is especially admirable
because it frames its story in an unusual way; through the recollections of Darling’s
friend and roommate Jeremiah Newton in the present day as he struggles to
arrange for Darling’s ashes to be buried in a cemetery plot with other of
Newton’s loved ones. As Newton looks
back, other interviewees take part as well, in a more conventional documentary
fashion. There are all the usual
suspects for this kind of film: such as Holly Woodlawn, Fran Lebowitz, and the
omnipresent John Waters, who seems to have carved out a whole new career for
himself as an interview subject in documentaries about anyone and anything having
to do with 60s/70s culture.
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