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Harris family’s residence

Harris family’s residence

319 E 9th St, New York, NY 10003

PLACE TYPE
Residence

Ellen Stewart helped the Harris family find their longtime apartment, located next door to her first La MaMa location (which she later kept as a rehearsal space and let the family use).

Stories

Hibiscus Begins to Flower

People

Before George Harris III became part of the La MaMa family and later formed the gender-fluid theater troupe the Cockettes, the future Hibiscus put on shows with his family in Clearwater, Florida. George—who was also called G3, along with other nicknames—was the oldest of six siblings: three girls and three boys, sort of an avant-garde Brady Bunch. In the early 1960s, the kids formed the El Dorado Players, a theatrical troupe that put on shows in the Harris family’s cramped garage, where the backstage door led to the kitchen. They placed lawn chairs in their driveway and sometimes rented klieg lights to announce the latest premiere of their homemade shows. “Hibiscus had real leadership qualities,” said his youngest sister, Mary Lou Harris. “He came out of the womb as the grand marshal. He was just like the leader of the parade.” She compared her brother’s methods to a Hollywood studio system in the way that he conceived and cast his DIY theatrical productions, then put his family to work. George also got help from his mother, who wrote plays and music in college, and his father, a natural theatrical performer and drummer. “Just look at those Busby Berkeley movies, he was our idol,” his mother, Ann Harris, said. “We all liked Busby Berkeley. I made sure they saw those thirties movies and things that I loved, like Fred Astaire. I would take them to the movies and show them what I liked.” From these beginnings to the very end of his life—Hibiscus was among the very first who succumbed to the AIDS epidemic, in 1982—his colorful productions were a product of, and collaboration with, a family that cultivated his offbeat aesthetic.

From Chapter 7 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


The Harris Family Matriarch Comes Into Her Own

People

“Everything was one, the music and theater and art,” Ann Harris recalled. “Everybody was interested in everybody then, and it was beautiful.” When Ann was in her mid-40s, she appeared in the 1970 cult film The Honeymoon Killers with actress Shirley Stoler, and Harry Koutoukas also cast her in one of his eccentric “camps.” She could occasionally be found running around with Koutoukas and Hair creators Jim Rado and Gerome Ragni, having a blast on the streets of downtown New York. “I think the Catholic Church was Mom’s anchor into a magical idea of life,” Walter Michael Harris said. “She had pretty strong, stringent Irish-Catholic roots in her childhood, and I think part of her fantasy life was really among the angels and with heaven—the idea of that sort of magical place.” After the family moved to New York, they stopped going to church and entered Off-Off-Broadway’s dingy temples. “Cino became the church,” he continued. “La MaMa took the place of that in our lives.” The Harris family matriarch finally entered a new act of her life after finding herself among a like-minded tribe of experimental playwrights, directors, and actors. From her headquarters on East Ninth Street in the East Village, Ann began writing more songs and collaborating with her husband, children, and newfound extended family. “It must have been a relief for Mom after what must have seemed like a long exile in a desert—the years in Florida. For Mom, I think it was just really quite liberating.”

From Chapter 7 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


George Harris III and the National Guard

People

George Harris III had lived a fairly apolitical life until he appeared with James Earl Jones and Al Pacino in Peace Creeps, which awoke him to the horrors of the Vietnam War. He drifted away from the New York theater world and began to be more openly gay and free, taking different lovers, including Allen Ginsberg. George accepted a ride to San Francisco in a Volkswagen van driven by Ginsberg’s longtime partner Peter Orlovsky, who took a detour to the antiwar protest in Washington—where George was famously photographed placing flowers in National Guardsmen’s rifles. This act was influenced by the street theater that surrounded him in downtown New York, and it effortlessly displayed the idea that love can overcome political tyranny and break the war machine. The next day, G3 excitedly called home to tell his mother that photojournalists snapped pictures of him. “George loved having his photograph taken,” recalled Jayne Anne Harris. “So it was probably a combination of things. He probably saw the cameras, he of course was a bit theatrical, he was probably high, and he believed in peace and love.”

From Chapter 15 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Hibiscus Returns to New York

People

In 1971, prodigal son Hibiscus returned home with his boyfriend Angel Jack (born Jack Coe). They arrived at the door of the Harris family’s East Ninth Street apartment wearing long hair and white robes, looking like two apparitions through the peephole. “He was screaming, ‘HONEY!’ ” sister Jayne Anne Harris said. “So I knew it was him.” No longer the preppy-looking teen who left the fold in 1967, he was now wearing outlandish Angels of Light costumes all the time. This was no shock, for she and her sisters were used to crazy clothes growing up in New York’s avant-garde theater world. “Regular life moments in those days looked a lot like theater,” recalled Mary Lou. “No one walked around in regular clothes.” Hibiscus hit the ground running, recruiting his sisters and mother into the Angels of Light. “It was like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Babes in Arms,” Jayne Anne said, “when they do the show in the barn: ‘Let’s put on a show!’ That’s what it was like.” Their brother was a one-man Off-Off-Broadway Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio system, and whoever happened to wander into Hibiscus’s view was cast in a show. He had an eye for spotting talents and skills, whether it was tap dancing, crooning, or ballet dancing. The entire family knew how to sew costumes, build sets, and other theater basics, and their mother also taught the kids how to tap dance. Ann Harris had learned tap routines while attending the Dan Harrington School of Dance as a kid in the 1930s, until her father pulled her out because the costumes were too skimpy. “But she remembered every single dance,” Jayne Anne said, “and taught all the queens in the West Village how to tap dance. The Vietnam War was still raging, and we just did these colorful, happy midnight shows, and whoever came was in it.”

From Chapter 26 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Hibiscus, Miss Marsha and Others Create a New World

People

The Angels of Light’s secret weapon, Miss Marsha, regularly whipped audiences into a frenzy. Marsha P. Johnson was a street queen and early gay liberation activist who wandered into an Angels of Light show and decided to jump onstage. Hibiscus extended an open invitation to join them anytime, for Miss Marsha’s impromptu banter with the audience always brought down the house. “After a while, Hibiscus just stopped writing for her because she’d never get to it,” Mary Lou Harris said. “She would just get a huge cheers and standing ovations.” The Harris sisters described themselves as straight girls who were socialized as gay men. “The queens were kind of my role models,” Eloise recalled. “Marsha was very motherly, even though she was kind of living on the street. She was kind of our nanny.” When Hibiscus or their mom went out, Miss Marsha would take them out for ice cream or babysit them at home. They would take turns pretending to be Barbra Streisand or Judy Garland, and also sang duets à la Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell performing “Two Little Girls from Little Rock.” Miss Marsha also appeared with the gay theater group Hot Peaches, who were part of the same circuit as the Angels of Light. While there was certainly competition among these groups—and among individual queens such as Miss Marsha, International Chrysis, or Flawless Sabrina—for the most part it was a healthy competitiveness. “There were rivalries, there was bitchiness,” Mary Lou said, “but that sort of propelled them forward to get better and better—to try to one up each other. I think it ultimately led them to creating bodies of work that led them to become important figures, which in turn led to the laws and freedoms that are just beginning to bloom today.”

From Chapter 26 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Mother and Children Collaborate

People

Angels of Light shows were hallucinatory homages to 1930s Busby Berkeley musicals, a cinematic tap-dancing fantasy world in which Angel Jack and Hibiscus subbed for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Their first show was Studio M, a lovingly produced family affair that was performed on a small semicircular stage that ratcheted up the dazzle factor. For each show they put on, Hibiscus created elaborate storyboards, his sisters joined him onstage, and their mother composed the songs. “I wrote almost all the music for the Angels of Light,” Ann Harris said. “George would say, ‘Oh, I need a sheik scene, with a sheik in it,’ and then I would come up with a song.” The Angels of Light show Gossamer Wings featured a massive storybook whose pages turned, moving the action forward from the Ice Age to the 1970s. Many of their shows dealt with environmental disasters that were occurring with an alarming frequency during that decade. “Who cares if the birds don’t sing as long as the cash box rings?” they sang in “Disposable Everything.” Ironically, these shows indirectly benefitted from the consumer culture–driven economy of abundance, which produced the junk they used for their shows. “You could find plenty of things in New York that were beautiful, beautiful,” Ann Harris recalled. “That’s how people did those shows, with costumes from fabric found on the street.” When the family discovered that a factory was throwing out piles of feathers, for instance, Ann and the kids used them for another one of their productions, Birdie Follies (which featured their friend Agosto Machado).

From Chapter 26 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore