Superstar adjacent pt.1

I’m moving in a little over two weeks, so I’ve been busy emptying this big shared space and planning my new solo space. I also had a crappy yard sale at my garage storage last weekend, and subsequently did a big purge and re-organization because the junk build-up was starting to stress me out. There’s a few little things I’d like to do still, and maybe I’ll post pictures of that when I’m done.

However, I do feel like this moving thing is under control, so I’ve still been doing some trash runs. I’ve had modest success in recent weeks, but with Moving Day approaching there’s probably going to be a lot more trash to pick through.

Anyways, it’s about time I shared some more past finds that have been sitting on my shelf for years. This particular batch has been there about two years, making it younger than some others. It looked to be the remnants of some artist’s past life.

I would assume these 1960s pop culture magazines were from their early life. I sold these a while back, I think I got about 100$ for them.

As we move towards the 70s and 80s, the magazines turned to “gay interest” (that’s the informal term used on eBay anyways), and alternative arts magazines. Here are two of several.

I also found some off-broadway promotional materials. Tom Eyen’s “Dirtiest Show in Town” was a fairly successful raunchy musical that opened in 1970. I didn’t find much about the Dirtiest Show 2, but I did find it mentioned in a New York Times article from 1975.

Tom Eyen died from AIDS in 1991. A bunch of people involved in the projects from this series of blog posts died young, a few of whom were struck down by AIDS.

Here we have a poster from another Eyen’s show, “Women Behind Bars“, which also opened in 1975. There were a few revivals, but I think this poster is from the original. It featured some actresses with Wikipedia pages, including Pat Ast and Helen Hanft.

And here’s a promotional photo from that same production. I forget the size, but it’s fairly big. At least 12″ wide, maybe 14″.

And finally, for this post, the item I find most intriguing. There is a lot of artistic fame here and I’ve done a fair bit of research, as you can probably tell. The poster itself is signed by Michaele Vollbracht, who was a noted fashion designer and illustrator. The play itself is “Glamour, Glory, & Gold: The Life & Legend of Nola Noonan”. The original opened in 1968 and featured a young Robert DeNiro, but this poster is from the 1974 version. The 1968 version also featured “Warhol Superstar” Candy Darling, who is an icon in the trans community, but who died of lymphoma one day before the opening of the 1974 running.

One person who appeared in both versions, besides director Ron Link, was Jackie Curtis, another Warhol Superstar and someone who was mentioned in Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side”. I’m not sure the term existed back then, but from what I read it sounds like Jackie was what would be today called gender fluid and took on various personas over the years. They are also an icon within the trans community, from what I hear.

Another interesting detail: during this production, Jackie Curtis was stabbed by some street punks, and tried to self-medicate with drugs for the pain. She kept performing, but ended up collapsing on stage one night, and had to get a kidney removed due to infection. So they ended up postponing this run, and added some dates later in 1974. Jackie died of a heroin overdose in 1985. According to Wikipedia, Andy Warhol wrote in his diary the day he heard of it: “It was an awful day… somebody called and said that Jackie Curtis O.D.’d. He’s gone. And that wasn’t something I wanted to hear.”

Needless to say, it sounds like the New York arts scene was pretty wild around this time. I don’t know much about it, but doing this research provided a bit of a glimpse.

As for this poster, for all the research I’ve done I still don’t know what it’s worth. I can’t find any other examples of this poster existing. All I can find with the same Vollbracht illustration are scans of ads that appeared in newspapers, and a regular paper sized flyer that sold for 75 USD in 2023. But this is a 25 x 19″ framed poster, with a Michaele Vollbracht illustration, and for all I know this is the only copy of either. So it’s pretty hard to put a valuation on it. I don’t expect any readers to know much about this very specific market, but if you have any ideas let us know in the comments!

Part two will feature more interesting stuff that needs to be researched. This is why some of these things end up sitting on the shelf for years … it’s a lot of work just to understand it, let alone place a value on it. And of course I can’t stop picking just to figure it out.