Divine

American actor, singer and drag queen (1945–1988)

Person · Open Library

Born: 1929
Works: 144

Top works

American Stories
NEW MyHistoryLab with Pearson EText -- Standalone Access Card -- for American Stories
American Story Myhistorylab Update, the, (Penguin Academic Series) Combined Volume
America's Past and Present
America Past And Present, Brief Edition, Combined Volume, Books A La Carte Plus Myhistorylab (7th Edition)

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Group
Country: GB
Active from: 1991

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 195,873
Total plays: 2,460,175

Article

Harris Glenn Milstead (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988), better known by the stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Closely associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a conservative middle-class family, Milstead developed an early interest in drag while working as a women's hairdresser. By the mid-1960s, he had embraced the city's countercultural scene and befriended Waters, who gave him the name "Divine" and the tagline of "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost". Along with his friend David Lochary, Milstead joined Waters's acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, and adopted female roles for their experimental short films Roman Candles (1968), Eat Your Makeup (1968) and The Diane Linkletter Story (1970). Again in drag, he took a lead role in both of Waters's early full-length movies, Mondo Trasho (1969) and Multiple Maniacs (1970), the latter of which attracted press attention for the group. Milstead next starred in Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972), which was a hit on the U.S. midnight movie circuit, became a cult classic and established Milstead's fame in the American counterculture.