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Life's a Drag!: Danny La Rue and the Drag Scene
Life's A Drag! - an evocative title for a very contemporary and compelling book!
While it is true that there have been forms of drag, both private and public, since earliest times, as a form of modern entertainment drag in recent years has developed into a phenomenon which is now a world-wide multi-million pound entertainment industry in itself.
This penetrating study, giving a depth background of the world drag scene is, however, primarily a book about one drag artist - the hugely-successful Danny La Rue, himself a veritable Industry of Drag and unquestionably the highest-paid performer of his type in the world. Strangely, no one has previously written a book about Danny la Rue, probably because he is a very private person despite his huge public persona.
To write this work, Peter Underwood, the well-established author of the highly-successful Boris Karloff biography, Horror Man (Leslie Frewin) and other books, researched widely and interviewed nearly seventy people close to the drag star - people who have worked with Danny la Rue both on and off stage over many years.
The result is this absorbing story of a unique star which intimately surveys the life and work of the Irish Danny la Rue. He started on the stage in a village hall, later joined the Navy at 17 and became in turn a window dresser, chorus boy and then left the stage to work in a shop, returning to the theatre and the chorus to become a dancer and drag artist in an all-male show (which he left because he couldn't stand it). He was eventually spotted in a small revue at London's Irving Theatre and offered his big chance in cabaret at Bond Street's Churchill Club.
So began the real success story of the fabulous Danny la Rue - a succession of successes: His own exclusive night club, recordings, countless pantomime hit shows, two Royal Command Performances, his first film, his three homes, three cars, greyhounds and racehorses, his hugely successful summer seasons, television appearances and the acclamation by the Variety Club of Great Britain as 'Show Business Personality of The Year'.
Surrounding the story of the inimitable Danny la Rue is a vivid examination of the Drag Scene which has projected Danny's success - how it has become a major entertainment phenomenon in top theatres, on TV, films and in pubs and clubs throughout the world. Author Underwood relevantly appraises the lure of drag, the pleasures and the pain, the hard work, the dangers and the impact of what is daily becoming an ever-growing phenomenon of the twentieth century's Permissive Age.
Life's A Drag! is essentially a Leslie Frewin 'Book of Our Time': it is copiously illustrated.
While it is true that there have been forms of drag, both private and public, since earliest times, as a form of modern entertainment drag in recent years has developed into a phenomenon which is now a world-wide multi-million pound entertainment industry in itself.
This penetrating study, giving a depth background of the world drag scene is, however, primarily a book about one drag artist - the hugely-successful Danny La Rue, himself a veritable Industry of Drag and unquestionably the highest-paid performer of his type in the world. Strangely, no one has previously written a book about Danny la Rue, probably because he is a very private person despite his huge public persona.
To write this work, Peter Underwood, the well-established author of the highly-successful Boris Karloff biography, Horror Man (Leslie Frewin) and other books, researched widely and interviewed nearly seventy people close to the drag star - people who have worked with Danny la Rue both on and off stage over many years.
The result is this absorbing story of a unique star which intimately surveys the life and work of the Irish Danny la Rue. He started on the stage in a village hall, later joined the Navy at 17 and became in turn a window dresser, chorus boy and then left the stage to work in a shop, returning to the theatre and the chorus to become a dancer and drag artist in an all-male show (which he left because he couldn't stand it). He was eventually spotted in a small revue at London's Irving Theatre and offered his big chance in cabaret at Bond Street's Churchill Club.
So began the real success story of the fabulous Danny la Rue - a succession of successes: His own exclusive night club, recordings, countless pantomime hit shows, two Royal Command Performances, his first film, his three homes, three cars, greyhounds and racehorses, his hugely successful summer seasons, television appearances and the acclamation by the Variety Club of Great Britain as 'Show Business Personality of The Year'.
Surrounding the story of the inimitable Danny la Rue is a vivid examination of the Drag Scene which has projected Danny's success - how it has become a major entertainment phenomenon in top theatres, on TV, films and in pubs and clubs throughout the world. Author Underwood relevantly appraises the lure of drag, the pleasures and the pain, the hard work, the dangers and the impact of what is daily becoming an ever-growing phenomenon of the twentieth century's Permissive Age.
Life's A Drag! is essentially a Leslie Frewin 'Book of Our Time': it is copiously illustrated.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 30, 1974
About the author
Peter Underwood
92 books16 followers(1923/2014): Author, broadcaster, historian of the occult; investigator of the paranormal.
Born in Letchworth in Hertfordshire, Underwood wrote prolifically on ghosts and haunted places within the United Kingdom, and was a leading expert on ‘the most haunted house in England’, Borley Rectory.
An early formative experience came at the age of nine, on the day he learnt of his father’s death; that night, he awoke to see an apparition of his father at the foot of the bed.
Around the same time, he was fascinated to learn of a ghost story associated the old house at Rosehall - where his maternal grandparents lived for a time; it contained a bedroom where guests claimed to see the figure of a headless man..
It was at this young age that Underwood's interest in hauntings and psychic matters began to take root.
On January 1942, Underwood was called up for active service with the Suffolk Regiment. After collapsing at a rifle range at Bury St Edmunds, a serious chest ailment was diagnosed. He was discharged, and returned to his employment at the publishing firm J.M. Dent & Sons.
One of his early investigations was the Borley Rectory haunting, where, over a period of years, Underwood traced and personally interviewed almost every living person who had been connected with the mysterious events surrounding the place.
Underwood built upon the legacy of the work of Harry Price, who had investigated Borley before him. Together with Paul Tabori (literary executor of the Price Estate), Underwood was able to publish all his findings in The Ghosts of Borley (1973).
In his autobiography No Common Task (1983), Underwood remarked that ”98% of reported hauntings have a natural and mundane explanation, but it is the other 2% that have interested me for more than forty years”.
Having joined The Ghost Club back in 1947 - at the personal invitation of Harry Price, Underwood was to become its President for over thirty years: from 1960 to 1993.
Underwood was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Savage Club. In 1976, a bust of him was sculpted by Patricia Finch - winner of the Gold Medal for Sculpture in Venice.
In recognition of his more than seventy years of paranormal investigations, Underwood became the Patron of The Ghost Research Foundation (founded in Oxford), which termed him the King of Ghost Hunters.
Born in Letchworth in Hertfordshire, Underwood wrote prolifically on ghosts and haunted places within the United Kingdom, and was a leading expert on ‘the most haunted house in England’, Borley Rectory.
An early formative experience came at the age of nine, on the day he learnt of his father’s death; that night, he awoke to see an apparition of his father at the foot of the bed.
Around the same time, he was fascinated to learn of a ghost story associated the old house at Rosehall - where his maternal grandparents lived for a time; it contained a bedroom where guests claimed to see the figure of a headless man..
It was at this young age that Underwood's interest in hauntings and psychic matters began to take root.
On January 1942, Underwood was called up for active service with the Suffolk Regiment. After collapsing at a rifle range at Bury St Edmunds, a serious chest ailment was diagnosed. He was discharged, and returned to his employment at the publishing firm J.M. Dent & Sons.
One of his early investigations was the Borley Rectory haunting, where, over a period of years, Underwood traced and personally interviewed almost every living person who had been connected with the mysterious events surrounding the place.
Underwood built upon the legacy of the work of Harry Price, who had investigated Borley before him. Together with Paul Tabori (literary executor of the Price Estate), Underwood was able to publish all his findings in The Ghosts of Borley (1973).
In his autobiography No Common Task (1983), Underwood remarked that ”98% of reported hauntings have a natural and mundane explanation, but it is the other 2% that have interested me for more than forty years”.
Having joined The Ghost Club back in 1947 - at the personal invitation of Harry Price, Underwood was to become its President for over thirty years: from 1960 to 1993.
Underwood was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Savage Club. In 1976, a bust of him was sculpted by Patricia Finch - winner of the Gold Medal for Sculpture in Venice.
In recognition of his more than seventy years of paranormal investigations, Underwood became the Patron of The Ghost Research Foundation (founded in Oxford), which termed him the King of Ghost Hunters.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 28, 2017
This slim biog of Danny La Rue was published in 1974; Danny had announced his retirement from drag. The book is a hack job cashing in on this fact, using it as an excuse to reflect back on his career. The work is both selective and hurried. The style of writing is journeyman and repetitive, and the last 50 pages are clearly cobbled together from recent newspaper articles and interviews and programme notes. The life story presented is minimal and there's no sense of the inner man or an explanation of his massive heyday public appeal. The writer is painfully careful not to offend or criticise, but is smoothly expert in dismissing while praising. Not a whisper about Danny's personal life or sexual proclivities. There's a brief throwaway reference to an unsuccessful engagement to a woman earlier in his life. This is never enlarged upon, and the woman in question is not identified or interviewed. But the author spends a large part of the book interviewing the women Danny worked with when he was a teenage window dresser and the beauty pageant contestants who briefly met him during shows. The silences in the book are the most interesting - telling and deafening. While there is some attempt to present historical context, the writer neither understands drag nor appears to want to. There's a sense he finds it all rather distasteful.
However, the long-lost world of 1950s and 1960s 'showbiz' - smoky after hours night clubs, revue shows, Variety Club galas, summer seasons in Margate and Blackpool - is preserved and long-forgotten British public figures such as Lady Docker and Sabrina remembered. Where else would you find a more evocative sentence of that milieu than "The party was held at the home of Princess Alexandra...and those present included Diana Dors and Leslie Crowther"?
However, the long-lost world of 1950s and 1960s 'showbiz' - smoky after hours night clubs, revue shows, Variety Club galas, summer seasons in Margate and Blackpool - is preserved and long-forgotten British public figures such as Lady Docker and Sabrina remembered. Where else would you find a more evocative sentence of that milieu than "The party was held at the home of Princess Alexandra...and those present included Diana Dors and Leslie Crowther"?
April 23, 2022
Surely the worst book ever published, certainly the most inept biography. So bad it reads like satire. Particular highlights include a graphic account of the sex industry in China....included for no apparent reason.....the incongruous inclusion of Shirley Bassey in the final paragraph....and an admission that when he finally saw one of Dan's shows the author didn't like it. "However many have told me its not a mans show. So perhaps I can be forgiven," No Peter Underwood you ghastly little man....you most certainly can't
January 2, 2021
I was looking forward to read this book,but was left sadly disappointed.since the book was published many participants have shuffled off this mortal coil,a bit of a split personality of a book,on one hand fawning all over the artist and many more times critical of so called blue material the artist used.tge time is ripe for a more up to date and proper book worthy of Danny la rue
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews