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Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7662092 EAN: 9780141180533 ISBN: 0141180536 Label: Penguin Classics Manufacturer: Penguin Classics Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 224 Publication Date: May 01, 1997 Publisher: Penguin Classics Studio: Penguin Classics Editorial Review: Product Description: In 1931, gay liberation was not a movement--it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to 'come out' as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was harrassed, ridiculed and beaten. Nevertheless, he claimed his right to be himself--whatever the consequences. The Naked Civil Servant is both a comic masterpiece and a unique testament to the resilience of the human spirit. 2 cassettes. Related Items:      see moreAverage Rating:
 Rating:  - Memoir of a narcissist."When the telegram announcing my father's death arrived, I felt nothing except irritation at the thought of having to go home, attend the funeral, and come back." Quentin Crisp is not a likeable human being. About one quarter way into this book, I was tempted to throw it aside for good. But given its generally favorable reviews, I felt I should give it another chance. And a peculiar thing happened. Although Crisp does nothing to present himself in a more favorable light - if anything, he goes out of his way to make the point that the reader's approval matters nothing to him - by the two-third mark, one cannot help but develop a grudging admiration for the man. It's hard to know why this happens - perhaps just a case of sympathy for the underdog. Crisp was born in a time when homosexuality really was the love that dare not speak its name, and made his mark by never obliging those who would have him live life in a shadow, instead choosing to flaunt his difference. This book is an account of the price exacted. While the reader may be moved toward a grudging admiration for Crisp's refusal to be ground down by the prejudice and cruelty surrounding him, it's impossible to feel any real sympathy for the man. Because, ultimately, this is the autobiography of a narcissist. Reviews of this book invariably mention its wit and brilliant self-mockery, qualities I found singularly absent. Given a 200-page book in which no other character appears as remotely human, as anything other than a sketch or cipher, and in which the author admits to never having loved, or been loved, the final effect of this strangely empty memoir is bleak indeed. I feel a certain admiration for Quentin Crisp. But I can't say that I enjoyed spending time in his company. Rating:  - The story of a funny, fascinating, melancholy life.Rereading "The Naked Civil Servant" after many years, I find Quentin Crisp's melancholy wit just as bracing as I did when I first encountered the book. The chiseled perfection of Crisp's aphorisms recall Oscar Wilde (though Crisp's distaste for Wilde was famous; Wilde's hubris and subsequent downfall made life that much harder for the gay men, such as Crisp, who came after him). One famous example: "I would have been tempted to say that he was ill did I not know that health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors." Another: "'Immaturity' is one more word that requires definition. To men it means the inability to stand on one's own two feet. A woman flings it at anyone who doesn't want to marry her. Here I find myself for once inclined toward the masculine view." Yet despite the humor, the overwhelming mood of "The Naked Civil Servant" is of loneliness. Crisp, who outed himself flamboyantly forty years before Stonewall, presents himself as a wildly contradictory character: exhibitionistic yet inherently and Englishly modest, too honest to present himself as anything other than he was, yet realizing fully the opprobrium and loss of companionship he would suffer by doing so. Reading his autobiography shows a younger generation of gay men precisely the mindset a hidebound society instilled in homosexuals in the early 20th century. Crisp, despite his flamboyance, was not immune to it: "Homosexuals were ashamed. They resented not being in the mainstream of life. The feeling varied from irritation to the anguish of irrevocable exile. It had little to do with God or the neighbors or the police. It was private and irremediable." In subsequent years--he lived to be ninety, outliving the publication of "The Naked Civil Servant" by three decades--Crisp found a measure of public acceptance and acclaim he would have thought impossible in the 1930s. Yet the loneliness and melancholy never really left him. To read "The Naked Civil Servant" is to be impressed by a great personality and a brilliant, acute observer of sex and society. But, at the same time, you wish he could have found a little more happiness for himself. Rating: - DisappointingI have heard of The Naked Civil Servant for many years and finally decided to pick it up to read. In many ways it is a great piece of gay history that would have been lost were it not for Quentin Crisp's acerbic wit and very English sense of time and place. As a historical piece, The Naked Civil Servant is well worth reading. Unfortunately, I also found myself wanting the book to end - in the same way that I wanted the movie Capote to end. I found Quentin Crisp to be a singularly unpleasant and self absorbed man who strives for fame by being outrageous, but never pleasant. His personality took away much of the value that I was hoping for in this book. I found his humor to be too cute in many cases and his quest for self-importance highly aggravating. Rating: - I don't give five-star reviewsWhat kind of title is that? Well, for 35 years, he was a nude model for art classes. So there you go. A naked civil servant. Now there's a career choice my high school guidance counselor never told me about. Quentin is the quintessential outsider. He outed himself as flamboyantly gay in 1931, and manages to be both sincere and parody at the same time. Forget the gay part. Focus on the outsider part. His writing style is quite crisp, ho ho! Time to scan the cover again, as opposed to being original. "His wit is brilliant, his observations acute, his self-mockery undiluted by the need to sentimentalize." "'As soon as I stepped out of my mother's womb... I realized that I had made a mistake,' Quentin declares, giving a small hint of the witty and wry approach he takes toward the life he describes with undiluted exuberance in this classic autobiography, which is both a comic masterpiece and a unique testament to the resilience of the human spirit." "His hilarious descriptions of encounters with parents, friends, employers, soldiers and sailors, and the law reveal the strength and humor of an honest man, determined to face the world with the uncensored, unapologetic truth about himself." "A work of great wit, intelligence and sensitivity." Quite. Rating: - An Unusually Riveting, Exuberant Autobiography "This is an unusually riveting, exuberant autobiography of a man who, in 1931, 'came out' in the streets of London as a self-confessed and self-evident homosexual. At a time when the slightest sign of homosexuality aroused immediate disgust, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to be true to his nature. He adopted an outrageously effeminate manner and appearance ('I wore makeup at a time when even on women eye shadow was sinful'), and his flamboyant exhibitionism, henna-dyed hair, and unconventional behavior shocked London society of the thirties. Though he was harassed, ridiculed, and beaten, he was determined to spread the message that homosexuality did not exclude him or anyone else from the human race. ¶ Quentin Crisp has become a cult celebrity since the highly acclaimed dramatization of The Naked Civil Servant was first aired on American television. His is a unique life story. One feels the strength and humor of an honest man, determined to face the world with the truth about himself."--© zebraz |
Three of them date from the '20s and '30s and were produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The 1926 silent The Winning of Barbara Worth gave Western stunt man and bit player Cooper his first featured role (by accident--the actor originally cast didn't report for work!). A cowboy whose visionary surveyor father aims to "redeem the desert and make it one fine garden," Cooper's character is the third corner of a romantic triangle, ordained by the Hollywood caste system to lose lifelong sweetheart Vilma Banky to engineer Ronald Colman. Colman has lots more screen time than Cooper and bears the moral-ethical brunt of the eco-conscious drama; he's also surprisingly persuasive wearing a sweat-stained Stetson and trading gunshots with the bad guys (if this were a sound film, Colman could never have gotten away with it). But the camera and the audience are locked onto Cooper whenever he's on screen. In longshot or vulnerable closeup, he's already one of the gods of the cinema. As for the movie, the quality of the print is excellent, its clarity intensified by bronze, yellow, and moonlit-blue tinting that often seems on the verge of resolving into full color. Director Henry King shows a good eye for action and bold vistas, and a visual adventurousness mostly absent from his later work.
Next up chronologically is The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), and the best thing about this misbegotten movie is Garson Kanin's description, in one of his Hollywood memoirs, of how Leo McCarey sold the idea for it to Sam Goldwyn. McCarey was, of course, a comedic master (recently Oscared for directing The Awful Truth), and his exuberant pitch convinced Goldwyn and his staffers that audiences would "piss" themselves laughing at this romantic comedy about a daughter of privilege (Merle Oberon) who falls for a rodeo rider (Cooper) and learns homespun values. Goldwyn paid McCarey off, assigned some writers to the script, then realized there was no real story--"no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have put it. The resultant unfunny and unromantic endeavor oozes bad faith from every pore, with neck-snapping life changes foisted on the hapless Cooper and Oberon from reel to reel, and excruciating scenes (jitterbugging in a drawing room, playing house back on Cooper's ranch) that strain charmlessly for McCarey's patented brand of fey. H.C. Potter directed, understandably without conviction.
We and Cooper are back on track with The Real Glory (1939). The reliable Henry Hathaway helmed this second cousin to his and Cooper's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, with Cooper as an Army doctor assigned to the Philippine Constabulary on Mindanao in 1906. The movie was well-received when it came out; encountered in the shadow of the Iraq War, its tale of U.S. occupiers trying to help the local populace "stand up" against a fanatical and murderous insurgency takes on new fascination. There are some amazing passages--two horrendous murders by bolo knife--and the final battle sequence puts the CGI-riddled action films of the present day to shame. But the most impressive element is Cooper, and we can't improve on the verdict of that astute film critic Graham Greene: "Mr. Cooper ... has never acted better.... Watch him inoculate [Andrea King] against cholera--the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think any more."
For the final film in the set we jump into the '50s--the century's and Cooper's. Vera Cruz (1954) casts him as a former Confederate officer who's ridden into Emperor Maximilian's Mexico, hoping to make a fortune in the new civil war south of the border so that he can rebuild his own devastated homeland. Costar Burt Lancaster (whose company Hecht-Lancaster was producing) plays another mercenary, a real sociopath, and it's fascinating to watch these two stellar icons of very different Hollywood eras make common cause--Lancaster at the height of his grinning-predator mode, Cooper an aging knight whose aim is still true. Director Robert Aldrich keeps finding dynamic uses for the SuperScope format and flavorfully fills it with sublime uglies like Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Horvath, Jack Lambert, and Charles Buchinsky-about-to-become-Bronson. Pieces of this movie found their way into the dreams of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. --Richard T. Jameson
