Smith Jack

American underground filmmaker, actor, artist and writer. His notorious underground film, "Flaming Creatures," is still banned in New York. Besides his work as a film-maker, Smith was also a brilliant writer, wit, actor, visual artist, musical experimenter, pioneer in what has become known as "performance art," and an early proponent of using color in fine art photography. Six-foot three tall and thin, sometimes stooped, Smith was a dark blond handsome man with "an intense, commanding gaze, serious cheekbones," and a dagger of a nose. Sexually ambivalent, he loved women platonically, preferring and needing however to sleep with men (but not those of the "garden-variety" homosexual type). He pronounced himself "queer" way before it became fashionable. A difficult and charismatic character who lived his life on the borders of poverty, Smith has been called "a magical trickster manically involved in all kinds of projects at all times." Notorious for his harsh temper and demanding work ethic, he nevertheless readily used his gift for cajoling actors, friends and associates into gladly working for him as unpaid "slaves," whilst he simply "appropriated" the materials he required for his art from whatever source served his needs. Born in Columbus, Ohio, the scion of a hillbilly and a practical nurse, Smith left that city at age seven, moving with his parents and sister across Ohio and Texas as the family pursued a living. After his fathers accidental death on a fishing boat off the gulf of Texas, he lived with his remaining family in trailer parks until his mothers remarriage took the family to Wisconsin. Smith moved to New York around 1953 and worked part-time as an office errand boy, film actor, and attendant in a photo processing lab. Too poor to afford a movie camera he attended lectures on film composition and narration at the Metropolitan and Frick museums. Turning to cheaper camera work, he became a pioneer in the use of color in art photography. His first one-person exhibition in 1960 at the prestigious Limelight Gallery consisted of 30 large-scale color photographs, but he turned to black-and-white photography after that, probably due to losing his lab job and other financial constraints. In 1962, "The Beautiful Book" was published in a limited edition. It contained 19 b&w photos including glam-fashion shots of some of his drag queen coterie (such as Mario Montez and Francis Francine). Smiths signature artwork, the short film "Flaming Creatures," was shot during the Summer and fall of 1962 on the roof of a Manhattan theater. Known for its camp aesthetic, "Creatures" has been called "the most important queer film ever." A Dionysian piece, the film has no linear narrative, instead depicting a cast of mostly male transvestites (that would later reassemble as the wild drag queen glitter theater act, The Cockettes) in exotic thrift store and quasi-Arabic/Hollywood Sultan costumes. They play orgiastic games, put on make-up, grope each other, expose their (flaccid) genitals, pose, preen, roll their eyes and dance. A woman is chased and mock-raped by the Creatures, one of which emerges vampire-like out of a coffin. This extravagant visual poem combines gender ambiguity, strange eroticism, Persian arabesque, and Smiths obsession with his "patron saint," Maria Montez: "Its good for the artist to fall in love with the mediocre, How I adore Maria Montez with her stunning 1935 padded shoulders, that marvelous creature, that sheer gossamer g Read less