#John Barry Humphries

[justforbooks]

John Barry Humphries 😂😂😂🤣

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #John Barry Humphries

[perfettamentechic]

22 aprile … ricordiamo …

21 aprile … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2023: Barry Humphries, John Barry Humphries, attore, sceneggiatore e doppiatore australiano. Si affermò inoltre come drag queen, creando il personaggio di Dame Edna Everage (noto anche semplicemente Dame Edna). Noto per l’interpretazione di Claire Otoms in Ally McBeal. Si sposò quattro volte: il primo matrimonio, con la ballerina Brenda Wright, dal 1955 al 1957; il secondo matrimonio, con la…

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#22 aprile #Albert Salmi #Alfred Salmi #Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg #Alida Valli #Andrea King #Barry Humphries #Berindey Erzsébet #Bert Remsen #Charles B. Middleton #Claudia Scrobogna #Dame Edna #Dame Edna Everage #Enrico Glori #Georgette André Barry #Helen Joan Stenborg #Helen Stenborg #Herbert Birchell Remsen #Irene Rich #John Barry Humphries #Morti 22 aprile #Oretta Fiume #Ricordiamo #Shirley Knight #Steffi Duna #Vera Reynolds #Vincenzo Ferdinandi

[all-action-all-picture]

Due to massive demand I am posting another Cliff Richard video. This time a fabulous duet with the stunning Dame Edna Everage who could really belt out a tune when she needed to. What a way to start the weekend!

I Could Easily Fall (in Love With You) was originally a hit in 1964 for Cliff Richard and The Shadows. The writing credit went to the four Shadows (Bruce Welch, Hank Marvin, Brian Bennett and the late John Rostill, who was their third bass player). It was produced, like their other hits from that period, by easy listening legend Norrie Paramor. A live performance by Cliff and the Shads (with their Burns guitars) from 1965 below.

#12sep #1987 #cliff richard and the shadows #the shadows #norrie paramor #hank marvin #bruce welch #brian bennett #john rostill #Youtube #dame edna everage #barrie humphries #burns guitars #i could easily fall in love with you

[my-life-fm]

#nowplaying #1973 #The Sound of my 1973 #Slade #Les Humphries Singers #Pink Floyd #Wings #Paul McCartney #Ringo Starr #Deep Purple #Nazareth #Queen #Albert Hammond #10cc #Suzi Quatro #Gary Glitter #Barry Manilow #Alice Cooper #Billy Joel #Elton John #Golden Earring #Spotify

[slack-wise]

Melbourne - Cheltenham in the jungle.

John Betjeman (via Barry Humphries)

#John Betjeman #Barry Humphries #quotes #texts #funny #lol

[t-jfh]

Veteran UK broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson dies at age 88.

'Best in the business': Tributes flow for legendary broadcaster Michael Parkinson.

ABC News - 17 August 2023

Five of Parky's most memorable interviews:

From Muhammad Ali to John and Yoko, Meg Ryan, Dame Edna and Billy Connolly.

By Lucy Sweeney and Riley Stuart, in London

ABC News - Posted 17 August 2023

#Arts culture and entertainment #Death and dying #Television broadcasting #Comedy (humour) #United Kingdom #Michael Parkinson #John Lennon and Yoko Ono #Muhammad Ali #Meg Ryan #Barry Humphries #Dame Edna Everage #Billy Connolly

[proudvisiontv]

BARRY HUMPHRIES A.K.A DAME EDNA EVERAGE PASSES AWAY AT 89

Goodbye Possums! The legendary Drag Performer behind the iconic Dame Edna Everage has died. John Barry Humphries AO CBE was an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He was best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson.

Barry Humphries was 89 

#Dame Edna Everage #LGBTQ #Barry Humphries #GLBT #RIP #RestInPeace

[fashionbooksmilano]

David Hockney 82 portraits and 1 still-life

David Hockney 82 ritratti e 1 natura morta

con un testo di Tim Barringer e un'intervista di Edith Devaney

Skira, Milano 2018, 176 pagine, 24,5x32,5cm, ISBN 9788857236094

euro 30,00

email if you want to buy [email protected]

Mostra Ca’Pesaro  Venezia 24/6 22/10 2018,

Questo libro, riccamente illustrato, esplora il rapporto di David Hockney con la ritrattistica, concentrandosi sulla straordinaria serie di “82 Portraits and 1 Still-life” (82 ritratti e 1 natura morta) che ha dipinto negli anni più recenti a Los Angeles. Per un breve periodo, nel 2013, Hockney smette di dipingere, ma dopo avere lasciato lo Yorkshire per tornare in California riprende i materiali acrilici e i colori intensi. Vibranti, saturi di vita, questi ritratti palesano l’osservazione attenta dell’artista e segnano un ritorno alla forma vivida, in technicolor. I soggetti sono amici, familiari, personalità della scena artistica, tra cui John Baldessari, Celia Birtwell, Larry Gagosian, Barry Humphries e lord Rothschild. Il racconto esaustivo e affascinante che Tim Barringer fa della ritrattistica di Hockney culmina nella sua interpretazione di quest’ultima serie. Edith Devaney dialoga con l’artista sulle opere che lui descrive come “pose di 24 ore”, in riferimento al tempo richiesto da ogni ritratto. La descrizione delle fasi intermedie di numerosi dipinti permette al lettore una comprensione eccezionale, unica e approfondita della tecnica di Hockney.

02/05/24

#David Hockney #art exhibition catalogue #Ca'Pesaro Venezia 2018 #ritratti #portraits #art books #fashionbooksmilano

[mybeingthere]

Clifton Pugh (1924 – 1990) was an Australian artist and three-time winner of Australia's Archibald Prize. One of Australia's most renowned and successful painters, Pugh was strongly influenced by German Expressionism, and was known for his landscapes and portraiture. Important early group exhibitions include The Antipodeans, the exhibition for which Bernard Smith drafted a manifesto in support of Australian figurative painting, an exhibition in which Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval and Charles Blackman showed; a joint exhibition with Barry Humphries, in which the two responded to Dadaism; and Group of Four at the Victorian Artists Society Gallery with Pugh, John Howley, Don Laycock and Lawrence Daws.

Frank Neilson, photographer, tells about his visit to Clifton Pugh:

Clifton Pugh, one of Australia’s most celebrated artists and three-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture, lived on his 15 acre property “Dunmoochin” at Cottle’s Bridge in country Victoria. Clifton, born in Melbourne on 17 December 1924, was a prolific painter and print-maker of landscape and portrait subjects. He received the honour of Officer of the Order of Australia for his services to art. A staunch supporter of the Australian Labor Party, one of his memorable Archibald wins was for his 1972 painting of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

"I first saw one of Clifton’s paintings during the early sixties, and was impressed by the very “Australian” style he used. That painting was of the carcase of a dead animal in the desert, painted in strong yellows and reds, with expressionistic black outlining. I got to know Clifton in about 1988, whilst photographing a series of works he had produced on the theme of Leda and the Swan; for which I used a studio lighting technique I had developed which correctly threw the brush-strokes into relief. They were made into high-quality posters, which Clifton loved, saying that they looked as good as the originals." Continue https://frankneilsen.com.au/gallery/clifton-pugh

[lindsaywesker]

Deaths In 2023

January

1: Fred White (67, American drummer, Earth Wind & Fire)

3: Alan Rankine (64, Scottish musician/producer, The Associates)

6: Gianluca Vialli (58, Italian football player/manager)

10: Jeff Beck (78, English guitarist, The Yardbirds/The Jeff Beck Group/Beck Bogart & Appice)

11: Yukihiro Takahashi (70, Japanese singer/drummer, Yellow Magic Orchestra)

12: Robbie Bachman (69, Canadian drummer, Bachman Turner Overdrive)

Lisa-Marie Presley (54, American singer/songwriter, daughter of Elvis, mother of Riley Keough)

16: Gina Lollobrigida (95, Italian actress)

18: David Crosby (81, American singer/songwriter, The Byrds, Crosby Stills Nash & Young)

27: Sylvia Sims (89, English actress, ‘Ice Cold In Alex’)

28: Barrett Strong (81, American singer/songwriter, co-wrote ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’/‘Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone’

Tom Verlaine (73, American musician/songwriter/producer, Television)

Lisa Loring (64, American actress, ‘The Addams Family’)

February

2: Calton Coffie (68, Jamaican singer, Inner Circle)

3: Paco Rabanne (88, Spanish fashion designer)

8: Burt Bacharach (94, American songwriter, co-wrote ‘Walk On By’/‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’/‘A House Is Not A Home’/‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’)

10: Hugh Hudson (86, film director, ‘Chariots Of Fire’)

12: David Jolicoeur a.k.a. Trugoy The Dove (54, American rapper, De La Soul)

15: Raquel Welch (82, American actress)

16: Chuck Jackson (85, American soul singer, ‘Any Day Now’/‘I Keep Forgettin’’)

18: Barbara Bosson (83, American actress, ‘Hill Street Blues’)

19: Richard Belzer (78, American actor, ‘Homicide: Life On The Street’/’Law And Order: Special Victims Unit’)

Dickie Davies (94, British television personality, ‘World Of Sport’)

23: John Motson (77, English football commentator, ‘Match Of The Day’)

March

2: Steve Mackey (56, English bassist/producer, Pulp)

Wayne Shorter (89, American jazz saxophonist, Weather Report)

3: Carlos Garnett (84, Panamanian jazz saxophonist)

Tom Sizemore (61, American actor, ‘Saving Private Ryan’)

5: Gary Rossington (71, American guitarist, Lynyrd Skynyrd)

8: Topol (87, Israeli actor, ‘Fiddler On The Roof’/’Flash Gordon’)

10: Junior English (71, Jamaican reggae singer)

12: Dick Fosbury (76, American high jumper)

13: Jim Gordon (77, American drummer, Traffic/Derek & The Dominoes)

14: Bobby Caldwell (71, American singer/songwriter)

15: Greg Perry (singer/songwriter/producer)

16: Fuzzy Haskins (81, American singer, Parliament/Funkadelic)

17: Lance Reddick (60, American actor, ‘The Wire’/’Oz’/’John Wick’ films)

23: Keith Reid (76, English songwriter, Procol Harum)

Peter Shelley (80, English singer/songwriter/producer, ‘Gee Baby’/’Love Me Love My Dog’)

28: Paul O’Grady a.k.a. Lily Savage (67, English comedian)

Ryuichi Sakamoto (71, Japanese musician/composer, Yellow Magic Orchestra, composed theme to ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’)

29: Charles Sherrell a.k.a. Sweet Charles (80, American bass player/singer, The JBs, ‘Yes, It’s You’)

April

5: Booker T. Newberry III (67, American singer, Sweet Thunder, ‘Love Town’)

6: Paul Cattermole (46, English singer, S Club 7)

8: Michael Lerner (81, American actor, ‘Barton Fink’)

12: Jah Shaka (75, Jamaican sound system operator)

13: Dame Mary Quant (93, English fashion designer)

14: Mark Sheehan (46, Irish guitarist, The Script)

16: Ahmad Jamal (92, jazz pianist)

17: Ivan Conti (76, jazz drummer, Azymuth)

22: Barry Humphries a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage (89, Australian comedian/actor)

Len Goodman (78, English TV personality)

25: Harry Belafonte (95, American musician/actor/civil rights leader)

27: Wee Willie Harris (90, English rock & roll singer)

Jerry Springer (79, English-born, American TV host)

28: Tim Bachman (71, Canadian guitarist, Bachman-Turner Overdrive)

May

1: Gordon Lightfoot (84, Canadian singer/songwriter, ‘If You Could Read My Mind’)

3: Linda Lewis (72, English singer/songwriter, ‘Rock-A-Doodle-Doo’)

18: Jim Brown (87, American football player/actor, ‘The Dirty Dozen’)

19: Pete Brown (82, poet/singer/lyricist, ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’/’White Room’/’I Feel Free’)

Andy Rourke (59, English bass player, The Smiths)

24: Bill Lee (94, American jazz musician/composer, Spike’s dad, scored ‘She’s Gotta Have It’/‘School Daze’/’Do The Right Thing’

Tina Turner (84, American-born, Swiss singer/actress, ‘River Deep Mountain High’/’Nutbush City Limits’/’What’s Love Got To Do With It?’)

26: Reuben Wilson (88, American jazz organist, ‘Got To Get Your Own’)

June

1: Cynthia Weil (82, songwriter, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’/’Here You Come Again’)

6: Tony McPhee (79, English guitarist, The Groundhogs)

12: Treat Williams (71, American actor, ‘Hair’/’Prince Of The City’)

14: John Hollins (76, English football player, Chelsea/Arsenal/England)

15: Glenda Jackson (87, English MP/actress, ‘Women In Love’/’Sunday Bloody Sunday’)

27: Julian Sands (65, English actor, ‘A Room With A View’)

29: Alan Arkin (89, American actor, ‘Catch 22’/’Little Miss Sunshine’)

30: Lord Creator (87, Trinidad-born, Jamaican singer/songwriter, ‘Kingston Town’)

July

3: Vicki Anderson a.k.a. Myra Barnes  (83, American soul singer, Carleen’s mum)

Mo Foster (78, English songwriter/musician/producer)

5: George Tickner (76, American guitarist, Journey)

16: Jane Birkin (76, French/English actress/singer, ‘Je t’aime … moi non plus’, banned by the BBC in 1969)

21: Tony Bennett (96, American singer, ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’)

22: Vince Hill (89, English singer, ‘Edelweiss’)

24: Trevor Francis (69, English football player, Birmingham City/England)

26: Randy Meisner (77, musician/songwriter, Poco/The Eagles, ‘Take It To The Limit’)

Sinead O’Connor (56, Irish singer, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’/songwriter, ‘Mandinka’)

30: Paul Reubens a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman (70, American actor/comedian)

31: Angus Cloud (25, American actor, ‘Euphoria’)

 August

4: John Gosling (75, English keyboard player, The Kinks)

7: DJ Casper (58, DJ/artist/songwriter, ‘Cha Cha Slide’)

William Friedkin (87, American film director, ‘The French Connection’/’The Exorcist’)

9: Robbie Robertson (80, Canadian musician/songwriter/singer, The Band)

Sixto Rodriguez (81, American singer/songwriter, subject of 2012 documentary ‘Searching For Sugar Man’

13: Clarence Avant (92, owner of Sussex Records/Tabu Records, film producer, ‘Jason’s Lyric’)

Magoo (50, American rapper, Timbaland & Magoo)

16: Jerry Moss (88, music executive, the ‘M’ in A&M Records)

17: Bobby Eli (77, guitarist, MFSB/songwriter, ‘Love Won’t Let Me Wait’)

Gary Young (70, American drummer, Pavement)

19: Ron Cephas Jones (66, American actor, ‘This Is Us’)

24: Bernie Marsden (72, English guitarist, Whitesnake/songwriter, ‘Here I Go Again’/’Fool For Your Loving’)

29: Jamie Crick (57, English radio broadcaster, Jazz FM)

31: Gayle Hunnicutt (80, American actress, ‘Dallas’)

September

1: Jimmy Buffett (76, American singer/songwriter, ‘Margaritaville’)

4: Gary Wright (80, American singer/songwriter, ‘Dream Weaver’/’Love Is Alive’)

Steve Harwell (56, American singer/rapper, Smash Mouth)

8: Mike Yarwood (82, English comedian/impressionist)

13: Roger Whittaker (87, Kenyan-born English singer/songwriter, ‘Durham Town’)

16: Sir Horace Ove (86, Trinidadian-born, English film director, ‘Pressure’)

Irish Grinstead (43, American R&B singer, 702)

25: David McCallum (90, Scottish actor, ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’/’N.C.I.S.’/musician)

28: Michael Gambon (82, English actor, ‘Harry Potter’ movies)

30: Russell Batiste Jr. (57, American drummer, The Meters)

October

2: Francis Lee (79, English football player, Manchester City/England)

8: Burt Young (83, American actor, ‘Rocky’)

11: Rudolph Isley (84, American singer, The Isley Brothers/songwriter, ‘That Lady’)

12: Michael Cooper (71, Jamaican musician, Inner Circle/Third World)

14: Piper Laurie (91, American actress, ‘Carrie’/’The Hustler’)

19: DJ Mark The 45 King (62, DJ/musician/producer, ‘The 900 Number’)

20: Haydn Gwynne (66, English actress, ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’)

21: Sir Bobby Charlton (86, English footballer, Manchester United/England)

24: Richard Roundtree (81, American actor, ‘Shaft’)

28: Matthew Perry (54, American-Canadian actor, ‘Friends’)

November

12: Anna Scher (78, founder of the Anna Scher Children’s Theatre)

19: Joss Ackland CBE (95, English actor, ‘White Mischief’)

22: Jean Knight (80, American soul singer, ‘Mr. Big Stuff’)

25: Terry Venables (80, English footballer, Chelsea/Tottenham Hotspur/England manager)

26: Geordie Walker (64, English guitarist, Killing Joke)

29: Sticky Vicky (80, Spanish dancer and illusionist)

30: Shane MacGowan (65, English-born Irish singer, The Pogues/songwriter, ‘Fairytale Of New York’)

December

1: Brigit Forsyth (83, Scottish actress, ‘Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?’)

5: Denny Laine (79, English musician, The Moody Blues/Wings, songwriter, ‘Mull Of Kintyre’)

7: Benjamin Zephaniah (65, English poet/writer/actor, ‘Peaky Blinders’)

8: Ryan O’Neal (82, American actor, ‘Love Story’/’Barry Lyndon’/’Paper Moon’)

Nidra Beard (71, American singer, Dynasty)

11: Andre Braugher (61, American actor, ‘Homicide: Life On The Street’/’Brooklyn Nine-Nine’/’Glory’)

Richard Kerr (78, English singer/songwriter, ‘Mandy’)

15: Bob Johnson (79, singer/songwriter/musician, Steeleye Span)

16: Colin Burgess (77, Australian drummer, AC/DC)

17: Amp Fiddler (65, singer/songwriter/producer)

#mixcloud #mi soul #dj #music #new blog #lockdown #coronavirus #books #weekend #democracy

[kelloggjkellogg]

Inspiration board

@citylighten came up with a challenge to create a collage of story Sims with the characters that inspired them or influenced them. Here's my effort...

Jeremy Saint, inspired by Don Hollinger from "That Girl" played by Ted Bessell. Suzy Humphries, inspired by a combination of Samantha Juste, Patti Boyd and Marisa Sannia. John Action, inspired by Shaft played by Richard Roundtree. Jamie, inspired by Barry Evans' character from "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush".

#1960s #sim 66 #sims 4 #decades challenge

[whileiamdying]

Barry Humphries (Dame Edna to You, Possums) Is Dead at 89

Bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, Mr. Humphries’s creation was one of the longest-lived characters ever channeled by a single performer.

Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage in the one-person show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance” at the Music Box Theater on Broadway in 2004. Credit... Sara Krulwich

by Margalit Fox April 22, 2023Updated 12:35 p.m. ET

Oh, Possums, Dame Edna is no more.

To be unflinchingly precise, Barry Humphries, the Australian-born actor and comic who for almost seven decades brought that divine doyenne of divadom, Dame Edna Everage, to delirious, dotty, disdainful Dadaist life, died on Saturday in Sydney. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by the hospital where he had spent several days after undergoing hip surgery. In a tribute message posted on Twitter, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia praised Mr. Humphries as “a great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind.”

A stiletto-heeled, stiletto-tongued persona who might well have been the spawn of a ménage à quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dalí, Auntie Mame and Miss Piggy, Dame Edna was not so much a character as a cultural phenomenon, a force of nature trafficking in wicked, sequined commentary on the nature of fame.

For generations after the day she first sprang to life on the Melbourne stage, Dame Edna reigned, bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, one of the longest-lived characters to be channeled by a single performer. She toured worldwide in a series of solo stage shows and was ubiquitous on television in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere.

A master improviser (many of Dame Edna’s most stinging barbs were ad-libbed) with a face like taffy, Mr. Humphries was widely esteemed as one of the world’s foremost theatrical clowns.

“I’ve only seen one man have power over an audience like that,” the theater critic John Lahr told him, after watching Dame Edna night after night in London. “My father.” Mr. Lahr’s father was the great stage and cinematic clown Bert Lahr.

Mr. Humphries conceived Edna in 1955 as Mrs. Norm Everage, typical Australian housewife. “Everage,” after all, is Australian for “average.”

Housewife, Superstar, National Treasure

But Edna soon became a case study in exorbitant amour propre, lampooning suburban pretensions, political correctness and the cult of celebrity, and acquiring a damehood along the way. A “housewife-superstar,” she called herself, upgrading the title in later years to “megastar” and, still later, to “gigastar.”

Mr. Humphries as Dame Edna, wearing a hat in the shape of the Sydney Opera House, in 1976. Credit... Wesley/Getty Images

In Britain, where Mr. Humphries had long made his home, Dame Edna was considered a national treasure, a paragon of performance art long before the term was coined.

In the United States, she starred in a three-episode series, “Dame Edna’s Hollywood,” a mock celebrity talk show broadcast on NBC in the early 1990s, and was a frequent guest on actual talk shows.

She performed several times on Broadway, winning Mr. Humphries a special Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Theater World Awards, for “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour,” his 1999 one-person show.

In her stage and TV shows, written largely by Mr. Humphries, Dame Edna typically made her entrance tottering down a grand staircase (Mr. Humphries was more than six feet tall) in a tsunami of sequins, her hair a bouffant violet cloud (she was “a natural wisteria,” she liked to say), her evening gown slit to the thigh to reveal Mr. Humphries’s surprisingly good legs, her body awash in jewels, her eyes agape behind sprawling rhinestone glasses (“face furniture,” she called them).

Addressing the audience, she delivered her signature greeting, “Hellooooo, Possums!”

By turns tender and astringent, Dame Edna called audience members “possums” often. She also called them other things, as when, leaning across the footlights, she would address a woman in the front row in a confiding, carrying voice: “I know, dear. I used to make my own clothes, too.”

Mr. Humphries with the English actress Joan Plowright at the Lyric Theater in London. Credit... Evening Standard/Getty Images

Performances concluded with Dame Edna flinging hundreds of gladioli into the crowd, no mean feat aerodynamically. “Wave your gladdies, Possums!” she exhorted audience members who caught them, and the evening would end, to music, with a mass valedictory swaying.

Between the “Hellooooo” and the gladdies, Dame Edna’s audiences were treated to a confessional monologue deliciously akin to finding oneself stranded in a hall of vanity mirrors.

There was commentary on her husband and children (“I made a decision: I put my family last”); her beauty regimen (“Good self-esteem is very important. I look in the mirror and say, ‘Edna, you are gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous’”); and the constellation of luminaries who routinely sought her counsel, among them Queen Elizabeth II and her family. (“I’ve had to change my telephone number several times to stop them ringing me.”)

Dame Edna’s TV shows were often graced by actual celebrity guests, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charlton Heston, Sean Connery, Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall.

They came in for no less of a drubbing than the audience did, starting with the inaugural affront, the affixing of immense name tags to their lapels — for eclipsed by the light of gigastardom so close at hand, who among us would not be reduced to anonymity?

“Chuck,” Mr. Heston’s name tag read. Ms. Gabor received two: a “Zsa” for the right shoulder and a “Zsa” for the left.

A few pleasantries were exchanged before Dame Edna moved in for the kill.

“You’ve had nine hits this year,” she purred fawningly at the singer-songwriter Michael Bolton on one of her British TV shows. “On your website.”

Turning to the audience after delivering a particularly poisonous insult, she would ooze, “I mean that in the most caring way.”

Those guests who emerged relatively unscathed had the savvy to take Dame Edna at face value and interact with her as though she were real. The moment he donned those rhinestone glasses, Mr. Humphries often said, Dame Edna became real to him too, an entirely separate law unto herself.

‘I Wish I’d Thought of That’

“I’m, as it were, in the wings, and she’s onstage,” he explained in a 2015 interview with Australian television. “And every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think, ‘I wish I’d thought of that.’”

But the truly funny thing, Possums, is that when Mr. Humphries first brought Dame Edna to life, he intended her to last only a week or so. What was more, she was meant to have been played by the distinguished actress Zoe Caldwell.

Mr. Humphries created a string of other characters over the years, notably the boorish, bibulous Australian cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson. But it was Dame Edna, the outlandish aunt who engenders adoration and mortification in equal measure, who captivated the public utterly — despite the fact that in later years, her mortification-inducing lines sometimes landed her, and her creator, in trouble.

So fully did Mr. Humphries animate Edna that he was at continued pains to point out that he was neither a female impersonator in the conventional sense nor a cross-dresser in any sense.

“Mr. Humphries, do you ever have to take your children aside and explain to them why you like to wear women’s clothes?” an American interviewer once asked him.

“If I were an actor playing Hamlet,” he replied, “would I have to take my children aside and say I wasn’t really Danish?’”

By all accounts far more erudite than Dame Edna — he was an accomplished painter, bibliophile and art collector — Mr. Humphries, in a sustained act of self-protection, always spoke of her in the third person.

She did likewise. “My manager,” she disdainfully called him. (She also called Mr. Humphries “a money-grubbing little slug” and accused him of embezzling her fortune. He did, it must be said, cash a great many of her checks.)

But as dismissive of her creator as Dame Edna was, she rallied to his aid when he very likely needed her most: after years of alcoholism culminated in stays in psychiatric hospitals and at least one brush with the law.

Mr. Humphries at the Booth Theater on Broadway in 1999 in “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour,” for which he won a special Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Theater World Awards. Credit... Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

‘I Hated Her’

John Barry Humphries was born in Kew, a Melbourne suburb, on Feb. 17, 1934. His father, Eric, was a prosperous builder; his mother, Louisa, was a homemaker.

From his earliest childhood in Camberwell, a more exclusive suburb, he felt oppressed by the bourgeois conformism that enveloped his parents and their circle, and depressed by his mother’s cold suburban propriety.

Dame Edna was a response to those forces.

“I invented Edna because I hated her,” Mr. Humphries was quoted as saying in Mr. Lahr’s book “Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage With Barry Humphries” (1992). “I poured out my hatred of the standards of the little people of their generation.”

Dame Edna emerged when the young Mr. Humphries, under the sway of Dadaism, was performing with a repertory company based at the University of Melbourne; he had dropped out of the university two years before.

On long bus tours, he entertained his colleagues with the character of Mrs. Norm Everage — born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, Australia, sometime in the 1930s — an ordinary housewife who had found sudden acclaim after winning a nationwide competition, the Lovely Mother Quest.

Unthinkable as it seems, Edna was dowdy then, given to mousy brown hair and pillbox hats. But she was already in full command of the arsenal of bourgeois bigotries that would be a hallmark of her later self.

For a revue by the company in December 1955, Mr. Humphries wrote a part for Edna, earmarked for Ms. Caldwell, an Australian contemporary. But when she proved too busy to oblige, he donned a dress and played it himself. After Edna proved a hit with Melbourne audiences, he performed the character elsewhere in the country.

By the end of the 1950s, hoping to make a career as a serious actor, Mr. Humphries had moved to London, where Edna met with little enthusiasm and was largely shelved. (She blamed Mr. Humphries ever after for her lack of early success there.)

Mr. Humphries played Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker, in the original West End production of the musical “Oliver!” in 1960, and reprised the role when the show came to Broadway in 1963.

But though he worked steadily during the ’60s, he was also in the fierce grip of alcoholism. Stays in psychiatric hospitals, he later said, were of no avail.

His nadir came in 1970, when he awoke in a Melbourne gutter to find himself under arrest.

With a doctor’s help, Mr. Humphries became sober soon afterward; he did not take a drink for the rest of his life. He dusted off Dame Edna and, little by little, de-dowdified her. By the late ’70s, with celebrity culture in full throttle, she had given him international renown and unremitting employment.

Edna did not seduce every critic. Reviewing her first New York stage show, the Off Broadway production “Housewife! Superstar!!,” in The New York Times in 1977, Richard Eder called it “abysmal.”

Nor did Edna’s resolute lack of political correctness always stand her, or Mr. Humphries, in good stead. In February 2003, writing an advice column as Dame Edna in Vanity Fair, he replied to a reader’s query about whether to learn Spanish.

“Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to?” Dame Edna’s characteristically caustic response read. “The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you’re American, try English.”

A public furor ensued, led by the Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek, who appeared on the magazine’s cover that month. Vanity Fair discontinued Dame Edna’s column not long afterward.

In an interview with The Times in 2004, Mr. Humphries was unrepentant.

“The people I offended were minorities with no sense of humor, I fear,” he said. “When you have to explain the nature of satire to somebody, you’re fighting a losing battle.”

Mr. Humphries drew further ire after a 2016 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph in which he denounced political correctness as a “new puritanism.” In the same interview, he described people who transition from male to female as “mutilated” men, and Caitlyn Jenner in particular as “a publicity-seeking ratbag.”

Sailing Above the Fray

Dame Edna, for her part, appeared to sail imperviously through. She returned to Broadway in 2004 for the well-received show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance” and in 2010 with “All About Me,” a revue that also starred the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein.

Mr. Humphries was back on Broadway as Dame Edna in 2010 with “All About Me,” a revue that also starred the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

As herself — it was she, and not Mr. Humphries, who was credited — Dame Edna played the recurring character Claire Otoms (the name is an anagram for “a sitcom role”), an outré lawyer, on the Fox TV series “Ally McBeal.”

Under his own name, Mr. Humphries appeared as the Great Goblin in “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012); as the voice of Bruce, the great white shark, in “Finding Nemo” (2003); and in other pictures.

Mr. Humphries’s books include the memoirs “More Please” (1992) and “My Life as Me” (2002) and the novel “Women in the Background” (1995). He was named a Commander of the British Empire in 2007.

Dame Edna also wrote several books, among them “Dame Edna’s Bedside Companion” (1983) and the memoir “My Gorgeous Life” (1989).

Mr. Humphries’s first marriage, to Brenda Wright, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Rosalind Tong, and his third, to Diane Millstead. He had two daughters, Tessa and Emily, from his marriage to Ms. Tong, and two sons, Oscar and Rupert, from his marriage to Ms. Millstead.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that his survivors include his wife of 30 years, Lizzie Spender, the daughter of the British poet Stephen Spender, as well as his children and 10 grandchildren.

Mr. Humphries continued to perform until last year, when he toured Britain (as himself) with a one-man show, “The Man Behind the Mask.” He returned to Australia in December for Christmas.

Dame Edna’s husband, Norm, a chronic invalid “whose prostate,” she often lamented, “has been hanging over me for years,” died long ago. Her survivors include an adored son, Kenny, who designed all her gowns; a less adored son, Bruce; and a despised daughter, the wayward Valmai. (“She steals things. Puts them in her pantyhose. Particularly frozen chickens when she’s in a supermarket.”)

Another daughter, Lois, was abducted as an infant by a “rogue koala,” a subject Dame Edna could bring herself to discuss with interviewers only rarely.

Though the child was never seen again, to the end of her life Dame Edna never gave up hope she would be found.

“I’m looking,” she told NPR in 2015. “Every time I pass a eucalyptus tree I look up.”

Constant Meheut contributed reporting.

Margalit Fox is a former senior writer on the obituaries desk at The Times. She was previously an editor at the Book Review. She has written the send-offs of some of the best-known cultural figures of our era, including Betty Friedan, Maya Angelou and Seamus Heaney. More about Margalit Fox

#Barry Humphries #Dame Edna Everage #Edna Everage #Moonie Ponds #Australia #Obituary

[i-want-to-see-mountains-again]

Rest in peace to our dear Great Goblin, John Barry Humphries. I bet he has the heavenly host cracking up.🤣♥️

#the hobbit #the great goblin #the goblin king #barry humphries #peter jackson movies

[richo1915]

The last of the cross dressing comedians that nobody had a problem with before the LBGTQ culture wars started.

An Australian Legend like Vegemite. The Grandfather of Political Incorrectness.

Vale John Barry Humphries AO CBE aka- Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson.

#RIP #barry humphries #dame edna #sir les #australian comedian #australian legend #political incorrectness #take the piss

[wikiuntamed]

Top 5 @Wikipedia pages from a year ago: Saturday, 22nd April 2023

Welcome, velkommen, dobrodošli, fáilte 🤗 What were the top pages visited on @Wikipedia (22nd April 2023) 🏆🌟🔥?

1️⃣: Indian Premier League "The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as the TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's Twenty20 (T20) cricket league held annually in India. Founded by the BCCI in 2007, the league features ten city-based franchise teams. The IPL usually takes place during the summer, between March and May..."

2️⃣: 2023 Indian Premier League "The 2023 Indian Premier League (also known as Tata IPL 2023 for sponsorship reasons and sometimes referred to as IPL 2023 or IPL 16) was the 16th season of the Indian Premier League, a franchise Twenty20 cricket league in India. It is organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. In the..."

3️⃣: Climate change "In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0? by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio, Key and Title by uploader (Eric Fisk)

4️⃣: Barry Humphries "John Barry Humphries (17 February 1934 – 22 April 2023) was an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He was best known for writing and playing his stage and television characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. Humphries's characters brought him international renown. He..."

Image licensed under CC BY 2.5? by WTCA

5️⃣: Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan "Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan (transl. Someone's Brother, Someone's Lover), also known by the initialism KBKJ, is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language action comedy film directed by Farhad Samji and produced by Salman Khan Films. It is a remake of the 2014 Tamil film Veeram. The film stars Salman Khan and Pooja..."

#TopWikiPages #WikiUntamed #WhatWeLookedAt #WhyThesePages

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 2.17

Beer Birthdays

George Younger (1722)

Ernest Davis (1872)

John A. White Jr. (1878)

Wendy Littlefield (1956)

Marty Jones (1959)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Billie Joe Armstrong; rock musician (1972)

Arcangelo Corelli; composer (1653)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt; actor (1981)

Michael Jordan; Chicago Bills G (1963)

Denise Richards; actor (1971)

Famous Birthdays

Enrico Banducci; nightclub owner, "hungry i" (1922)

Red Barber; sportscaster (1908)

Michael Bay; film director (1965)

Noah Beery; actor (1882)

Jim Brown; Cleveland Browns RB (1936)

Buddy DeFranco; clarinetist, bandleader (1923)

Isabelle Eberhardt; Swiss explorer, writer (1877)

Dorothy Canfield Fisher; writer (1879)

Paris Hilton; celebutante (1981)

Hal Holbrook; actor (1925)

Barry Humphries; actor (1934)

Arthur Kennedy; actor (1914)

Friedrich Alfred Krupp; German manufacturer (1854)

Tobias Mayer; German astronomer (1723)

Valeria Mazza; model (1972)

Samuel Sidney McClure; publisher, writer (1857)

Loreena McKinnitt; pop musician (1957)

Mary Ann Mobley; actress (1939)

Lola Montez; Irish dancer (1821)

Huey P. Newton; political activist (1942)

Andre Norton; writer (1912)

Jerry O'Connell; actor (1974_

Lou Diamond Phillips; actor (1962)

Christina Pickles; actor (1935)

Wally Pipp; New York Yankees 1B (1893)

Gene Pitney; singer (1941)

Rene Russo; actress (1954)

Horace-Benedict de Saussure; Swiss physicist, founder of "Alpinism" (1740)

Margaret Truman; writer (1924)

Montgomery Ward; department store founder (1843)

Thomas J. Watson; businessman, IBM president (1874)

#Birthdays