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During the next three decades Michael Greer would become something of an urban gay legend in the world of nightclubs and cabaret. He created a revue that always capped the evening with a skit know as “Don’t mess with Mona”. In this skit he would don a long black wig and sit on a stool holding a life size picture frame in front of him. At this point he would set the stage as the world famous Mona Lisa, waking up after hours in the museum, dispensing one liners and bon mots for the benefit of the other paintings and his adoring audience.

I first came across his revue in a landmark gay club on Polk Street known as the “PS” in San Francisco where Michael played to a full room night after night. One of his protégés was dating a friend of mine from San Francisco State, so I was invited to go back and meet Michael after the last show. In those days everything seemed to be happening at once, life really was a cabaret. However three weeks later the young man who arranged our introduction was brutally murdered in Golden Gate Park and to this day his killing remains unsolved. The turn of events naturally affected us all and I would not see Michael again until I was living in Los Angeles several years down the line.

During this era between 1970 until the end of 1982, now considered the “Golden Age” of gay life from coast to coast, the unknown dangers of casual sex in bath houses and one night stands moved from penicillin to HIV. The glittering nightlife in discos and cabaret’s like RENO SWEENEY’S on the east coast to the TIVOLI GARDENS in North Beach were booking talent like Michael Greer, the sublime Sylvester, and the grand dame of impersonators himself, Charles Pierce.

These popper-fueled nights in black leather were made all the more mythic by the freedom and yes, the reckless abandon with we chose to express that freedom was without regret…at least not yet. I can still remember to this day a Saturday night in North Beach at the CABARET, watching Sylvester in a shimmering midnight blue gown with a blu- and-silver deco headdress, impersonating with superb style a youthful Ethel Waters as she might have been in 1929, all red hot jazz, and that voice that could at his command transcend time, space and gender. People tend to forget all this now, when all one has to remember him by are the disco hits that could never fully capture his amazing talent. It was Michael who turned me on to Sylvester when the night bird still lived above a bar in the Castro called, of all things, Toad Hall.

I also remember Michael laughing about the legendary Peter Berlin, who became a sex icon simply by posing against lampposts in the Castro, or anything tall and hard that might support his outrageous good looks. He always wore a skin-tight pair of black leather pants with a work shirt almost open to the waist, with that long blond hair. Michael would see him on the street and always ask “How’s business today Siegfried? To which Berlin would just wink and grin “Never better.” A few weeks later he would make his now classic underground film NIGHTS IN BLACK LEATHER, thus a another legend was born in the Castro Village of San Francisco.

By 1973 Michael had found himself a home in the Hollywood Hills, although he traveled wherever the work might take him. At that time I was living in San Francisco, still in college, with serious thoughts of an acting career, auditioning for theatrical productions on campus. During this period I was playing the Baron De Charlis in a production of Camino Real when, one night after rehearsals, a bunch of us would-be actors went into North Beach to see the ultra-fab “Ultra Violet,” the infamous Warhol goddess and part time witch, do her thing.

I had always wanted to meet this witchy woman, so this was a real turn on for me. By the time we arrived at the scene, Ultra Violet was reading with much eye movement from a volume of occult text at an intensely hip Tarot/magic boutique across from Big AL’S. Afterwards we mingled among the occult personages until I finally had my one-on-one with Ultra. She was really cool and quite nice. She actually read my cards, telling me that a film was in my future. Well, there was no real magic in this, because it turns out that a friend of hers, a guy name Budd, was doing make-up on a horror film being made down the coast towards Santa Barbara, and just maybe they might have work as an extra, and all we had to do was drive down there and present ourselves.

The film turned out to be MESSIAH OF EVIL and it starred none other than Michael Greer as the “dark Stranger” Thom, or as Michael described him, “The Devil’s son…” Michael had signed on for this low budget film with his name above the title to hopefully please his agent…and for a change he was playing STRAIGHT. I only worked on the film for two days so my memories of it are not crystal. I know that just about everyone on the production was new. Unfortunately my two little bits were not with Michael, and one was cut altogether.

I finally moved to LA in 1976, now and then running into Michael, as he performed just about anywhere there was an audience. I saw him perform his act about three years later when a client of mine, Barbara London (she played in Altman’s CALIFORNIA SPLIT) took me to see him out at some cabaret in the valley. Michael was still Michael and yes, he was doing “Don’t mess with Mona”. He greeted my little group warmly, yet by now there was a bittersweet aura of sadness in his demeanor. Always a trooper, he gave one hundred percent of himself to every performance. Michael told us he was up for a film and might play again in New York, so we left him on a high note for 1977.

My next encounter with Michael Greer would be my last. As we approached the new millennium I had taken a job in Palm Springs to host my own radio show, which I rightly named “TALES FROM THE CLOSET”. I was working for a gay radio station called Triangle that allowed me free reign with phone-in guests from all over the country and a chance to do a live entertainment show from the desert where so many stars had lived and loved without the prying eyes of Hollywood.

One of the best-known venues for live entertainment in Palm Springs was a café and grill called “The Rock Garden Café” which boasted a Showroom for cabaret of all kinds. It was there, in the summer of 2000, that Michael Greer would headline his review for what would be his fourth decade as a singer/impressionist/actor/comic. I called the Showroom days before and asked if Michael would like to appear on my show. They got back to me that he was only coming in from LA to do the show and I would have to negotiate any other appearances with him personally.

I organized a small group and we attended his first night at the Showroom of the Rock Garden. The act was so old it was new. I laughed as much as I did in the remote golden days of 1973, even when he placed that well worn frame on his lap to caution for the thousandth time “Don’t mess with Mona”. The audience loved him as they always did, yet that night Michael seemed a bit on the ashen side, his energy level somewhat strained at times. Michael was a lifelong smoker, probably from impersonating Bette Davis, to the point of actually being asked to dub her when she was on her last legs in the film WICKED STEPMOTHER.

I went backstage afterwards where the conversation went right back to those hazy days in San Francisco, a Mecca the late Herb Caen always referred to as “Bagdad by the bay”. I made a point of telling Michael that now that I was starting to do more audio commentaries we should look into getting FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES out on DVD and really tell it like it was baby! To my lasting regret, Michael could not stay over to do my radio show. I told him not to worry, there would be other times.

There would not be another time. Michael Greer, who by then was suffering from Cancer, passed away two years later in a hospital in Riverside at the age of 59.

These lines of Shakespeare below stayed with me for days after hearing of his passing
Michael Greer had to live those lines his entire life and he did so with courage and dignity.

“WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES, I ALL ALONE BEWEEP MY OUTCAST STATE…..

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