Tweet

At the time of Samson’s death in April of 1995 he had lived at 6026 Barton Ave for over fifty years and never cleaned it once after the salons ceased to exist in the early seventies. There were mementos everywhere, some of value, others too absurd to contemplate. The costume he wore in Pleasure Dome was framed under glass although it had been in that frame so long there was doubt it could be removed without damaging the piece altogether. There were antiques to be sure, but everything was covered in dust and grime, things piled on top of one another. Samson really did live like a bag lady, even clipping coupons and always dining out on everybody else. He slept in a small bedroom off from the parlor in a red and gold Chinese frame bed that looked like Anna May Wong might have owned it around 1915. He kept a loaded gun, also an antique, but it did work (he said), by his bed as he feared burglars all his time there. His house may have been nice when he bought it 70 years ago but his neighborhood declined to the point where gunshots could be heard on a nightly basis. Miraculously he was never robbed or beaten up in the lifetime he lived in that house. It was even more of a miracle that he did not go up in flames like a witch in Salem because he chain-smoked cigarettes like Bette Davis on a slow day.

There was a time when I first got to know Samson that I used to take him to industry screenings at various locations around town, until the night we went to see a John Waters film at the Gower Studios. Now I must tell you that Samson had no problem mouthing off to anybody who crossed his path the wrong way. In the past he would tell somebody to be quiet and nothing ever came of it, as people should be silent during a film. However on this occasion Sam found himself sitting behind Pat Ast, a very large, loud and sometimes pissed off actress whose shit list I personally would not want to be on. Well Pat was sitting with her group and her hair was teased very high on her head so Samson moved to a different seat in the same row, leaving me a seat or two away from him. During the movie Pat kept talking to her friends at key points, yet it was not affecting the people around her except for Sam. As the film was into the last 20 minutes or so Sam had reached his limit and told her to just shut her fucking mouth and watch the fucking film. Well all three hundred pounds of Pat Ast rose up and turned around to face her heckler and, seeing it was an old man, she still did not give a fuck. She told him to shut his fucking mouth and then told him she was Miss Pat Ast, to which Sam, without missing a beat, replied that her name should be Miss Fat Ass… By now the film was no longer the center of attention, and I managed to get Sam up and took him out the side exit to my car.

He kept asking me if I knew who this fat dyke was and I told him not to give it a thought.
I believe that was the last screening I ever took La Perversa to see, as I grew tired of the rudeness and bad manners that he felt were his right because of his age, and the fact that nobody ever stuck or hurt him physically in his entire life. Compare that with, say, Quentin Crisp, who was beaten up so many times over his homosexuality that he simply refused to hide, regardless of the risk. Maybe Samson, spending a lifetime with a private income in Hollywood where he never ventured out without companions, may have had something to do with his amazing luck.

There are countless stories I could tell about Samson, yet they all end the same way. Yes, sometimes he was a trip to deal with, and did possess on occasion a gallows’ humor in his observations about Hollywood. I think what disturbed me about my relationship with him was never knowing if he was a real friend or not. In the end this became the ultimate turnoff.

When he died, appropriately on April fools day 1995, all of us found out that he had something like five million dollars in the bank, and yet he lived his entire life as a miser in a filthy old house by himself, surrounded by objects that were too dusty to see or appreciate.

When all of the considerable dust finally settles surrounding this man, I imagine his legacy will always be tied to Kenneth Anger, who has his fault s to be sure but remains a towering figure in the history of Cinema of the 20th Century. Thus Samson De Brier will finally have a diminutive footnote in film history all to himself, as the man who lent his house to Anger to make his film and played three roles in what is now a highly regarded art film – THE INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME. Let the marquee read SAMSON De BRIER as the Lord Shiva, Osiris and the Great Beast.

The other day I noticed online they were about to auction off the house Samson lived in throughout all the notoriety of seven decades. The house is now valued at over one million dollars in spite of the crappy neighborhood. The flyer for the house described it as follows: “Former home of the infamous celebrity warlock, Samson De Brier. Check out this relic from Hollywood’s pre-hippy LA Freak show history.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself…

BLOOD MOON RISING

In preparing the above-mentioned piece on Samson De Brier I luckily chanced upon a book site online entitled HOLLYWOOD’S SILENT CLOSET that had an excerpt from one of its many X- rated chapters which chronicled the arrival of Ramon Navarro in Hollywood and his meeting with both Francis X Bushman and Frank Harris. The author of this book is Darwin Porter and I am here to tell you that within five minutes of reading this man’s work I was a fan. Darwin Porter rocks, baby, and I have at least a dozen more volumes of this man’s work yet to read.

Those of you who have been reading CAMP DAVID for the last three years are more than aware that I have started chronicling some Hollywood closets of my own both in print and for a moment on my radio program TALES FROM THE CLOSET. So you can imagine my astonishment to come across such a kindred spirit, who has an equally amazing body of work, and yet I had never encountered Mr. Porter until now.

I must give credit for this discovery to a new and exciting publishing company that is bravely forging ahead where only men like Kenneth Anger and Terry Southern have gone before in the field of satire and celebrity biography… Ladies and gentlemen, I give you BLOOD MOON PRODUCTIONS and a special round of applause for its publisher, the ever so grand Danforth Prince.

Please log on to www.bloodmoonproductions.com and savor the revelations of a Hollywood you never thought you would ever read about unless you were accustomed to receiving your reading material in a raincoat…just kidding Danforth…..

I for one cannot wait to read Darwin Porter’s account of the uncensored lives of such Hollywood Icons as Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Howard Hughes, not to mention ‘Hollywood’s Silent Closet,’ now high on my must-read list for 2008.

I leave you with the motto of Blood Moon’s own publisher, Danforth Prince:
BE BRAVE
SIN BOLDLY
AND TRY TO HAVE FUN MARKETING YOUR PROJECT

Continue to page: 1 2 3 4 5 6