There is nothing you can name -- nothing in the world -- that is anything like Dame Edna, the brazen Australian hausfrau with the plummy voice, upholstered couture, sharp eye and acid tongue.
An institution almost since her stage debut in 1955, Dame Edna became a US phenomenon about 10 years ago. The Gladiatrix of Gladiolas is touring with her Tony Award-nominated extravaganza, Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!
This follows Dame Edna's 2001 production "The Royal Tour," a self-reference to the megastar whose image soon will be on Australian postage.
Barry Humphries is the Austra-lian actor whose relationship with Dame Edna can be described as Robin Leach once referred to Edna's gynecologist and interior decorator -- "one and the same."
Humphries maintains a palpable distance from the doughty and malicious "but in a caring way" character. He never speaks of Dame Edna as his creation. She is a personification less relevant to gender-bending than to Humphries' malicious Dada-ist take on social politics. (Humphries is thrice divorced and a father currently married to actress Lizzie Spender.)
Both Humphries and Dame Edna address theirs as a symbiotic, but mutually disadvantageous, relationship.
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In the hilarious 1989 autobio-graphy, My Gorgeous Life, Dame Edna dismisses Humphries as "still my manager, but under solicitor's thumb," saying his contributions to her show diminish annually.
"I am her much-disparaged manager," Humphries acknowledged in a telephone interview from his home in Switzerland.
"Considering the opportunities I've given that woman, it's the worst case of biting the hand that feeds that I know of. I've put my own career on permanent hold. I'm not known. I don't get roles as a character actor -- not very often, anyway. And it's entirely due to this woman. I was hoping, 50 years ago, that she'd sink without a trace."
Edna Everage made her stage debut on Dec. 19, 1955, shortly after Australian newspaper advertisements urged readers to put up 15,000 beds for athletes competing in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.
In that sketch, Humphries presented Edna as a frumpy, pompous suburbanite more house-proud than hospitable, suggesting that her son "would be tickled to death if you could let us have a real Red Indian" when asked what nationality of athlete she prefers.
Audiences immediately recognized and embraced this embodiment of a particular breed of bourgeois housewife obsessed with euphemism, class and appearances. Dame Edna owes more than a small debt to Humphries' mother, who felt that her son's most notorious character was a national mbarrassment.
The most affecting illustration of the mother-son-Dame relationship occurred when Humphries, then living in London, traveled to Australia to introduce his newborn son to his mother. As she listened to a talk radio show enthusias-tically disparaging Humphries, she ignored the baby and upbraided her son. Furious, he stalked into the next room, called the talk show as Dame Edna and vehemently denounced Humphries.
"Barry's passport should be removed, and I happen to know that his mother agrees with me," Dame Edna declared.
Humphries' mother, who heard this pronouncement, never brought it up with her son.
Humphries' father was a homebuilder who piled the family into the car for painfully slow Sunday drives touring new suburban developments.
Those excursions, coupled with his appearance-conscious upbringing, helped lay the foundation for Humphries' dishy and regrettably short-lived Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch, a prying, bizarre TV game show now on video. The show featured unwittingly pre-selected audience members who witnessed live-camera tours of their own homes, accompanied by Dame Edna's caringly acrid comments on the decor.
Over the past 50 years, Dame Edna -- and to a lesser extent, other Humphries creations including the decadent Sir Les Patterson -- enjoyed starring on stage and in TV series and spectaculars.
Her exquisite legs and peerless visage led to rumors that Dame Edna underwent cosmetic surgery. The rumors are untrue, Humphries said, though he once acknowledged that Dame Edna is no stranger to socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein, called "the world's scariest celebrity" on the Web site www.awfulplasticsurgery.com.
Just the facts ma'am
* Dame Edna Everage is a housewife, investigative journalist, social anthropologist, talk show host, swami, children's book illustrator, spin doctor, megastar, and icon?
* Stage shows include: Housewife, Superstar, A Night with Dame Edna and countless command performances for the royal family.
* Broadway shows include: Dame Edna: The Royal Tour, which received the Tony Award for best Live Theatrical Event
* Television credits include: A Night on Mt. Edna and two series of her own innovative chat show, The Dame Edna Experience
* Her books include Dame Edna's Coffee Table Book, Dame Edna's Bedside Companion and her seminal autobiography, My Gorgeous Life.
* Other possible facts: She may be Jewish, is a widow, with three grown children. She spends her time visiting world leaders and jet-setting between her homes in Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Switzerland and Martha's Vineyard.?
* She is the founder and governor of Friends of the Prostate and the creator of The World Prostate Olympics.
Source: www.edna.com
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