Negin still gives good face photo: Courtesy Louis Negin

"They weren't supposed to take pictures," Negin says of the enormous publicity still he first saw when he arrived for work one day. "And there I was!"

London audiences gasped when Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe appeared nude in the West End revival of Equus in 2007. So imagine the reaction to Negin 45 years earlier!

Now Negin - who chronicles his storied star-studded career in his critically hailed semi-autobiographical one-man show The Glass Eye at the Centaur Theatre next week - knows a thing or two about making an entrance.

Take the time Joan Collins arrived at his birthday party in Toronto, when Collins was starring in the play Legends! at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in the fall of 2006.

"Joan's an old, old friend and she was in Toronto with her husband - he's very nice and very young, he's like 12 years old," Negin says. "But I didn't tell anyone at the party that she was coming because if she doesn't come, then everybody's disappointed. But there were lots of people there she knew and, of course, the doors open, every head turns and she's Joan Collins."

Or how about the time Negin met Marilyn Monroe.

"It was at this Howard Johnson's in Massachusetts. She came in wearing a babushka and no make-up on. She goes into the washroom and 45 minutes later out comes the image. We all talked and I felt like I wanted to protect her. She was very vulnerable. She was really like that. It wasn't an act."

Then there's Marlene Dietrich.

"A friend of mine was stage-managing her show [in Ottawa] and we were invited to a matinée. So I'm at her hotel in the magazine store and I hear this deep throaty laugh. I look over and it's this really old lady. 'Oh my God, it's Dietrich!' Then when we saw her on stage she had completely transformed. She was beautiful!"

The London-born Negin arrived in Montreal during its Sin City era. "It was like being in a Hollywood movie - all these nightclubs were filled with gangsters and movie stars. It was like Las Vegas!"

While homosexuality was still a crime in Canada back then, Negin was always out. After all, he worked in the theatre world. Still, that same world was unable to protect his colleague, acting legend John Gielgud, who was arrested in England for cottaging in 1953.

"John and I worked together in Much Ado About Nothing at Stratford and during that time I got to know him," Negin recalls. "At the time of his arrest he was starring in a play in London. He was petrified to go on the next night. How was the audience going to react? It could mean the end of his career. So when he went on it was an act of bravery. And the audience cheered him."

Some of Negin's other co-stars over the years include Anthony Quayle, with whom Louis worked on Broadway, and Dame Edna (a.k.a. Barry Humphries). "Barry's a very funny man but when he's dressed as Dame Edna, you must always address him as Edna. He stays in character because it's very difficult to keep switching back and forth."

Negin also appeared on stage as writer Truman Capote in another one-man show, Tru, as well in the film 54. In fact, Negin met Capote ("He was with Warhol") in 1970s New York where Negin also found himself getting down at Studio 54.

These are the kind of anecdotes that fill The Glass Eye, which Negin wrote with his old friend, Quebec playwright and Robert Lepage protégé Marie Brassard. And the score was written by one of my own friends, Alex MacSween.

"You must interview Louis!" Alex told me last year after The Glass Eye premiered at Usine C. Then, last summer, the critics swooned in Toronto.

"This is a show that triumphs in its ability to induce self-reflection," The Globe and Mail reviewed. "[Montreal's] charming portrayals are fleeting, as scenes of espresso cafés and walks on Mount Royal are supplanted by the excessive vanity of the city's nightlife. For much of the show, Montreal fails to sustain its idyllic quality and instead takes on the characteristics of Negin's fantasy Hollywood, a place of superficial glamour."

Today, Negin blames rabid celebrity journalism for cheapening our movie stars.

"They all look the same. Lindsay Lohan? She's no Marlene Dietrich. The only one today who has that old glamour is Cate Blanchett."

Negin sighs. "But I encourage young kids who want to be the next Dietrich, Mae West or Rock Hudson to continue. There will be lots of tears, lots of fighting and screaming, but it's all worth it for the two minutes of applause at the end. It makes you feel alive."

Essential buttplugs Louis Negin stars in The Glass Eye at the Centaur Theatre, Dec. 2-6. Another of Marie Brassard's works, her signature one-woman show Jimmy (about a gay hairdresser) runs at the Centaur until Nov. 29.

Also, Montreal's space age dominatrix Tranie Tronic launches her debut album Transmission at Le Cocktail (1169 Ste-Cat E.) in the Village, Nov. 26 at 8 p.m.

And Montreal's sole remaining porn theatre, Cinéma L'Amour on the Main, celebrates its 40th anniversary with its inaugural Grindhouse Wednesdays, with a 9 p.m. screening of Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!, on Dec. 2. $10. Proceeds benefit HIV/AIDS awareness through Head & Hands. Surf to www.thegrindhouse.ca.
 
 

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