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Amid the taboo-shattering andpolymorphously perversechaos that is the John Waters universe, she was an oasis of...well, if notsanity, after that entirely an off-kilter form of niceness. Few who have seenthe director'slandmark 1972 "exercise in poor taste," PinkFlamingos, can see at an order of deviled, hard-boiledorsunny-side-up eggs without thinking of the snaggletoothed grin,cackling laughand one-in-a-million descent delivery that were hallmarks of"Edie the Egg Lady," Edith Massey.
The details of Edith's before cartoon are sketchy, withsources listing her May, 1918 birthplace as San Francisco, even if Massey herselfsaid it was other York. As recounted in the Watersbook bewilderment ValueandRobert Maier's 1975 documentary rapid adore Letter to Edie, shewassoon placed in a Dickensian orphanage near Denver. Sentto workas a maid at 15, Edith ran away andwound happening in a reformatory.Dreams of a be in biz career sent her upon the lam again, this get older to California,where sheclaimed to create her screen debut as an additional in the 1940Claudette Colbert romance Arise, My Love.
Over the next-door three decades Edith criss-crossed the country,riding the rails and full of zip as all fromchorus woman totapdancer in a burlesque home to madam. Along the habit she then wed and separatedfrom a soldier named Massey. Her wanderings eventually took her to Baltimore'sseedy Fells narrowing port district, where she became a barmaid whosemotherly, chatterbox demeanorcaught the eye of a distinct young filmmakerand his oddball cohorts. Waters cast Edith as herself--and the VirginMary--in his1970 dark comedy combination Maniacs.
Two years later, shegot the iconic role of Divine's"mentally ill mother, Miss Edie" in Pink Flamingos. Sitting in aplaypen, clad abandoned in bra and girdle and demanding that someone repair her a plateof eggs, Edith was at in the same way as bizarre still strangely sweet. She as well as got to have ahappy elopment withbeloved Eggman Paul Swift. Waters' next-door mutantmelodrama, Female Trouble, found Massey playing leather-clad Aunt Ida, whowished hairdesser nephew Michael Potter would dump Divine and "turnnelly." As she explained to him, "I distress that you'll action in anoffice, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of aheterosexual is a ill and boring life!" By the mid70s she moved outfrom astern the bar and opened her own thrift shop in Fells Point, Edith'sShopping Bag.
Following avillainous slope as Mortville'sevilQueen Carlotta in the Waters-style fairy symbol Desperate Living, Masseyplayedcleaning woman-turned-heiress Cuddles, best friend to put-uponhousewife Franice Fishpaw (Divine) in Waters' Douglas Sirk spoofPolyester, where the pedigree "Poor, poorFrancine" came out--thankstoEdith's unique accent--as "Purr, purr Francine."Alongthe habit she as well as made a memorable appearance, asJohn Cougar Mellencamp'sdream woman, in his video for"This Time,"and co-starredin the sci-fi satire Mutants in Paradise. Edith as well as had a "singing"career as"Queen of Punk," releasing covers of"Fever" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" and the originalsong "Punks, acquire off the Grass."
Shortly after upsetting to Venice, California for healthreasons, Massey passed upon to that huge playpen in the tell due to complicationsfrom cancer and diabetes in October of 1984.
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