John Waters favorite Pink Flamingo Edith Massey a short history

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Amid the taboo-shattering andpolymorphously perversechaos that is the John Waters universe, she was an oasis of...well, if notsanity, then certainly an off-kilter form of niceness. Few who have seenthe director'slandmark 1972 "exercise in poor taste," PinkFlamingos, can look at an order of deviled, hard-boiledorsunny-side-up eggs without thinking of the snaggletoothed grin,cackling laughand one-in-a-million line delivery that were hallmarks of"Edie the Egg Lady," Edith Massey.

The details of Edith's early life are sketchy, withsources listing her May, 1918 birthplace as San Francisco, while Massey herselfsaid it was New York. As recounted in the Watersbook Shock ValueandRobert Maier's 1975 documentary short Love Letter to Edie, shewassoon placed in a Dickensian orphanage near Denver. Sentto workas a maid at 15, Edith ran away andwound up in a reformatory.Dreams of a show biz career sent her on the lam again, this time to California,where sheclaimed to make her screen debut as an extra in the 1940Claudette Colbert romance Arise, My Love.

Over the next three decades Edith criss-crossed the country,riding the rails and working as everything fromchorus girl totapdancer in a burlesque house to madam. Along the way she also wed and separatedfrom a soldier named Massey. Her wanderings eventually took her to Baltimore'sseedy Fells Point waterfront district, where she became a barmaid whosemotherly, chatterbox demeanorcaught the eye of a certain young filmmakerand his oddball cohorts. Waters cast Edith as herself--and the VirginMary--in his1970 dark comedy Multiple Maniacs.

Two years later, shegot the iconic role of Divine's"mentally ill mother, Miss Edie" in Pink Flamingos. Sitting in aplaypen, clad only in bra and girdle and demanding that someone fix her a plateof eggs, Edith was at once bizarre yet strangely sweet. She also got to have ahappy elopment withbeloved Eggman Paul Swift. Waters' next 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 worry that you'll work in anoffice, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of aheterosexual is a sick and boring life!" By the mid-'70s she moved outfrom behind the bar and opened her own thrift shop in Fells Point, Edith'sShopping Bag.

Following avillainous turn as Mortville'sevilQueen Carlotta in the Waters-style fairy tale Desperate Living, Masseyplayedcleaning woman-turned-heiress Cuddles, best friend to put-uponhousewife Franice Fishpaw (Divine) in Waters' Douglas Sirk spoofPolyester, where the line "Poor, poorFrancine" came out--thankstoEdith's unique accent--as "Purr, purr Francine."Alongthe way she also 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 also had a "singing"career as"Queen of Punk," releasing covers of"Fever" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" and the originalsong "Punks, Get off the Grass."

Shortly after moving to Venice, California for healthreasons, Massey passed on to that big playpen in the sky due to complicationsfrom cancer and diabetes in October of 1984.