Michael Greer

Michael Greer, born James Robert Malley on April 20, 1938, in Galesburg, Illinois, was an American actor, comedian, and cabaret performer. His birth year of 1938 is supported by 1940 U.S. census records listing a two-year-old "Jimmie Malley," as well as obituaries that recorded his age as 64 at the time of his death on September 14, 2002. He was the son of Charles and Elizabeth Malley and grew up alongside two sisters and two half-brothers. His parents divorced and each married three times, and Greer described his childhood as unhappy. From an early age he performed, singing during intermissions at a local movie theater in Galesburg.

In the mid-1950s, Greer left Galesburg at age 16 and, despite being underage, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He served three years in Japan and Korea, during which time he organized a pop vocal group that performed in the style of The Four Aces. After completing his service, he relocated first to Boston and then to New York City in the early 1960s, where he worked as a furniture salesman while entering talent competitions alongside other aspiring performers, including Tiny Tim and Barbra Streisand. He subsequently worked as a floor captain at Arthur, the Manhattan discothèque founded by Sybil Burton, where he encountered figures such as Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Jacqueline Kennedy. Disliking his birth name, he legally changed it in the mid-1960s to Michael Greer, selecting "Michael" for personal preference and "Greer" in tribute to actress Jane Greer.

In the fall of 1965, Greer moved to Los Angeles and formed a comedy troupe called Jack and the Giants with Roy Gaynor and Jim Bailey. The act was performing at the Redwood Room when Judy Garland discovered and championed them, resulting in a sixteen-month engagement. After the group disbanded, Greer continued as a solo performer at San Francisco venues including The Fantasy and The Purple Onion. His act combined music, comedy, and female impersonations of figures such as Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead. He also developed a long-running signature routine in which he appeared as the Mona Lisa, speaking through a large picture frame and delivering art-related jokes. His Bette Davis impersonation was precise enough that he was called upon to dub some of her lines in the television miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home in 1978 and again in her final film, Wicked Stepmother, in 1989. A 1975 New York Times travel feature documenting an ocean cruise for gay men and lesbians described Greer as "the gay world's Jonathan Winters" and compared him to "George Burns at a Friars' Roast." He remained a fixture on the gay nightclub circuit for three decades. Two recordings of his comedy work were released: Tallulah in Heaven, a 1972 LP on RipRap Records featuring his Tallulah Bankhead impersonation, and Don't Mess With Mona, a posthumous 2005 release on Gatorlegs Records capturing a 1979 performance of his Mona Lisa routine. In addition to performing his own material, Greer wrote comedy for Phyllis Diller, Debbie Reynolds, Rip Taylor, and Larry Storch.

Greer's stage career gained significant momentum in 1969 when director Sal Mineo, having seen his nightclub act in San Francisco the previous year, cast him as Queenie, a gay prison inmate and drag queen, in the Los Angeles production of John Herbert's play Fortune and Men's Eyes. Greer went on to perform the role in both the Los Angeles and New York stage productions, accumulating more than 400 performances. During that production he became close friends with Mineo and with Don Johnson, who played the lead role of Smitty. In 1971, Greer reprised Queenie in MGM's film adaptation of Fortune and Men's Eyes, a role he had initially declined. He rewrote most of his dialogue to align with his interpretation of the character and composed and performed the song "It's Free" in the film. His performance received positive reviews and has been regarded as a notable expression of gay assertiveness on screen.

Greer made his feature film debut in 1969 in the comedy The Gay Deceivers, playing Malcolm, the flamboyant gay landlord of two heterosexual men who feign homosexuality to avoid military service. He rewrote portions of the script to reduce homophobia and present a more realistic portrayal of the gay characters, and received star billing. The following year he co-starred with Don Johnson in MGM's The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, for which he also co-wrote and performed the song "Water." He appeared in The Curious Female, playing a computer dating service operator set in the year 2177, and in Diamond Stud. His last major film role came in 1973 in the horror film Messiah of Evil, in which he played a character identified as the dark stranger. He was one of the first openly gay actors to appear in major Hollywood films, and he refused his agent's advice to marry a woman or otherwise conceal his homosexuality for the sake of his career.

On the stage, Greer appeared in a 1983 New York City production of Terrence McNally's The Ritz, a farce set in a gay Manhattan bathhouse, which starred Holly Woodlawn. In 1992, he collaborated with composer Wayne Moore on the book for Freeway Dreams, a musical about Los Angeles commuters stuck in traffic. Greer also directed the Los Angeles production, which ran for four months, and appeared on the original cast recording, released in 1997 on Moore's Ducy Lee label, as the voice of a car radio announcer. In 1998, he appeared in a Santa Monica production of Mark Savage's coming-out musical The Ballad of Little Mikey, playing an old-guard activist professor. Greer died on September 14, 2002, at the age of 64.