My Trip Down the Pink Carpet Read Free

that Truman Capote and I were the same. I was both repulsed and deeply fascinated as I watched him on The Tonight Show, lisping to Johnny Carson. But I would eventually have to leave the room when he was on TV, my feelings were so strong. I really thought I would vomit. I felt the same way when Paul Lynde was the “center square” of Hollywood Squares. It all seemed really shameful.
    This is not the road tour of Tru. Are you going to work with me or not?
    I was devastated. It really started to affect me. I would be at home all alone watching TV and catch myself curled up like a cat. I would immediately unfurl myself and find a way to sit that more befit the manly man everyone was trying to make out of me.
    The night we shot American Dreamer in front of a studio audience, I was a mess. In one scene, I had to stand offstage with a bullhorn and deliver my lines. When the moment arrived, I assumed a manly pose and hollered, “Tom! Tom! Open up! It’s Ralph Short with the FBI! Open up or we’re coming in!”
    Huge laughter.
    Oh dear. That line was not supposed to be funny.
    Situation comedies are taped without the director on the floor. Instead, he sits up in a booth calling the camera shots. When the director needs to speak to the actors, he does so over a loudspeaker, and essentially (to me, anyway) sounds like the voice of God. The director stopped the action and called down to me.
    “Leslie? Who is out there?”
    I put my voice in a lower register and yelled, “Ralph Short with the FBI!”
    “ Who is out there?”
    I took an even wider stance and lowered my voice as much as possible. “Ralph Short with the FBI!”
    “Who is out there?”
    I screamed, “RALPH SHORT WITH THE FBI!”
    “Could have sworn it was Charles Nelson Reilly!”
    Huge laughter.
    You might think that I detest this director to this day. But you had to be there. It was all in fun. It really was. It is not his fault that this particular issue was my hot button. I do not believe there is a homophobic bone in his body. He did not mean to be cruel, he just wanted to get a good performance out of me. He wanted to see me do something that I had never done before. He’d told me that he was going to work with me—and he did.
    When I saw the episode, I was floored. When you work in situation comedies as much as I have, you tend to acquire a little bag of tricks. I am the proud founder and the guiding light of the Leslie Jordan School of Mugging. But the director was having none of that, and as a result, my performance was top-notch. You did not see Leslie Jordan at all. And, more important for the character, you did not see “gay” at all. In a strange way, I was very proud of that.
    I had pulled it off!
    Many years later, I was called in to read for a new movie called The Mighty Ducks. The character I was to audition for was a hockey coach.
    A hockey coach?
    I thought, I’m not sure I can pull that off. I started to turn down the audition but my agent told me the director had specifically asked for me.
    Yep, the same director was at the helm. There was much hemming and hawing in my mind. Did I want to go through another butch-Leslie-up session?
    When I got to the audition, the director told the people in the room, “This is one of the funniest men you will ever meet.” God bless him. I almost started crying.
    Needless to say, I did not get the part.

Good Southern Stock

    My mother always said, “Stop making a spectacle of yourself,” something that I have obviously made a career out of.
    John Waters, Spectacle
    M Y MOTHER was a bashful champagne blonde who always smelled of White Shoulders perfume. On special occasions she would dab on a little Shalimar. She always conducted herself with a great amount of class. She was never one to succumb to fads, and she wore her hair in a modified bouffant. It was very glamorous—Jackie Kennedy with just a little touch of the Supremes—and it had an amazing flip to the side that she sprayed with a cloud of