Gene Curtis Harrington (September 17, 1926 – May 6, 2007) was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films and horror films.[1] He is considered one of the forerunners of New Queer Cinema.[2]
Harrington was born on September 17, 1926, in Los Angeles, the son of Isabel (Dorum) and Raymond Stephen Harrington,[3] and grew up in Beaumont, California. His first cinematic endeavors were amateur films he made while still a teenager. He attended Occidental College and the University of Southern California, then graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in film studies.[1]
Career beginnings
At age 16, in 1942, he directed and co-starred in a (9 minute) short version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. He began his career as a film critic, writing a book on Josef von Sternberg in 1948. He directed several avant-garde short films in the 1940s and 1950s, including Fragment of Seeking, Picnic, and The Wormwood Star (a film study of the artwork of Marjorie Cameron which was filmed at the home of multi-millionaire art collector Edward James). Cameron also co-starred in his subsequent film Night Tide (1961) with Dennis Hopper. Harrington worked with Kenneth Anger, serving as a cinematographer on Anger's Puce Moment and acting in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) (he played Cesare, the somnambulist). Harrington had links to Thelema shared with his close associates Kenneth Anger and Marjorie Cameron who frequently acted in his films.[4]
Harrington's final film, the short Usher, is a remake of Fall of the House of Usher, an unreleased film he did while in high school. He cast Nikolas and Zeena Schreck in his updated version of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher". Financing of the film was partly accomplished through the Shrecks' brokering of the sale of Harrington's signed copy of Crowley's The Book of Thoth.[5]
The Academy Film Archive has preserved several of Curtis Harrington's films, including Night Tide, On the Edge, and Picnic.[6]
Personal life
Harrington was homosexual. He wrote in his autobiography that he had his first sexual experience with another male (a football player) in high school.[7]
Death
Curtis Harrington died on May 6, 2007, aged 80, of complications from a stroke he suffered two years earlier.[1] His remains are interred in the Cathedral Mausoleum at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.[8]
House of Harrington, a short documentary about the director's life, was released in 2008. It was directed by Jeffrey Schwarz and Tyler Hubby and filmed several years before Harrington's death. It includes footage of his high school film Fall of the House of Usher.
Harrington's memoir Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood was published in 2013 by Drag City.[9]
Filmography
Short films
Rally 'Round the Flag Promotion introduces the Payroll Savings Plan as a patriotic and practical way to save money starring actors Robert Young and Robert Bagley, directed by Harrington
^Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 19968-19969). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^Toscano, Mark (2013). Conversations in the Back of the Theatre: Preserving the Short films of Curtis Harrington (DVD Booklet). Drag City/Flicker Alley.