Hibiscus (entertainer)

George Harris Jr. (Hibiscus)
Hibiscus was a key figure in the Cockettes' success and later left to form the Angels of Light
Born	1949
Died	1982
Occupation	Actor

Hibiscus (real name, George Harris, Jr.) (1949-1982) was one of the leaders of the psychedelic gay liberation theatre collective group known as the Cockettes in early 1970s San Francisco - by today's standards he may have been considered a Creative Director. Their commune in a condemned Victorian house on Sutter street near Steiner street in San Francisco was a member of a group of communes called KaliFlower that was dedicated to distributing free food and to creating free art and theater. The Cockettes, consisting of gay hippies (Gippies), non-gay men and women, and even babies, decked themselves out in drag outfits and glitter for a series of legendary midnight musicals at the Palace Theater on Columbus St. and Union St. in San Francisco's California North Beach neighborhood. They first used their striptease performance as an excuse to get into the movies for free but quickly wrote scripts and used a flair for scrounging and borrowing to create impressive and whimsically designed sets and costumes for outlandishly decadent productions like "Journey to the Center of Uranus," "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma" and "Gone with the Showboat to Oklahoma."

Two notable troupers were the disco diva darling Sylvester whose career started with the Cockettes and the "queen of B-movie filth" Divine who sang "If there's a crab on Uranus you know you've been loved" while dressed as a psychedelic crab queen.

From San Francisco, Hibiscus as Madame Butterfly at Sonoma State College in 1970. Photo by Kreemah Ritz.jpg

No affectionate history of the psychedelic drag troupe, the Cockettes, whose rise and fall embodied the utopian idealism, gender-bending anarchy, touching naivete and sad dissolution of San Francisco's counterculture scene – would be complete without Hibiscus. The Cockettes were born by accident, the product of a unique confluence of circumstance and personalities. The charismatic Hibiscus (whose full beard, vintage dresses, make-up and costume jewelry look defiantly freaky even by today's standards), embraced drag and drugs as paths to spiritual liberation. He attracted a group of like-minded hippies who loved show-tunes, dressing up, showing off and dropping acid. Most members cohabited in one of two communes that grooved on the revolutionary mix of nudity, camp, glitter and affectionate homages to showbiz excess. Hibiscus eventually left to form the Angels of Light when finances for the group convinced some that they had to charge for shows.

Hibiscus believed that all of the Cockettes shows should be free and, after a long dispute over this, left and formed the Angels of Light in San Francisco, which gave many free theatrical performances in the early 1970s in San Francisco and New York. Later, in his home state of New York he also appeared in a daytime soap opera under his real name. Hibiscus died of AIDS in 1982.

Historical Cameo

Hibiscus (then George Harris) was the young man in the turtleneck sweater in the famous picture of the anti-war protester putting flowers into the gun barrels of the MPs during the October 21, 1967 march on the Pentagon. (See photo and story at Washington Post link below.)

External link

Flowers, Guns and an Iconic Snapshot -- The Washington Post