Patricia Quinn will always be adored for originating the roles of the Usherette and Magenta in Richard OBrien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We talked to the cult icon about Rocky and beyond. Here’s what she had to say…
Joining the circus
I said to my agent: “What is this about?” I knew it was a musical, it was 18 quid a week, upstairs at the Royal Court for three weeks. He wasn’t happy about that because he made 10% of 18 quid a week. He said: “I think it’s something about a circus.” He wasn’t wrong. I’ve been in this circus for over 40 years! It’s taken me around the world, I can join it anywhere I want, I can go to anywhere in Europe and if it’s playing… I used to make a joke about it, I’m like Maria Callas. I drop in, sing ‘Science Fiction [Double Feature]’, anywhere it’s playing, take a bouquet and leave.
Quinn didn’t know the Rocky Horror team before her audition, but creator Richard O’Brien had been in the audience when she was in AC/DC by Heathcote Williams.
I was seven months pregnant but in those days nobody cared about shit like that. The play began in a photomaton, where you take passport photos, with the half curtain. There were three of us in there, Pat Hartley, me and a boy, and we were taking pictures of us fucking. Trousers down to here, my bohemian robe up over my knees… and the first line of the play is I come out and shout” “MONGOLIAN CLUSTERFUCK!” Such a great line!
Getting the part
At my audition, I sang a Thirties song: ‘Over My Shoulder Goes One Care‘, because I didn’t know rock and roll songs. I could sing ‘Maria‘ from West Side Story but I didn’t rock, okay? My first husband was a drummer and he used to tell me I had no rhythm, so that was helpful. So I sang the Thirties song for them and Richard politely said: “Do you have your sheet music, Pat?” and I said no. So he said: “Well, how am I going to play it?” and I said: “The piano puts me off!” These guys were looking at me thinking: ‘Jesus Christ…’ So anyway, I sang the song. It was cheery, which suited the Usherette. The Usherette is naïve, and she sings about these wonderful films that she adores, her science fiction films. O’Brien said: “If I play this for you can you sing it with me?” It was ‘Science Fiction‘. He started to sing it and I was singing with him, and I thought: ‘That sounds fantastic!’ Half an hour later they said they’d like me to play it and my agent said: “Just a minute, you haven’t read the script!” I said: “No, but I’ve heard the song!” and he said: “Go and get the script because it might be four lines!” So I picked up the script and… four lines! Magenta, four lines.
Rocky started off in the upstairs theatre at the Royal Court, but quickly moved to bigger premises…
What they did was they moved it to the Chelsea Classic, which was up for demolition – a cinema. They had scaffolding and all these planks, so Tim Curry could make the biggest entrance he ever made in his life! It was better than the lift in the film. He came in the back, down the plank, and went “HOW DO YOU DO? I…” and the whole audience turned around and went: “Who the HELL is that?!” He knocked people for six! He was brilliant.
The picture show
I had lunch with Richard O’Brien and Richard Hartley and they said: “We’re going to make a movie.” I was exhausted after three months – I was the first to leave Rocky. I was offered the role of Christabel Pankhurst [in 1974 television series Shoulder To Shoulder], and I went off to do that. The first thing they said was that the Usherette won’t work as a cinematic idea. So I said: “Am I not singing ‘Science Fiction’?” They said no so I said: “Well I’m not doing it then!” I decided to walk. Then John Goldstone, the producer, asked if I would go over to his house to see the sets. I’m glad he did, because I went round and said: “Oh! I’m going to be in THIS!” Then we were sitting in a car, Curry, me and O’Brien. Curry said: “By the way, Richard, who’s singing ‘Science Fiction’?” and O’Brien said he was. I said: “You BASTARD! You took my song!”
Filming was completed in six weeks. Pat’s job was not quite over yet though…
On the day we finished filming, Jim Sharman says to me: “Pat, have you ever seen Man Ray’s ‘Lips In The Sky’, it’s in Montmartre?” He’d had this idea to have my lips, my disembodied mouth, singing ‘Science Fiction’. I said: “My mouth and his voice… how much?” Then I get a call from Elstree and he says: “Darling, there’s no money left.” I think I didn’t even get 300 quid for it. Elstree was dark, nobody was working. I was the only person there, with the crew. They blackened up my face and did red lips, but my face moved. It went out of focus all the time. They said: “How can we do it?” and then said: “Take that arc lamp out of there and clamp her in!” I didn’t move an inch. Great. Then the phone kept ringing and they said it was my husband on the phone. I said: “I know, he wants a divorce – tell him I can’t talk to him, I’m clamped.” And that’s how we did it – there were no special effects.
Oooh, shock treatment!
The Shock Treatment thing is this – it’s extraordinary, when James Carrey brought out The Truman Show, I was amazed to read the other day, it was 15 years later. I was in sock reading that. Richard O’Brien phoned me when it came out and he said: “They’ve stolen my fucking plot!” You see, Shock Treatment was so ahead of its time that we were sat in the dressing room and Barry Humphries turned to me and said: “Do you know what this is about?” and I looked at him and said no and he said: “Well, just say your lines, darling, and don’t bump into the furniture.”
Patricia was not 100% clear on what was going on…
Now, don’t tell anyone but I thought I was a real psychiatrist! I wasn’t. We’re locked in a gameshow, right? This is before reality TV. ‘DEAR BLENDER, WON’T YOU HELP A FIRST OFFENDER?’. I love that song. I love it! Of course, it used to be that. People would win coffee pots and things, there was a show like that. Then somebody said about Cliff De Young being so brilliant playing the two characters, and I said: “No he didn’t, what are you talking about?” I just think of him as the guy running the TV studio. They said: “Pat, he did… he played Brad!” I said: “WHAT?!” Because he was SO good. I mean, it’s like two different people!
Making Shock Treatment was rather different to The Rocky Horror Picture Show…
I remember I went to sing for Hartley, and I think I sang ‘Lullaby’. That was such a different experience because with Rocky we’d all been on stage, we were a family. Now this thing comes up, we don’t know what it is. You’re reading a film script, you’ve never heard the songs. It’s another world – a very different world – so you go in blind. I remember them saying to me: “You need to lose a bit of weight, Pat.” So I went down to ‘Dr Diet’ in Harley Street, and you lose weight really quickly. All the actors in the world went there at one time in their life, male and female. You’re up washing the windows at four in the morning, so you get thin.
I gave [costume designer] Sue Blane a dress I had, one of the best designer dresses ever, with fantastic shoulders not cut in a square but triangular, like nothing you’d seen before, and I said: “Can you copy this for our costumes?” I didn’t want to be in a boring nurse’s frock. She did it in green, which was brilliant. I haven’t seen my dress since, it disappeared that day. So we looked good. I didn’t know what it was about, not really. The trouble was, we wanted to go to Texas. Then there was a writer’s strike in America and no films were being made. So that was our lot – no Texas for us. So Sue Blane went to Texas and went to every thrift shop and bought all the Texan clothes. All our audience [in the film] are in thrift shop Texan clothes.
I love the picket fence happiness and innocence in Denton. When the Old Queen [O’Brien’s original idea for a direct sequel] was written it was going to be Frank comes back to Denton and Janet has his baby. I felt sick! I don’t want any babies in Rocky Horror! BLEEEEUURGH! It was too domestic for me.
The we were on a panel and Little Nell said Susan Sarandon should have been in Shock Treatment, if she had been in would have been a success, and that Jessica Harper [who replaced Sarandon as Janet] was the thing that killed it off. I nearly fell off my chair because it never occurred to me. Jessica Harper, as far as I’m concerned, can really sing! And she was in The Phantom Of The Paradise which played at the beginning with Rocky. I took a bunch of seven-year-olds to see Rocky and we all sat through it with that. I said to one of their mothers recently: “It didn’t seem to do them any harm!” and she said: “Well sorry, Pat, but Nathaniel was traumatised for years!”
Magenta is close to many people’s hearts, and Pat has an idea for how to commemorate her…
They invited me to open the Belfast Film Festival and I thought: “About bloody time!” I said to them what I’d like is a doctorate at Queen’s University, because Kenneth Branagh‘s got one and he only lived there three years, and I’d like a statue of Magenta in her space outfit, preferably in bronze. They said: “Well, Miss Quinn, we might be able to arrange the doctorate but we’re not sure about a statue…” ‘Ohhhhh!’ I thought, ‘I know why I got out of here!’ Richard O’Brien has one in bronze in Hamilton, New Zealand, and people make pilgrimages to it, and I thought the sister one should be in Belfast.
This piece first appeared in issue 138 of SciFiNow.
Shock Treatment is available now on Blu-ray from Arrow Video. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox. Get all the latest sci-fi news with every issue of SciFiNow.
