British actor Tim Curry has died this Tuesday night at his Los Angeles home at the age of 80, according to the TMZ website. Curry was in a wheelchair and had restricted his public life since suffering a stroke in 2012, the beginning of various incidents that progressively worsened his health.
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Endowed with a prodigious voice and an infinite capacity to control and move every muscle of his face, Curry achieved worldwide fame as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Curry knew the transvestite character perfectly because he embodied him from his beginnings in the original production in a small venue on the upper floor of the Royal Court Theatre in London; and he continued as the musical grew in size: first in London’s West End, then across the Atlantic on New York’s Broadway, and finally in cinema with Susan Sarandon, Meat Loaf, and Barry Bostwick in 1975.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show was, and remains, an impressive cult phenomenon. And the curious thing is that it’s not the original musical, but the screenings of the film that continue to be held every month in cities around the world. The original work was in itself a tribute to the most popular cinema, B-movies, cheap horror and science fiction films from the forties and fifties that fueled matinees and midnight sessions. The plot had its own: a newlywed couple ends up in the mansion of a scientist (Frank-N-Furter) who turns out to be a transvestite trying to create a sex slave, after accidentally thawing a violent gang member (played in the film by Meat Loaf). At the moment of revelation, it is discovered that Frank-N-Furter and his henchmen are actually aliens from the planet Transexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.
Tim Curry, by embodying Frank N. Furter, was a pioneer in the use of lingerie in a sadomasochistic-themed Hollywood film, and his figure revitalized the corset as loungewear in a transvestite character who also signified, like the film, a banner of sexual freedom and transgression of the seventies.
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Curry also appeared in Muppet Treasure Island, as the pirate John Silver surrounded by Jim Henson’s creatures, and in popular titles such as Clue, Kinsey, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Annie, The Hunt for Red October, Scary Movie 2, Congo and in dozens and dozens of animated series where he showcased his voice.
Additionally, he was Pennywise the clown in the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel It, and for decades he enjoyed the same recognition and work in theater.
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