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Christopher Jarman Morley (born c. 1951) is an American actor and female impersonator. He specialized in cross-dressing roles. He played numerous parts in television and movies, most known for his parts in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and General Hospital (1980).
Morley is the elder of two sons born to William Jarman Morley II and Audrey Mary Farmer. His paternal family originated in England, but came to America in 1843, settling first in Dillsboro, Indiana and later in Carrollton, Kentucky.
His great-grandfather, William Jarman Morley, moved to Austin, Texas in the 1870s and was a co-founder of Morley Brothers Drug Company, with his brother, Stephen Kay Morley, of Morley Brothers Drug Company, which invented and patented many popular old remedies and gradually grew to include locations in several states.
Christopher Morley's parents divorced and he and his brother were raised by their mother and allowed little contact with their father, a prominent veterinarian in El Paso, Texas.
Morley was accepted to UCLA in 1969 with a major in mathematics. Once at UCLA, he changed his major to dance and studied ballet with Mia Slavenska. He also studied ballet with Stanley Holden at the Los Angeles Music Center.
He performed with the Santa Monica Ballet at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in their production of The Nutcracker . Later he obtained a license in cosmetology, and worked in Beverly Hills in Vidal Sasoon's hair salon and in Jon Peters' hair salon, on Rodeo Drive.
Morley specialized in cross-dressing roles in the 1970s and 1980s. He played numerous parts in television and movies, most known for his parts in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and General Hospital (1980). In General Hospital , Morley played Sally Armitage, owner of a bar and a friend of Laura. The role was played straight and attracted the flirtatious interest of Luke until Morley's character finally revealed he was a man. Once revealed as a male, Morley's character became part of a plot to hold Luke and Laura's lives as ransom, in exchange for hidden gold. After the gold was found, Morley's character was killed in a gunfight. [1] On an episode of Magnum, P.I. , he played David Bannister, a disgraced operative for the British MI6 intelligence service who was dismissed for being openly transvestite. Bannister becomes a deadly efficient ruthless international assassin available to the highest bidder, always operating in female guise, often as nuns in full habit (an advantageous disguise for various reasons).
Morley was featured as a female impersonator in a pictorial article in the May 1975 issue of Playboy , photographed by Mario Casilli. [2] [3]
In the 1980s and 1990s Morley was one of the foremost Marilyn Monroe impressionists, starring at the La Cage aux Folles Dinner Theatre in Los Angeles. Later he toured with their various road shows, An Evening At La Cage, playing Las Vegas, Toronto, Taipei, and Helsinki.[ citation needed ]
Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes usually worn by a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and self-express oneself.
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and part of gay culture.
Magnum, P.I. is an American crime drama television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator (P.I.) living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from December 11, 1980 to May 8, 1988 during its first-run broadcast on the American television network CBS. Magnum, P.I. consistently ranked in the top 20 U.S. television programs in the Nielsen ratings during the first five years of its original run in the United States, finishing as high as number three, that for the 1982–83 season.
An Elvis impersonator is an entertainer who impersonates or copies the look and sound of American musician and singer Elvis Presley. Professional Elvis impersonators, commonly known as Elvis tribute artists (ETAs), work all over the world as entertainers, and such tribute acts remain in great demand due to the unique iconic status of Elvis. There are even several radio stations that exclusively feature Elvis impersonator material. Some of these impersonators go to Graceland on the anniversary of Presley's death to make their personal tribute to the artist.
Christopher Ryan is a British actor best known for his roles as Mike TheCoolPerson in the BBC comedy series The Young Ones, Dave Hedgehog in the BBC comedy series Bottom, Tony Driscoll in the BBC comedy series Only Fools and Horses, and as Edina Monsoon's ex-husband Marshall Turtle in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. He has also appeared as the McKendrick twins in One Foot in the Grave, and played Sontaran General Staal in Doctor Who in 2008.
The term "drag" refers to the performance of exaggerated masculinity, femininity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. A drag queen is someone who performs femininity and a drag king is someone who performs masculinity. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
Thaao Penghlis is an Australian actor. He is best known for roles in United States daytime soap operas such as Days of Our Lives, Santa Barbara, and General Hospital, but has also guest-starred on a number of crime dramas, such as Kojak, Cannon, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, Hart to Hart, Nero Wolfe and Magnum, P.I.. He also starred in the late 1980s remake of Mission: Impossible. Penghlis has studied under Hollywood acting teacher Milton Katselas.
Donna Mills is an American actress. She began her television career in 1966 with a recurring role on The Secret Storm, and in the same year appeared on Broadway in the Woody Allen comedy Don't Drink the Water. She made her film debut the following year in The Incident. She then starred for three years in the soap opera Love is a Many Splendored Thing (1967–70), before starring as Tobie Williams, the girlfriend of Clint Eastwood's character in the 1971 cult film Play Misty for Me.
Stella Stevens is an American former actress. She began her acting career in 1959 and starred in such popular films as Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), The Silencers (1966), Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
Trevor Gordon Bannister was an English actor best known for having played the womanising junior salesman Mr Lucas in the sitcom Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1979, and for his role as Toby Mulberry Smith in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, from 2003 until it ended its run in 2010.
Freebie and the Bean is a 1974 American buddy cop black comedy action film directed by Richard Rush and starring James Caan, Alan Arkin, Loretta Swit and Valerie Harper. The film follows two off-beat police detectives who wreak havoc in San Francisco attempting to bring down an organized crime boss.
Kenneth Morley is an English actor and comedian best known for playing the role of Reg Holdsworth in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street from 1989 to 1995 and General Leopold von Flockenstuffen in the BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! from 1988 to 1991.
A gender bender is a person who dresses up and presents themselves in a way that defies societal expectations of their gender, especially as the opposite sex. Bending expected gender roles may also be called a genderfuck.
Barbi Benton is an American retired model, actress, television personality, and singer. She is known for appearing in Playboy magazine, as a four-season regular on the comedy series Hee Haw, and for recording several modestly successful albums in the 1970s. After the birth of her first child in 1986, Benton retired from show business to raise her family.
Stuart Margolin was an American film, theater, and television actor and director who won two Emmy Awards for playing Evelyn "Angel" Martin on the 1970s television series The Rockford Files. In 1973, he played in Gunsmoke as an outlaw. The next year he played an important role, giving Charles Bronson his first gun in Death Wish. In 1981, Margolin portrayed the character of Philo Sandeen in a recurring role as a Native American tracker in the 1981–1982 television series, Bret Maverick.
Cross-dressing in film has followed a long history of female impersonation on English stage, and made its appearance in the early days of the silent films. Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel brought the tradition from the English music halls when they came to America with Fred Karno's comedy troupe in 1910. Both Chaplin and Laurel occasionally dressed as women in their films. Even the beefy American actor Wallace Beery appeared in a series of silent films as a Swedish woman. The Three Stooges, especially Curly, sometimes appeared in drag in their short films. The tradition has continued for many years, usually played for laughs. Only in recent decades have there been dramatic films which included cross-dressing, possibly because of strict censorship of American films until the mid-1960s. One early exception was Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Murder!, where the murderer is a transvestite who wears particularly frilly dresses and petticoats. Cross-gender acting, on the other hand, refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite gender.
The Change was a British radio Sitcom that originally aired from November 2001 - November 2004, running for 3 series on BBC Radio 4.
Cross-gender acting refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite sex. It is distinct from both transgender and cross-dressing character roles.
This article details the history of cross-dressing, the act of wearing the clothes of the sex or gender one does not identify with.
Stefan Kalipha is a British film, television and stage actor originally from Trinidad who has been acting from around 1970. He played Ramon, the Cigar Factory Foreman in the 1979 film Cuba, Daoud on The Curse of King Tut's Tomb, and Fat Larry in Babylon, both released in 1980. He also may be familiar to James Bond fans as Hector González, the Cuban hit man in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only. Kalipha's other film roles include Wali Dad in the 1991 film of The Crucifer of Blood and Buldeo in the 1994 film The Jungle Book.
