Dale Guy Madison
Books
dale guy madison:
His life is an open book, (two books to be exact)
I started this amazing journey in telling my life story as I approached 50. Dreamboy was a cathartic experience that helped me heal old wounds and learn about the man I had become. It gave me the blueprint of where the next road would lead me in terms of my career. I knew I needed to educate through my art. My life is art. My words, my dolls, my costumes, my stories, my voice, even my leopard print. Writing my first book took 3 years. I had to pour over so many memories and research dates and times. My second book, Sissy Sammy was a lot easier to birth because it came totally from my imagination. I've always loved telling stories to kids, but the kid in me also loves cartoons and adult fairy tales.
Diana Ross finishes her live concerts with a powerful message: “Go for your dreams!” Mary Wilson motivates audiences with her “Dare to Dream” lectures, building on the message of her best-selling autobiography, Dreamgirl: My Life As A Supreme. Now Dale Guy Madison, inspired by the timeless songs of Diana Ross and The Supremes, “dares to dream” his life story in this uncensored and candid memoir.
DREAMBOY: My Life as a QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits is the vintage “album” of Madison’s life set against the tunes of The Supremes and filled with lessons on love, self-determination, and surviving the trenches of the entertainment industry. Through itspages Madison navigates a litany of broken intimate relationships, (including an affair with a closeted Baltimore politician), experiences a whirlwind heterosexual marriage, fights for and secures work as a gay black actor in Hollywood and clings to life within the halls of a city mental institution. However, it is after gaining nationwide fame as a television host on the QVC shopping network that Madison learns opportunities must not be waited on -- they must be created -- and thus begins the “B-side” of the album.
If Music is the soundtrack of our lives, then the songs of Diana Ross and the Supremes headline each chapter of my life
If Music is the soundtrack of our lives, then the songs of Diana Ross and the Supremes headline each chapter of my life
Diana Ross finishes her live concerts with a powerful message: “Go for your dreams!” Mary Wilson motivates audiences with her “Dare to Dream” lectures, building on the message of her best-selling autobiography, Dreamgirl: My Life As A Supreme. Now Dale Guy Madison, inspired by the timeless songs of Diana Ross and The Supremes, “dares to dream” his life story in this uncensored and candid memoir.
DREAMBOY: My Life as a QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits is the vintage “album” of Madison’s life set against the tunes of The Supremes and filled with lessons on love, self-determination, and surviving the trenches of the entertainment industry. Through its pages Madison navigates a litany of broken intimate relationships, (including an affair with a closeted Baltimore politician), experiences a whirlwind heterosexual marriage, fights for and secures work as a gay black actor in Hollywood and clings to life within the halls of a city mental institution. However, it is after gaining nationwide fame as a television host on the QVC shopping network that Madison learns opportunities must not be waited on -- they must be created -- and thus begins the “B-side” of the album.
Sissy sammy In The Land of Weho 90069 is a parody of the Frank Baum Classic
The Wizard of Oz
It is the tale of a young gay boy from Compton who ends up in West Hollywood trying to find a bus token to get home. Along the way he meets a drag queen, rough trade and a butch lesbian. They all have something they need from the head DJ at the Raging Queen. Just like Dorothy’s trip to OZ, the journey is also a lesson of self-discovery.
Sissy Sammy was a hit with audiences at the Squaw Valley Writers conference of 2007. It was presented as a staged reading during the closing night variety show. In addition, I have read it as a performance piece for various gay prides throughout California.
It is an adult fairy tale penned and illustrated like a children’s book. Most children’s books are written and inked similarly and purchased by parents to read to their kids. However, this is not intended to be a bedtime story read to a five year old. I don’t fool myself in believing a parent would read this book to their LGBTQ son or daughter. The kid who would benefit from reading this book is already out of the house They would have been asked or pressured to leave. It uses adult language and adult situations.
DREAMBOY is a story that appeals to audiences on many levels. How many times have we heard a song and it reminds us of something that happened in our lives? Madison faces obstacles and turns them successes. Being born black, gay, and in a single family household, Dale has dreams of being successful like his idols, the Supremes.
Having grown up in a household where fantasies of stardom were stamped out “with a quickness,” a young Madison held on to his dreams of becoming successful like his idols, The Supremes. DREAMBOY: My Life As A QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits pays homage to the artist in every human spirit while giving a humble nod to the immortal Motown female phenomenon. A true renaissance man, (an actor, nude model, fashion designer, television host and film producer), Madison proves that clarity of vision and being true to one’s self are the makings of a bona fide Dreamboy. (Or girl!)
Reviews
MOTOWN DREAMBOY TELLS ALL!
by Corey Jarrell
I LIVE IT! I AM IT!
DREAMBOY: MY LIFE AS A QVC HOST & OTHER GREATEST HITS
Even though writer-actor-entertainer-former TV host Dale Guy Madison partially dedicates his incredibly likable and spiritually uplifting memoir to “every little boy who dreamed of sparkle, glitter, and glamour while singing Supreme songs in the mirror, but was ashamed to let anyone know it,” there is no shame in his game. Mr. Madison’s personal tale of cock-eyed optimism is buoyant enough to pull the most submerged pessimist above the waters of despair to breathe in all the good that is life and the living of it, and to celebrate the good that is love with all its crazy ups and downs, particularly, the greatest love of all, self-love.
And what makes his celebration of life and love even more wonderful is that there are no lectures, no preachments, just personal antidotal snippets of his life as an unapologetic all-things-Supremes-gay-boy affectionately shared with humor, wit and the humanity of the perfection of being imperfect.
He paralleled the meteoric careers of Diana, Mary, and Flo with his own, starring in most of his grade school plays, making the morning announcements over his elementary school’s PA system, and even suffering a Florence Ballard setback when a pubescent voice change resulted in him being replaced by a male teen-aged Cindy Birdsong wannabee in the school’s production of “A Christmas Carol.”
Unwavering in his devotion to the Divas of Motown, and having spent his high school and college years in a typically traumatic exploration of his homosexuality, the now 23-year-old openly gay entertainment aspirant headed to New York with his best friend to see his first Broadway show, “Dreamgirls,” of course. Short on funds for a hotel room, he and his friend spend the night under a bridge near Christopher Street in the red Volvo they drove up in, and it is here where Dale has his epiphany moment. He had determined that he was going to be in “Dreamgirls.” But a chance audition for the national touring company of the show in 1985 turned in what Dale describes as a “bad American Idol moment.” Still, he walked out with his head held high knowing that one day he “would be close to the Supremes, have an iota of fame close to their fame, or both.”
Finally Dale’s dream of being on screen in a starring role came true when he was hired to be a host on the QVC Fashion Channel, making for the first time a six-figure-a-year salary plus a $4,000 a year wardrobe allowance, not to mention creating a new fan base and hobnobbing with such celebrities as Richard Simmons, Joan Rivers, and Susan Lucci. He tried hard to get his idol Diana Ross booked on the show, but to no avail.
It was a dream that lasted 4 years. In the last days at work for QVC, Dale landed a part in the movie “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” which starred Wesley Snipe, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo as a trio of drag queens driving cross-country from New York to Los Angeles. With the assist of the QVC wardrobe department, Dale appeared on the movie set as one the most beautiful movie drag queens the movie crew had laid eyes on, prompting Wesley Snipes to not only gasp in approval but to have his picture taken with Dale.
Riding on his growing reputation as the definitive movie and TV drag queen performer, Dale had a one-man show created for him by Darryl Lemont Wharton, a young and talented staff writer on the TV series “Homicide: Life on the Streets” (in which Dale also appeared in drag).
The show, “FREEda Slave: Mask of a Diva”, starring Dale as Alfred, a cross-dresser whose alter ego is the mostly funny, sometimes sad, always dazzling title character, proved to be a triumph. Opening in 1994, “FREEda SLAVE” starring Dale Guy Madison, played across the country, to rave reviews and standing ovations.
What a full and fascinating life Madison has had, and with his spirited telling and his generous sharing, it seems like only the beginning.
Dale Guy Madison may not be as rich or famous as his idol Diana Ross, but his star and his gold shine bright for many, particularly for himself. If only more of us could be as pleased as he is when gazing into the mirror. If only more of us could allow ourselves to enjoy the thrill of living a purpose-driven life! Dale Guy Madison’s memoir is the perfect upper read.
Stanley Bennett Clay Facebook Page
A SUPREMES BOY
You know you’re gay when you lip-synch songs by Diana Ross. You know you’re really gay when chapters of your memoir are titles of her greatest hits.
Dale Guy Madison is an unabashed fan of Diana Ross and the Supremes who connects the dots of his life in his memoir Dreamboy (www.damngoodman.com) via the music of Miss Ross, both as lead singer of the Supremes and as a solo artist (after all, he had to include her disco hit I’m Coming Out). The full title is Dreamboy: My Life as a QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits, and in homage to his childhood in Baltimore, Maryland, he includes a Nancy Wilson song that Bonnie Raitt later made famous. Madison introduces Dreamboy with an explanation of how he structured the book into five “discs,” including “The Happening” (“To a black kid growing up in the sixties, the Supremes were an undeniable symbol of success,” he writes. “You could rise from the projects and one day be on The Ed Sullivan Show”); “Family” (including a gay brother); “I Meant You No Harm/Breathtaking Guy” (in which he dishes on all of his “enrapturing, heartbreaking, and delicious relationships”); “Up the Ladder to the Roof” (when fame eluded him and his drag alter ego FREEda Slave, he moved to Los Angeles and tried to produce a movie starring Joey Buttafucco); and “Acknowledgements,” serving as album “liner notes” which he contacted Mary Wilson to write, but “she hasn’t gotten back” to him).
Did you know that Diana Ross and the Supremes recorded an album of songs from Funny Girl? This and much more can be found in Madison’s memoir, dedicated to “every little boy who dreamed of sparkle, glitter and glamour while singing Supreme songs in the mirror, but was ashamed to let anyone know it.”
Donalevan Maines is a frequent contributor to OutSmart magazine.
This adult parody also slips in gay historical references. I believe it is important to let the younger queer generation know how we got here and occasional holdovers of past inequality like the requirement for gays of color to have two ID cards to enter a club.
It also plays with pop trivia. West Hollywood (also nick-named WEHO) is a real city that exists with the second largest percentage of likely homosexual households and a zip code of 90069. Sammy admits an attraction to the iconic image of Tarzan.
When I talked to gay men of my generation about their pre-adolescence days, in a time before the internet, the safest way to lust after a man was to watch a Tarzan movie. Where else could you go and see a half naked man without exposing your sexuality?
Besides embracing gay history and taking a wink at pop culture, at the conclusion of the story, my goal is to offer a therapeutic platform to discuss issues.
I urge readers to seek out organizations to support our queer youth. Read this book and give it to someone whose life you might influence and possibly save.
