Jim bailey gay

However, as Bailey grew older, his desire for an intimate relationship pushed him to find a way to come out.

After attending Delgado College and Tulane University where he studied business administration, he served as an administrator for Catholic Charities of New Orleans at a residential treatment center for learning disabled/emotionally disturbed youth.

In the mid-80s, Bailey's love for media and graphic arts resurfaced. As rehearsals progressed, there was a problem: while Jim was eager to act, when he wasn’t costumed as one of his legendary divas, he was lost. The play’s director, Chris Ashley, and I, first arranged to meet with Jim in a lounge at JFK, because he was touring. Never tried to pray the gay away.

Amid all this, Jim Bailey has died, at age 77. When my play Jeffrey was first performed there, Jim was cast to play the central role of Sterling, an acerbic and great-hearted interior designer.

Who is Jim Bailey?

Early Life, Coming Out, and Advertising Background

Jim Bailey was raised in Kentucky until 1961 when he moved to a (then) remote part of Louisiana due to his father’s work.

He attended public school and a Southern Baptist Congregation Sunday School. He worked for a time as a designer, first for Cox Newspapers, then for the corporate advertising department of one of the South's largest retail distributors. As Carol Channing or Judy, he was brilliant, but acting in a more ordinary range just wasn’t his sort of thing.

He always wore a decent amount of make-up, even on the street, and his hair was always immaculately colored and immobile. I’m grateful that he shared this talents with all of us, and grateful that we live in a time when all we have to do is Google his name so that we can watch him perform to our heart’s content.

Thank you, Jim. Thank you so very much.

Paul Rudnick

With so much focus on the amazing Caitlyn Jenner story, there’s been a lot of discussion involving gender identity and sexual preference and masculine and feminine presentation.

WHERE’S BARBRA’S HEAD?” When we found Jim, he was standing amid a stack of deluxe luggage, and searching for the styrofoam stand which held his Barbra Streisand wig.

Jim couldn’t have been more gracious or more excited about doing the play. She was so entranced by his impression of her that she jumped on stage with him during a performance and made him sing a duet with her…as her.

That’s something, kiddos.

He didn’t lip-synch, as he was an astounding vocalist. He was most often called a female impersonator, or a gender illusionist. He became the divas he was portraying. He’d already had his script bound in black calfskin, with the title of the play embossed in gold. Out of drag, he seemed even more like a regal, delightful leading lady from the Golden Age.

He wasn’t a relic; he was one-of-a-kind. And to hear for so many years that God loves all, then to hear the pastor say there are those that God hates, was such inconsistency as to be unbelievable.

Bailey never experienced much of a conflict between his spirituality and sexual orientation as so many others have.

RuPaul’s Drag Race is a phenomenon that has put drag into the living rooms of middle, mainstream America, and “showgirls” like myself owe Mama Ru a great amount of gratitude and appreciation for just that.

We all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, however, and long before RuPaul ever “started her engines”,Jim Bailey was blazing a trail for all of us to follow – RuPaul included.