He’s Back — James “Gypsy” Haake

What do you do when you’re 82-years-old and have been performing all your life? You started out as a dancer on Broadway, then opened a nightclub. You entertained the stars there for a couple of decades and then you moved on to appear in films, television, and started working in drag as the star of the La Cage Au Folles show in Beverly Hills. You finally decide to retire but then what do you do? Sit around the house and watch daytime television?

Not if you’re the incomparable Gyspy.

James Gyspy Haake has done all of the things mentioned above. We spoke with Gypsy recently and asked him about the highlights of his show business career.

TGF: When you first started in show business you weren’t doing female impersonation. How did you get the name Gypsy?

Gypsy: In 1950 I graduated from high school in Morristown, New Jersey. I was the only male for the four years of high school that was taking ballet, tap and jazz dancing classes with girls. Then in the summer I would work at an Equity playhouse that’s very famous, it still is, The Papermill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey.  So when I graduated from high school in 1950, that fall they had Equity calls. [Ed. Note: Open casting calls for the theater.] Boys and girls on Broadway that dance are called gypsies. Because they go from one show to another. I went to an open call with another guy from another high school who danced also and I was taken and he wasn’t. So my first show on Broadway was Wish You Were Here. It was the only show on Broadway that ever had a swimming pool onstage.

TGF: So your name came from your first work in show biz. But you weren’t doing any female impersonation in the ’50s?

G: I never did that till 1981 with La Cage. In the late ’60s, early ’70 I opened Gypsy’s in New York. The only thing I did in my club was I wore tuxedos and a pair of high heels. But no makeup, no nothing. It was a cabaret and it became famous. Chita Rivera would come in and they would all break their songs in for new musicals.

TGF: Why did you close Gypsy’s?

G: Studio 54 and all those discos came in. I said, ‘ya know, I’m gonna retire.’ I was 46 years old. I was never beautiful but I looked in my very early 30s then. So I retired and came to L.A. I had friends in L.A. Many times during those years when I was on Broadway I would do the national tours and that’s how I met those people.

TGF: How did you get the job in the La Cage Au Folles production?

G: One thing led to another and when La Cage Au Folles the French film opened in 1980 a producer from New York was living in L.A. and he wanted to do what you didn’t see in the film. You never saw the show. This producer wanted to do the show that you didn’t see in the film. Benny Luke played Jacob in the film, the maid. He was supposed to open as the star and things didn’t go well. Vivian Blaine [Ed. Note: Gypsy’s then agent] talked the owner into trying me out. I had never done drag before then. We had a hot meeting and I said, ‘Let me tell you something. I’ve got a long nose, I’m not pretty, I’ve got great legs and a nice figure. So this is the way I’d like to do it. I’ll never wear wigs and I won’t wear boobs.’ I was so non-threatening. If you can’t describe it you can’t yell at it.

Gypsy on his role as MC of La Cage.

TGF: And the production was a big success.

G: It was huge. Internationally famous — mainly because of Rev. Falwell. They picketed La Cage and they did it the second night we opened. One of the “born again guys” grabbed Rock Hudson when he was coming in with Elizabeth Taylor and said “Don’t go in there, blah, blah, blah.” So he punched him and knocked him out and went in. Then you couldn’t get in. Every star in the world was going there.

TGF: La Cage led to your film career.

As Sasha in To Be Or Not To Be

G: I was there for two years, and one night Mel Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft came in and before I knew it he had signed me to a contract to co-star with them in my first film. I got an agent. My name was submitted for the Oscars for best supporting actor. (To Be Or Not To Be.) I didn’t win but I won lots of other award.

TGF: And you moved into television.

G: I was Uncle Otto on Married With Children, and was on Dynasty. I went on tour to Miami, South America, Finland, Russia, Oslo, and Sweden. The best audiences were in Miami.

’97/’98 I was on Long Island and I got a call from April Summers who was putting together a big show in Lake Tahoe. We opened there. It was huge. The show ran for four years.

A few months ago we ran an interview that David de Alba conducted with Gypsy in the early 2000s. That interview indicated that Gypsy was set to relax in Palm Springs and live the quiet life. But that’s not what happened. After a little bit of relaxing the urge to hear his high heels clicking on the stage returned. Gypsy’s long time manager Dan Gore told him that going back on stage was not a bad idea and that they should do it in a big way — by building Gypsy his own showplace.

The plan for the new Gypsy’s envisions a state of the art performance space that will accommodate a big audience and have a stage large enough for production numbers, along with the technical production features of lights, sound and giant LED screens. This is not going to be a drag show on the dance floor of a dingy club.

Artist’s rendering of the proposed club.

TGF: So retirement didn’t work out and you’re getting back into the biz.

G: Dan keeps urging me to and I’ve done some shows with him and now he’s on the big project thing.

Dan: He’s not going anywhere so I’m like, well, I think he should go back on the stage. He just continues to get better with age when he’s performing and the last time we were in Oklahoma 600 hundred people were on their feet, 600 cowboys, and he shouldn’t just be at home doing nothing.

TGF: You’re running an online fundraising campaign to raise money for Gypsy’s new venue. Was that your idea?

Dan: There’s so much more talent and he’s got so much more to give. Presentations to high end investors cost money and that’s what the online campaign is for. We rent a room and bring in performers. That costs money. The crowd sourced money is basically to move us through the next couple of presentations.

TGF: So what is the concept for the new club?

Dan: It all centers around female impersonators with Gypsy being the star. I’m sure you’re familiar with most of the shows in the country, there’re just not any like I want to do. Female impersonation is not celebrated in this country like it is celebrated in other parts of the world.

TGF: Gypsy, what do you think of the drag performers of today? People like RuPaul and Lady Bunny.

G: I think of RuPaul as a very tall African American man who through the magic of what he’s able to do transformed his look into that RuPaul beautiful face and then from that face flew all these projects, which is a very different thing than someone like me, who is the orchestra leader of the show. I’m the needle and the thread and I’m sewing all these wonderful stars together through my little web. Where Ru is RuPaul. They didn’t give a shit if she opened a grocery store. She’s brilliant. She was the first one of her kind ever to get a cosmetic contract.

TGF: Many of the drag shows today small affairs that are held in bars.

G: I don’t perform in gay bars because those queens would boo me out of the room. I’m useless there because I don’t look beautiful. You have to really look like a chick. Most of the time you can be singing anyone’s songs and you don’t have to look like them you just have to look like a chick.

TGF: What will the new club’s show be like?

G: The way I introduce them [the performers in the show] the whole focus is on these actors.

TGF: You’re the mistress of ceremonies.

G: That’s what I’m good at. Get ’em ready, but then you have to know how to ease ’em in otherwise they’re [the audience] still hanging on to your madness when a character comes out. If you set it up right they forget what you were just doing.

TGF: And the remember later when you come back.

G: Yeah. I come back between every act. Twelve changes a night. We have one production number in the beginning and a production number at the end. Then, there is one number that he [Dan] does where three of the acts are doing one number. All the other acts and myself are getting out of our makeup and getting into tuxedos. Those three acts are in drag doing this act but the act itself requires them to be taking makeup off. All three of those acts end up in tuxedos and then we do the finale.

TGF: That sound amazing. Is there anything you’d like to see happen during the show?

G: My vision, what I’ve always wanted to do, just to see, at the end of the show when the three are back stage, when we’re to come out in our tuxedos, I would like from ceiling to floor  a picture of them, say if one did Marilyn, of him as Marilyn, and all he does is step from behind that picture in his tuxedo and stand by that picture.

Visit the GoFundMe page to make a donation toward bringing back a big production venue for female impersonation and Gypsy.

The Gypsy Photo Gallery — Gypsy with many stars through his career.
Click the first photo and use the navigation arrows >> to navigate.

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