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John "Bunny" Breckenridge
From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia. A very minor celebrity among the gay community in Hollywood and San Francisco, "Bunny" Breckenridge might be entirely forgotten today were it not for his single film performance, that of the alien ruler in Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space. His characterization is one of the more memorable highlights of what is arguably the most enjoyable "so bad it's good" film ever made. Born 6 August, 1902 in Paris to a wealthy San Francisco family, John Cabell Breckenridge was the great-grandson of US Vice President John C. Breckenridge, for whom he was named, and was also the great-grandson of Lloyd Tevis, founder of the Wells Fargo Bank. He grew up in England, attending Eton and Oxford. Eccentric and flamboyant, young Breckenridge developed a life-long penchant for perfume and costume jewelry, and a reputation for those oh-so-bitchy bon moits which are the special forte of every respectable queen. Working as an entertainer in Paris, he married the daughter of a French countess in 1927 and had a daughter, but divorced two years later before moving back to London, where he performed in Shakespearean plays for a brief time before moving to San Francisco. In 1954 Breckenridge announced plans to travel to Denmark to have a sex-change operation and marry his male secretary. Bunny was by now a grandfather, and his granddaughter surprisingly supported him in his efforts. Unfortunately, his plans fell through when he was severely injured in a car wreck while traveling in Mexico. He was also successfully sued by his infirm mother and ordered to pay her an annual support stipend of $8500. The following year, while patronizing a San Francisco waterfront bar, he was charged with "vagrancy," a common charge brought against homosexuals caught cruising for sex, and jailed, though the charges were later dropped because of his family and wealth. Contrary to the events portrayed in Tim Burton's 1994 film, there is no evidence that Bunny knew Ed Wood prior to the making of Plan 9 From Outer Space in 1958. However he was, like celebrity psychic and fellow "Woodite" Criswell, a friend of Paul Marco, who played "Kelton the Cop" in Wood's Bride of the Monster, and was living as Marco's house guest when Wood began casting for Plan 9. Marco was asked to reprise his role as Kelton in Plan 9, and Bunny's friendship with Marco and his previous stage experience convinced Wood to cast him as the alien ruler who oversees an attempt to take over the world using an army of radio-controlled zombies. Indeed, Bunny's background made him one of the few experienced actors in the entire cast. Breckenridge's performance in Plan 9 From Outer Space is pure gay camp. Dressed in a pajama like outfit which is curiously less ornate than those worn by his underlings, Bunny sports very visible mascara and lipstick, and constantly rolls his eyes and mugs for the camera. One wonders if Bunny's performance isn't a deliberate attempt on his part to deal with the extreme silliness of the entire picture. Soon after Plan 9 was completed, Bunny took two teenage boys with him to Las Vegas and was arrested and charged with ten counts of sex perversion, for which he was committed for one year to the Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Upon his release, Bunny returned to his San Francisco home, a Spanish style bungalow adorned with gold framed photographs of the many celebrities he met and befriended, including Princess Margaret, Noel Coward, J. Edgar Hoover, Elvis Presley, and Ed Sullivan. Bunny frequently opened his home to members of the growing hippie movement, who were enthralled not only by his stories of his wild flamboyant youth, but also his favorable opinions on free love and his encyclopedic knowledge of gay history, not to mention who in Hollywood was gay. He also returned to stage acting, appearing in several local productions. Later, he moved to New Jersey, occasionally returning for extended stays in the San Francisco area. Unlike many other members of the Ed Wood entourage, Bunny Breckenridge lived to see the cult following Wood's films developed in the late 1980s, and the release of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, in which Bunny was portrayed by Bill Murray. His advanced years and failing health, however, prevented him from participating in any of the publicity surrounding the film. Finally, on 5 November 1996, he died in Monterey from heart failure. External links: Entry revised 20 November, 2004. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details). |
