A visit to the notorious Hollywood fashion critic Mr. Blackwell, at his baronial mansion in Hancock Park. Gardeners clip at the hedges. A cream-colored Jaguar sits in the circular driveway. I pull my rental — a forest green Plymouth Neon — around back. I’m ringing his doorbell. He’s going to take in what I’m wearing with one withering, scornfully silent glance. I’m suddenly aware of my shoes. I’m ringing again. When the door finally opens, it’s Blackwell. Or is it? Silent, grey, sneakered, smaller than I imagined, waving me in behind a caged door. “Being Mr. Blackwell wasn’t the best of ideas,” he whispers hoarsely in his dining room, giving a disinterested tap to the bottom ball of a Baccarat crystal chandelier. It is a rueful, startling admission, especially given his public persona as the outrageously acid fashion critic and author of The Worst Dressed List, the man who, for the past forty years, has held his annual press conference from his living room every January. But as I soon learn, following him on a tour of his dark, opulent mansion, the Mr. Blackwell of the scandalous Tonight Show visits, the People magazine quotes — is just another invention like any other star in Hollywood. But it’s only one of the roles he has played throughout his life.
Like Joan Rivers, (“She’s what I always feared I would become”) he has become trapped in a persona of his own making: a walking soundbite of dependably bitchy barbs, aimed squarely at only the biggest stars: “Mariah Carey: The Fashion Pariah — Strikes Again! She’s shrink-wrapped cheesecake — trapped in a Peek-and-Boot Parade!” One would think the author of such gleeful scorn would relish his self-created role as merciless arbiter of style, sitting in judgment on gilded perch, high above the multitudes of fashion victims.
What Mr. Blackwell really wants to tell the world is that they don’t know the real him. Who that is, or was, is revealed in his eyebrow-raising autobiography, From Rags to Bitches. Born Sylvan Richard Selzer, he came from a poverty-stricken family in Brooklyn in the early 1920s. Brought to an open casting call by his mother, the real-life juvenile delinquent became one of the original “Dead End Kids,” and worked as a child actor under contract to Universal in the ’30s. He later had cameos and walk-ons in dozens of movies, playing opposite Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, and Mae West. Among other lives he lived were those of street hustler, Hollywood boy-toy, and personal manager to singers and entertainers.
Still palpably street tough, with his Old New York accent intact, he admits to having exhausted his fondness for the beautiful objets that fill his and his partner Spence’s house. I remark that it feels like a beautifully furnished fortress. “This is my world,” he says. “No one gets in here.”

David Savage: I saw a picture of you once in which you were wearing a long fur coat and cowboy boots.
Mr. Blackwell: Not long. It was a hip coat, and sneakers and jeans.

David: No, cowboy boots.
Mr. Blackwell: No, they were sneakers.

David: Boots and jeans and a fur coat. Is that well dressed?
Mr. Blackwell: Madonna was appearing, I think, at the Regent Beverly Wilshire. I was going to another party and this is what I wanted to wear.

David: And someone took a picture of you.
Mr. Blackwell: It was a private party. They took a picture of me and they said: Worst Dressed. But this is how I wanted to look that night. That didn’t make it ugly. It wasn’t ugly. It wasn’t out of proportion. I guess they just wanted to bitch back at me, that’s all. And why not?

David: You go to a lot of black tie affairs, don’t you.
Mr. Blackwell: Too many.

David: Of course you make a point of observing the way people are dressed.
Mr. Blackwell: No.

David: You don’t?
Mr. Blackwell: I make a point of trying not to. Because I’m not working. I don’t want to be seen checking people out.

David: How do people interact with you at those affairs?
Mr. Blackwell: A lot of them, unfortunately, come up and say, “If I knew you were going to be here, I’d have worn something different.” And I say to them, “Then why did you wear it to begin with?” I mean, don’t dress for me; dress for yourself. If you like it, defend it.

David: How would you describe your own personal style?
Mr. Blackwell: I love shirts and ties. I like Leonard ties. Other people think they’re horrible. I think they’re great. This jacket I’m wearing, it’s a modest tweed but it’s good. It’s okay. And I tell you this, good fashion has no date. Believe it or not, this jacket is twenty-two years old.

David: It’s very good-looking.
Mr. Blackwell: Which also proves I haven’t gained weight. [both laugh] It fits. The cut is great. It doesn’t look like a John Ford, or whatever his name is for Gucci ...

David: Tom Ford.
Mr. Blackwell: You see, I forget him too. I don’t believe what he’s done. It looks like something out of the ’60s that was too small. It doesn’t close. The pants are too skinny. They never come to the shoe. I don’t get what he’s done. And he’s become a genius.

David: Maybe he’s more of a stylist than a designer.
Mr. Blackwell: Is that what he is? Well, don’t style me. And don’t style you. You look like you’re wearing your kid brother’s suit. What is that? That’s baloney. I don’t see what he’s done. And they’re saying he’s a great designer.

David: Do people come up to you and parry with you — play with you a little bit?
Mr. Blackwell: I don’t like that.

David: Because they’re dealing with the persona of Mr. Blackwell ...
Mr. Blackwell: Yeah.

David: ... instead of with you as a person?
Mr. Blackwell: I would rather they just say, “Hi, how are you?”

David: When do you formally announce your List?
Mr. Blackwell: We have the press conference the second Tuesday in January. And we do it right here in the living room. This year, at the turn of the century, will be the 40th anniversary of the List.

David: Congratulations.
Mr. Blackwell: And I will do three lists. I will do the 10 Worst of the Year, the 10 Worst of 40 Years, and the 10 Worst of the Century.

David: Where did the idea for the Worst Dressed List come from?
Mr. Blackwell: My partner Spencer, who ran the business, R.M. Spencer. He thought it was a good way to get attention. But I was serious. No one had ever done the worst of anything. The only thing that touched it, and it was really a lot more pushy, was The Harvard Lampoon. That was the only thing that ever came out that had a negative viewpoint. The List was created around 1958, but was first exposed in 1960.

David: How was it received?
Mr. Blackwell: The reaction was: How dare you? Who do you think you are? What right do you have? And my response was: “I’m not saying I’m a critic at all. I’m not telling any of these people what to wear. I’m just telling them what I think of what they’re wearing.”

David: You had been a designer before the List, correct?
Mr. Blackwell: I had been a designer before it, but I faked it. You see, there was a period where I became a personal manager and managed some great singers. Now, none of us had a dollar. I mean, my office was a phone booth and a slug. In those days we found out how to get the nickel back. It was an old trick we learned. And that was my office — the phone and the phone booth. Once I booked this girl, we needed clothes. So somehow I was able to take three yards of fabric, hang it on the girl with a lot of rhinestone pins and artificial flowers, and pin the fabric into what looked like a dress.

David: Did you have any training as a designer?
Mr. Blackwell: Oh, no. It was instinctive. I would do this in the dressing room right before she went on stage.

David: So very last minute?
Mr. Blackwell: Of course you couldn’t take it off. If you unpinned it, it’d be a 3-1/2 yard piece of fabric. And sometimes if we ran out of fabric, we’d use drapes from the hotel. We’d use a bedspread.

David: That’s incredible.
Mr. Blackwell: And there was always a train on the dress, because we never could cut the drapes or we’d get charged for them by the hotel. So we always let the balance of the fabric train. It was quite sensational. And the dresses got great reviews and the singer got terrible reviews. So I took all these pictures and said I was a dress designer.

David: How simple.
Mr. Blackwell: And that’s how I became one. I took the pictures down to a belt manufacturer, who was a Napoleon, who wanted to run the whole industry, and he was very impressed. But I didn’t design dresses right away. My big claim to fame was designing toilet seat covers. I know this whole thing is getting weird but ...

David: [laughs] No, I love it.
Mr. Blackwell: But I’m weird too anyway, so that’s okay. So I put rhinestones in them and we sold them to Sears ... or maybe J.C. Penney. 10,000 toilet seat covers, ruffled and pretty toile and net, and sprinkled with rhinestones. It was fabulous in a small apartment. It lit up the bathrooms. Well, until one woman jumped out of a shower and sat on the rhinestones and cut herself on her rear end and filed a lawsuit against the store. All of the toilet seat covers were returned. Now what do you do with 9,000 toilet seat covers, I ask you?

David: Make a dress?
Mr. Blackwell: How? There was no way you can cut them up to do that. Well, I was in Orange County, and there were lots of drive-ins at the time. There were these girls with rollers in their hair, the waitresses. They had silk scarves wrapped around their hair, but you could still see the rollers and it didn’t look nice. So I went to management and said: “I have the perfect cover for these girls to wear. And in the sun, with the rhinestones and the colors, they’re going to be gorgeous.” And I brought it out and said: “One size fits all. All you have to do is pull the string tighter.” And we sold them.
David: That’s ingenious.

Mr. Blackwell: Well, it wasn’t that I was that bright; it was just by accident I came upon it. Anyway, he finally let me design a dress, and we set up a little factory. I did everything in black wool jersey. It was the only mill that would give me any credit — we had no money. And that was fine — until summer came. You couldn’t wear wool jersey in the summer and I didn’t know how to make a real pattern. The stores were saying: We want scoop necks. So I cut out the neck but the dresses would fall down. We got them all back and went bankrupt.

David: And how did the List come out of all this?
Mr. Blackwell: At that time there was a magazine called American Weekly, a Sunday supplement. Someone from the magazine called and said, would I, having been in the movies and being a designer, would I do a list of who looks good and who looks bad? So the Worst and Best was born — not really as a list. It was only a one-Sunday editorial. But people grabbed it. They loved it.

David: Is there an art to being badly dressed?
Mr. Blackwell: I don’t think it’s an art at all. Just wear what they’re showing. [laughs]

David: Do you think anyone in particular has elevated it to an art form?
Mr. Blackwell: Well, when they do, I take them off the List. Phyllis Diller did that. Because it’s a gimmick. Roseanne, I said something nice about her, and she wrote me a great letter. Whoopi Goldberg sent me flowers every time she made The Worst Dressed List. Barbara Mandrell put me on her TV show. I have a wonderful picture from that show, where my arm is in a sling, my leg is broken, and I had bandages on my head. She announces me by saying: “He’ll never do that again.” And then I come hobbling out and we do a number together.

David: Do you think you’ve ever ruined anyone’s career by putting them on The Worst Dressed List?
Mr. Blackwell: Helped them? A lot of them.

David: I mean ruined.
Mr. Blackwell: Oh, no. Ruined a career? No, good heavens, no. In fact, think of it this way — my list is January. And when are the Oscars?

David: March.
Mr. Blackwell: Okay. At least thirty or so times out of the forty years that I’ve been doing this, someone at the top of my List won an Oscar. Now I believe the publicity, in addition to their being talented, put them up front.

David: As an underdog?
Mr. Blackwell: I don’t really know. Remember, you don’t just pick blindly. You’ve got to pick celebrities that people want to read about. Otherwise no one’s going to read your List.

David: Why do they make such a big deal out of what’s worn to the Oscars?
Mr. Blackwell: Because it’s fancy and it’s a party. It’s a huge escape party. And all the world loves a beautiful woman. The only trouble is that none of these people wearing the clothes have created their own image. Take what’s her name? I try to forget it but it keeps haunting me ... Kate Winslet. What is that Victorian nightmare she wore to the last Oscars? What was that? I thought it was draperies from an old bordello. It reminded me of the days I used to swipe drapery and pin it up. I mean, she looked like the breadmaker at the country house of the queen.

David: Cher.
Mr. Blackwell: Cher was doing an incredible thing. She was a fabulous image. However, she was representing it as wardrobe. And as wardrobe, it was dreadful. As costume, it was dynamite. And I didn’t want people who idolized her to clone her. So I had to put her on the Worst Dressed. Mackie did work that this world should never forget. Bob Mackie is the King of Hollywood Glamour.

David: Liz Taylor. She’s made the List more times than anyone else.
Mr. Blackwell: I’ve never known anyone who could make more ugly mistakes — and having been so beautiful. I cannot believe what a legend of such magnitude and real beauty, even though she’s heavy, does to herself. Now she’s not well. And I’ve always had a policy: if someone isn’t well, don’t touch it. She’s an incredible woman. I’ll never put a person on I don’t like, by the way. If I don’t like them, I won’t put them on the list.

David: Oh, that’s interesting.
Mr. Blackwell: I don’t want them to say, “He doesn’t like me, he’s trying to get even.”

David: So inclusion on your Worst Dressed List is almost a sign of affection from you?
Mr. Blackwell: It’s acknowledgment that you are somebody worth talking about. I loved it one year when I said Streisand looked like a Godfather in drag. I think Streisand beats out Taylor.

David: For what reason?
Mr. Blackwell: She’s looked worse than anyone who’s been a star, and for a lot of years. She’s looking pretty decent now. I mean, not wonderful, but she’s looking good. And since her marriage, she’s even being nice — which, of course, won’t last that long.

David: You had a stinging critique of Streisand in ’68.
Mr. Blackwell: When I look back at those pajamas she wore to the Oscars, they were beautiful for that period — if she hadn’t slipped on the staircase.

David: She slipped?
Mr. Blackwell: She fell on the way up the stairs. And her fanny went up in the air and it was pure see-through. So I had a perfect line. I said: “I really don’t object to see-through provided there’s something I want to see through to.”

David: Do certain people court inclusion on your List?
Mr. Blackwell: They try. Then I take them off. If a press agent tries to get them in, they’re out. And I will never design a dress for anyone after they make my List. Because everyone’s going to turn around and say: “He only put them on the List to get them as a customer.” And the minute that happens, the List has no credibility. So I totally refuse. If they ask: “What should she wear?” I say: “I’m not in the business of dressing her. I’m in the business of critiquing her.”

David: Who had the worst reaction to being included on your List?
Mr. Blackwell: One who screamed murder publicly was Estelle Getty, from The Golden Girls. Now, I wasn’t harsh about her. I loved her work. I went up to her and said: “Estelle” — smiling — “I am so thrilled that you’re short.” And she said: “Why would you say that?” I said: “Well, there’s just so much less of you to look awful.” She went into a rage. And she screamed and she hollered and she hooted. I have been known to be the bitch of this century — which is okay.

David: You don’t mind that?
Mr. Blackwell: I do and I don’t. I reputedly have the mouth of all times. But this is a shame because they’ve never heard the other side of me. They didn’t know that I was performing the role of Mr. Blackwell, a man I created. They didn’t know that I wrote his dialogue, I taught him how to walk, I dressed him, I told him how to act. I told him when to be acid and when to shut up. I taught him everything. And at times I didn’t want to live with him. I must tell you, there were days I did not want to know this man. But he did make headlines.

David: So in a sense Mr. Blackwell is the longest-running role that you’ve created.
Mr. Blackwell: The most successful. Not the happiest of all. I don’t think people think of me as being human. I’m an enigma. They’re just amazed when they see me at a party. They do the buzz thing [whispers]: “That’s Blackwell.” They think of me as a statement of some kind. I don’t think I’ll ever die in their eyes. I will probably last forever as a voice. Strange. And very painful. Because that doesn’t allow me to do all the other things I feel a great need to do — but that I do anyway.

David: Such as?
Mr. Blackwell: My favorite thing is to go to women’s prisons and talk to them in the auditorium.

David: Really? What sort of things do you talk about?
Mr. Blackwell: I let them lead. I bring fashion. I have a piano player. I do a couple of songs. I bring two or three models. I show them clothes — not as a fashion statement but as a kind of editorial movie, something moving and fun. And these women, in spite of being incarcerated, love the freedom and the camp that I put into it.

David: Do you make them laugh?
Mr. Blackwell: I want to make them laugh. I want to make them think. I want to tell them that considering where I came from and how I began my life, if I could make it over that mountain, they can go on from there. I even give away dresses for a few of them to wear when they get out.

David: Most people don’t know that you were a child actor here in Hollywood, either.
Mr. Blackwell: That was ... oh god, do I have to tell you?

David: Yes.
Mr. Blackwell: Damn.

David: ’40s?
Mr. Blackwell: I started in 1937. 1938, I was at Universal Studios in Little Tough Guys. The first one had all the Dead End Kids in it. And if you worked with them in anything, you became a Dead End Kid.

David: So you were one of the Dead End Kids?
Mr. Blackwell: Yes.

David: Now, for our readers who don’t know about these movies, they were tales of street kids in New York.
Mr. Blackwell: They were hoodlums, mostly. Kids who lived on the other side of Park Avenue. Of course, people can say: “Isn’t that terrible? You were born in poverty, you lived on the street, you were in reform schools, you ran away, you did dreadful things to survive.” But we weren’t bad kids. We just needed to live. And in those days there was no welfare, no one was going to give you a helping hand.
Half the time if you lived through the night in the alley and the gangs didn’t kill you, it was a miracle.

David: You were living in alleys?
Mr. Blackwell: Slept in alleys, lived in alleys, lived on the East River. We had no alternative. We had no money. Don’t forget, a lot of that was after the Crash.

David: The Great Depression. So there was a period when you had no home?
Mr. Blackwell: I had my mother, I had a tent. That was my home. We didn’t know there was anything different. I didn’t know people were supposed to have a bed. I didn’t know you were supposed to have a hot meal.

David: Being cast as one of the Dead End Kids took you out of all that.
Mr. Blackwell: Yes. But growing up from a kid actor to a young adult was very difficult. My mother and I were able to move to California and get a new start. Most of the other kids did not pass on happily ... suicides, some overdoses. Most were pretty broke, because they wouldn’t change.

David: They couldn’t adapt?
Mr. Blackwell: They had no more dream. I went on to other things — to Broadway and other films. In 1948, Paul Konar saw me. He was one of the top agents in town, and didn’t realize I had been a Dead End Kid — he wouldn’t have touched me. Howard Hughes was casting a movie called Vendetta, and he put me under contract. And it was Howard Hughes who gave me the name Blackwell.

David: Really!
Mr. Blackwell: My name at that point was Dick Ellis. But Vendetta was a Corsican part, and Dick Ellis didn’t sound very Corsican. Richard Blackwell didn’t sound it either, but it was black, black, dark. And it worked. Howard came up with incredible things. No one ever knew how he came up with anything.

David: When you were older, what sort of work did you do?
Mr. Blackwell: I was in Passage to Marseille at Warner Brothers ... then in ’39 I went back to New York to the World’s Fair. Mike Todd discovered me by chance, and then I had a lot of plastic surgery done. A lot of it. I was one of the first men to be public about it.

David: At such a young age!
Mr. Blackwell: Well, I was pretty ugly. [laughs] I needed work. Mike Todd cast me in a show called Streets Of Paris, starring Gypsy Rose Lee. I was one of the only men who ever touched or danced with Gypsy Rose Lee on a stage.

David: Is it true you also worked with Mae West?
Mr. Blackwell: When Mike Todd cast Katherine Was Great, with Mae West in 1944, he called me to an audition. Mae was pure voyeur. She wanted to rule. She was not a sexpot. Sex was not the point. She wanted power. Anyway, Mae chose me to be in the show. We got hideous reviews but the theater was packed. So who cares what they said?

David: You shared a Broadway stage with Mae West ...
Mr. Blackwell: Mae was a very volatile woman, an incredible woman. And the show was gorgeous. She was, in truth, Katherine The Great of Russia.

David: What do you think about young Hollywood? Are there any starlets that you’re impressed by?
Mr. Blackwell: No one’s making points with me. Only one that I’ve changed my mind completely on — Julia Roberts. Totally did a reversal on her.

David: And now you think she’s well dressed?
Mr. Blackwell: Forget dressing. I think she’s going to be the consummate star. She’s very major and not recognized for it. Sharon Stone, I think one day is going to come around and be great. She’s got to get away from all this garbage in Hollywood and make a movie in Europe. Because she is something, that lady, but she isn’t showing it.

David: And what about genuine “star quality” as you knew it?
Mr. Blackwell: I don’t see that magic star on very many of them today. Where, when they walk out on a stage, you could turn out every light in the theater and they would still be shining ... I mean, I saw Lana Turner walk into a black tie affair — and this was in the last few years of her life — and the minute she got on the edge of that stage the audience rose to their feet to a screaming ovation. It was the way she walked and held herself. Incredible, incredible. I’m missing the Lana Turners.

David: Why?
Mr. Blackwell: I don’t see that today.

David: Well, I guess I don’t have any more questions ...
Mr. Blackwell: You’ve just done in reality what everyone else has done to me. You said: “I have no more questions.” But we never really got to: where am I going?

David: Oh, I’m sorry.
Mr. Blackwell: No, no. Don’t be sorry. Because you didn’t do anything different than everyone else has done to me.

David: But I don’t want to be like everyone else.
Mr. Blackwell: You know what I would like? To see my life story done as a movie. Because in it, it has a tremendous lesson in survival and making it in glamour.

David: What would the movie be called?
Mr. Blackwell: “No Regrets.”