John Waters Week: Cry-Baby gets weird celebrating the mainstream 50s

The year is 1951 and Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker is the name on everybody’s lips in John Water’s musical, mad cap, do-wop movie Cry-Baby. He also happens to be my favorite bad boy, Johnny Depp. Cry-Baby is a bad boy in Baltimore and a rebel without a cause, leading his gang of “drapes” through a Square’s world. Of course, Mr. Baby (Depp) falls in love with one of the squares, sweet Allison (Amy Locane). Peril, jailtime, musical numbers, and chicken competitions ensue as our modern Romeo and Juliet fight to be together in a world trying to tear them apart.
It spawned a Broadway musical, hurled Waters into Hollywood budget territory, and broke Johnny Depp’s matinee idol reputation, shepherded him into the weirdo, queerdo, mainstream. It’s a celebration of everything corny, stupid, and romantic about the 1950’s.

In typical John Waters fashion, there is a collection of colorful characters and awesome outcast actors. As the Drapes, the perpetually pregnant Pepper (Ricki Lake), the aptly named Hatchet-Face (Kim McGuire), and too sexy for her own good Wanda (Traci Lords), Ramona and Belvedere Ricketts (Susan Tyrrell and Iggy Pop) are as delightful as they are scary. There’s a cameo from a young Willem Dafoe as “Hateful Guard” and Mink Stole as Hatchet-Face’s iron lung bound mother.
Stole particularly shines when her entire performance is filmed through a mirror while she chain-smokes cigarettes. And don’t forget Lenora (Kim Webb), who is obsessed with Cry-Baby and will stop at NOTHING to stop him and Allison from being together.
Waters, our Pope of Trash, is notorious for casting folks on the fringe of society. It’s why we love him and it’s what makes his movies so successful. They’re honest and without pretense. Real life weirdos embracing movies as a creative outlet. Because of that, I’m here to celebrate some of the strange surrounding Cry-Baby.

Fun Facts!

• While looking for his Cry-Baby, John Waters bought $30 worth of Teen Magazines and Johnny Depp’s face was on all of them. From there, the call went out to Depp’s agent. Johnny Depp, being the weirdo he is, didn’t want to be pinned as a teen heartthrob for the rest of his life and quickly signed on, despite hating dancing. There’s a lot of dancing in the movie. He sucked it up.
  
• Traci Lords, famous for posing nude and doing pornography as a youth, was visited by the FBI on multiple occasions on set. Then 21 years old, they were questioning her about her childhood and attempting a national investigation about the child porn ring she was associated with. The cast and crew rallied around Lords, and to make her feel better, shared stories of their terrible run-ins with the law. Comradery!!
  
• The first movie John Waters made after Divine’s death. I often wonder who she would have played. Maybe Allison’s puritanical mother.
  
• A real murder served as a loose inspiration for Cry-Baby. 14 year old Carolyn Wasilewski was found on a train track in Harrisburg, PA after she disappeared from Baltimore. Carolyn was missing her skirt and written in lipstick on her right thigh was the name Paul. Carolyn was a member of a Drapes group and part of what made the story so ripe for exploring was the mystery of it all. The case remains unsolved.
  
• There’s a restaurant called “Cry-Baby Pasta” in Queen Village, Philadelphia. It’s all made from scratch pasta, I think? Look for the sign in the shape of the Leather Jacket.
  
• Pepper (Ricki Lake) has two children, Snare Drum and Suzie Q. They’re about 6 or 7 in age, meaning Pepper was pregnant with them in, like, the 5th grade.
  
• -Neither Johnny Depp nor Amy Locane did their own singing for the film, which is strange considering Depp earned his second academy award for Sweeney Todd and toured with a rock band. Those singing voices belong to James Intveld and Rachel Sweet. Oh yeah, that Rachel Sweet. The one who sings that 80’s cover of Everlasting Love with Rex Smith.
  
• Following on the heels of Hairspray, Cry-Baby was also turned into a Broadway musical. It ran from April 24th-June 22nd and closed after just under two months. But it DID get nominated for 4 Tony Awards, including Best Choreography, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best New Musical. It slaps.