Hibiscus (real name, George Harris, Jr.) (1949–1982) was one of the leaders of the psychedelic gay liberation theatre collective group known as the Cockettes in early 1970s San Francisco; in today's theatrical parlance he would be considered to be a "Creative Director".
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Harris was born in Bronxville, New York in 1949 to George Sr. and Ann Harris. The family moved to Clearwater Beach, Florida. The Harris parents had theatrical backgrounds, and the son started a children's theatre troupe, the El Dorado Players. In 1964, the family moved to New York, and Harris appeared in commercials, television, and in 1966 in an Off Broadway play titled Peace Creeps by John Wolfson with Al Pacino and James Earl Jones.[1]
In 1967, George Harris II appeared in New York in the Off-Off-Broadway play Gorilla Queen by Ronald Tavel.[2]
Hibiscus (then George Harris) was the young man in the turtleneck sweater in the famous picture of the anti-war protester putting flowers into the gun barrels of the MPs during the October 21, 1967 march on the Pentagon in order to "levitate" it.[3]
Hibiscus (whose full beard, vintage dresses, make-up and costume jewelry created a defiant look, even by today's standards) embraced drag and drugs as paths to spiritual liberation, and attracted a group of like-minded hippies who loved show-tunes, dressing up, showing off and dropping acid, and became The Cockettes.
The Cockettes decked themselves out in drag outfits and glitter for a series of legendary midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in San Francisco's California North Beach neighborhood. They quickly became a "must-see" for San Francisco's gay community, with their outlandishly decadent productions like "Journey to the Center of Uranus," "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma" and "Gone with the Showboat to Oklahoma."[4] Two notable Cockettes were the disco diva darling Sylvester and the "queen of B-movie filth" Divine, who sang "If there's a crab on Uranus you know you've been loved" while dressed as a psychedelic crab queen.
When the Cockettes wanted to start charging for their shows, Hibiscus left, believing all shows should be free, and formed the Angels of Light in San Francisco, which gave many free theatrical performances in the early 1970s in San Francisco and New York. After moving back to New York, he put together a number of off-off Broadway revues, of which Sky High ran the longest. He also appeared in a daytime soap opera under his real name.
Hibiscus died of AIDS on May 6, 1982. He was an early AIDS casualty. Even at the time of his death the new illness was still referred to as GRID.