Toronto drag queen Michelle DuBarry has been given a Guinness World Record for her 84th birthday, recognizing her as the oldest performing drag queen in the world.
DuBarry, a.k.a. Russell Alldread explained to the Toronto Star that when he got his start in drag in the ‘50s “it was all underground.”
“I’ve always had the love of the stage,” he explained. I had two sisters and the three of us were always put out singing to the women’s groups or to the hospital—Christmastime, whatever. And then I got dressed up in drag — I didn’t know anything about drag then. We got dressed up like girls at the high school Halloween night. And then, when I got into the city in the 1950s, I got involved in theatre and ballet. I was a ladies’ shoes salesman and started doing underground dress-up.”
“Michelle represents an era that I grew up, the Dynasty era, because she’s all furs, gowns and diamonds,” he added of his stage persona. “That’s what set her apart.”
Having started performing before RuPaul was even born, the 84-year-old queen has seen the drag world change a huge amount across his career.
“Well, I guess time changes everything. It’s a different feeling. Not so many as put-together shows, there are more individual stars on their own. Like, in my day, we had women’s names, like I was Michelle. It was easy to remember. A lot of them don’t have real people’s names. And their makeup is sort of weirder, to me, now. They do extreme eyebrows, and extreme lashes and everything extreme. In my time, we tried to look very real. We performed as Barbra Streisand, or Marilyn Monroe, and we tried to look like the person.”
“It’s quite an honour,” he said of being recognized as the world’s oldest drag queen. “I wake up in the morning. I don’t live yesterday, I don’t live tomorrow. I wake up and count my blessings because I’m very, very lucky. I’m very healthy. I’ve lost pretty well all my special friends now. They’ve all died on me. You know, because I’m old. It’s your attitude at living every day, I think, that counts. I’m an old drag queen, but I’m still very young.”