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Drag Queen Diaries.com Must Have Movie!
Born Russell Craig Eadie on January 10, 1948, he was a Canadian female impersonator known by the stage name of Craig Russell.
His impersonations included Carol Channing, Bette Davis, Mae West, Barbra Streisand, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Midler, Anita Bryant, Peggy Lee and Judy Garland, always speaking and singing in the voices of the celebrities he was impersonating.
Craig Russell became president of Mae West's fan club as a teenager and he briefly worked and lived in Los Angeles as her secretary before returning to Toronto where he moved in with the writer Margaret Gibson. He worked as a hairdresser while pursuing his career as a stage performer, and by 1971, he was a regular performer in Toronto gay clubs and had a burgeoning international following. In 1977 he starred in a film based on a short story that he wrote about his and Gibson's time as roommates, called Outrageous! A decade later, he starred in the sequel, appropriately titled Too Outrageous!
Russell fathered a daughter, Susan Allison, who was born January 6, 1973 in Toronto, whom he developed a relationship with in the years prior to his death. And although he publicly called himself as gay rather than bisexual, Russell married his close friend Lori Jenkins in 1982. The two remained married until his death in 1990 of a stroke related to complications from AIDS. His body was cremated and buried at Pine Grove Cemetery in Port Perry. Lori joined him on August 15, 2008, after a long losing battle with cancer at Toronto Grace Hospital, and was laid to rest beside her husband in Port Perry's Pine Grove Cemetery.