Born in San Francisco, Edith Dornfield was raised in an orphanage in Denver, Colorado. According to John Waters’ book, Shock Value, she lived in this orphanage “until she was sent out to be a maid at the age of fifteen. Edie finally got fed up and ran away, but was captured by the police and put in a reformatory.”
She moved to Los Angeles, California in an attempt to start a career in show business. She is said to have appeared as an extra in the 1940 film Arise, My Love, which starred Ray Milland and Claudette Colbert, however a search of the cast and crew, including uncredited roles at IMDb could not confirm this.
In 1946, she married a soldier, presumably surnamed Massey, in Reno, Nevada. In Shock Value, Edie recalls that the wedding was the happiest day of her life, despite the fact that “he went to the movies by himself right after the ceremony and I went to the gambling casino alone”. They separated in 1951 after Massey “got restless”.
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Born in San Francisco, Edith Dornfield was raised in an orphanage in Denver, Colorado. According to John Waters’ book, Shock Value, she lived in this orphanage “until she was sent out to be a maid at the age of fifteen. Edie finally got fed up and ran away, but was captured by the police and put in a reformatory.”
She moved to Los Angeles, California in an attempt to start a career in show business. She is said to have appeared as an extra in the 1940 film Arise, My Love, which starred Ray Milland and Claudette Colbert, however a search of the cast and crew, including uncredited roles at IMDb could not confirm this.
In 1946, she married a soldier, presumably surnamed Massey, in Reno, Nevada. In Shock Value, Edie recalls that the wedding was the happiest day of her life, despite the fact that “he went to the movies by himself right after the ceremony and I went to the gambling casino alone”. They separated in 1951 after Massey “got restless”.
She worked in several odd jobs through the years and she eventually relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, where she was a barmaid at Pete’s Hotel. John Waters met Massey while she was working at Pete’s Hotel and offered her a role as herself in the film Multiple Maniacs. In the early ‘70s, she quit her job at Pete’s and opened a thrift store called Edith’s Shopping Bag. When poor health demanded she move to California near the end of her life, Massey moved her thrift store there as well.
Massey gained a cult following from her appearances in five John Waters films: Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977), and Polyester (1981).
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Massey capitalized on the infamy of Waters’ films by touring as the lead singer of a punk band, Edie and the Eggs. She also posed for a series of greeting cards. Later, when the Baltimore winters became too much for her to endure, she moved to Venice, California, where she opened another thrift store with the money she earned from acting in Waters’ films. During the year of her death, Edith starred in the film Mutants in Paradise. She had been cast in Paul Bartel’s Western parody Lust in the Dust opposite longtime co-star Divine, but died before filming; she was replaced by Nedra Volz. Massey died in 1984 from cancer and complications from diabetes and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. —Wikipedia
