I think we have made it clear here at “The Remains” in pre­vi­ous arti­cles how we love out­casts, the aes­thetic of fail­ure, sub­cul­tures, etc., and part of it can be sum­ma­rized in a sen­tence by Mal­colm McLaren that we used on a pre­vi­ous arti­cle and from which I try to con­stantly draw inspiration:

“Authen­tic­ity believes in the messy process of cre­ativ­ity. It’s unpop­u­lar and out of fash­ion. It wor­ships fail­ure, regard­ing it as a roman­tic and noble pur­suit — bet­ter to be a flam­boy­ant fail­ure than any kind of benign success.”

Flo­rence Fos­ter Jenk­ins tal­ent or lack of it, exem­pli­fies many of these ideals. Every day I strive to be like her. Well per­haps strive is much of a strong word if fail­ure is the aim, but you get the point.

Decades before Amer­i­can Idol, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary artist proved that ter­ri­ble singing can be passed off as great entertainment. She had enthu­si­asm, and she had enough money to finance her oper­atic career. What she didn’t have was talent.

For 30 years, Manhattan’s upper crust paid good money to hear this hefty woman mur­der the melodies. Her name was Flo­rence Fos­ter Jenk­ins: the dire diva of din, the cat­er­waul­ing count­ess of cacoph­ony. At pri­vate recitals, she usu­ally donned her Angel of Inspi­ra­tion cos­tume, a tulle gown and a tin­sel tiara but­tressed with a pair of feath­ered wings that made her resem­ble an over­grown turkey. To the accom­pa­ni­ment of a belea­guered pianist who rejoiced in the name Cosme McMoon, she would launch into her open­ing num­ber, usu­ally the Queen of the Night’s aria from Mozart’s “Magic Flute.” The audi­ence got caught full-blast with a sound like alley cats pitch­ing whoopee.

Believe it or not, Flo­rence man­aged, despite being famously awful, to sell out an entire con­cert at Carnegie Hall. She had many admir­ers (among them Enrico Caruso). This has to be heard to be believed. As a par­tic­u­lar point of inter­est, after she recorded this song, she told the sound engi­neer that no sec­ond try was needed as it was perfect.

Flo­rence Fos­ter Jenk­ins “A World of Her Own” is a doc­u­men­tary, writ­ten, pro­duced and nar­rated by Don­ald Collup, telling the com­plete and uncen­sored story of this cult fig­ure who enter­tained Man­hat­tan audi­ences for over three decades.
Until now, very lit­tle was known about her life, her wealth, her loves and her tragic end.

There is also a play about her life, named “Glorious!” Florence Fos­ter Jenk­ins was born in Penn­syl­va­nia in 1868 and left home because her father refused to allow her to ful­fil her ambi­tion to sing in pub­lic. Now, many might say that Pop Jenk­ins had it com­pletely right and the daugh­ter had it wrong, but those who we think are losers are often win­ners and vice-versa.