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Through the early '90s, revealing a love for these women often meant expressing a love for men. Gay singles scenes grew up around film revivals, and phrases like "friend of Dorothy" were code, a way to come out, but only to someone who was also in the know. Later, Cher, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and then Madonna also offered gay men real-life versions of Davis' and Crawford's wonderfully bitchy characters.

But with the new millennium upon us, diva worship is dying in the gay community. With extended life spans for HIV sufferers becoming reality, a booming economy and the increasing ease of assimilation, divas are no longer needed as a unifying force against oppression and discrimination in the gay community.

"There was a time when divas were very much a part of closeted gay culture, when gay men had to be united by talking about the same things to reveal themselves," says John C. Clum, an openly gay English professor at Duke University and the author of "Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture." "But people aren't looking for that kind of connection anymore."

Just look at Garland's own daughter, Liza Minnelli. She's back on Broadway, but it's her chorus of six beefcake behemoths that are drawing the stares. And while '80s Madonna videos still induce gushes of respect, many gays say that when these women pass on, there will be no universal cry of gay grief. In fact, no one under 40 has managed to unify the fantasies of America's vast gay population.

For men like Marc Heustis, a gay promoter who hosted "A Judy Garland Christmas" on Dec. 17 at San Francisco's Castro Theater, such a loss would be tragic. "Never," he says of the shift away from divas. "People are still absolutely worshipful." Yet for a growing mass of gay men, divadom's descent heralds progress. Men need no longer identify with flawed women who, for all their talents, remain psychologically suspect, Clum says. "Divas got their start at a different time in gay culture, and no one is going to create that kind of excitement again."

It's not for a lack of contenders. Divas must be anti-establishment figures who overcome the limits of mainstream taste, either through style, strength of character or sheer energetic talent, says Michelangelo Signorile, a columnist for the Advocate, a national gay and lesbian magazine. Their lives must intertwine with their careers, and they must be capable of reinventing themselves.

Judy Garland remains the archetype. Entering the public eye in 1939 as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," this wisp of a woman sang her way through more than 30 films, and dozens of stage appearances. At her best, Garland gave everything to her audience. As "the little girl with the grown-up voice," she often trembled, her strong vibrato sending shivers through her fragile frame. But her worst troubles -- the drugs, the suicide attempts and breakdowns -- seemed to draw the most die-hard fans. She was one of the first stars to let her bruised life be seen, and gay men felt her pain. In her voice, they could hear the intense anguish that they also felt; in her words ("somewhere over the rainbow") they heard the chance to overcome.

Similarly, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford traveled a frost-heaved road, ending their lives as battered, not-quite-together stars. But while Garland remained a girl for most of her career, Davis and Crawford were women, "bitches" in every positive sense of the word. When Davis descended the stairs in "All About Eve," regally gowned, her eyes burning with thoughts of vengeance, she was a portrait of strength. When she quipped, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night," she put into words the thoughts of every gay man who struggled to come out, or get laid with a not-so-safe stranger.

Plus, it's a damn fun line to repeat -- another important requisite for divadom, Signorile says. And there are plenty more: "I detest cheap sentiment," also from "All About Eve," bears repeating, as does Davis' classic exclamation from "The Letter": "Yes, I killed him, and I'm glad, I tell you. Glad, glad, glad."

Meanwhile, Crawford's best zingers, besides "He promised me the world and I've got to have it" ("The Damned Don't Cry"), come from Faye Dunaway's portrayal in "Mommie Dearest." The square-jawed star had died four years earlier, but lines such as "Don't fuck with me fellas, this ain't my first time at the rodeo" live on, attributed posthumously (and perhaps apocryphally).

Today's stars rarely get the chance to speak such gems. Still, several would seem to deserve admittance into the diva club. Signorile elevated Hillary Clinton to diva status in his September column, but eyeing only the younger crop of talent, he pointed to Courtney Love, who despite suffering through drugs and the death of her iconic husband, Kurt Cobain, has remained a scratch-throated wolf of song and screen.

Drew Barrymore is another one who has lived a "Behind the Music" life of despair and redemption. Like Garland, she began young with sugar, spice and everything nice ("E.T."), then nose-dived into depression, only to transform herself into an adolescent leading lady ("Never Been Kissed," "The Wedding Singer").

And there are others: Audra McDonald, the Broadway siren now starring in "Marie Christine," Sporty Spice, recently refreshed with a new solo album and Britney Spears, who reportedly became the drag phenomenon of this year's Halloween parade in New York.

Next page | Christina Ricci: A gay man's wet dream