Chapter One

Baltimore. The story of Hairspray begins here, as does the story of its director. John Samuel Waters, Jr was born in Maryland's largest municipality on April 22, 1946. He was raised in suburban Lutherville, in an upper-middle-class Catholic home. His parents, Patricia Ann Whitaker and John Samuel Waters, a successful manufacturer of fire-protection equipment, provided him with a happy and conventional childhood despite recognizing early on that their eldest child was "an odd duck" (Waters, 2004b). For example, he was obsessed with catastrophic automobile wrecks, fires (an interest he shared with his father), hurricanes, and disasters in general, all of which fed the grisly fantasies of his precocious imagination. He was drawn to stagecraft, costuming, and showmanship, always with an entrepreneurial edge. Neighborhood children paid a nickel for admission to his family's garage, which Waters transformed into a "horror house." He staged puppet shows for local birthday parties at US$20 a pop, presenting hyper-violent versions of Cinderella and Punch and Judy. He developed a particular fascination with the stage actor, Cyril Ritchard's portrayal of Captain Hook, so much that the young Waters attempted to imitate him by scotch-taping his fathers' neckties to his head to create the appearance of long, pirate locks.

Growing up, Waters loved the movies. He especially enjoyed horror films, films with evil villains, or anything involving a gimmick. In the late 1950s, he became a fan of the director William Castle, the "King of the gimmicks," who aggressively promoted his low-budget horror films with sensational stunts s