Wild Side Story

Wild Side Story
2001 logo with silhouette from 1973 and drawing from 1976

Wild Side Story is a parody musical that originated in 1973 as a drag show on the gay scene of Miami Beach, soon developed there into an underground happening for mixed audiences, and up until 2004 was performed hundreds of times in Florida, Sweden, California and Spain.

Descending from a musical family,Swedish-American producer, author and entertainment director Lars Jacob went to Florida at the age of 22 to work as a desk clerk at the Doral Hotel, and there part-time also continued his recent Swedish career as a disc jockey. With Logan Carter and a handful of young Cuban refugees who were doing drag in Miami Beach he created a stage show which did a campy parody of West Side Story, but also included independent material. Wild Side Story first opened officially at the Ambassador III on August 8, 1973, and by 1974 moved down 22nd Street to the new Stonewall of Miami Beach run by Larry Boxx.

In 1975 Lars Jacob went back to Sweden and produced shows for one of the earliest nightclubsAlexandra’s, thus introducing drag shows to Sweden. In 1976 he brought his Wild Side Story to the stage there with local people, since a European tour, which Danny La Rue had tried to help him set up, had failed to materialize with the Florida cast because of their refugee status. A few months later he went back to the United States and a front desk job at The Beverly Hills Hotel. On the side he again built up an underground ensemble which intermittently played Wild Side Story, with a few adjustments to Californian culture, at alternating venues from 1977 until the beginning of the 1980s, most prominently at Osko's. In 1976 his basic plot of Wild Side Story had been registered with the Writers Guild of America West by Jacob and business partner Richard Max Mersky of Mimical Productions, and in California they called their show a mimical lampoon.