Lindsay Kemp

[Jorn Barger <barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu>]

Just recently I rented the video of "The Wicker Man" (British c1973) and was
surprised to see Lindsay Kemp's name in the opening credits.  The story is
about a police detective who visits an island community off the English coast
after getting a complaint that a girl may have been sacrificed to the local
gods.  The island has gone pagan under the leadership of the local gentry,
and the movie presents a fairly sympathetic picture of a culture where
sexuality is openly reverenced.

Kemp plays the local innkeeper, whose daughter (Britt Ecklund) is a kind of
'temple prostitute' who initiates young men into sexual experience.  Kemp
does no dancing, but does join in a bawdy song about his daughter.

But later in the film, at the Mayday festival, he is supposed to take the
role of the _Fool_....

Which put me in mind of a certain song about a homosexual actor who they give
a part to, but he has to play the fool... 
(I have no idea if Kemp is gay, but I've read that his great theatrical success
was in drag-- I forget the name of the play...)

(And I don't find any other listing for him in the actors index of my video
guide...)

Any hypotheses or refutations?

--jorn