The Royal Court

Vaudevillian Dick Buckley first adopted his self-dubbed title of "Lord" in the 1940's and began referring to his audience as his "Royal Court." There was plenty of royalty in the entertainment world at the time, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, so why not a Lord? More than just a hip moniker, however, "His Lordship's Royal Court" was central to an understanding of what Buckley was about as the pioneer of performance art. 

Richard Myrle Buckley was born in Tuolumne, California on April 5, 1906. He began to perform in medicine shows while still in his teens and by the late 1920's, Buckley was working the speakeasies in Chicago. Along with Red Skeleton, he was a leading Master of Ceremonies for the Depression-era Marathon craze. During the war, he toured with many of the leading band leaders of the day and in the years following became a "high sahib" of the Beats.

Constantly on the move and creating theater wherever he went, it was not just a stage act for Buckley, but a way of life. Buckley would hold court wherever he went, creating a theater in which both artist and audience and being off stage and on completely disappeared. His "Royal Court" became a center for post-World War II bohemian society and helped blaze the trail for what later became known as the counter culture.

Proclaiming the "Nobility of the Gentility," the notion that all people should be treated with the respect due royalty, Buckley would confer titles on anyone he liked and his world was filled with Lords, Ladies, and Princes. Often resembling a circus sideshow, the Royal Court convened in jazz clubs, coffee houses and neighborhood bars, in what Buckley called "modern cathedrals." 

Buckley's boisterous antics always challenged the status quo. His "Church of the Living Swing" was held in a Topanga Canyon art gallery in 1954 and featured a psychedelic light show. A demonstration of bringing the dead back to life involved 6 naked women and a coffin. Building a human pyramid with the guests was his act on the Tonight Show. During his life, Buckley attracted everyone from Al Capone to Ed Sullivan and since his death in 1960, has influenced the likes of Ken Kesey, Wolfman Jack and Robin Williams.

Like Mark Twain, Buckley was a post-war humorist who helped reinterpret American values during an era of dramatic social change. But what Twain lacked was Buckley's warm heartedness and optimism. For Buckley and his fans and friends, this Royal Kingdom they were a part of existed simply because everyone agreed that it was so. Yet the culture of this place you could not point to has found a home in our own national character.

Here then is a gleaning of hipster-isms in Buckley's own words:

"I went out looking for God the other day, and I couldn't find him. So I figured if I couldn't pin him, I'd look for his stash, his great lake of love that holds the whole world in gear. And when I finally found it, I had the great pleasure of finding that people were the guardians of it...I figured that if people were guarding the stash of love known as God, then when people let the white angelic wings of their beauty be shown, they become little gods and goddesses, and I know a couple of them personally and I know you do too."

"This world...is loaded with beautiful people that we never hear a thing about...but those people are the protectors and the possessors of the vaults of Love known as God...I don't know about that Jehovah cat - I can't reach him. But it seems like every time I found myself in a bind, nothing mystic came to help me, it was some man or woman stepped up there and said; 'We'll help you,' and that's the way it looks to me."

"There is a world torch that says that life cannot be as beautiful as it should be. Yet we have the blocks to make the mosaic of life a dream, a beautiful, warm, unending delightful schematic of living."

"We have to spread love. We the people of this nation have to learn to be more kind, more gracious, we must rehearse kindness and graciousness with other people. We must do that. We must be more generous...We have to learn to give more...to magnetize this nation by love...(All) the people must help. They can help us by rehearsing love to each other."

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