As his cheery persona of Miss Sammy, Orlando performer Sam Singhaus exhibited a lightness of spirit that set him apart from other drag performers, spreading joy and pushing for tolerance both in and out of character.
The Broadway performer and familiar smiling face on Central Florida’s entertainment scene died Monday evening from complications related to an inoperable brain tumor. He was 62.
A true showbiz trouper, Singhaus kept the laughs coming — even when hospitalized in recent weeks.
“He has all the nurses in stitches,” wrote partner Jessica Dawson in a late-September social-media post. “He is constantly telling jokes.”
Through his decades of performances and activism, Singhaus acquired fans from all walks of life.
“He was an icon in local entertainment,” said longtime friend George Wallace, executive director of The Center. “Sam was generous with his time and talent and I can’t think of a local celebrity who has hosted or emceed more events. He will be missed by not only the LGBTQ community, but all of Orlando.”
As Miss Sammy, the performer appeared in shows at the Orlando Fringe Festival, as well as Parliament House’s Footlight Theatre. Miss Sammy also hosted popular Bingo nights at clubs and restaurants, participated in the “Trash 2 Trends” eco-friendly fashion show and read to children at “Drag Queen Storytime.”
At Savoy nightclub, Singhaus hosted “Showtunes at Savoy” with a mix of entertainment trivia and crowd singalongs. He could draw on his own Broadway experience: In the early 1980s, he spent four years in the cast of “La Cage aux Folles” as Clo-Clo, one of the dancing Cagelles, the musical’s chorus line of drag queens. In New York, Singhaus also worked at Radio City Music Hall.
Margaret Nolan became friends with him while he was in “La Cage”: “He lit up the stage,” she said.
The Savoy nights spoke to the uplifting quality that made Miss Sammy — and Singhaus — so popular.
“The spirit of that show was the song ‘Get Happy,'” said Hal Boedeker, a former Sentinel critic who wrote about “Showtunes at Savoy.” “He wanted to help you forget your troubles.”
While drag queens are often described as “fierce” and known for “throwing shade” — delivering cutting insults — Singhaus took a sunnier approach with Miss Sammy, most often seen in kicky 1950s- or swinging 1960s-inspired frocks designed by his sister-in-law Marcy Singhaus, who died in July.
Singhaus portrayed a young Lucy in a show at Parliament House in 2008. He also worked at the Mark II Dinner Theatre, appeared in local productions of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and featured regularly in playwright Michael Wanzie’s long-running and popular “Ladies of Eola Heights” series, with appearances stretching from the original 2005 installment to the most recent online show in August.
“I channel my mother. I channel Lucille Ball — an idol,” he told the Sentinel in 2017 about the character’s inspiration.
Wanzie and others teased their friend over his habitual tardiness in social-media posts over the weekend: “A man who was late for almost every curtain-up in his life,” proclaimed Wanzie, adding “my heart is breaking.”
And if Singhaus was notorious for his lack of attention to time, he was also legendary for his attention to others as commenters recalled his empathy, his compassion and his generous spirit.
The social-media tributes had begun as soon as Singhaus was hospitalized in the early hours of Saturday.
“Heartbroken,” wrote David Lee, a longtime friend who appeared in productions of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” with Singhaus. “But so thankful to have worked with you and known U and loved U, Sammy Sue.”
Wanzie called him “a bonafide icon who is universally loved.”
Born in Ohio, Singhaus came to Orlando at the age of 3. He grew up in the Colonialtown neighborhood and attended Boone High School, where he first started dancing.
His mother Betty, who died in 2006, was a teacher. His dad, Myron, was a football coach and principal at several local schools. He died in 2014, and Singhaus also was predeceased by his twin, Daniel, who died in 1993. He is survived by his older brother Steven, of Orlando.
Although Singhaus participated in gymnastics, swimming and diving as a youth, a ballet scholarship took him to New York, where he remained for a decade.
After his role in Broadway’s “La Cage,” he returned to Orlando and with Betsy Benson opened the Big Bang nightclub, which had a four-year run downtown on Orange Avenue.
“When you own a bar, everybody knows you,” he quipped in a Sentinel interview. “They want free drinks.”
The goal of Big Bang was to be welcoming place for anyone and everyone.
“We just thought there was no place to go to dance and have some beer in a real casual environment, some place where there wasn’t any kind of attitude or problems with bigots,” Singhaus said in a 1989 article announcing the club’s opening. “There’s a lot of problems around town with the younger clubs.”
Fighting prejudice was a lifelong mission for Singhaus, who in 2018 was given the lifetime-achievement award for his activism and entertainment contributions by The Center, which offers services to the LGBT community.
“I think that children are so open to new things, and they don’t have the prejudice and bias people seem to have when they get to be adults,” Singhaus told the Sentinel before appearing at Orlando Public Library’s Drag Queen Storytime. “They’re still in awe of their imagination.”
His activism extended to politics. Fiercely against the president’s policies, Singhaus for a time hung a large “Dump Trump” banner on his home. Friend and “Eola Heights” co-star Beth Marshall posted on Facebook that before he died, Singhaus had been able to vote.
Miss Sammy wasn’t the entertainer’s only alter-ego; Singhaus also appeared as 1970s playboy Dick Swinger. In a monthly, ’70s-themed karaoke night, he and writer-performer Liz Langley (as Constance Swinger) regaled amateur singers with lounge-act panache.
Singhaus was part of other double acts. Miss Sammy and Carol Lee, the alter-ego of performer Matthew Arter, were long-running comedic Bingo hosts. And a decade ago, Miss Sammy teamed with longtime friend John Barber’s alter-ego, Tweeka Louise Weed, in shows around Central Florida.
When Barber died of cancer in 2011, Singhaus remembered him as “giving, fun and crazy,” saying “everyone that met him loved him — he made an impression on everyone he met.”
The same could be said of Singhaus, whose charm was augmented by the fact that he didn’t take himself too seriously.
“I don’t really consider myself a serious actor,” he once told the Sentinel. “I’m a performer.”
