Baltimore Sun

Frances Milstead, who reveled in her son Glenn’s outsized persona as Divine, the drag-queen star of many John Waters films, died Tuesday morning at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., hospice of complications from a stroke. She was 88.

[...]

On her MySpace page, where she was posting as recently as last month, detailing her fight against cancer, Ms. Milstead continued to talk glowingly about her son. Divine died on March 7, 1988, the day before he was to audition for a featured part on the TV sitcom Married…With Children.

[...]

Ms. Milstead, who last saw her son at the 1988 premiere of Hairspray, came to revel in her son’s success, and eventually became popular in her own right. She was the author (with Towson University film instructor and documentary filmmaker Steve Yeager) of the 2001 book, My Son Divine and was later the subject of her own documentary film, Frances: A Mother Divine.