ELLEN DEGENERES...MARRIAGE, THE ICING ON A BLISTERING "SECOND ACT"!

Second coming? Ellen DeGeneres has been there, done that! Here guest writer, Connie Wilson, takes us on an incredible trip of perseverance and one set to take yet another turn with the recent announcement of plans to marry fiance - Portia de Rossi.

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“In 1998 I lost my show, I lost my entire career, and I lost everything for three years. I got to learn that I was strong enough to start over again.” This quote from Ellen DeGeneres’ to “People” Celebrity Central, explains a few of the rough times that preceded her second coming.

This is, after all, the woman who has been nominated for 15 Daytime Emmy Awards, has won Outstanding Host twice and Outstanding Talk Show Emmys three times. She’s also the first woman who was ever invited over to the couch by Johnny Carson, after performing stand-up on his show, in 1986.

She had won the title of Showtime’s Funniest Person in America in 1982 (no pressure there!) and has said of her Carson appearance, (“Time,” Saturday, May 17, 2008 online), “They say you just stand over there. He’ll say thank you and you walk back off and that’s what I thought was gonna’ happen, but, in my head, I had for 5 or 6 years known that he was gonna’ call me over. I had created that experience because I wanted it.”

Ellen DeGeneres was born in Metairie, Louisiana, on January 1, 1958, to Betty and Elliott DeGeneres, who divorced when she was thirteen. Ellen’s older brother, Vance, stayed behind with Dad, the insurance salesman, and Vance (who had a brief stint on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” from 1999 to 2001) was the star when they were young, as he was involved in a New Wave band. Ellen remembers, “Everybody knew who he (Vance) was. That’s what motivated me to do something, because I watched him get all this attention and glory.”

It was in 1971 that Ellen and mother Betty moved to Atlanta, Texas, a small town, to live with the new stepfather who molested the young Ellen at age 16. Raised a strict Christian Scientist, Ellen says that she was “naïve” about her body, and did not tell her mother about the sexual molestation until she had graduated from high school. Moving to the small Texas town prompted Ellen to give away the tall glittery socks known as Hot Sox (a seventies style) that she had previously liked to wear. As she said at the time, “I’m going to a place where they have gun racks on the back of their pickup trucks. I just have to get rid of anything weird.”

It was during her time in Texas, helping her mother Betty recover from a broken heart and breast cancer, that Ellen recognized the healing power of humor, she told “People” magazine in 2006, “Helping my mother cope with a broken heart, it brought us closer together and made me realize the power of humor.”

Ellen’s mom, Betty, remains one of her staunchest allies, standing by Ellen when she came out of the closet. Betty told the New York Post in 2000, “As a mother, I’m just happy to see my child happy. So much has happened to Ellen. She’s been so devastated.”

Besides the public break-ups with girlfriends Anne Heche (1997-2000) and Alexandra Hedison (2000-2004), Ellen had had an earlier relationship with poet Kathy Perkoff in 1980, when Perkoff was 23 and Ellen was 21. It ended when Perkoff was tragically killed in a car accident. Perkoff’s death caused Ellen to write her very first funny bit, “A Phone Call to God,” and it was this piece of material that won Ellen her first accolades in the comedy world.

Ellen came out on the cover of Time magazine (“Yep! I’m gay!”) on April 14, 1997 and the pressure caused the loss of her show and her relationship with Heche. (Actress Anne Heche was later found wandering in a daze in Fresno and required hospitalization for her delusional state. One year later, Heche married cameraman Coley Laffoon.)

Ellen told student interviewer Yal Kohen (The Michigan Daily online, 4/9/99) that she always felt that “everyone has to like me and it didn’t matter what I really felt.” She described announcing her sexual orientation publicly this way: “Coming out was giving up the shame that I had been living with.” Ellen has said that she felt she was meant to be gay, meant to be ashamed, and meant to overcome the shame.

It wasn’t easy overcoming the attacks leveled against her by the religious right after she announced her sexual orientation to the world. Jerry Falwell took to calling her “Ellen DeGenerate” to which she replied, “Really? He called me that? Ellen DeGenerate? I’ve been getting that since 4^th grade. I guess I’m happy I could give him work.”

Ellen did not streak to the top of the comedy pack and amass a fortune estimated at $65 million without handling odd jobs along the way (she sold vacuum cleaners and shucked oysters in New Orleans and also was a TGIF waitress) and enduring odd jabs. After 46 million people watched the “coming out” episode (“The Puppy Episode” with Oprah playing her shrink and friends like Demi Moore, Billy Bob Thornton, Laura Dern, Melissa Etheridge and k.d. Lang guesting) on April 30, 1997. There were protests and sponsors bailed. ABC canceled her show. Said Ellen, “I tried to do something that didn’t work. I tried to incorporate educational things about what people actually go through when they’re coming out and it wasn’t funny. Because it’s not funny.”

In 1989 (Aug. 27), Ellen had gotten her start with a role as Margo Van Meter on “Open House.” Then, on March 29, 1994, she played Laurie Hill. Ellen turned down a role on “Friends” but was offered a series originally entitled “These Friends of Mine” that ran for 5 years and became “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” with Ellen playing Ellen Morgan and winning 4 Best Actress Emmy nominations, a writing Emmy, and 3 Golden Globes.

All this success changed, however, in 1997 with the announcement that she was a lesbian, and ABC canceled her show. She moved to CBS with a show called “The Ellen Show” that ran Fridays at 8:30 p.m. It was canceled after 3 months.

Some film work in 1999 for Director Ron Howard included “EdTV,” “The Love Letter” and “Goodbye, Lover,” but Ellen’s innate sense of humor led to her triumphant return, when the role of Dory in the Disney animated film “Finding Nemo” was written especially for her in 2003. Ellen demonstrated that her sense of humor never left her, even during trying times. Witness her appearance on the twice-postponed Emmy Awards in 2001, moved because of the terrorist attack on New York City on 9/11/01.

Ellen had hosted the Emmy Awards once before, but, this time, she came onstage wearing a swan dress that mimicked Bjork’s infamous garment at the Academy Awards and quipped, “I felt it was important for me to be here tonight, because what would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?” DeGeneres got a standing ovation.

There have been ups and there have been downs in Ellen DeGeneres’ career and life. Now, at fifty, she is set to play George Burns’ role in a remake of “Oh, God!” (Time, Saturday, May 17^th online). Ellen once famously quipped, “In the beginning, there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there by light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.”

And, as the piece de resistance in her Second Coming (or is it her third or fourth?), with the announcement that California will allow gays and lesbians to marry, Ellen DeGeneres, now comfortable in her own skin and at the top of her talk-show game, announced on her talk show on May 16, 2008, that she and her companion of four years, actress Portia de Rossi (best known for her role on “Ally McBeal”) are engaged and will be married.