Cynthia Plaster Caster, Who Memorialized Rock Star Penises, Dies At 74

CHICAGO — Cynthia “Plaster Caster” Albritton, one of the most flamboyant figures of the backstage rock world in the 1960s and 1970s, who gained fame for her plaster casts of famous musicians' penises, died Thursday after a long illness. She was 74.

Born May 24, 1947, on the South Side of Chicago, Albritton grew up a music-crazed teen in the South Shore neighborhood, “when I liberated myself from my overprotective mother,” she said in a 2010 radio interview. She was an art student at the University of Illinois at Chicago — “Circle” as it was known then in the local parlance — when a teacher gave a homework assignment to “make a plaster cast of ‘something hard.’” After a few experiments on friends, as legend has it, Albritton connected with Jimi Hendrix in 1968 at the Chicago Hilton Towers, when Hendrix got stuck in the mold for five minutes. The rest is rock 'n' roll history.

At age 20, Frank Zappa took an interest in Albritton’s art and brought her to Los Angeles, where she became close to Pamela Des Barres, best known for her 1987 memoir, “I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie,” detailing her exploits in the Los Angeles rock music scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

While Hendrix was her crowning achievement, Albritton went on to immortalize the phalli of Wayne Kramer of MC5, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, Momus, Eric Burdon of The Animals, Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley and Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who appeared in the 2001 documentary “Plaster Caster.” Her method of making the plaster casts included using a dental mold-making substance called alginate, and many willing assistants.

“She thought of them as art pieces,” her close friend John Connors said. “Lots of people would want her to cast them, but she would only do them for bands she respected.”

Momus described the experience of being casted as “asexual” and “clinical, with newspapers on the floor.”

Albritton eventually branched out to make plaster casts of filmmakers and Broadway stars she admired, as well casting the breasts of such female band members as L7’s Suzi Gardner and Sally Timms of The Mekons, according to AV Club. She estimated casting 60 men and a dozen women, with a few roadies creeping into her collection.

Having spent three years living the rock 'n’ roll life in Los Angeles, Albritton moved back to Chicago, where she became regarded as an institution by the music, art and theater communities. (Being pulled into her orbit at The Hideout, a rebel club in the Elston Avenue Industrial Corridor, a friend and I once tried to convince her to cast President Bill Clinton’s privates at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.)

Albritton lived in the same apartment in Lincoln Park for close to 50 years. She had been in declining health for the past year, tended to by a close circle of friends.

“Cynthia didn’t want anyone pitying her,” Connors told Patch. “She wanted her friends to visit her, and the fact that none of us outed her on social media is amazing. We let her go out the way she wanted to go out.”

Connors said Albritton was a regular at his Sunday movie nights.

“It was fun sitting with her on movie night watching old variety shows,” Connors said. “She’d point out band members she had slept with, or who was a big drug addict.”

While Albritton was known for her love of rock, she was also heavily into Broadway musical comedies. She was able to hook up with a major Broadway star through one of her assistants, “who really wanted to be casted.”

“But they ran out of plaster," Connors said, "and she went with him in his white convertible to the hardware store to buy more plaster.”

Albritton gifted Connors with the plaster cast of the Broadway star as a birthday present, which inadvertently appeared in the background of a Chicago TV news broadcast, when he was interviewed after a megacryometeor crashed through his ceiling, just missing his cat, Oscar.

“Cynthia was more excited about it than I was,” Connors said.

Although Albritton often described herself as a “recovering groupie,” Connors said Albritton thought of herself as “creating art.”

“She was excellent at drawing and did sketches of the Beatles, Rollings Stones and Frank Zappa,” Connors said. “But it was the phalluses she was known for.”

Albritton was the subject of a 2001 documentary “Plaster Caster” and participated in the 2005 BBC documentary “My Penis and I,” by filmmaker Lawrence Barraclough about the anxiety over the size of his private parts.

She was further immortalized in Kiss’ “Plaster Caster” and the late Jim Croce’s “Five Short Minutes."

In 2010, Albritton declared her candidacy in Chicago’s mayoral race on the “Hard Party” ticket, when she was in her 50s.

“I am not a politician. I am an everyday citizen that is sick and tired of seeing the problems of our city escalate, and I believe we ALL need to participate in helping to make our city the best it can be,” she was quoted saying in Dangerous Minds. “Please join me by being a part of this election process. Tell your friends and family to actively engage in being informed about what is REALLY happening in City Hall RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES!”

News of Albritton’s death brought a flood of tributes by Rolling Stone, People, AV Club, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few.

“I hope that somehow in the great beyond, Cynthia knows that has been this great outpouring of love for her,” Connors said. “She was the last of the wacky dames.”

Funeral arrangements are pending.