Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr. wins 'America's Got Talent,' joining the ranks of global success stories

landau.JPGLandau Eugene Murphy, winner of "America's Got Talent," with host Nick Cannon.

A svelte contestant wearing jeans, a red blazer and skinny black headband walked across the stage, embellished green eyes twinkling under a mop of chestnut tendrils. Flashing an impenetrably gleeful, lip-glossed smile, the singer was about to perform in the Polish version of Simon Cowell’s “The X Factor.” Asked to give a name, the talent competition hopeful began to speak.

Michał Szpak.

The crowd erupted in laughter at the 20-year-old man. They realized he was, in fact, a man, one with a not-so-manly speaking voice. Poland doesn’t exactly have a time-honored tradition of androgynous public figures.

And yet, this lost child of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period became a finalist on the top-rated talent show.

As the first season of America’s “The X Factor” premieres Wednesday and a new crop of hopefuls line up the next day for “American Idol” auditions in East Rutherford, the expectation might be that contestants will be received differently. Singers with gender-bending images have long been around in the United States and United Kingdom.

Image, sexual identity and elements of biography, especially struggle, can all play a role in the appraisal of talent, experts say. In the United States and in many countries with televised talent competitions, there’s a sense that viewers — through votes and shared YouTube links — help contestants become accepted, especially when their look doesn’t jibe with what audiences expect.

The evidence is there in past contestants: Susan Boyle, the onetime church volunteer of “Britain’s Got Talent” and the rococo-costumed Prince Poppycock of “America’s Got Talent,” as well as in Landau Eugene Murphy, who won “America’s Got Talent” on Wednesday night.

Not only did Murphy, a 36-year-old car washer from West Virginia, successfully mimic Frank Sinatra’s vocal style, but he also had the element of the unexpected working for him.

“I gotta say, you were such a surprise,” judge Howie Mandel told dreadlocked Murphy after his first audition in June, in which he sang Sinatra’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

“You know, the look — versus the music that you were doing,” he said, causing laughs to barrel forth from the audience. “I did not expect that.”

Weeks before, at the conclusion of the Polish “X Factor,” judge Czesław Mozil — the Cowell of Poland — offered some words on Szpak, the runner-up. As with Murphy, Szpak’s voice had also belied the audience’s knee-jerk judgment of his appearance.

“This young guy, he’s so important for this country,” said Mozil of Szpak, a rock singer with a strong, soulful voice reminiscent of Jim Morrison.

“For the last seven weeks, he changed Poland a little bit, you know?”

STEREOTYPICAL RECEPTION

Spzak didn’t change Poland, says Magda Dul. “He divided Poland.”

Dul, a store clerk at Piast Meats & Provisions, a Polish shop in Garfield, is one of many New Jerseyans who tuned into Szpak’s performances on the Polish-language channel TVN.

“I loved him,” she says. “His voice, his image, how he looks, his personality … he’s different than the others.” But some of her friends — men who believe that men should look and sound like traditional men — don’t feel the same way. “They are jealous!” she quips.

Danusha Goska, an adjunct professor of anthropology at William Paterson University in Wayne, visited Poland this summer and lived there in 1989, when communism fell. Szpak’s appearance, she says, “violates the gender norms that provided security and stability for Poland in the face of so much turmoil.”

The Polish singer might have underlined cultural conflict overseas, but talk of sexual identity has also surrounded American competitions. This summer’s “The Voice” was the first of recent televised talent shows to feature openly gay contestants, says Danielle Stern, an assistant professor of media studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. In the past, Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert, gay stars of “American Idol,” only revealed their sexuality after they departed the show. In Aiken’s case, that meant five years later.

“Reality television may have increased the exposure of hopeful pop stars and other performers, but I’m not sure the genre has truly democratized the route to fame,” says Stern. “Many of these shows still allow us to laugh at those who are different from us, such as ‘American Idol’ audition shows or much of ‘America’s Got Talent.’ ”

At least one “Got Talent” contestant was well aware of the potential for laughs. After having made it to the final four last year dressed as a theatrical dandy named Prince Poppycock, John Quale wasn’t afraid to riff on his foppish image.

“Look at me, I’m flaming!” exclaimed Quale, during a return visit in August.

OFFSTAGE EFFECT

Like Poland’s Szpak, Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old church volunteer from Scotland, had to listen to a bit of snickering from the crowd during her 2009 “Britain’s Got Talent” debut. For her, too, it was appearance that caused a specific first impression. The Guardian wrote that the audience had been “simply waiting for her to fail because of the way she looked,” a characteristic she shared with the unassuming 2007 U.K. champion, Paul Potts of England. Just moments later, her voice put an expression of childlike wonder on curmudgeon Cowell’s face. A runner-up on the show, the plain-looking Boyle became popular enough via YouTube that Americans knew her without having yet known the “Got Talent” franchise. Her story is now being made into a musical.

“The TV people are always looking for something different or new, as well as the audience,” says Sean Garrett. The Grammy-nominated artist and songwriter has produced 17 No. 1 songs, having worked with Beyoncé and Chris Brown as well as 2004 “American Idol” champion Fantasia Barrino. Currently heading up “The Search for the Next Teen Superstar,” a talent competition for Columbia Records, Garrett calls Antonio “L.A.” Reid, a judge on the forthcoming “The X Factor,” a mentor.

A solid vocal may be the beginning, but a relatable biography can significantly impact the marketability of an artist, says Garrett. “It just makes for the whole story.”

It was backstory that figured perhaps most heavily in the reception of Sung-Bong Choi. A contestant in the first season of “Korea’s Got Talent” that aired in June, Choi has since been dubbed the next Susan Boyle. Telling judges he was an orphan who had been on his own since the age of 5, selling gum to get by, Choi also said he taught himself to sing by listening. The sheepish 22-year-old, sporting a haircut a tad too overgrown to warrant a Justin Bieber comparison, opened his mouth and let out an operatic revelation. The entire package, story and performance, traveled the internet. Later, those connected with the show revealed Choi did have some training, a detail purposely omitted during editing to make his story more compelling. Yet the fact that he didn’t have any family to support him resonated with the judges.

“We always root for the underdog,” says producer Jay King, 49, the founder of 1980s R&B group Club Nouveau. King, who has been in the music business for 25 years, says televised talent competitions fall short of encouraging singers who have standout styles and calls them “massive karaoke shows” that hype up anyone with underdog potential.

“Michael Jackson would’ve never won one of these shows,” says King. He says contestants such as Choi and the Sinatra-singing Murphy might be good mimics, but that doesn’t mean they’d make it in the music business after the buzz of the talent show dims. “American Idol” is the one show that has an added dose of credibility because it requires contestants to sing an original song, whether or not the vocalist is the author, says King.

For Quale, Prince Poppycock of “America’s Got Talent,” part of the victory was acceptance itself.

“To every kid out there that feels like an outsider, I want you to believe that dreams can come true,” he said, before exiting the show. Sporting harlequin makeup and a tall white wig during his audition, he belted out “Largo al Factotum” from “The Barber of Seville.” As his “Figaros” reached a crescendo, it became clear he had won the admiration of the judges and audience.

"When somebody walks on stage dressed like you calling themselves Prince Poppycock I was expecting it to take a certain route," said judge Piers Morgan. "And instead it took a rather different route."

Amy Kuperinsky
: (973) 392-1840 or akuperinsky@starledger.com

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