In the previous couple of a long time, drag tradition has grown and expanded in ways in which few individuals anticipated. With the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars not too long ago concluded and the tenth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race underway, followers all through the world have begun to pack bars and pubs on Thursday nights in the identical approach that sport fanatics do.
Ask most individuals who the oldest drag queen they know is, although, they usually’ll in all probability reply Divine from Pink Flamingos or RuPaul, and perhaps somebody will point out that Ed Wooden dressed as a lady in Glen or Glenda.[1] What many individuals don’t know is that at present’s drag performers have an extended cultural tapestry from which to attract inspiration. To assist educate drag followers, this listing will evaluate ten of probably the most wonderful American drag queens who have been born earlier than 1900.
10 The Drag Performer Who Had A Track In A Bug’s Life
Born in 1840 as Ebenezer G.B. Holder, Rollin Howard turned one of many first drag queens in the US to have reached a degree of nationwide recognition.[2] A dramatic performer, Howard labored drag into his minstrel performances between 1860 and 1870. Minstrel reveals have been a very fashionable type of leisure that concerned Caucasians utilizing blackface to painting African American characters.
Earlier than the US Civil Warfare, drag performances in the US have been comparatively uncommon. However after the battle, Howard was certainly one of a number of well-known drag performers, together with Francis Leon. (We’ll get again to him.) Howard tended to carry out as a wench who was flirtatious, sleek, and stylish.
As we speak, Howard is greatest remembered for receiving credit score for arranging “Shoo Fly, Don’t Hassle Me,” though the precise creator of the track remains to be a topic of some rivalry, with others crediting T. Brigham Bishop. The track is acknowledged by many for its use within the 1998 Disney/Pixar movie A Bug’s Life. Like many performers, Howard died earlier than his time across the age of 39.
9 The Solely Leon And His 300 Attire
One other New Yorker, Francis Leon was born in 1844 and was additionally turned a well-known blackface minstrel performer. Educated as a boy soprano, Leon began performing in drag at 14.
Typically billed as simply “Leon” or “The Solely Leon,” he carried out a wench character very like Rollins. A centerpiece of his act was “Leon’s 300 clothes,” with a few of the clothes price $400, fairly some huge cash for the time. Leon’s act was so in style that by 1873, each main minstrel troupe had Leon imitators. Leon obtained glowing critiques from the press for his sensitivity and accuracy in performing as a “man lady.”[3]
How Leon spent the tip of his life shouldn’t be identified, however the final reference to him was in 1883, when he joined the San Francisco minstrels.
8 The Drag Performer Who Performed Widows
Neil Burgess was born in Boston in 1846 and lived a unprecedented life as a drag performer.[4] He specialised in taking part in aged widows.
Burgess started his profession round 1865, when he crammed in for a sick actress throughout a efficiency of the play The Quiet Household in Windfall, Rhode Island. His hottest act was a taking part in an aged widow in Widow Bedott in 1879. His mates recalled him as “not in the least effeminate” however nonetheless terribly gifted at performing as a lady. Burgess’s final efficiency was the aged widow Abigail Prue within the musical County Truthful.
When he was not performing, Burgess was additionally an aspiring inventor and designed each a turning platform that allowed horses run at full velocity within the theaters and a tool that simulated the noise of a giant crowd.
7 The Mormon Drag Performer
Many individuals have heard of Brigham Younger, a significant determine within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in addition to the founding father of Salt Lake Metropolis. Most individuals, nevertheless, have no idea that his son, Brigham Morris Younger, was a well-known drag performer.[5]
Morris Younger carried out drag underneath the pseudonym of Madam Pattirini all through places in Utah from the 1880s to 1900s, together with on the Sugar Home Ward, which was a Mormon assembly home in Salt lake Metropolis. The Church of Latter-day Saints even welcomed Madam Pattirini into its buildings for performances. Morris Younger’s son wrote that Madam Pattirini’s falsetto was so excessive and female that it fooled many individuals into considering that Morris was truly a lady.
Madam Pattirini’s title has lived on, and at present, Utah’s Ogden’s Personal Distillery even has a gin named after “her.” Morris Younger additionally based the Younger Males’s Mutual Enchancment Affiliation, a precursor to the Mormon church’s Younger Males program, which remains to be in existence at present.
6 The Drag Performer Who Bought Struck By Lightning
Bert Savoy was born in Boston in 1876, and by the 1890s, he was performing in carnivals, honky-tonks, drugs reveals, and inventory corporations. Savoy first carried out on Broadway within the present Miss 1917, with an act referred to as “The Society Jesters.” Savoy later performed in Ziegfeld Follies 1918 and the gay-friendly Greenwich Village Follies of 1920.[6]
Not like drag performers of the previous, who almost all performed sleek ladies, Savoy turned identified for enjoying bawdy drag queens within the vein of Divine. Some sources have claimed that Mae West borrowed her act from Savoy. Remembered for sporting a vibrant purple wig, after as soon as being instructed of how a person pushed his spouse out of a ship to drown her, Savoy replied, “She was a idiot to come back up.”
On June 26, 1923, Savoy was strolling alongside Lengthy Seashore with four mates when a thunderstorm instantly appeared. Earlier than he was struck and killed by lightning, Savoy is claimed to have quipped both, “Nicely ain’t Miss God cuttin’ up somethin’ fierce?” or “That’ll be fairly sufficient out of you, Miss God!” As we speak, Savoy lives on in two in style tradition sayings that he’s credited with creating: “You slay me” and “You don’t know the half of it.”
5 The Drag Performer Who Danced With A Snake
Born in Denmark however raised in San Francisco, Bothwell Browne was one of many first drag performers to look on movie. For a time, Browne carried out in an act with male impersonator named Kathleen Clifford.
In 1911, Browne starred within the Broadway present Miss Jack, which was a few faculty pupil who goes in drag as a sorority lady. In 1919, Browne made his solely movie look within the Mack Sennett manufacturing Yankee Doodle in Berlin, which was partially World Warfare I propaganda. Within the movie, Browne performed an aviator who clothes as a lady. Browne additionally performed roles akin to Cleopatra, a suffragette, and a “pantaloon lady.”
Bothwell’s act is remembered for being extra seductive than most different drag performers on the time. Throughout one reside efficiency, Browne even danced with venomous snake. Not like different drag performers on the time, Bothwell was brazenly homosexual and by no means married or had youngsters. After retirement, Browne taught dance lessons.[7]
4 The First Ambisextrous Drag Performer
William Julian Dalton (who was higher often called Julian Eltinge) started showing dressed as a woman with the Boston Cadets on the age of ten. Throughout his teenage years, Eltinge appeared in ladies’s clothes in saloon performances for ranchers and miners. After discovering his drag performances, Eltinge’s father savagely beat him.
In 1904, on the age of 23, Eltinge appeared on Broadway. Earlier than lengthy, he was world-famous and appeared in vaudeville acts all through Europe and the US. Eltinge even appeared in drag in quite a lot of movies, together with 1917’s The Countess Charming and The Isle of Love with Rudolph Valentino.
Not like many different drag performers on the time, Eltinge tried to really current himself as a lady relatively than as a caricature. To assist protect his female identification, he carried out as simply “Eltinge” with out revealing his act. On the conclusion of every efficiency, Eltinge would take away his wig to disclose his masculine identification. Off the stage, Eltinge emphasised his masculine qualities by entering into fights and smoking cigars. Consequently, author Dorothy Parker created the phrase “ambisextrous” to outline Eltinge.[8]
Resulting from his success within the musical The Fascinating Widow, a theater on New York’s 42nd road was even named after Eltinge. The theater ultimately fell into dilapidation and have become a burlesque home. In 1941, Eltinge died after a present in New York Metropolis.
3 The Drag Performer Who Killed A Man
Born in 1892, Ray Bourbon is most remembered for his outrageous habits and his surprising (for his time) monologues. Bourbon claimed that he was the illegitimate son of a Texas congressman and that his mom had been from the “Habsburg Bourbons,” a uncommon and now extinct line of European royalty.
Bourbon’s ascent to headlining at nightclubs occurred shortly. In 1931, Bourbon modeled ladies’s clothes in a Bakersfield, California, division retailer. In 1932, he headlined a present referred to as Boys Can be Women in San Francisco. Over the subsequent decade, Bourbon appeared in tons of of homosexual nightclubs all through the US, performing songs like “Mr. Wong Has Bought the Largest Thong in China.”
In 1956, Bourbon claimed he had obtained intercourse reassignment surgical procedure in Mexico, however many believed this to be a faked occasion for publicity. Bourbon later launched an album, Let Me Inform You About My Operation, and demanded from then on that he obtain billing as Rae Bourbon relatively than Ray Bourbon.
Bourbon’s profession, nevertheless, would quickly come to a tragic finish. In 1968, he was arrested for murdering a kennel proprietor who had saved Bourbon’s greater than 70 canines.[9] After being sentenced to 99 years in jail, Bourbon died in 1971.
2 The Drag Performer Who Was A Sergeant
Often called “Half-Pint” resulting from his 157-centimeter (5’2″) top, Frankie Jaxon was born in 1896 (or 1897 in accordance with some studies) and made his dwelling as a vaudeville performer and feminine impersonator.[10]
Touring drugs reveals in Texas through the 1910s, Jaxon turned in style amongst crowds resulting from his bawdy habits and female voice. Jaxon started his profession in 1910, performing in bars, cafes, and film theaters. In 1918 and 1919, Jaxon took a break from performing to serve within the US navy, the place he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Within the 1920s, Jaxon carried out with a bunch referred to as the Black Hillbillies. Jaxon’s personal band was referred to as the Quarts of Pleasure.
Performances by Jaxon have been characterised by their intricate dance numbers, quite a few comedy modifications, and even acrobatics. The songs in these performances, like “Operation Blues,” included quite a few double entendres.
As we speak, Jaxon is greatest remembered for his work with Duke Ellington within the quick movie Black and Tan and his work with Cab Calloway. In 1941, Jaxon retired from present enterprise. He’s generally mentioned to have died in a veterans’ hospital in 1944. Different sources had claimed he lived to 1953 and even 1970.
1 The Drag Performer Who Toured With His Mom
Billed because the “Creole Vogue Plate” and later known as the “Queer Previous Vogue Plate” by Groucho Marx, George Paduzzi was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1897. Paduzzi, nevertheless, carried out underneath the title of Karyl Norman.[11] He selected this title as a result of he felt “Karyl” was genderless, and “Norman” was his father’s title.
All through his profession, Norman traveled together with his mom. Norman started performing vaudeville on the West Coast on the age of 16. A significant star by the mid-1920s, Norman’s act was totally different from many different drag artists on the time as a result of half of his characters have been male. Norman was identified for performing Southern songs and would change gender all through his efficiency.
Within the 1930s, nevertheless, Norman’s recognition diminished enormously, and he took to acting at underground golf equipment in New York Metropolis. After being arrested on a morals cost within the 1940s, Norman was launched from jail by First Girl Eleanor Roosevelt. After Norman’s mom died, he retired to a quiet life in Hollywood, Florida.
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