Finocchio’s – post WWII

 Original version, January 2010.

 Part I: the early years

Part II: post WWII 

In 1946, Joe, and other club owners, were having problems with the Board of Fire Prevention and Investigation after a fire at the Herbert Hotel and Backstage Cocktail Lounge in which four firemen had lost their lives.  Temporarily the number of patrons was limited to 250, until required structural changes were made.  

During this time Majorie was absent.  On 16 July it was reported that she had married another clubman, Percy Harman of San Mateo, in Calexico on the Mexican border, but only four days later, back in San Francisco, she obtained a separation and the restoration of her Finocchio name.  She explained that immediately after the marriage, Harman had pestered her for large sums of money.

In September 1947 a burglar entered the home of Joe and Marjorie and took $40,000 in furs and a safe containing $15,000.  While the break-in occurred at about 10.30 pm, it was not discovered until the 350lb house safe was discovered by a motorist at 1:45am southwest of the city.  The safe had been punched open.  The Finocchios, still at the club were informed by the police, and hurried home.

Howard Hughes grew bored with Pussy Katt. However, he did finance a drag club for her in Acapulco which they called Finocchio’s South.  In later years she performed at Madame Arthur’s in Paris.

William Stoffler, a San Francisco stockbroker, married and noted for his good looks, became a dancer at Finocchio’s, and an occasional date of Howard Hughes.  His suspicious wife discovered his second life, and divorced him. 

In 1948, the Finocchios sued four former employees, Ray Bourbon, Jackie May, Johnnie Magnum, and Francis Russell, for putting out records and advertising with the words “The new Bourbon Records presents the world’s foremost female impersonators from Finocchio’s of San Francisco”.  Later that year Joe and Marjorie travelled together to England. 

The 5^th edition of Where to Sin in San Francisco, 1948, asked “Is it true what they say about Finocchio’s?”, and answered: 

“Yes, it is. Even if the girls were women, the shows would be provocative. But the artists in the costly gowns are not women. Without saying what they are, twinkling Marjorie Finocchio does declare, “They’re the only stable ones in the country.” Tall, beautiful, stable Freddie Renault, the $200-a-week MC, has been here fourteen years. . . . Cute, Oriental Li Kar, double stable after ten years, is both a dancer and the club’s costume designer. . . . Stablest of all is Walter Hart, $275-a-week specialist in murky songs.”

Walter Hart, had been at Finocchios since 1933.  He was billed as the male Sophie Tucker, and the real Sophie Tucker was delighted.  She gave him many of the gowns and furs he wore and never failed to catch his show when in the city.  However in 1948, as Herb Caen wrote: “ After 15 solid years on the job, Entertainer Walter Hart is out of Finocchio’s, on acct. some verbal twanging with Mrs. F. That’s sort of like the last ferry leaving the Ferry Bldg”.  However Hart soon found employment at the Tivoli.

Lucian Phelps took over the “male Sophie Tucker” persona, and, as with Walter Hart, the real Sophie Tucker caught his act and sent him gowns and furs. 

The 1949 San Francisco Real Property Directory listed only Marjorie as the club owner.

By 1950 the City Directory listed Joseph and Eve Finocchio living at the same address.

The local competition was the Black Cat Bar, which was developing from being a bohemian and Beat bar, to being more gay.   Jose Sarria entered a competition to get a gig at Finocchio’s, but did not get it, and then went to the Black Cat where he started as a waiter, and graduated to being the major singer, openly gay, openly in drag, singing a re-working of Bizet’s Carmen.  Unlike Finocchio’s, customers were permitted to dress as they chose.  In 1951 the State Board of Equalization suspended the Black Cat's liquor license in that known homosexuals ate and drank there.

The other competition was Jewel Box Revue, and many of the impersonator stars worked for both the Revue and Finnochio’s at different times.  As a touring revue, the Jewel Box was in San Francisco only intermittently.  However, even when the Revue was in town, Finocchio’s was filled to capacity, four shows a night, six nights a week, attracting locals, tourists and celebrities such as Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead. 

1954: UCLA psychologist Evelyn Hooker started her groundbreaking work comparing the psychological adjustment of homosexual and heterosexual men that showed that gay men were not significantly different.  Her research included a visit to Finocchio’s.

Marjorie died in 1956 after a lingering illness.  Joe then married Eve, and Eve was finally allowed into the club, and quickly took over Marjorie’s role. She took over with a vengeance.  Her brother George Filippis also came in as club manager, her sister Maria Filippis as the cashier and Eve’s teenage daughter Concetta as the official photographer.   Joe continued to oversee the bar and the door.   The huge photos of the performers which were hanging in the club and outside on the street were all taken down. The club was redecorated – the décor was said to be based on that of Le Carrousel of Paris – and at the same time Le Carrousel star Les Lee was hired. 

Another new hire was Lavern Cummings, who sang as both soprano and baritone, and who stayed until 1982.

A chorus line, Las Vegas style, were introduced known as the Eve-ettes, after the second Mrs Finocchio. Eve quickly cut the number of musicians from five to three, and refused to be addressed as ‘Madame’ as that was how Marjorie had been addressed.

1958: Francis Blair, star of Seatle’s Garden of Allah, also performed a comedy drag routine with Ray Francis, “Two Old Bags from Oakland” which they did at Finocchio’s that year.

In the summer of 1959, the future Aleshia Brevard, moved to Los Angles and found a Catholic priest lover who, after giving her gonorrhea, took her to San Francisco and to see the show at Finocchio’s.  Lucian as Sophie Tucker fabricated a story about having a training school for impersonators, and picked out Aleshia in the audience and said "And this, ladies and gentlemen, is my star pupil.   Isn't she beautiful?   Stand up and take a bow."   Aleshia then knew what she wanted.  “I auditioned at Finocchio's, based solely on a photograph I'd submitted.   Before having that audition photo taken, I'd never been in female attire. Talk about an untrained 'New Nanette'!   I would have never gotten hired at the most prestigious impersonation club in the country if it had it not been for Stormy Lee, Finocchio's star exotic dancer.   People HATED Stormy, I'm well aware of that, but she put me under her protective wing on the night of my audition.”   Aleshia was given the stage name of “Lee Shaw” by the MC Lestra Lamonte. Aleshia had the looks and developed an act as Marilyn Monroe singing "My Heart Belongs To Daddy".  The real Monroe came one night to see the act.

'Lee Shaw' and Eve

Aleshia and Stormy had extra kudos in that they each had a boyfriend. Off-stage Aleshia became a patient of Harry Benjamin during his summer sojourns in San Francisco – it was Stormy who shared her Premarin and then took Aleshia to her first appointment with Harry Benjamin.  The aspect that Aleshia hated most was “having to remove my makeup and despised dressing in men's clothes before leaving the club - but that was the law.   What I detested most was how Mrs. Finocchio's sister, Maria, who sold tickets, would call out ‘Good night, Lee Shaw’ - or whomever, as we were exiting the club.   She was pointing out to lingering customers how impersonators looked 'off stage'.   I always felt that was very unkind.”

Libby Reynolds, two years after his tryst with actor Raymond Burr, and then selling the story to Confidential Magazine, was hired in 1962.  

Aleshia/Lee Shaw left the club in 1962, and was one of the last trans woman to have surgery with Dr Elmer Belt in Los Angeles.  This was to the chagrin of the Finocchios who threatened that she would never work again.

There was a shortage of dancers at the club.  Reggie Dahl was in the hospital, a Spanish dancer by the name of Néstor had a mental breakdown, and the only dancer left at the club was Stormy Lee.   Robin Price, previously of the Jewel Box, heard of the vacancy and came from Los Angeles to audition, and was not hired.  However Price was phoned a few days later, asked if she could do the Can-Can, and after a second audition was hired.

Concetta, Eve’s daughter, graduated from UC Berkeley.  In 1963 she married Eric Jorgensen, and they called their first child Eric.

Stormy had surgery the next year with Dr Burou in Casablanca.  Lestra Lamonte, the emcee died, and Price became the new emcee.  Price fell out with Eve Finocchio when she tried to tell him not to visit a certain club on his own time, despite her sister going to the same place.  They stopped talking until the last day of Price’s contract, when Eve finally wanted to talk, but Price simple packed bags and left.

The Black Cat Bar,  following some 15 years of unrelenting pressure from the police and the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) finally closed in1963.

Carroll Wallace, who had a sideline as a real-estate investor, became the emcee. As such he  had to do the stage lighting and sound, which was not easy and it was very tiring on his feet to be standing for the whole show.

David de Alba joined as a star performer in 1971, and he did hair-styling and wigs for the other performers.  Two years later, he asked permission for four days off for plastic surgery.  However on returning he found that he had been fired, and was told to pick up his costumes, make-up cases, wigs and musical charts.  He still did wigs and hair styling for the other performers, and was often contracted as a guest star.  “What I didn’t realize at the time was that there was a new cost cutting trend going on at the club.   Mrs. Finocchio was getting rid of the main supporting acts and replacing them with members of her beloved chorus line, 'The Eve-ettes'.   They now had two jobs, being in the chorus and then as main supporting acts.   So there you had it, two acts for the price of one!”

Lucian Phelps, 65, who had performed at Finocchio’s since 1949, died after a long illness in 1973. 

An ad 1977 

A wildfire destroyed the area surrounding the Jorgensen house, but not their house.

Jae Stevens, 27, was a performer at Finocchio’s when she was murdered in Golden Gate Park in 1974.  The police actually pulled over her car, presumably driven by her murderer, but, after a chase and a crash into a house, the man escaped.

Mr and Mrs Jorgensen had three more children, and then were divorced, leaving Concetta as a single mother of four.  The very same year she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  She became a disability activist, did publicity for the club and despite her disability – and she was eventually a paraplegic - she was 30 years on the Alameda County Consumer Affairs Commission.

In 1981, in an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, Joe was quoted: “We always keep our eyes open. It’s easy to get fellows in women’s clothes. But we don’t allow any filth, and most of them resort to filth.”  Eve did the first interview, and if Joe agreed, Eve made arrangements for costuming and rehearsals.  At that time dancers were paid $80 to $125 a week.  Eve arranged for Holiday Tours and Gray Lines to add Finocchio’s to their tour lists.  Gray Lines included a Finocchio’s photograph in its brochure.  During the 1970s, as topless and then bottomless revue bars had opened, there had been fears that business at Finocchio’s would decline. But with time the topless bars became passé and Finocchio’s was still going.  In the late 1970s it managed as many as 300,000 customers a year. There were four shows a night, each running about an hour. The shows had themes that were not always the same from show to show, and guests could stay for extra shows.

Joe Finocchio died of a stroke in January 1986, aged 88. This left Eve as the sole owner.  She brought in Eric Jorgensen, Concetta’s eldest son, then 23 to be groomed as a future manager – which he was by 1989.  Eve continued to manage the shows and performers, but the zest was declining.  Gray Lines dropped Finocchio’s in 1988, but later restored it.   An article in the Chronicle in 1989 claimed that Finocchio was grossing $2 million a year.  However in 1990 they upped the cover charge from $10 to $15, with a new two-drink minimum, and now opened only four days: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Again in 1991, a wildfire destroyed the surrounding area, but again not the Jorgensen house.  A television movie was made of the event, Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland. Actress Jill Clayburgh played a character based on Concetta Jorgensen. 

 A few years later Finocchio’s started presenting lip-synching performers – weakening what had made the club special.  Eve later fired the band and it became all lip-synching.  The press paid less and less attention.  Openings were reduced to only three nights: Friday to Sunday, and only three shows a night.  Sometimes there were no customers, and the show was cancelled.

Eve Finocchio decided to close the club in November 1999 because of a major rent increase and dwindling attendance.

Eve died 2007, age 92.

Concetta Finocchio Jorgensen, daughter of Eve died in 2012, age 71, survived by 4 children and 12 grandchildren.

Lavern Cummings died in 2018 age 91 in Las Vegas after being hit by a car.

Other artists who performed there include: Katherine Marlow, Holly White, Russell Reed, Val DeVere, Ted Hendrix, Harvey Lee, Francis Stillman, Jeri-Lane, Frank Doran, Jackie Philips, Bobby Johnson, John Lonas, Vaughn Auldon, Johnny Mangum, Del LeRoy, Milton La Maire, Ray Francis, Francis David, Paul La Ray, Mike Michelle, Bobby Belle.

 

--------------------------------

• “Police Raiders Arrest Ten in S.F. Night Club: Patrons Rush for Exits as Officers Visit Finocchio’s”.  San Francisco Chronicle. July 20, 1936: 5.
• Ki-Lar Finocchio’s.  Finocchio’s program, 1944. Online.
• “Ex-Finocchio Wife Divorced: ‘Quickie’ Marriage to San Mateo Man Aired in Action”. San Francisco Examiner, Aug 2, 1946,
• “Finocchio Defies Order To Close S.F. Night Club: Fire Marshal Threatens to Jail Owner For Disregard of Safety Rules”.  San Francisco Examiner, Aug 24, 1946: 5.
• “Finocchio Home Looted of Furs”.  San Francisco Examiner, Sep 11, 1947:11.
• Jack Lord and Lloyd Hoff, Where to Sin in San Francisco, 5th ed. (San Francisco: Richard F. Guggenheim, 1948), 145.
• “In Memoriam: Lucian Phelps”.  Drag, 3, 10, 1973:40. Online.
• “In Memoriam: Jae Stevens 1947-1974”.  Drag, 4, 16, 1974:34. Online.
• “San Francisco drag bar owner Joseph Finocchio dies at 88’.  Santa Cruz Sentinel, Jan 15, 1986:10.
• Norman Melnick. “Deaths: Joseph Finocchio”.  San Francisco Examiner, Jan 15, 1986: 19.
• Jacqueline Frost. “Home alone: ‘House of mixed blessings’ in lunar landscape: Fire survivors lament lost neighborhoods”. Oakland Tribune. Jan 27, 1992:1.
• Tracie Reynolds.  “Star Struck: Survivor to give proceeds to son, who suffered burns: Firestorm victim with multiple sclerosis sells story to TV”. Oakland Tribune. Nov 9, 1992:1.
• Michael Tuchner (dir). Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland. With Jill Clayburgh playing a character based on Concetta Jorgensen.  US 104 mins 1993. IMDB.
• Les Wright. “San Francisco”. In David Higgs (ed). Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories Since 1600. Routledge, 1999: 171-2.
• Jesse Hamlin.  “Strutting Into History / Laughter gives way to tears as Finocchio's ends 63-year drag-show run”,  San Francisco Chronicle, 29 November 1999.
• Jesse Hamlin.  “What a Drag: Finocchio’s to Close/Cross-dressers have entertained at club for 63 years”.  SFGate, Nov 4, 1999.  Online.
• Nan Alamilla Boyd. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. University of California Press, 2003: 49,52-6,187.
• D.J. Doyle. “Finochio’s”. Queer Musical Heritage.   http://www.queermusicheritage.us/oct2002f.html. 
• “David de Alba on Finocchio's”.   www.david-de-alba.com/david4.htm.  www.david-de-alba.com/david5.htm.
• “David de Alba on Shaw”. www.david-de-alba.com/aleshia.htm.
• “David de Alba on Price”.  www.david-de-alba.com/Price.htm.
• Mel Gordon et al. "UC Berkeley Interview on Finocchio Club Legend: David de Alba". http://david-de-alba.com/Berkeley%20Interview.htm
• Aleshia Brevard. The Woman I Not Was Born to Be: A Transsexual Journey. Temple University Press, 2001:
• Darwin Porter.  Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel.  Blood Moon Productions, 2010: 575-6, 593-5, 733.
• Aleshia Brevard. The Woman I Was Born to Be. A Blue Feather Book, 2010:
• Kathleen Brosnan & Amy Scott.  City Dreams, Country Schemes: Community and Identity in the American West.  University of Nevada Press, 2011: 248-250.
• Chris Treadway. “Berkeley disabled rights activist dies at 70”. The Mercury News, January 11, 2012. Online.
• David Artavia.  “Trans Trailblazer Aleshia Brevard Dead at 79”.  The Advocate, July 25, 2017.  Online.
• James Smith.  “Finocchio’s club: A San Francisco Legend”.  The Argonaut, 28, 2, Winter 2018. Online.
• James Smith. “Finocchio’s” Except from San Francisco’s Lost Landmarks.  Online.
• Susan Stryker. “Finocchio's, a Short Retrospective”.  FoundSF: the San Francisco digital history archive.  Online.
• Michail Takach & B J Daniels.  A History of Milwaukee Drag: Seven Generations of Glamour.  History Press, 2022: 64-6.
• Margot Canaday.  Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. Princeton University Press, 2023: 95-99.
• Lucas Hilderbrand. The Bars are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After.  Duke University Press, 2023: 74-5, 77.

 

EN.Wikipedia    GLBT Historical Society   Online Archive of California    Queer Music Heritage     Digital Commonwealth 

 

Discussion in other books:

Canaday: 

“For the trans women who performed at Finocchio’s, this was more than just a job. The actress Aleshia Brevard was first taken to the night club by a man she was involved with and “instantly felt she had to be there. …  It was common, she remembered, for trans women to dance at Finocchio’s just long enough to earn the money for surgery and then leave. As a result, Finocchio’s eventually preferred hiring cross-dressers to trans women because they tended to stay on the job.”  

She also includes a footnote Chp 2 n167 

“Friedman thought (citing letters between the sexologists Harry Benjamin and William Masters) that a date with a performer at Finocchio’s (usually made through a waiter) could be arranged for around $50. The higher price was because these women were, according to some, considered exotic. Certain young gay hustlers “who ordinarily might not have cross-dressed” did so in order to command a higher wage.”  

This is taken from Harvey Friedman. Strapped for Cash: A History of American Hustler Culture, 2010: 124-5.  This in turn is based on Harry Benjamin & R E L Masters. Prostitution and Morality, 1964: 305-9, which does not actually mention Finocchio’s but the comment probably does apply to it. 

“Impersonators  working  in  clubs,  and  making  their  contacts  there,  earn  far  more  money  than  do  other  types  of  male  hustlers,  for  the  reason,  no  doubt,  that  they  are  to  some  extent  “celebrities.”  Fifty dollar  fees  are  not  unusual,  and  at  the  club  most  intensively  studied,  a  $20.00  fee  for  a  single  sexual  act  was  the  absolute  minimum  the  prostitutes  would  consider.”

Takach &  Daniels: 

“Despite offering drag shows for seven decades, Finocchio’s was never really a gay-friendly destination. The club capitalized on its gay performers for amusement, but its owners never really wanted to deal with gay customers.  While Joe Finocchio provided gainful employment to generations of gay men who might otherwise struggle to survive in San Francisco, he was always more interested in running a profitable tourist attraction than a LGBTQ safe space, social outlet or historical landmark. … Joe’s first wife, Marjorie, was the front face of the operation. … Robyn Raye, an impersonator … said of Marge Finocchio, ‘I don’t think she liked gay people, but she certainly knew how to use them.’ … ‘Marge Finocchio made millions off drag queens. We made that woman rich.’ “

My comments:

’finocchio’ is Italian for fennel and by extension a negative word for gay. Some say that this is because its bulb looks like male genitals, but the corresponding word in Portuguese, ‘fanchono’ would seem to be cognate.

Rachel Harlow in Philadelphia was also born with the Finocchio name.  However there does not seem to be any connection between the San Francisco Finocchios and those of Philadelphia.  Likewise there does not seem to be any connection between the San Francisco Jorgensens (the family of Concetta’s husband), and the family of Christine Jorgensen in New York City.  The fact that Concetta bore both names, Finocchio and then Jorgensen, is a fascinating trivium – but without significance.

Many – less informed - articles maintain that it was Joe Finocchio who built up and ran the 201 Club.  However it was Marjorie who used her money to buy the first club, and then chose the acts and ran it, and afterwards Eve – who despite despising her – stepped into her shoes.  Marjorie ran the club 1929-1956, 27 years.  Eve ran it less well, but for longer, 1956-1999, 43 years – and carried on after Joe’s demise.

The requirement for the performers to arrive and leave in male drag also applied at the 181 Club/Club 82 in New York.   But not at Le Carrousel in Paris.  The Finocchios were strict, sometimes shouted at their employees and threatened blacklisting if a performer left without permission.  However the 181 Club/Club 82 was mafia owned – by the Genovese family - and if you crossed them, worse things could happen.   

I could not have written this without James Smith's  “Finocchio’s club: A San Francisco Legend” in  The Argonaut.

Vardaman (1877 - 1945) female impersonator

Mansel Vardaman Boyle was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. As a boy soprano, Boyle had been in demand for school entertainments. He played light juvenile parts with the Alcazar Theater Company,

Around 1896, the family moved to Butte, Montana when his father and brother found work there as miners. Mansel, then 19, worked as a clerk, and then as a stenographer and bookkeeper. Mansel was interested in theatre, especially music and singing, and was a member of the entertaining Overland Club, where his affinity for female clothing, a high singing voice and a natural proclivity as a performer were appreciated. An article in the local press in June 1902 commented: 

“Mr. Boyle impersonated a young danseuse, and his make-up, actions and singing barred to many the thought that he was not a woman”. 

His first solo amateur performance was at a New-Year party and then a female role in a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers. This had gone down so well that friends suggested that he continue professionally.

The family moved back to California in 1903, this time to Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco. Mansel developed his female impersonation act, and was able to break into the Vaudeville circuit. He returned to Butte in April 1904 playing his solo act. He used his middle name as a stage name, and toured across the US, sometimes billed as the ‘celebrated French impersonator’. As was the custom at the time, Vardaman ended the act by removing his wig and thus revealing that was not the woman that many in the audience had taken him to be. In 1913-14 Vardaman made a world tour, that is Australia, South Africa and Britain. By 1916 he was billed as “Vardaman: The Gay Deceiver”, starred in a burlesque show with comics and female dancers where he was the only female impersonator. 

By 1920 Boyle was 43, and no longer able to pass as a young woman. For a while he was unemployed and lived with his sister in Alameda. His last performance was in 1925. In the late 1930s. Boyle was living with the gay silent-film star J. Warren Kerrigan.

He died in May 1945, age 68.

• “Appreciates the Wit”. The Butte Daily Post, June 6, 1902: 10.

• “The Hit of the Season: Entertainment given by the Overland Minstrels”. The Anaconda Standard, June 6, 1902:1.

• “How I Came to Enter Vaudeville” Daily Arkansas Gazette, Feb 23, 1909: 12.

• Trav S.D. “Vardaman: The Gay Deceiver. Travalance, January 17, 2014. Online

• “Vardaman: The Gay Deceiver”. BellingHistory, February 2023. Online.

• Tracy Thornton. “Butte men donned dresses and wowed crowds”. Montana Standard, Jun 28, 2024.

• Tracy Thornton. “Butte man in drag wowed the crowds”. The Billings Gazette (Montana), June 30, 2024.

Gay History Wiki    Find a Grave

Phil Black (1903 - 1975) female impersonator, ball organizer.

Original version December 2008.

Pittsburgh’s Hill District had been settled in the 1820s when those who could afford it moved out from Pittsburgh’s industrial core.   It became the city’s primary neighborhood for immigrants and other newcomers.  During the Great War, many black migrants came from Alabama and other parts of the South to fill Pittsburgh’s wartime labor shortage. By the 1930s African-Americans constituted a small majority in the area alongside various immigrant communities. Unlike the segregated theatres and nightclubs downtown, those in the Hill District, particularly the jazz clubs, were racially mixed.   The ethnic mix was open to sex/gender diversity in a way not found downtown.  Some female impersonators like Gilda lived as female off-stage as well as on, and as such visited hairdressers and attended church - Purcell and Coco sang as such in church choirs.  Grantmyer writes 

“female impersonators carved out a space for themselves in the Hill by performing in local nightclubs; by being themselves as they meandered down the neighborhood’s streets, shopped in its stores and drank in its bars; and by forging personal relationships that helped transcend stereotypes”.

Phil Black was born in Sharpsburg, 5 miles/8 km northeast of Pittsburgh. In 1924, 21 years-old and dressed as female, he went to Cake Walks with a buddy and they won first prize as the best couple. Friends told him that he was as good as the professional female impersonators. As such he started with bookings in the Pittsburgh area. He performed for two years at Pittsburgh's Little Paris nightclub, and the at various clubs around the city, and then joined a touring group, the highly popular Shufflin Sam from Alabam, again as a female illusionist.   

For six years from 1927 he played in and around Atlantic City, often as the only colored member of the troupe.

From the mid-1930s he was based in New York City, appearing in Greenwich Village and Harlem. 

Thomas H. Robinson on October 10, 1934, kidnapped Alice Stoll in Louisville, Kentucky and released her unharmed in exchange for $50,000 ransom.  He then went on the run.  A customer at the Harlem nightclub where Phil Black was appearing gave a $10 tip to dance with Black, who immediately realised that the customer was not a cis woman.  She gave the name ‘Jerry’ but when questioned further quickly departed.   Afterwards Black saw a photograph of Robinson in a newspaper and recognised the mysterious customer.

The first drag ball organized by Black was on Thanksgiving Day, 1941.

Performance Card

In 1944 Black played Montréal for four months, and in 1948 was promoting boat rides on the Hudson River. Black made seasonal appearances at the Harlem Club in upstate New York, and in the early 1950s appeared in Washington DC.

Black put on the Funmaker drag balls at the Rockland Palace ballroom located on 155^th Street and Frederick Douglass Avenue, where the Hamilton Lodge balls had previously been held.  Anyone who cared to could be in drag, or express their inner self.

Phil Black was interviewed in 1953 in the black community magazine Our World, which emphasized his normality: 

"I don’t join the many parties that take place after some clubs close and I have very little use for alcohol. I have never been married chiefly because of my mother. She has no other means of support and has been living with me for 18 years”

The article also wondered if ‘Phil Black’ was a stage name signifying lover (philia) of black persons.

Black was included in E Carlston Winford’s pioneering 1954 book, Femme Mimics, the first ever collection of photographs of female impersonators.  Perhaps in reply to Our World, Winford wrote of Black: 

“He prefers to use his real name, contrary to the practice of many in this profession who choose a ‘feminine’ stage name”.

In 1956, Leslie Matthews wrote in The New York Age: 

“There were ladies exhibitionistic belles, unmindful of the night’s chill doffed their minks, beavers and rabbits and gave the hungry sidewalk onlookers a little of what was in store for them if they entered Rockland Palace, Thanksgiving night, where the ‘Funmakers’ were staging their 15th annual extravaganza. The ‘girls’ came from all over (there were two from Mississippi and one from San Diego, Calif.) ‘played’ within the confines of the auditorium…. Everyone was a celebrity. Attired in expensive frocks and gowns the ‘girls’ who disliked being called ‘fags,’ had their faces reshaped to photogenic proportions by new cosmetological techniques.” 

Black had a second job in that a Harlem private detective agency needing a woman to follow husbands in divorce cases, hired Black for the task.

The stage show was both a song and dance routine. Black made his own gowns, but such was his reputation that Josephine Baker in Paris also sent some of hers.  Black's transformation took only 20 minutes, and his reputation was such that tourists to New York, even from Europe made efforts to catch his act.  He was a member of the Negro Actors Guild.

In 1963 a reform group called the Committee for Racial Pride protested the event, citing that drag and homosexuality were blights on the black community, the latter wrought by white people. Black nationalists also picketed the event, their signs posted with the slogan “Rear Admirals Stay downtown” and some of those who came to the ball were harassed. This lead Black to cancel the 1964 event. However that year Black appeared as himself, a stage performer, in an uncredited role in the film The Pawnbroker.

The 1965 event was also cancelled in that Black’s diabetes led to gangrene in his left leg and amputation.  However a prosthetic was fitted and the balls continued. While previously Black had done a song and dance act, now it was simply a song and joke act – in particular the high kicks he had been famous for were now not on.

The balls had lasted from the mid-1940s and, with only the two cancellations, continued until after Stonewall, until his death, and became the standard for the later voguing balls.

*Not the auctioneer, nor the fitness consultant.

·         “Robinson Disguised as Woman: At Least So New York Newspaper Declares in a Copyright Article, Hammond Times, October 15, 1935 (based on article in The Evening Journal, October 14, 1935).  Online.

·         Black, Phil. “I Live in Two Worlds.” Our World, October 1953: 19.

·         “Phil Black” in E Carlton Winford.  Femme Mimics.  Winford Company, 1954.  Online.

·         “Leslie Matthews Unlimited,” The New York Age, December 1, 1956, 4. 

·         ‘Luscious Limpwrist’. “ ‘Les Girls’ had a Ball at Rockland, Honey!” The New York Age, December 7, 1957, 4. 

·         “Phil Black Loses Leg.” New Pittsburgh Courier, 16 Oct, 1965, p. 1

·         “Phil Black’s Annual Valentine Ball!”  Female Impersonators, 2,1969 :12-7.  Online.

·         Tony Gild.  “Tripping the Light Fantastic at the Gay Funmakers Ball”.  National Insider. April 20, 1969.  Online.

·         Avery Willard. “In Memoriam Phil Black 1903-1975”.  Drag, 5, 20, 1975:22.  Online

·         “The Last of the Balls”. Drag, 6, 24, 1975 :10-18. Online.

·         Stephen P Knadler.  “White Dissolution: Homosexualization and Racial Masculinity in White Life Novels” in The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness.  University Press of Mississippi, 2002: 161-3.

·         Jeffrey Callen.  “Gender Crossings: A Neglected History in African American Music” in Sheila Whiteley & Jennifer Rycenga (eds).  Queering the Popular Pitch.  Routledge, 2006: 191-3

·         Laura Grantmyre.  “’They lived their life and they didn't bother anybody’: African American Female Impersonators and Pittsburgh's Hill District, 1920-1960”.  American Quarterly, 63, 4, 2011.

·         Rebekkah Mulholland. Historical Erasure is Violence: The Lives and Experiences of Black Transgender Women and Gender Nonconforming Women of Color in the 19th and 20th Century.  PhD Thesis, University of Memphis, May 2020: 190-205.

·         Elyssa Maxx Goodman,  Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City. Hanover Square Press, 2023: 62–64, 119, 122, 145.

Queer Music Heritage     

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Phil Black is not listed as a notable person in the Wikipedia Sharpsburg page.

Gilda in the Hill District is not the same as Guilda in Montréal.  However both took their name from the 1946 film Gilda with Rita Hayworth. 

Mowry Saben/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind/Jennie June (1870 - 1950) journalist, female impersonator

(This article builds on the October 2022 article in OutHistory “Who Was Jennie June?” by Channing Gerard Joseph Online.  I accept Joseph’s argument that Mowry Saben and Jennie June were the same person, and integrate the two biographies. June – in her Autobiography of an Androgyne and The Female Impersonators – slightly altered the facts of her life such as claiming to be from Connecticut rather than Massachusetts, and that she attended an “uptown” university (presumably Columbia) in New York rather than Harvard. She also altered her birth year from 1870 to 1874. This creates problems: if she says that she was 19, is this 1889 or 1894?

Pronouns? Some writers use he/she for Jennie June which is cumbersome; some use he/him as that is what June did in her own writings. I will use he/him for the Mowry Saben persona and she/her for the Jennie June persona.

AJUS= American Journal of Urology and Sexology; Auto=Autobiography of an Androgyne)

Part I: early life

Part II: publications

Part III:  comments and bibliography 

Israel Mowry Saben was raised in Uxbridge, Massachusetts in a strict Puritan family. Israel was his father and grandfather’s Christian name, and Mowry was his paternal grandmother’s maiden name. His sister three years younger was Jennie May. The father was a noted mathematician, who was disappointed that his son had no talent in that direction. However, his private education gave Mowry fluency in Latin, French and German.

At age 14 Mowry became ‘God-intoxicated’ and attended seven religious services a week in addition to college chapel. He was the leader of prayer groups, preached from the pulpit and spent two hours a day in private devotions. He then realized that he was a ‘female impersonator’ – he told this to his family physician, who did not understand the nature of such, and suggested finding a girlfriend.

In 1891 Saben attended Harvard, at first in the college and then the law school. He became a friend of the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson. He still did preach in the slums. He also became an assistant to the lawyer, Clark Bell who among other cases was representing a ‘cultured and moneyed fellator’ who was being blackmailed by a young man whom he had pleasured. Clark Bell was also the editor of the Medico-Legal Journal.

In the summer of 1892, Saben’s other persona, Jennie June, emerged for a ‘First Nocturnal Ramble’ to New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, and then to the New Bowery. She met Red Mike for the first time.

Later that year, not sure what to make of his androgynous nature, Saben consulted three New York medical professors, two of whom were Drs Prince A Morrow and Robert S Newton. In her third book, Jennie June wrote: 

"The alienist Dr. Robert S. Newton was the third physician whom I consulted but the first who had any inkling of the true nature of my malady. His frankness put an end to my chronic melancholia. I thenceforth merely suffered from it at rare intervals. I ceased the worse than useless longing and praying for a different nature than it had seemed good to the All Wise to predestinate. The alienist opened my eyes. He taught me that the androgyne’s proclivities are not the depth of depravity that every one, even the two preceding medical advisers, had previously given me to understand." 

The other, unnamed, physician 

“gave me to understand as early as 1892 that my case was a remarkable one. This pronouncement incited me still further to keep a record of what life brought me with a view to writing an autobiography some day.”

In November 1892 and April 1893, Jennie June again did a ‘Nocturnal Ramble’ to New York’s Mulberry Street and Grand. Her ‘Fairie Apprenticeship Begins‘. She lived with Red Mike who took much of her money and abused her. She found a gig performing in a night club. (See ‘The Female Impersonator”, AJUS, June 1919). She gave out that her male name was Ralph Werther (from the painter Raphael and Goethe’s famous melancholiac). Saben finally gave up preaching and all church work.

In May, towards the end of his second year Saben was expelled from Harvard, possibly after the police broke up an all-male gathering in his room (Channing Joseph on Mowry Saben), but later other explanations were given: a ‘Nervous Breakdown’ (Auto p99) or “I was expelled from the university for being an androgyne, I came within an ace of suicide although believing that none of my family even suspected my expulsion; I having explained that my New York physician had ordered me to rest my brain on account of neurasthenia, which malady the expulsion had immediately occasioned as a matter of fact”. (II: "The Boy Is Father to the Man”) or “But the faculty, through an accident, finally discovered it [female impersonation] and immediately expelled me”.(‘The Female Impersonator’, AJUS, June 1919) or “The wreck of my happy and highly successful student-career was now brought about by a physician whom I had consulted in hope of a cure for my inversion, but not one of the two gentlemen already named. He happened to number the president of the university among his friends, and whispered to him that I ought not to be continued as a student. I was immediately expelled.” (Auto p139)

“In a few weeks I was penniless and a shelterless wanderer on the streets in midwinter. I was driven for shelter to the Bowery, because there alone lodging could be obtained for fifteen cents, and a big meal of coarse and even disgusting food for ten cents.” (Autobiography, p141) Saben was living as Jennie June and the life of a low-class fairie. "The fact that I could now satisfy every day my instinctive yearnings to pass for a female and spend six evenings a week in the company of adolescent ruffians went far towards counterbalancing the many tears I had to shed when there was nothing to divert my thoughts from my condition of an outcast and an outlaw. I never coquetted on Sunday evenings, which I devoted to worship of my Creator at some mission.” (Auto p143)

Jennie also had adventures with soldiers, even visiting them at their army camps. This led to sanctions, leading June to stop using the Ralph Werther name when seeking men or approaching doctors, and using Earl Lind instead – although the books and journal articles that she published in the 1910s carried the Werther name.

One night Jennie met a group of men who took her into a groggery near Water Street in south Manhattan, and gang raped her. 

“I was at last rendered unable to be on my feet owing to spinal trouble, and to excruciating pain in the anus whenever I attempted to walk. I was compelled to enter a hospital.”

Saben returned home. His father’s antagonism had softened. 

“Of course I never gave a true account of our period of estrangement.” (Auto p158).

What happened next is discrepant between the biographies of Saben and June.

Jackson’s Oxford Journal

• In 1894 Saben is said to have gone to England and studied at Oxford. He was there during the Oscar Wilde trials, during which he was obliged to petition for bankruptcy having liabilities of £388/16/6 after his father stopped his remittances (attested in the Jackson’s Oxford Journal). Somehow he was then able to travel to Germany and study at Heidelberg University.
• June wrote (Auto p173, 168) that her male persona became an amanuensis to a millionaire septuagenarian and the two were five months in Europe.

By the end of the decade/century Saben/June was back in the US, and in 1899 finally started writing an autobiography re their experiences as an Androgyne – although it will be 20 years before it is published. 

"But in 1900, as soon as I had this autobiography ready, I submitted it to Mr. [Anthony] Comstock in order to ascertain whether it could be circulated. He was then a Post-Office Department inspector, with power to prosecute for shipping 'obscene' matter by common carrier. He read considerable of the manuscript of this book, and stated . . . that he would have 'destroyed' it but for the fact that I impressed him 'as a person not having any evil intent." (Auto, page 24.)

Werther/June arranged to be castrated (orchiectomy) giving the reason that he suffered from spermatorrhoea. Although in his introduction to the first Werther-June book, Alfred Herzog later commented: 

“My belief is, that, feeling as a woman, desiring to be a woman and wishing to seem as much as possible like a woman to his male paramours, he hated above all the testicles, those insignia of manhood, and had them removed to be more alike to that which he wished to be”.

As Saben he became an established speaker travelling across the country giving lectures on Emmerson, Whitman, Goethe, Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, religion and freedom. One of these lectures, The twilight of the gods, was published in 1903. The lecture series segued into working for newspapers, both as an editorial writer and freelancing.

An approach was made to two more doctors in New York. The first was Robert Shufeldt, an ornithologist, army doctor and eugenicist. A person using the name Earl Lind, presented a manuscript to Shufeldt by the said-to-be recently deceased Ralph Werther – also known as Jennie June. Shufeldt described Werther in a July 1905 paper in the Pacific Medical Journal: 

“Ralph Werther throughout his brief life had, in all anatomical particulars, the form of a man, though bearing to some extent the impress of the opposite sex. His psychic nature always remained distinctly that of a girl, and that, too, of a very amorous and passionate girl. In fact, he was a girl with the body of a boy. Intellectual and educated to a high degree, she passed through the most remarkable life-experience imaginable, from childhood to the day of self-destruction, which occurred before 30 years of age.  During this time, the wonderfully interesting subject of this account kept a very full diary, and scores upon scores of letters, and other matters calculated to shed ample light upon the terrible cruelties and tortures he had passed through.” 

Shufeldt however did realize that Lind and Werther were the same person, and persuaded the same to pose for nude photographs.

Dr William Lee Howard also met with Jennie June, and wrote a 1905 paper about her, “Two Souls in One Body: A Realistic But Scientific Account of a True Psychological”, in The Arena, where she is referred to as Jennie/Karl.

Also that year, Werther/Saben was diagnosed with syphilis, and was seriously assaulted by a gang of boys. He considered taking them to court, but was advised not to.

James Bidgood/Terri Howe (1933-2022) 1950s drag performer

James Bidgood was born and raised in Wisconsin. He moved to New York City in 1951.

He found work at the drag nightclub Club 82 when it opened in 1953 as a set and lighting designer, and then as one of the drag performers, performing under the name of Terri Howe. 

He also graduated from the Parsons School of Design, and then worked professionally as a window-dresser, costume designer and free-lance photographer. He desisted as a drag performer. 

Through the 1960s he became a photographer of male nudes, often working in his own small Hell’s Kitchen apartment. His masterpiece is taken to be the 1971 film Pink Narcissus, IMDB, with male actress Charles Ludlam, again mainly filmed in his apartment over a period of seven years, although he was not credited with the film until almost 30 years later in that he took his name off the film after the financers became exasperated by his perfectionism, and imposed their own edit and soundtrack. For many years it was incorrectly assumed that Andy Warhol was behind the film.

In 1999 Bruce Benderson, having researched Bidgood’s life and work, published a large coffee-table book of Bidgood’s photography, and put the record straight re Pink Narcissus. 

In 2005 Bidgood was honored with a Creative Capital grant, which financed his return to art photography. He was recognized in the last years of his life as pre-cursor of camp. and is now spoken of along with Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. 

He died of complications from COVID at age 88.

• Bruce Benderson. Bidgood, Tashen, 1999.
• Jesse Dorris. “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Camp”. Aperture, May 15, 2019. Online.
• David Noh. “James Bidgood’s Sexy Phantasmagorical World”. Gay City News, June 25, 2019. Online.
• William E Jones. “AGAINST NATURE: William E. Jones on the art of James Bidgood”. ArtForum, Summer, 2019. Online.
• Trudy Ring. “James Bidgood, Creator of Film Pink Narcissus, Has Died”. Advocate, February 01 2022. Online.
• Patrik Sandberg. “Elegy for a Packrat: Remembering James Bidgood: Patrik Sandberg on his years of friendship with the legendary filmmaker”. Frieze, 23 May 22. Online.
• Miss Rosen. “How James Bidgood Inspired a Generation of LGBTQ Artists”. Blind-Magazine, October 24, 2022. Online.

EN.Wikipedia    IMDB