Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.
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Harry Foy was born in Sydney, NSW. The son of a horse-trainer, Harry worked as a barman, but at night he was Sydney’s best-known female impersonator after Lea Sonia died.
He had appeared at various venues in Sydney since the mid 1920s. He often performed at the Ziegfeld Club where in semi-drag he flirted with the customers. A visiting US sailor, John Williams, took offence and struck him in the mouth. He fell and never recovered consciousness. Williams was charged with manslaughter, released on £40 bail, handed over to the US shore patrol and never seen again.
John Dale Harvey was raised in Greeneville, Tennessee until age 12 when his family moved to Cincinnati.
As a teenager he started working as a amateur female impersonator, and at 19 was a member of the Jewel Box Review - where he took the name Tobi Marsh. He joined just after Dorian Wayne left creating a vacancy. In the early 1960s he was engaged at Club 82 where Tony Midnite was doing the costumes.
Tobi's lover was the 6'5" (1.96m) Yale-educated lawyer Sandy. Sandy liked to say that he was five foot 17 inches. He was a regular in Virginia Prince's FPE organization in New York, where he rarely wore female clothing, but did show photographs of himself so dressed. He was also part of the local bondage community.
Tobi had a part in the 1971 film, The Love Thrill Murders/Sweet Savior with Troy Donahue, as a hair-dresser in drag who is killed. He was also in Devil in High Heels, Grand Illusion, The Bedroom Window 1987.
Tobi did an European tour appearing at Chez Nous in Berlin (where his landlord subjected him to homophobic abuse), Madame Arthur's and Le Carrousel in Paris, but came home disillusioned:
"The local entertainers were resentful of Americans working in their countries. The standard of living was below par for an American. I cancelled my contract and came home."
Tobi retired age 55. John Harvey died aged 74 from complications after a car accident.
Darrell Raynor. A Year Among the Girls. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966. New York: Lancer Books, 1968: 88.
Kate Cummings. Katherine's Diary- the Story of a Transsexual. William Heinemann Australia 1992. Revised and updated 2008: 134, 148, 195-9, 218-9, 221, 224.
R. Kurt Johnson. "An American Drag Queen in West Berlin: The Negotiation of Homosexual Identity, Transgressive Behavior and Social Acceptance in late 1960s and early 1970s West Germany". Sexuality and Culture, 16,2,2012: 187-204.
One presumes that Prince was not informed about Sandy. While male lovers of trans women are mainly straight, in the 1960s Sandy would have been taken as gay for having Tobi as a lover. And into bondage too!
Billie Dodson was raised in the town of El Monte, California which was founded during the 1849 gold rush and is today part Los Angeles County. From the time of his birth his mother was an invalid. He spent his childhood by her side sewing, knitting and crocheting. When she died he stayed with his father doing the cooking, mending and housekeeping, and tending to the younger children.
When Billie left home, he went into vaudeville as a female impersonator making his own costumes. Being feminine came naturally to him, and he met acclaim for his performances.
However he felt obliged to return home to look after his father and step-mother. He hung out a shingle in El Monte as a milliner, and sold hats, corsets, garters etc. all made by himself. His shop became a women's social center where they would talk and talk and drink tea. His creations were sough far and wide. Also at family gatherings Billie would socialize with the women, and avoid the men.
A Los Angeles Times reporter wrote:
"The odd thing about Billie Dodson is that he lacks the offensive and wholesome suggestion that usually lingers about an effeminate man. He is more like a kind-hearted, sensible, cheery woman."
In 1905 Billie married an actress who had newly arrived from Seattle. Two years later Mr Dodson sought and was given a divorce. He married again in 1910. He then returned to the stage with a two-year engagement on the Pantages circuit.
He died at age 38.
"Billie's Way is Feminine". Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1907.
"Was Female Impersonator". Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1914: I-12.
Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: Basic Books, 2006: 19-20.
Hans Crystal performed at the 82 Club in the 1960s and is regarded as one of the great drag performers of that era.
Her departure by surgery was announced in a 1965 issue of Female Mimics, after which she presumably changed her name (Hans not being unisex), and was not heard of again, except that she had a a small part in the 1967 film, She-Man.
Kim was raised in the Bronx, New York. By age 14 he was going out in semi-drag. He took up with the young Billy Schumacher (later to become International Chrysis). They were photographed fooling around outside the Astor in Manhattan when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were staying there, and the picture appeared in a Life Magazine article on teenage delinquents.
The photograph in Life Magazine: Kim with back to camera, Chrysis at front
Kim and Chrysis each left home and shared a tiny apartment in the area that later became New York's SoHo. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Kim had a boyfriend who worked with her to soften her Bronx accent. She got to know New York female impersonators such as Tammy Novak, and performed at Club 82 as a stripper and as a showgirl. Her song was the theme music from A Man and a Woman. She toured North America as a female impersonator.
Kim and Chrysis had uncredited roles in the chorus line in the 1967 contest that became the film, The Queen. In 1968 a photograph of Kim and Chrysis appeared in Female Mimics. By 1969 Kim was being kept by an oil tycoon.
Kim with her mother
She also starting doing photography for Eros Publishing Company, which published Eros, ModeAvantgarde, Hooker and Exposé. When Female Mimics was relaunched in 1973, the first issue featured Kim winning a Los Angeles beauty contest. In 1979 Kim became editor of Female Mimics,which was owned by Jennifer Jordan, one of Lenny Burtman's ex-wives, and the name was changed to International Female Mimics. The transsexual content was increased and eventually explicit photographs were introduced. Kim also became editor of Exotique, a revival of Burtman's pioneering fetish magazine from the 1950s.
Also in 1979 Kim was in Los Angeles doing a photo-shoot when he discovered Sulka in the audience. The next year he put her in the film Dream Lovers, and then after her surgery, in The Transformation of Sulka, 1981, and Sulka's Wedding, 1983. He became a major producer of she-male and fetish porn – spanning 8mm, VHS and DVD. He also made straight porn.
In FMI, 11,1, 1980
++Kim had reverted to male as Ken Olsen. He met and married a woman. Their marriage has lasted: they now have grandchildren.
In 1998 Kim/Ken won an award as Best Fetish Producer. The same year he edited the original run of Exotique in book form. In 2001 he edited The Christy Report, a historical survey of sex and fetish images. He was inducted into Adult Video News (AVN) Hall Of Fame in 2004, the first transgender person to be so.
“I am married to my wife. I am with her. Something I learned from all my years working with clients all over the world: Men and women can both be very fluid in their sexuality. Plus things like certain sexual scenarios can engage a person deeply for a time. Sometimes it’s same-sex activity. Some people stay attracted to one gender or another all their lives. I was with men — when I lived as a woman — who never would have called themselves gay, but they were not unhappy about my extra parts at all. Like I said, back then we did not name things so much. I never thought of any of the things I did as who I was. They were things I liked. Things I did.”
*Not the horse exhibitor. Not Ken Olsen the sound engineer.
James Mills. "The Detective: a good cop fights for law but the deck is stacked against him". Life, 3 Dec 1965: 90d-132. http://bit.ly/1cJ6A0B.
"These are the twins - Kim and Bobbie". Final section in George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.
"Kim Christy". Guys in Drag, 1,4,1977: 3-4.
"Meet your Editor: 'Kim Christy's' Personal Photo Album". Female Mimics International, 11,1, Winter 1980: 6-11. Online.
Kim Christy (ed). Letters to Kim Christy. North Hollywood, Calif: Leoram Productions, 1986.
Kim Christy (ed). The complete reprint of Exotique: the first 36 issues, 1951-1957. Köln: Taschen, 1998.
Kim Christy & John Quinn. The Christy Report. Taschen, 2001. Review.
The Internet Adult Film Database (IAFD) entry on Kim is a bit dubious. See Jim Beaux’ comments. The image supposedly of Kim is actually of Carnal Candy in a 1984 film. It lists Kim’s years active as performer: 1984-2001 – except that Kim never performed in any adult films.
Ms Bob wrote a 3-part history of Female Mimics for TG Forum. Bob lists Kim as appearing in the magazine, but says nothing at all about Kim becoming the editor.
I couldn’t find any photographs of Kim after the early 1970s.
In the Advocate article, Kim says that her aunt and then her mother recognized her in the Life Magazine photograph. As she has her back turned, how could they be sure?
According to the author page in Man into woman, Eric Gilbert Oakley was the son of T. Gilbert Oakley (? - 1953) of the National Association for Mental Health, Chief Consultant to the Pelman Institute (which promoted courses in willpower and mental exercises) and author of books on psychology and feelings of inferiority.
Eric lists his higher education as Skerry’s College (which prepares for civil service exams) and the Glasgow School of Art. However he puts a D.Psy after his name, which presumably was not acquired at either Skerry's or the GSA.
After military service in the Second World War, and six years on the stage, Oakley became editor of the monthly Health Magazine, and wrote more than 60 books. Like his father he wrote about self confidence and psychology. He also wrote about sex. He married and became the father of a daughter.
In 1964 he published Man into woman: the amazing account of a male's change into female, with full psychological and medical case history and personal analysis questionnaire, which purported to be a biography of Juliet Griffiths who had gender surgery in Casablanca in 1950. I have analysed this, and came to the conclusion that it is a clever fraud. It does however portray Griffiths as a pioneer and a star despite her early death, and its implication that you needed lots of class privileges to transition.
During the 1960s Oakley studied female impersonation and decided that he could offer something different. He started doing one-night drag acts under the name of Linda – one-nighters being compatible with his work as a writer.
In 1970 Oakley published Sex change and dress deviation. He followed the usual convention of two
sections: one on Transvestism and the other on Trans-sexuality. He explains that
"Transvestism is a mild form of sex change … and involves not merely a change of clothing but a distinct attitude of mind that expresses a desire to adopt the feminine role in society".
He identifies different types:
Partial Transvestites who dress only on set occasions, which can be planned, designed or spontaneous depending on the strength of the urge.
Permanent Transvestites at work as well as home – a complete and utter compulsion.
Extreme Transvestite who "wishes to have sexual relations with a real girl while living with her as a girl himself".
Those who worship the the opposite sex and wish to be above the carnal desires and activities of men.
The passive homosexual who dresses with the intention of attracting aggressive homosexuals. (Oakley insists that "His identification is not a true one.")
The masochistic cross-dresser who desires a dominant woman to bring out his passive femininity.
In the introduction to the Trans-sexuality section Oakley writes
"The author considers that any man who is prepared to face such hazards is worthy of the greatest possible respect and consideration from everyone involved".
Note that he writes 'man' for trans woman, and he repeatedly refers to the operation as a phallectomy rather than a vaginoplasty - which means that he regards it as a removal rather than a gain. He seems to regard trans-sexuals as a special cases of effeminate men:
"The feminine mind in the male body can produce the image of effeminacy. The degree of femininity will determine his sexual role which will be chosen from three possible alternatives, i.e. the passive (femme) homosexual, the transvestite, or the trans-sexual. Trans-sexual identification with the female embarces not only the feminine mind, but the body as well. Unlike transvestism, this identification with the female is rarely, if ever, acquired. Transvestite and effeminate men are born with a predeliction for feminine habits and characteristics, but the trans-sexual is born with definite physical characteristics which interrect with his mental attitude."
He claims in chapter 12 that at the time of writing
"it is said that at Hammersmith Hospital alone no less than twelve sex-change operations are performed every month".
On the next page he writes
"Trans-sexual males are seldom sought after by homosexuals since they approximate far too closely to the woman who is of course, the sexual 'enemy' of the homosexual male".
Unfortunately he does not stick to this generally true observation elsewhere.
Oakley's typology of trans-sexual personalities is:
Those who are really transvestite but insist that they are trans-sexual. They resist hormone treatment, electrolysis and of course phallectomy.
Those who take hormones but stop short of phallectomy through fear or because of secret sexual pleasure.
The homosexual trans-sexual who is really a glorified transvestite. He is accepted by his followers, i.e. aggressive male homosexuals, as a femme , and is used anally by them.
The dedicated trans-sexual who simply cannot face life as a man and is convinced that his male role is erroneous and unjust.
On the last page of the book Oakley writes:
“From his observations, the author is convinced that the transvestite is far happier than the trans-sexual. Life is by no means so complex, so painful, or so embarrassing for them. The future is not obscured by a mist of hopefulness and doubt. The best of two worlds lies within the transvestite's grasp, for he can change from male to 'female' at will.
The author concludes, therefore , that the sex-change phenomenon is wholly and completely disastrous, and that medical bodies the world over are seriously at fault in encouraging it in any way when other means of therapy are surely at their disposal to help these unfortunate people."
Gilbert Oakley. Man into woman: the amazing account of a male's change into female, with full psychological and medical case history and personal analysis questionnaire. London: Walton Press, 1964.
Gilbert Oakley. Sex change and dress deviation. London: Morntide, 1970.
Desmond Montmorency. The Drag Scene: The Secrets of Female Impersonators. London: Luxor Press, 1970: 130.
The 1970 Oakley and the Montmorency book were both published in 1970. Both books are the same size and shape, both are dominantly yellow and both have a partial title but no author on the spine. One is published by Morntide and the other by Luxor. However both Morntide and Luxor give their address as 50 Alexandria Road, London SW19.
There is no mention at all of Virginia Prince, although the Beaumont Society, the British version of Prince's group, had been founded in 1967. Initially it had very little impact. Also note that while the book came out a year after the Stonewall riots, they too are not even mentioned.
It is not obvious how to read the 1964 Man into woman. Having established that it is not true, we could read it as Oakley’s wish life. Which of course would be in marked contrast to his 1970 rejection of gender surgery. Which of course parallels Prince who wanted surgery in the mid-1950s but later dogmatically told everyone that they should not have it.
The anti-gay, anti surgery platform which is now associated with Prince is found here in Oakley and demonstrates that it was not derived from Prince. Unlike Prince Oakley does not differentiate transvestism from female impersonation, and like Susanna Valenti he was a performer. He seems to think that female impersonators are mainly heterosexual – a very different point of view from that found in Kris Kirk’s Men in Frocks, and a point of view that became very hard to maintain as time went on.
1970 was probably the latest that such ignorant comments about both homosexuals and transsexuals could be published.
Harvey Wilson Goodman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He suffered from tuberculosis from an early age. He was interested in theatre and his father made a makeshift stage for him out of canvas and drapery.
After he graduated from high school in 1930, he quickly made his way to Washington, DC where he was employed as a clerk in the Bureau of Public Health. He also studied music and dance, and built up a female wardrobe. He first appeared as a female impersonator at a dance recital in 1933.
The City Slicker, 1936
He resigned from the Bureau of Public Health in 1934 when he was hired by Club Richmond in New York City, where he adopted the stage name of Harvey Lee. Lee played the part of a female performer in a Warner Bros-Vitaphone movie, The City Slicker. He was billed as the male Jean Harlow.
However in 1936 he was rushed to hospital with a 104-degree fever and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was in a sanatorium until 1941. Harvey then returned to Arkansas and worked as a clerk at an army base.
Word got out about his show-biz experience and he was coaxed to perform, which his drag persona did in 1942 at the Arkansas Ordnance Plant to a capacity crowd of 5000 with two full orchestras. He did three more victory balls. In 1943 he moved to San Francisco and became a performer at Finocchio's night club. In 1945 Harvey acquired a white borzoi (Russian wolfhound) whom he then featured in his act. He toured with the Jewel Box Revue, performed at the My-O-My club in New Orleans and the Moroccan Village in New York, and won first prize for female
impersonation at the 1952 Mummers Parade in Philadelphia.
In 1952 he had another bout of tuberculosis. Until 1957 he worked in clerical positions in New York. Harvey Lee performed on stage in France and Germany, but he returned to clerical work again the next year. In 1964 Lee returned to Finocchio's to be the MC, and then worked sporadically in California. He retired in 1984.
After the 1989 San Francisco earthquake Goodwin returned to Little Rock, where he was honored as a judge of the Miss Gay Arkansas Pageants.
He died at age 81.
Vincent Astor. “The Incomparable Mr. Harvey Lee.” The Triangle Journal, July 1992: 20.
"Biographical Note". Harvey Goodwin Collection, 1913–1992. Center for Arkansas History and Culture. University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas. www.ark-cat.com/browse/fulldetail.aspx?id=1636.
Brock Thompson,. The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2010: 35-8, 61-2
Born of a US father and a German mother, van Crist grew up in Berlin and San Francisco. Carla found work as a female impersonator.
A visit to Harry Benjamin’s office in New York resulted in a suggestion to see Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin. This she did and she obtained work as a receptionist at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. In 1929 and 1930 she was operated on by Kurt Warnekros.
The Institut was destroyed in 1933, and by 1942 she was back in New York, where she made a living coaching young actors in “English diction”, and she also acted in several Off-Broadway productions.
Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 2002: 30,48, 294n53.
Carla is known about only because she wrote a letter to Christine Jorgensen’s parents in 1952. Benjamin was unable to remember her visit. Of course Carla, rather than Otto Spengler is thus Benjamin’s first trans patient. She also pre-dates Lili Elvenes (Elbe) and is perhaps Hirschfeld's second surgical transsexual patient.
Gerardo Virguez, the son of a retired military officer, studied dentistry at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He also performed in nightclubs and discos, sometimes as a travesti, Cris Miró.
He he was discovered and was offered a position as a showgirl at the Tabaris theatre. He was a
woman on and off stage, and the producers said nothing. When it later came out that Cris Miró was not a woman, Cris became the first Argentinian travesti to become a star.
Cris was in the 1991 film, Dios los cría, and La peste, 1992. He was tempted to work in Spain, when he was cast again in a show at the Maipo theatre.
In 1997 he developed medical problems, and he died aged 31.
Herbert Beeson was raised in Summitville, Indiana. At 17 he was working as a clerk in a general store, and helping out three nights a week as a stage hand at the village theater.
A small circus, the Marvelous Lucknows came to town. Herbert took up with Margaret, the slack wire dancer, and joined the troupe. Seven months later, in Texas, Margaret slipped and was hurt, and Herbert practiced in wig and skirt, took over her act as Berta Beeson, and graduated to tight rope. Margaret and Herbert also married.
From 1917-1923 Berta was a featured artist at the Sells-Floto Circus which billed her as M’lle Beeson, and as she was the star they had no other acts performing at the same time. Berta Beeson performed in Vaudeville during the off season.
Ringling Bros, Barnum & Baily Circus (RBBBC) lost their star high wire dancer, Bird Millman in 1923. She was replaced by Berta Beeson who canceled his contract with Sells-Floto. Like Bird she wore a calf-length dress with flounce and fluff, but was now being described as “the Julian Eltinge of the Wire” which implied that her her gender was an open secret.
Berta Beeson, high wire performer, retired in 1936. Herbert Beeson, who became known as Slats continued with the RBBBC as a 24-hour man (advance advertizing before the circus arrived in town), and then in the 1950s as an announcer. He was also on the circus baseball team.
Berends was raised in Zwolle, Overijssel, Netherlands. After a few years of window dresser, she went to Amsterdam and found work in a nightclub as a travestie, and later appeared at Madame Arthur in Amsterdam and Paris.
She had breast augmentation in 1956, and made the transition to regular night clubs, and sang and danced in clubs all over Europe and North Africa. She completed transition to Colette with surgery from Georges Burou in 1971. Two Moroccan gynaecologists certified that she had all the external characteristics of a woman. Three months later, with the help of the noted endocrinologist, Dr O de Vaal, she was able to have her birth certificate re-issued.
“Some people said: the most remarkable fact is that you remained precisely the same person, but now it looks more natural. Indeed, I remained the same. Some transsexuals totally reject their past. They tear apart old photo albums in order not to be reminded by the past. However, I have also lived before my surgery and in some way I was happy too. This is not bothering me too much. I am as I am, I do not impose anything on myself. Sometimes they say: as a woman you have to behave such and such. Nonsense. Even should I have a male characteristic. I don’t know if I have one - then it is like that and that makes me not unhappy.”.
She continued as a performer until she was 48. This gave her the money and the time to take holidays all around the world. Colette then returned to Zwolle, despite the fact that she and her past were known there. At first she opened a beauty salon, but became known for her artistic work with tapestries, for which she has won many awards.
She spent the last 30 years of her life with the same boyfriend, Ton. She died at age 77.
I Am a Woman Now. Michiel van Erp (dir) with April Ashley, Marie-Pierre Pruvot, Colette Berends, Jean Lessenich, Corinne van Tongerloo. Netherlands 80 mins 2011.
Robert Timbrell was from Kingston, Ontario. He was working as a stock broker when he was helped in starting his drag career by Craig Russell in 1972.
Rusty founded The Great Impostors the same year, which initially included Michelle DuBarry, and they concentrated on touring small towns at a time when taking a drag revue into northern Ontario was considered brave and crazy, but they were actually treated as stars.
Rusty also played parts, both male and female, in commercials. He was Jimmy the bartender in the two Craig Russell films, and had a part in the US remake of Queer as Folk.
In 1999 Rusty had a contract with a Vancouver agent and The Great Impostors played 382 stages across the country. He also toured with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. He was proudly gay, and performed in many drag fund-raisers and charity events.
He died of a coronary just after a mufti performance in Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
*Not the Brad Pitt character in Ocean’s 11 and sequels.
Kim, from Flint, Michigan, began working as a gender impersonator at age 15. At 18 she had a nightclub act in San Francisco, and was recruited to perform at the 82 Club in New York, where she was the featured singer. She toured with revues across the US.
She sang well with her own voice. Kim was noted for her impersonation of Judy Garland that she always did when Judy was in the audience. She also did Lena Horne, Bette Davis and the then new star Barbra Streisand.
In 1960 Kim acted in CBS’ Playhouse 90 with James Mason. She was on the cover of the very first issue of Female Mimics, 1963.
Kim appeared in 2 films: The Tiger Makes Out, 1967 where she plays a female impersonator, and No Way to Treat a Lady, 1968, where she plays a woman killed by the Rod Steiger character in drag. There is no indication that her character is trans and certainly was not so in the source novel, but knowledge of the actor has led to such an interpretation.
In later years, Kim returned to Flint. She continued to dress female even when not working.
Noel was born in Oamaru, on New Zealand’s South Island. He married his first wife in his twenties.
In the 1960s he worked during the week at an elegant menswear shop in Queen St, Auckland. At the weekends he was a classy female impersonator, and sang on stage for a full hour. He appeared in clubs and cabarets all over New Zealand and Australia. He was friend of Carman Rupe.
His albums usually had a photograph of himself on drag, but his EPs entitled Party Songs: For Adults Only, were aimed at a straight audience, and included mildly risqué songs, but he also included a little drag/gay humour that the straight listener would miss.
++Revised March 2013 to correct who was behind the 1952 Transvestia.
Edith Ferguson (or Enid Foreman) was a female impersonator, and perhaps also a lawyer, in southern California, who retired in the early 1950s.
Edith advertised in Billboard and Variety magazine offering ‘personalized instruction’ in female impersonation. For a fee of a few hundred dollars she sent 50 or more mimeographed lectures on how to do makeup, how to wear clothes, how to sound and appear like a woman.
Edith, Muriel (later known as Virginia Prince) and other transvestites started meeting at the Long Beach home of Joan Thornton. In 1952, they started a mimegraphed newsletter which they called Transvestia. The
initial subscription list was built around Louise Lawrence’s
address book, and the subscription list for Edith’s
instruction course. However when Prince restarted Transvestia in 1960, Edith and Joan were no longer involved.
She spoke out against transsexual surgery, but hoped that the Christine Jorgensen publicity might ‘redound to the benefit of transvestites in general’.
Darrell Raynor. A Year Among the Girls. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966. New York: Lancer Books, 1968: 105-6.
Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 180-1.
Antonio Auriemma was born in Naples, and was raised in Providence, Rhode Island. In the early days of his career, he worked in Vaudeville as Francis Renault. He got his break replacing Julian Eltinge in a touring version of his Broadway show.
++In 1913 he performed in Atlanta and contested local ordinance banning cross-dressing, to the consternation of the local police.
He made his reputation impersonating the famous actress Lillian Russell, and like her he wore expensive gowns. Renault’s show became famous for his costumes, and each Friday afternoon they would be displayed for ladies to come and see. He also had a great falsetto voice.
In 1924, after a European tour, he opened his own club in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Unlike Julian Eltinge he would wear his female costumes in the street in towns where he was touring. This created publicity for the show, but he was arrested several times, notably in Dallas where a policeman who had seen the show and recognized him, arrested him while he was on his way to Weil’s Department Store to exhibit his $5,000 wardrobe.
Out of costume he was a strong and masculine man, with many male admirers, one of whom was the young Archie Leach before he changed his name to Cary Grant. In his last years, Francis sang at Carnegie Hall billing himself as ‘The Last of the Red Hot Poppas”.
In 1945 he was crippled with polio, and was paralyzed for two years. He overcame this and returned to performing at Carnegie Hall.
Anthony Slide. Great pretenders: a history of female and male impersonation in the performing arts. Lombard, Ill.: Wallace-Homestead Book Co., 160 pp. 1986: 40-1.
Founded in Miami in 1939 by lovers Doc Brenner and Danny Brown, the Jewel Box Revue toured for 30 years and was the best known drag show of its kind in the US.
They preferred the terms ‘feminine impressionists’ and ‘femme mimics’. Although the management and performers were gay, the show was aimed at straight audiences, winning acceptance through comedy. The performers would tell interviewers of wives and girlfriends, but they were largely mythical. Brenner performed in the earlier show, while Brown MC’d. Then they introduced male-impersonators, Mickey Mercer and Tommy Williams, to be MC, an innovation that was copied by drag clubs everywhere. The Revue then went a step further in 1955 hiring the Afro-American Stormé DeLarverieto MC. The Revue, almost uniquely at that time, employed white, black, Latino and native performers. It made an unprecedented tour of the black theater circuit.
Benjamin O’Reilly grew up to become Lea Sonia, Australia’s major female impersonator, in the 1930s.
In Paris he mentored the young Barri Chat.
In 1941 he was the headline star at Sydney’s Tivoli Theatre. He finished his encore with the song, “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone”. He ran across the street, darkened in the wartime brownout and was fatally hit by a tram.
He is featured as a ghost in Alex Harding’s musical, Only Heaven Knows, 1988, about gay life in Sydney.
Laurence Senelick. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 365.
A child who had been abandoned at birth, Rex Coster was named by the couple who adopted him. He was raised in Southend-on-Sea, until 1938 when they moved to Holloway in London, an area that was heavily bombed during the Blitz.
Rex was called up to the RAF in 1942 and was able to join Ralph Reader’s RAF Gang Show. He toured North Africa, Italy and Cyprus putting on shows for the forces. His flight sergeant was Tony Hancock who would become a famous comedian in the 1950s and 1960s. Rex was usually cast as either the leading lady or as a comic vicar. After the war, as there was a popular broadcaster called Sam Costa, Rex took the name Jameson, after the whiskey, to avoid confusion.
He found work in a touring company playing a cockney charlady, a character that he named Gladys Shufflewick when he appeared on BBC radio in 1950. Rex was the first dame comedian to perform in female clothing when on the wireless. He actually arrived, usually by taxi, already dressed and stayed in character. There were very few other comedians doing anything similar, and the act took off. He was usually billed simply as Mrs Shufflewick, and many in the audience were unaware of Rex Jameson, taking Mrs Shufflewick to be a woman.
He did eight seasons at the Windmill Theatre, when as Mrs Shufflewick, he would drink at the Bear and Staff in Charing Cross Road where he developed a friendship with the young Danny La Rue. Mrs Shufflewick played most variety theatres across Britain sharing the bill with most of the stars of the day. However Rex was drinking more and more, and betting on horses, and by 1960 he was bankrupt.
In 1964 Mrs Shufflewick appeared on the LP Look in at the Local recorded live at the Waterman’s Arms on the Isle of Dogs. He also appeared in West End Shows. He also did some pantomime, and a season at Butlins Holiday Camp where he had to constrain the natural bawdiness of his act for the family audience. However he then started working the northern working men clubs where the bawdiness was encouraged. He lived in a run-down flat in Kentish Town where he kept scrap metal in the bath, and was proud of the fact that he had not had a bath in over 25 years.
In 1968 he was mentioned in the first edition of Roger Baker’s history of drag. In 1969 Mrs S was the star of an ‘adult pantomime’ in Brighton called Sinderella, but the police closed it after two nights because of complaints about the material. Also in 1969, Rex met David, a labourer in his 30s who would stay with him until his death. They shared a fondness for drink and gambling. By the early 1970s, Mrs S was mainly performing in gay pubs, especially the Black Cap in Camden and the Vauxhall Tavern in Lambeth. She recorded an LP live at the Black Cap which sold well, but within a few months there were performers who were doing her full act under their own names. Listen to the entire album here.
Patrick Newley (1955 – 2009) became her manager in 1972, and managed to get her back into the West End as a support act to Dorothy Squires. Newley also managed Douglas Byng, and introduced the two of them.
Shuff, as both the actor and the character became known, became a fixture of the thriving gay scene of the 1970s. He gave an interview to Gay News in 1973, and was now open about his own sexuality. He did not seem to understand what the Gay Liberation Front was about, but twice Shuff was on a prominent float in the Gay Pride march. He was also a celebrity judge at Andrew Logan’s Alternate Miss World.
In his 50s, Rex looked over 70. He continued heavily smoking and drinking till the end. In 1983, just before his 59th birthday, he popped out to buy cigarettes and Guinness and dropped dead on the pavement. Over 500 people turned up for his funeral.
Roger Baker. Drag: a history of Female Impersonation on the Stage. London: A Triton Book. 1968: 184-5.
Laurence Senelick. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 250-2.
Patrick Newley. The Amazing Mrs Shufflewick: The Life of Rex Jameson. Third Age Press. 2007.
Not Southend nor Holloway nor Kentish Town list either persona of Shuff among their notable residents on Wikipedia.
Rex’s preferred term for what he did was Dame Comedian. Not female impersonator or drag performer.
Rex’s affectionate term for his lover, David, was ‘Myra’. Nothing to do with any character created by Gore Vidal, the cultural reference was to Myra Hindley (1942 – 2002) the Moors Murderer who finally died in prison.
Born possibly as Hal Wadell in Texarkana, Texas in 1892, or as Ramon Icarez near Chihuahua, Texas in 1898, Ray Bourbon enjoyed embellishing his life story. He claimed that his first lover was the ranch foreman who was subsequently murdered, that Pancho Villa helped his mother at this time, and that he ran guns (in drag) for Pancho Villa, as the mysterious ‘La Senora Diablo’, that he was the illegitimate son of Franz Joseph of Austria and Louisa Bourbon, and that he was a student at the Tulane Medical School in New Orleans.
It does seem that he was in England in 1913 and managed to get small roles in shows in Music Hall. He returned to the US in 1917, and began using the name Ray or Rae Bourbon. He married for the first time, and a son was born in 1918.
Ray may have won a Photoplay contest resulting in work at a Hollywood studio. He had cameos in a variety of silent films, including as the stuntman for Estelle Taylor and a stand in for Clara Bow. He has been identified in some of the Rudolph Valentino pictures, and played an old woman in Pola Negri’s Bella Donna, 1923. As Ramon Icarez he was a ‘fire dancer’ at the opening of the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1923.
In the mid-1920s he was working with Bert Sherry and later toured with the Martin Sisters. By 1932 he was working fulltime as a female impersonator. His performance at Tait’s in San Francisco in 1933 was being broadcast live when the club was raided by the police. He was one of the big names of the Pansy Craze of the last years of Prohibition. He had a small role as a dancer in the film Golddiggers of 1937. He worked at Finocchio’s drag nightclub in San Francisco, and with Mae West in her shows Catherine was Great, 1944, and Diamond Lil, 1948.
After arraignment, 1956 Beverly Hills
In 1956 Rae claimed he had approached Johns Hopkins Hospital to have had a sex change, but was told that it was impossible. He then went to Dr Emerick Szekely, a Hungarian refugee from the Nazis living in Juarez, who had performed the operation. Rae at different times claimed that she had had the operation to avoid cancer, and to avoid local laws against cross-dressing. However he still stood to urinate, and off-stage still lived as man. In a club in West Hollywood in 1956, Rae was billed as ‘not a female impersonator’, and was charged and convicted of impersonating a female.
Rae was also charged with female impersonation in Seattle, El Paso and New Orleans in the next few years. However in Miami she was arrested for impersonating a man.
In the mid-1960s he toured with the Jewel Box Revue. He released dozens of LPs, probably more than any other female impersonator. He toured more than other female impersonators, and for many gay men in the US at that time, Ray Bourbon was the only drag act that they ever saw.
In 1967 his car caught fire in Texas. Rae saved his dogs, and lodged them with Blount’s Pat-A-Zoo. Rae couldn’t pay the bill and A.D. Blount sold them for medical research. Rae was upset by this and wrote to the Governor of Texas and the newspapers about it. In December 1968, two young acquaintances drove Rae’s car to Texas using his money, and, while roughing him up, one of them killed Blount. The two young men were convicted of murder with malice, and Rae, accused of paying the men to kill Blount, was convicted of accomplice to murder. Rae was 75 and in ill health: he had a serious heart attack while awaiting trial. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
He accidentally escaped once when a door was left open, but merely went to sleep around the corner. He obtained a typewriter from his lawyer, and started writing his memoirs. He wrote 300 pages before dying of leukemia complicated by a heart condition.
He was married twice to women, and fathered a son. He had both male and female lovers, and was said to fancy young men, but never referred to himself as gay or bisexual.
George Capozi Jr. ‘Female Impersonator Needn’t Fake Again – Says Surgery Made Him a Her’. New York Journal America. May 28, 1956. On the back of the LP sleeve to Let Me Tell You About My Operation. Online at www.coolcatdaddy.com/bourbon-doc-operat-ja.jpg.
Don Romesburg. Ray Bourbon : a queer sort of biography. PhD University of Colorado. 2000.
Randy A. Riddle. Don't Call Me Madam: The Life And Work Of Ray Bourbon. www.coolcatdaddy.com/bourbon.html. Includes discography, and a list of possible films.
Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 86, 89.
. New York: Regiment Publications. 95 pp 1971: 84-5. Online at: 
Lombard, Ill.: Wallace-Homestead Book Co., 160 pp. 1986: 40-1.
. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 365.
. London: A Triton Book. 1968: 184-5.
. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 250-2.
. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 86, 89.
