Barbara de Lamere previously known as Bunny Eisenhower

Several trans histories tell us that Bunny Eisenhower and Lee Brewster founded the Queens' Liberation Front in 1970, and that they worked with Sylvia Rivera. We know quite a lot about Lee Brewster, but who was Bunny?  Nobody seems to have dug into this question.     David Kaufman's Ridiculous!: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam mentions her several times in that she was a minor actor in the plays considered in the book.   However Arthur David Kahn's The Many Faces of Gay contains a fairly detailed biography of Bunny.  This was published in 1997 and nobody seems to have noticed.  Kaufman has details that Kahn does not.   Putting them together we get the account below.

++ Original September 2015, revised March 2021 after being informed by her brother that "Esther" was really Enid Dame, the noted poet. 

----------

Eddie Dame (1940 - )  began cross-dressing at age 3, but usually only when the parents were away. The family regarded him as effeminate, and called him 'Butch' to toughen him up. Cousins slapped him around, to the same end. By age 13 he had started drinking, as did most of the family. Eddie's sisters helped him with makeup, and Nellie, the elder, introduced him to her fiancé with the comment: "my brother wears my clothes". However the rest of the family played a game of denial.

Anticipating being drafted Eddie volunteered for the US Air Force in 1959, where he entered into a relationship with Larry. From 1963, the year that they completed service, to 1967, they lived as a couple in New York. Larry refused to escort Eddie when he was cross-dressed. In 1967 Larry, announcing that he wanted children, married a woman. Eddie was the best man, and Eddie and Larry had sex the night before, as they continued to do occasionally until 1982 when Larry was seriously ill. Eddie never heard from him again.

After the wedding, Eddie went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and bought a full set of female clothing. Back in New York Eddie started going out dressed female.

In 1968 he joined Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and had a part in When Queens Collide. The name Inez Bunny Eisenhower was first proposed for cis actress Regina Hirsch, without her approval, and both names were listed for her in the flyer for Jack Smith's film Big Hotel. However she settled on the nom d'etage of Lola Pashalinski by the time that she was in Bill Vehr's Whores of Babylon. By the time of the production of Ludlam's Turds in Hell, 1969 the name had been assigned to Eddie.

He took up with Esther Enid Jacobs, the daughter of Jewish radical labor activists in Pennsylvania.  She was active in a Communist anti-war group, had had lesbian affairs and was okay with his transvestity, however she felt that the group would not be, so she left the group. Enid was not accepted by the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, so Eddie gave up acting. Eddie's father died in 1970, and later Eddie and Enid were married in a Unitarian Church, a second marriage for both of them. His mother came, but was already drunk.

Bunny and activist Lee Brewster founded the Queens' Liberation Front in 1970. They campaigned successfully to de-criminalize cross-dressing in New York. Previously a bar or club could be closed and patrons arrested, simply because a single person, deemed to be cross-dressed, was present.

Enid & Bunny in 1973 gay parade.   p8 Drag Magazine 3.11

Eddie and Enid stayed married for seven years. When Eddie let his hair grow and grew a beard, Enid thought that his cross-dressing would stop, but he continued with a scarf to hide his beard. 

In 1977, Eddie got a position as a proof-reader in a law firm. The next year he and Enid divorced.

Eddie now considered the possibility of transition. A therapist provided a reference to an electrologist and an endocrinologist. She came out at work after speaking up when the supervisor made comments about transsexuals. Word spread though the firm, and as Eddie became increasingly androgynous, colleagues would stop by her office to see 'the company freak'. Outside Eddie was taken as a woman, but at work was still addressed as a man. She was unnerved by this, developed ulcers and thought of suicide. After a bad experience with a Catholic family values psychologist, Eddie was referred to a therapist who was positive and helpful. She gave up drinking at home and worked overtime to accumulate savings for the operation, which, as Barbara de Lamere, she achieved in 1982. 

Barbara was able to retain her job as a proof-reader. She became active in gay organizations. In 1990, the Gay Veterans Association was excluded from the Veterans Day Parade and Barbara joined the GVA. She became a member of the board and editor of the newsletter. In 1993 she was arrested while marching in the unofficial St Patrick's Day Parade with the Irish and Lesbian Gay Organization.

• Jayne County & Rupert Smith. Man Enough to Be a Woman. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995: 64.
  
• Arthur David Kahn. The Many Faces of Gay: Activists Who Are Changing the Nation. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1997: 3, 15-20, 266-9.
  
• David Kaufman. Ridiculous!: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam. Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002: 95, 98, 107,119.
  
• Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008: 87.   2nd edition, 2017:111. 
  

Enid Dame

Enid Dame become known as a poet, gained a PhD in English from Rutgers University in 1983, and taught there and at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  Her third husband was the poet Donald Lev, but she retained her second husband's surname.  The two edited Home Planet News, a literary review.  Enid's poetry often expanded the Torah from a midrash and feminist perspective, for example by invoking the personae of Lilith and Eve. 

Enid died in December 2003.  The Academy of American Poets Prize bestows the Enid Dame Memorial Poetry Prize for the best poem by an undergraduate.

• Burt Kimmelman.  "The Historical Imperative in Contemporary Jewish American Poetry: Enid Dame, Michael Heller, and Nikki Stiller".  Shofar:  An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 21,2, Fall 2002: 103-110. 
• "Enid Sue Jacobs Dame".  Legacy, The New York Times, Jan 9, 2004.  Online.  
• "Enid Dame (1940?- ) Jewish American". In Linda Cullum (ed).  Contemporary American Ethnic Poets: Lives: 91.  Greenwood, 2004.
• "Honoring Enid Dame".  Friends of Rutgers English, Spring Summer 2005.  Online.  
• Madeline Tiger & DeDe Jacobs-Komisar.  "How Enid Dame Led Us Beyond Paradigms".  Bridges, 16,1, Spring 2011: 200-7.  

EN.Wikipedia     Jewish Women's Archive    Penny's Poetry Pages    Amazon      

___________________________________________________________

Kahn refers to Enid as Esther, which I initially followed until corrected by her brother.  

The following is found on p98 of Kaufman's book:

 A flyer about the cast of a theatrical production by custom may take liberties with the truth.   Either way I could not see how to fit in the work in Chicago and Los Angeles between the marriages to Larry and to Enid.

Slights

In Stryker’s book the only mention is that “drag queen Lee Brewster and heterosexual transvestite Bunny Eisenhower” founded the Queens Liberation Front.  As you see above, to simply describe Eddie/Bunny/Barbara as a ‘heterosexual transvestite’ raises a lot of difficulties.  ++For the second edition of her book, Stryker could not be bothered to add the extra information about her transition.

Wikipedia, Contemporary American Ethnic Poets: Lives, etc, etc totally ignore Enid's first two marriages and her being in a Communist group, simply describe Donald Lev as her husband, not as her third husband, and do not explain why her surname is 'Dame".  

Wilhelmina Ross (? - 1991 ) performer

Tish Gervais (who many years later reverted to being Brian Belovich) was a friend when Wilhelmina chose her name, ‘Wilhelmina’ from a modelling agency active at that time and ‘Ross’ from the singer Diana Ross. Wilhelmina was part African American and part Cherokee, and was already living fulltime as female.

In 1968 Wilhelmina became involved in the Jackie Curtis play Amerika Cleopatra. There was a contretemps with Alexis del Lago who had created a special dress for Jackie, but it was Wilhelmina who was wearing it on stage. Wilhelmina was also involved in Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company.

Jimmy Camicia founded the Hot Peaches acting troupe in 1972, with drag as a major component. Marsha P Johnson was an early recruit. Wilhelmina joined in 1973. They were skeptical about the Warhol Factory scene and satirized it as The Magic Hype drag show, starring the celebrity-obsessed sell-out Randy Whorehall. In another play, Wilhelmina played drag queen superstar Belladella Bosom with the line:

“I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, it’s my own game”. 

In 1974 Wilhelmina was one of the trans women recruited, mainly from the Gilded Grape, for the Andy Warhol / Luciano Anselmino Ladies and Gentlemen Project. Anselmino paid Warhol $900,000 for 105 paintings. However Warhol took more than 500 polaroids of 19 sitters, paying each of them only $50. This resulted in 268 canvases. Wilhelmina had the biggest presence. She was in 52 Polaroids and 73 of the paintings. The paintings were exhibited in Italy the next year, but none of the sitters were identified.

The next year Wilhelmina had a bit part in the pro-prostitution film, The Happy Hooker.

Armitstead quotes Jimmy Camicia that Wilhelmina

“had a very bad ending, addicted to crack cocaine and sleeping on the streets. She didn’t want to go on welfare and pushed and pushed until she got a job, but they gave her a really hard time and finally she couldn’t take it any more.”

Some of the 1974 pictures were shown in 1997 at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, and Camicia came forward to identify Wilhelmina. The full collection was exhibited in Pittsburgh, London and elsewhere in 2018-20. This time the sitters were identified, following careful research.

• Craig B Highberger. Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis. Penguin, 2005: 7, 88
• Jonathan Katz. “From Warhol to Mapplethorpe: Postmodernity in two Acts”. In Patricia Hickson (ed). Warhol & Mapplethorpe: Guise & Dolls. Yale University Press, 2015: 23-4, 36, 65-7.
• Brian Belovitch. Trans Figured: My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man. Skyhorse Publishing, 2018: 78. 
• Elizabeth Hoover. “Andy Warhol's Trans Subjects Finally Get Named”. PaperMag, 24 August 2018. Online. 
• Claire Armitstead. “'Andy allowed everyone to be beautiful': Warhol’s unseen drag queens”. The Observer, 8 Mar 2010. Online.

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Jayne County (1947 - ) Part II: New York City

Part I: Atlanta
Part II: New York City
Part III:  London and Berlin

After a spell living at the YMCA, Wayne met the aspiring photographer Leee Childers (1945 - 2014) who invited him to share a coldwater walkup on 13^th St. Wayne hung out at the Sewer club on West 18^th St where he encountered members of Charles Ludlum's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and also Holly Woodlawn, a friend of Tammy Novak. Leee had already photographed Holly and Tammy.

On the night of June 27 1969 Wayne was on his way to the Stonewall when he met Miss Peaches and Marsha P Johnson and realized that a riot was in progress.  He joined an impromptu march up and down Christopher Street shouting "Gay Power!".

Through Leee, Wayne came to know Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, and the Andy Warhol crowd. After falling out with Warhol's screenwriter, John Vaccaro, Jackie moved into Leee's flat. Shortly afterwards, Holly also moved in. After Leee and Wayne had been to Woodstock, Wayne started going to Max's Kansas City at 213 Park Avenue.

Wayne's first on-stage performance was in Jackie Curtis' Femme Fatal, a women-in-prison play.  He wanted a stage name and took Wayne County, from where Detroit is located, in homage to Iggy and the Stooges. He was cast as a psychotic southern lesbian. Patti Smith played a mafia dyke, and Bunny Eisenhower was also in it.

Wayne wrote a play World – Birth of a Nation that had lots of sex and fetishes in it. It was produced, and one of the stars was Cherry Vanilla. Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey came to the opening night, and The Village Voice gave it a rave review.

Andy Warhol had been taping private telephone conversations, and he arranged for them to be transcribed and arranged into a play, that became called Pork. Wayne was to play a character based on Warhol Superstar Viva. The play got a big write-up in The New York Times, and it was taken to England, where it opened, August 1971, at the Roundhouse in Camden Town. This was the same time as the Oz Magazine trial for obscenity. The reviews in the British Press were completely negative, but crowds came anyway. Rod Stewart and Ron Wood came more than once. As did David and Angie Bowie.

Back in New York Wayne got a gig as the house DJ at Max's Kansas City, and did some more theatre. While playing a transvestite revolutionary in a play, Wayne thought about forming a band, which became Queen Elizabeth, which took a lot of ideas from the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Jackie Curtis, and put them to music. They played with the New York Dolls and at Max's. David Bowie's manager Tony Defries put Wayne on a retainer, but never recorded the band.

In October 1973 Wayne was on the cover of Melody Maker, and was in David Bowie's 1980 Floor Show with Amanda Lear and Marianne Faithful. In 1974 Wayne started doing shows at the 82 Club.


At this time Wayne read Canary Conn's autobiography, and felt that she wanted to be more transsexual than drag queen. She was referred to Eugene/Jeanne Hoff (who herself was starting transition) at what had been the Harry Benjamin practice. Hoff advised

"You should only get a sex change if you are one hundred and twenty five per cent sure about it. If you have the least hesitation about it, don't do it".(p100)

After starting on female hormones, early in 1976, Wayne resumed being the DJ at Max's, and working with the new band, The Back Street Boys, and wrote the song 'Man Enough to be a Woman'. A proposed album with ESP records fell through, but they were included on the compilation album Max's Kansas City: New York New Wave.

While mainly a Max's performer, Wayne did a gig at the competing nightclub, CBGBs where she was heckled by ex-wrestler Dick Manitoba, singer in the band, The Dictators, shouting homophobic taunts.  Manitoba then climbed on the stage holding a beer-mug, and County hit him with the microphone stand.   County cut his hair short and wore a false beard, but was arrested for assault some days later and spent one night in jail.   Other musicians and performers including the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, The New York Dolls, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, Divine put on a benefit to meet County’s legal costs.  Three times Manitoba failed to show in court and therefore the charges were dropped.

Leee Childers was working in London, and phoned that Wayne should be also.

• Viviane K.Namaste. " 'A Gang of Trannies': Gender Discourse and Punk Culture". Chp 4 in Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 
• Zagria. "'A Gang of Trannies': Gender Discourse and Punk Culture – a review of the chapter by Viviane Namaste". Gender Variance in the Arts, 05 March 2011. http://gvarts.blogspot.ca/2011/03/gang-of-trannies-gender-discourse-and.html

______________________________________________________________________

Viviane Namaste doesn't seem to have a feel for how trans and punk interact.    She takes the Dick Manitoba episode and attempts to deform it to fit her theoretical position.  This attempt is not helped by her getting most of the facts wrong, nor by her disinterest: "Yet I remain uninterested in a type of historical inquiry that would establish the presence of MTF transsexuals in punk culture”.

Jayne County's account of Stonewall has been added as a comment to that posting. 

Song by Wayne County

Jayne County, The Lower East Side Biography Project, excerpt from 28 minute biography from Steve Zehentner on Vimeo.

Minette (1928 – 2001) performer.

Jacques Minette was born in Manhattan to visiting French parents, and raised in Boston. A child performer, her career as a female impersonator dates from the 1940s. As Minette she played all the big drag clubs of the period.

She, and most drag performers, were driven out of Boston in 1948 when Archbishop Cushing banned them. In New York she was a regular at 82 Club. She put out an LP, Come to Me at Tea-Time, 1968, and was a guest singer in the seminal film, The Queen, 1968, hosted by Jack Doroshow (Sabrina). She was a regular in Avery Willard’s Ava-Graph films, and also a member of the Ridiculous Theatre Company. She also worked with the underground film director, Andy Milligan, even to the point of sewing dresses when he opened a dress shop.

She is a connecting link from the drag shows in the days of vaudeville and burlesque, through the avant-garde of the 1960s to the end of the 20^th century. However she says that she made more money as a sex worker than as a singer.

She was an activist in the early Gay Liberation movement in New York. Although she was non-op, she normally wore female clothing off-stage as well as on, and preferred female pronouns for herself. She was also a musicologist and gay historian.  She died at age 73.

• Minette, edited by Steven Watson. Recollections of a part-time Lady. New York: Flower-Beneath-the-Foot Press 72 pp 1979. Autobiography. Photocopy edition.
• Stephen Holt. “Passing of a part-time lady: Memorial for a legendary drag queen Minette”. New York Blade. Feb 15, 2002. Online at www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-minette.html.
• Avery Willard. Female Impersonation. New York: Regiment Publications. 95 pp 1971: 18-21. Online at: www.queermusicheritage.us/fem-willard6.html.
• F. Michael Moore. Drag!: Male and Female Impersonators on Stage, Screen, and Television : an Illustrated World History. McFarland, 1994: 185-6. 
• Jimmy McDonough. The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan. A Cappella, 2001: 36, 183, 341.
• Adrian Milton (dir). Minette: Portrait of a Part-Time Lady. With Minette. US 27 mins 2006.

IMDB    

____________________________________________________________

IMDB is totally deficient and has hardly anything of her filmography.

Here is an attempt at her filmography based mainly on F. Michael Moore.

Speakeasy Queen, 195?, Avery Willard (dir)
Fashions of the Twenties, 1958,  Avery Willard (dir)
The Last of the Worthingtons, 1961.  Avery Willard (dir)
Magic Music Hall, 1961.   Avery Willard (dir)
The Dead Sister's Secret, 1962.   Avery Willard (dir)
Variety, 1963.  Avery Willard (dir)
If Ads Were True, 1963.  Avery Willard (dir)
Compass Rose, 1967, Andy Milligan (dir)  IMDB
Flaming Twenties, 1968.  With Mario Montez.  Avery Willard (dir)



 

Mario Montez (1935 - 2013) underground film actor

++updated March 2014

René Rivera was a Puerto Rican New Yorker, born 1935, a drag performer, with a day job as a postal worker or maybe as shipping clerk, who appeared in many New York under-ground films and avant-garde plays in the period 1963-6, working with the seminal directors of the genre: Jack Smith, Ron Rice, Bill Vehr, Charles Ludlam, Avery Willard and Andy Warhol. He designed and sewed most of his costumes, and often those of his co-actors.

He was cast-listed as Dolores Flores in Flaming Creatures, 1963, his debut, an underground film of an extended party on the roof of the Windsor cinema in New York's Lower East Side with lots of drag and nudity, and where Flores dances a fandango. The film became famous when New York City police seized the print at the premier.

He then became Mario Montez in homage to the 1940s film star, Maria Montez. Mario's characters were all much alike: flamboyant and narcissistic, and as the milieu was one where acting per se was suspect, Mario mainly played Mario - no matter the character's name. The distinction observed between cross-acting and androgynous characters loses its meaning in these films.

The only film where Mario is actually stated to be a 'man' is in Warhol's Screen Test Number 2, 1965, with Salvador Dalí and Lou Reed, where he is confronted about his gender and must admit that he is male, but he does so, he says, only because he is a woman. This was redone the next year on stage by the Ridiculous Theatre Company, again with Montez.

Mario was a guest performer singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" in the seminal film The Queen, 1968, hosted by Jack Doroshow (Sabrina).

In  1977, René moved to Orlando, Florida where he worked in clerical jobs.   In 2006 he was featured in a documentary about filmmaker Jack Smith.  In the last few years of his life he again appeared in avant-garde films, and was honored:  March 2010, Montez was honored by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race; February 2012, Montez was honored with the Special Teddy Award 2012 at the Berlinale for her outstanding role in underground film history.

He died of a stroke in 2013, aged 78. 

• Avery Willard. Female Impersonation. New York: Regiment Publications. 95 pp 1971: 11-15. Online at: www.queermusicheritage.us/fem-willard4.html.
• “Mario Montez”. WarholStars. www.warholstars.org/warholfilm/warhol5.html.

EN.WIKIPEDIA   

A female-impersonator impersonator

Penny Arcade is the stage name of Susana Ventura (1950 - ), performance artist and playwright. She has worked with many female impersonators and transgender actors. She performed with the Ridiculous Theater Company with Charles Ludlam, in the Jackie Curtis play Femme Fatal, and was in Women in Revolt, 1972, with Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn. She worked with Jack Smith, and was a friend of Quentin Crisp with whom she did a performance piece.

Her major drag performance is Margo Howard-Howard (1935- 1988 ) born Robert Hesse a New York drag artist who describes his adventures as a transy hooker in 1950s and 1960s New York, and his encounters with James Dean, the Windsors and Truman Capote. He was kept by a bigshot heroin dealer for four years, and after escaping the dealer and his drug addiction he met Judy Garland, Andy Warhol, Jackie Curtis, Tallulah Bankhead, Madonna and Elizabeth Windsor. He published his memoirs in 1988 as if an autobiography shortly before dying. The copyright page says: "This is a fictionalized memoir".

Most reviewers did not realize that Penny Arcade was performing Howard-Howard in her act, and took the autobiography at face value.

It is not known who posed as Margo in the photographs for the book, but here he is with Penny.

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

*Not Margo Howard, aka ‘Dear Prudence’, the daughter of ‘Ann Landers’.

• Margo Howard-Howard with Abbe Michaels. I was a White Slave in Harlem. Four Walls Eight Windows. 1988. Reissued in 1991 with an Introduction by Quentin Crisp.
• “Margo Howard-Howard”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Howard-Howard.
• ·http://pennyarcadenyc.blogspot.com.
• www.pennyarcade.tv.