Rachel Harlow (1948–) pageant winner, model, nightclub hostess, restaurateur

See also: Flawless Sabrina, Rachel Harlow and 'The Queen'


Richard Finocchio was raised in South Philadelphia, and bullied at school for being too pretty. A friend of the family was a gay man who introduced young Finocchio to the gay subculture, where acceptance was found.

Finocchio started winning drag contests. The Hotel Philadelphia (now demolished) at Broad and Vine Streets was the site of the annual Miss Philadelphia contest. The contest was organized by Sabrina (Jack Doroshow). The big winner in 1967 was Finocchio using the name Harlow (in homage to Jean Harlow, the 1930s movie star). Harlow did a few times visit The Stonewall Inn when in New York, but preferred the straight uptown scene.

Harlow won the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant held in New York in 1967 (again organized by Sabrina). This was filmed, and released as The Queen, 1968. The contestants are shown chatting in their hotel rooms, discussing how they were not called in the draft, their boyfriends, why they would never have a sex change. Harlow throws a fit because he does not have a suitable wig (although her own hair is quite feminine enough). The other standout among the contestants is Miss Manhattan (Crystal LaBeija, who later founded the House of LaBeija) who stages a tantrum when Harlow wins. The film includes shots of only Harlow arriving and departing, and on stage she gets longer and better-lit close-ups than the other contestants.

She went to Cannes International Film Festival with the film and was a center of attention. David Bowie, in his androgynous phase, cited her influence. A few other minor film roles followed, and, especially in Philadelphia, she became a night-life personality. Bar owner Stanley Rosenbleeth opened Harlow's in the Old City area in 1970, with Rachel as hostess. The place was an immediate sensation. A short time later, a second Harlow's was opened in Atlantic City. There were also interviews, endorsements, modeling jobs and television appearances.

Rachel Harlow completed gender correction in 1972.

The Philadelphia disco-nightclub was a place that attracted celebrities, and one person who came was John B. Kelly Jr., brother of Grace Kelly, film star and Monaco princess. In his own right Kelly was an accomplished rower, a four-time Olympian, and an Olympic medal winner. He was also a businessman and was 12 years on Philadelphia council. He separated from his first wife in 1969. In 1975 he began a well-publicized affair with Rachel. He ran to be the Democratic candidate but his mother publicly and financially supported his opponent. This combined with the publicity over his affair led to his dropping out. He claimed that he intended to marry Rachel, but a year later, after his mother threatened to disinherit him, he ended the relationship.

Rachel was having problems finding her identity. She dropped out of the night-life business and the gay subculture. She did continue to work as a model in New York, but avoided publicity.

"I was burned out. I was tired of being on all the time. I began to dread meeting new people, having to talk about my life.  Even now, the only way I can talk about my life is to think of it as just a story. It's as if it all happened to somebody else, and I'm just telling about it."

One night in 1979, she and a woman friend stopped for a drink in a small bistro, got into conversation with two men, and a year later Rachel and Gerard Billebault were married. On the wedding day:

“I came out of my mother's South Philadelphia house and there were 500 to 600 people waiting in the street for me to leave the house. It wasn't the neighbors, it was the neighborhood. I turned to my mother and said `Look mom, it's all the neighbors - I guess they have forgotten, too' ''.

Rachel in 1989

Billebault was a chef and had founded a bakery. After a trip to Paris Mr & Mrs Billebault opened
Harlow's, a restaurant, in 1988, with Mrs Billebault as the hostess.

However later both the marriage and the restaurant failed.   They were divorced in 1993.   Rachel has stayed out of the news since.

• Frank Simon (dir). The Queen. Hosted by Jack Doroshow (Sabrina), with Rachel Harlow Crystal Labeija, International Chrysis, Kim Christy. US 68 mins 1968.
  
• Arthur H. Lewis. Those Philadelphia Kellys, With a Touch of Grace. William Morrow, 1977: 175-7, 233-5, 249.
  
• John Carr. "Different, Yet The Same: Philadelphia's Famous Transsexual Started Life As Richard Finocchio, But Became Famous As Rachel Harlow. After Years Of Shunning Publicity, She's Back In The Spotlight. Her Restaurant Is Harlow's - And She's Still Rachel". Philly.com, April 18, 1989.
  
• William Grimes. "'The Queen' on the Runway Again". The New York Times, March 27, 1993. www.nytimes.com/1993/03/27/movies/the-queen-on-the-runway-again.html.
  
• Martin B Duberman. Stonewall. New York: Dutton, c1993. New York: Plume, 1994: 186.
  
• April Adamson. "It's Harlow! City's Best-known Transsexual Recalls Her Rise From S. Philly To A Life Of Glitz And Glamor". Philly.com, November 16, 1998.
  
• Thom Nickels. Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia. Arcadia Publishing, 2002: 37, 52, 56.
  
• Marc Stein. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972. Temple University Press, 2004: 81-2, 269.
  
• Wendy Leigh. True Grace: The Life and Death of an American Princess. New York: St Martin’s Press 307 pp 2007: 9, 219-20.
  
• Gail Gerber & Tom Lisanti. Trippin' with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2009: 81-4.
  

EN.WIKIPEDIA(John B Kelly)     IMDB
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There was a famous nightclub in San Francisco owned by another Finocchio.   There is no evidence of them being relatives.

John B Kelly, Jr, died in 1985 at age 57 of a heart attack.  His mother lived till 1990.  So, as fate would have it, he didn't inherit after all.

The IMDB, entry for a long time, was in Rachel’s boy name.  In fact, in the cast list for The Queen, it said: “Richard Finnochio as Harlow” rather than "Harlow as Herself".   It now says Rachel Harlow plays Harlow (as Richard Finnochio)

Kim Christy (1950 - ) performer, editor, adult film producer

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, Mode Avantgarde, 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.
  
• Christopher Harrity. "Kim Christy's Lost World". The Advocate, February 12 2011.http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/photography/2011/02/12/kim-christys-lost-world.
  
• Ms Bob. "Female Mimics Magazine — Part 1, The Early Years". TG Forum, Jan 16, 2012. www.tgforum.com/wordpress/index.php/female-mimics-magazine-part-1-the-early-years.
  
• Jim Beaux. "Leonard Burtman, 1921 – 1994", "Jennifer Jordan 1938 - ????", "Kim Christy" The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, May 2013. http://www.hungdevils.com/index.php?/topic/18134-the-transsexual-erotica-archive-of-magazines-and-films-we-need-your-help/page-2.
  
• www.kimchristy.com.
  

IMDB   IAFD
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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?

International Chrysis (1951 – 1990) performer.

Revised January 2014.

Billy Schumacher was raised in Brooklyn. A performer noted for her beauty, Billy became Chrysis from the age of twelve, and was soon entering pageants and performing. She took up with Kim Christy. They shared an apartment in Manahattan below Houston Street. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman, who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Chrysis and Kim appeared together in Female Mimics.  They had uncredited mufti cameos in the chorus line of the film, The Queen, 1968.

By the mid-70s Chrysis was a drag celebrity, and had performed at the Jewel Box Review and other major venues, including in Europe, especially Berlin and she was a long-time friend of Salvador Dali.   In 1976 she was on the cover of Whitehouse, the UK magazine named antagonistically after the anti-porn crusader. Despite the claim on the cover that "This Woman is a Man", that was the first time that an out trans woman was on a magazine cover.

In 1982 she was the woman in the Van Halen video to their cover of "(Oh) Pretty Woman".  She reveals herself herself as a non-standard women by taking off her wig.  It played a few times on MTV but was pulled after complaints about the non-consensual fondling by little people.



Many accounts mention that she was a sexual top with the New Jersey college boys that she liked to pick up.

She headlined in Jesus Chrysis Superstar and The Last temptation of Chrysis. She was in the drag acting troupe, Hot Peaches, was to be found at the Pyramid Club and performed at Wigstock.

Her best-known movie role was as a witness to be eliminated in Q & A, which was released in 1990, a month after she died, at age 39, from cancer caused by the seepage of silicon from her breasts. Her friend, the singer Pete Burns, named one of his groups, International Chrysis, after her.

The documentary Split was actually proposed by Chrysis herself, but not completed until after her death.

*Not the powerboat racer.

• "This is Chrysis". In George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.  
• Ellen Fisher Turk & Andrew Weeks (dir). Split: William to Chrysis: Portrait of a Drag Queen. Scr: Dan Chayefshy. US 60 mins 1992. Special Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
• Laurence Senelick. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 433.
• “International Chrysis”. Endless Night.  Online. 
• Jim Beaux.  "International Chrysis".   The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, 05 August 2013.  

EN.WIKIPEDIA       IMDB    FACEBOOK      BACKINTHEGAYS    

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Jim Beaux' article contains: "Kim Christy's commentary points out that when she was in hospital dying, she hated the fact that the staff used her male name. She had a couple of roles where she portrayed a woman, who at the end would pull her hair off to reveal a man, and she disliked the endings both times."   This raises the question: what was her female name, as opposed to her performance name?  As with Sir Lady Java, we have a male name and a performance name.  But the female name, the one that was presumably on her driving licence and tax return, that is, her real name, remains unknown.

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    

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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)



 

Flawless Sabrina, Rachel Harlow and 'The Queen'

Jack Doroshow (1939 -  2017) Drag Name: Flawless Sabrina. Drag performer and organizer of pageants from Philadelphia. Through his company, The Nationals Academy, Jack organized 46 pageants a year from 1959-1967. As local laws almost always prohibited cross-dressing, he would meet with officials and propose a charitable donation, and in return the town would pass a variance to permit the pageant. Usually the town officials did not understand that local people would be performing. The 1967 finals held in New York was a much bigger affair. The Muscular Dystrophy Association was announced as the charity, and Lady Bird Johnson, the President’s wife, and Robert Kennedy were initially co-sponsors, but quickly dropped out as the nature of the event became clearer.

The event was filmed as The Queen, 1968, which was a sensation at the Cannes International Film Festival. On this basis Jack was hired as special advisor on Midnight Cowboy, 1969, and Myra Breckinridge, 1970. He played a gay mufti part in the thriller, The Anderson Tapes, 1971.

The 2002 short film, Between Two Worlds, is mainly about him, and he appears in the 2008 documentary about the transgender rock singer, Lisa Jackson.

See also a longer article on Rachel Harlow.

Rachel Harlow (1948 - ). Born Richard Finocchio in Philadelphia, aka Rachel Billeboult. In 1967 Rachel was a very passable female impersonator, described as a 'natural wonder’, who always won the drag contests she entered, and she became briefly famous in the film, The Queen, 1968.

The contestants are shown chatting in their hotel rooms, discussing how they were not called in the draft, their boyfriends, why they would never have a sex change. Richard throws a fit because he does not have a suitable wig (although her own hair is quite feminine enough). The film includes shots of only Richard (as male as he gets) arriving and departing, and Richard, as Harlow on stage, gets longer and better-lit close-ups than the other contestants. She went to Cannes International Film Festival with the film and was a center of attention. David Bowie, in his androgynous phase, cited her influence.

She transitioned in 1972. In later years she was active running nights clubs, including Harlow’s at 22^nd and Market, and in local television in Philadelphia.

For a long while that was all the public knowledge about Rachel. Then Wendy Leigh published her biography of Grace Kelly, and included two pages on Rachel, who had an affair with John B. Kelly, the brother of Grace, who would have married her if his mother had not threatened to disinherit him.


Crystal Labeija (? - ? ). Crystal was the other standout among the contestants in The Queen, under the title, Miss Manhattan. She threw a tantrum at the end after losing to Rachel Harlow.

She was the founder of the New York House of LaBeija in 1972, which in turn inspired others to declare Houses, sometimes named after themselves – e.g House of Corey after Dorian Corey, sometimes named after established fashion houses such as Chanel or St Laurent. Crystal Labeija is discussed, but does not appear in the 1990 film, Paris is Burning.



The young Billy Schumacher, who will later become the famous International Chrysis, and the young Kim Christy are in the chorus line, but are not identified.
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• Frank Simon (dir). The Queen. Hosted by Jack Doroshow (Sabrina). US 68 mins 1968.
• Gazelle. “Flawless Sabrina”. The Blitz Kids. www.geocities.com/le_beat_route/flawlesssabrina.html.
• William Grimes. “ ‘The Queen’ on the Runway Again”. The New York Times. March 27, 1993. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5D71530F934A15750C0A965958260
• Martin B Duberman. Stonewall. New York : Dutton, c1993. New York: Plume, 1994: 186.
• Wendy Leigh. True Grace: The Life and Death of an American Princess. New York: St Martin’s Press 307 pp 2007: 9,219-20.
• Gary Morris. " 'There was no before!': The Queen". Bright Lights Film Journal. Sept 1996.http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/17/08b_queen.html

The film:

(note: Rachel is listed under her male name.   This is still the case in IMDB.)