Rosita de la Plata (187? - ? ) female impersonator

In the 1890s and the first few years of the 20th century, it was a lot more difficult to proceed down the transgender path.   Many settled just for stage performance.   The person described here, a porteña  (a resident of Buenos Aires) for whom we have neither a male nor a female name, just a performance name, could be regarded as either a heterosexual transvestite or a heterosexual drag queen, a full eight years before Hirschfeld's book that is given credit for pointing out that not all transvestites were 'homosexual'.

De Veyga collected several gay and trans life stories in the first few years of the century.   While he was ahead of Hirschfeld in doing this, he published only in a journal, and never published a book on the topic.  In 1904 de Veyga left off his clinical histories and became the Surgeon General of the Argentine army.

(all quotes are translations from de Veyga by Salessi)

In 1895 in Buenos Aires, a city quickly growing, two-thirds of the immigrant population were men; in 1914, nearly four fifths of Buenos Aires male adults were foreigners. (statistics given in Salessi)

“Rosita” was one of the minority of men to have a wife in the city. He began by wearing costumes during carnival in the 1890s, continued to do so at other times of the year. He performed in song and dance groups, became well known in the local gay scene, “mixing with uranists of every species".

He took the name “Rosita de la Plata” which was already being used by an Argentinian circus equestrienne. For a while his fame surpassed that of the other Rosita, although with time other performers displaced him.

“To what does he owe his fame? To very little, to be sure. To his care in always lying in wait for parties and to his indefatigable activity in the labour of feminine imitation. ‘Rosita’ follows fashion, and sets the fashion for his peers. Here, he is portrayed in the photograph, in a matinee dress, inciting envy in many for his gracious air and arrogance at the same time. She has imposed the fashion of several costumes and of these outrageous portraits that seem to be a speciality of these people, so idiosyncratic are they.”

de Veyga captioned the photograph: “Rosita de la Plata - Inverted by Suggestion”.

• Francisco de Veyga, "La inversion sexual adquirida,"Archivosl, 1903: 203.
• Jorge Salessi. “The Argentine Dissemination of Homosexuality, 1890-1914”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, 3, Jan 1994: 337-368.
• Jorge Salessi & Patrick O’Conner. “For Carnival, Clinic and Camera: Argentina’s Turn of the Century Drag Culture Performs ‘Woman’”. In Diana Taylor & Juan Villegas Morales (eds). Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/O America.Duke University Press, 1994: 263-273.

Neil Cargile (1928 – 1995) pilot, dredging entrepreneur.

Neil was raised on a large estate outside Nashville, Tennessee. At 12 he made motor scooters out of washing machine engines. At 16 he built an airplane in his backyard from spare parts. He was a dare-devil pilot. He worked as a crop duster pilot while in college. He got into the business of dredging, often in remote parts of the world. 

In 1970 his 14-year-old son died of a burst aneurysm while in a swimming pool.

Neil first did public drag in the mid 1970s at the Palm Bay Club in Miami. Female friends encouraged him to go as Dolly Parton, and he won first prize. He continued to do drag at costume parties but not in Nashville at first, but then there as well. 

He held a vice-versa party at his home where all invited were expected to cross-dress. He was between marriages at that time. In 1979, in a costume party at the Science Museum, he came as 'Neil Cargile in a dress'. He made no attempt to pass, he mixed male and female clothing, and enjoyed the attention. He enjoyed his new nickname: High-Heel Neil. He referred to his female self as SheNeil, pronounced 'chenille'. 

In 1979 a passenger on his plane was decapitated at New Orleans when he walked into the propeller after disembarking. In 1990 Neil lost a propeller blade, but was able to land on the grassy median of the Interstate 24 causing severe disruption and slightly damaging a van, but without any injuries. 

In 1994 he won a trophy at the Easter-Bonnet contest at the Palm Beach Polo and and Country Club. Also that year he was arrested for drunken driving. He was in a red dress with his girlfriend after a night at a dance club. In New York he was interviewed by John Berendt, and together they went to Lee Brewster's emporium. 

The next year, Neil died at age 67 after contracting malaria while supervising a dredging project in Guyana.

• John Berendt. “High-Heel Neil”. The New Yorker. Jan 16, 1995. Online at http://aosoc.org/silhouette/2007/March2007.htm#blog
• J.J. Allen. The Man in the Red Velvet Dress. A Birch Lane Press Book. 1996: 5-6
• E. Thomas Wood. “Neil H. Cargile (1928 – 1995). La Femme Silhouette. June 2007. http://aosoc.org/silhouette/2007/June2007.htm

Wallace Beery (1885 – 1949) elephant trainer, female impersonator, film star, airplane pilot.

Wallace Beery was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He joined the Ringling Brothers circus at age 16 as an assistant elephant trainer. He left after being clawed by a leopard.

He made his name as an actor doing female impersonation first on the New York stage and then in one-reel comedies in the silent era, in 30 of which he appeared as Swedish maid called Sweedie.

In the thirties he was described as as having a 'pug-ugly face, ungainly 250-pound wrestler's physique and crinkly, boyish grin [which] fascinated audiences', starred in several MGM films of that time, including The Secret Six, Grand Hotel and The Champ (for which he received an Oscar in 1932).

Louis Mayer of MGM had a soft spot for the reckless pilot who often crashed his plane in deserts and on mountains, but who flew though a stormy weather and a forced landing in St Louis to be at the bedside of dying mother in New York.

Beery remained a drag queen who would put on an evening dress and a feathered hat at the slightest provocation.

As an actor he ignored the dialogue he was given, ill-treated his co-stars, and improvised everything to the despair of the director. He was brutal with women: he bloodily raped his first wife, Gloria Swanson, on their wedding night, and without her consent got her to drink an abortificant when she was pregnant.  He was equally bad to his second wife, Rita Gilman.

In 1937 Ted Healy, a founder of the Three Stooges, was beaten to death. One account is that the beating was inflicted by Beery, Albert Broccoli (the future producer of the James Bond films) and Pat DiCicco (gangster and Broccoli’s cousin). MGM sent Beery to Europe for several months and put out a story that three students had done the beating.

Beery acted in over 230 films. One account says that he died of a heart attack on the Queen Mary at age 64. The ship owners took his body to New York and put it in a hotel to avoid bad publicity. Other accounts say that he died at home in Beverly Hills.

• Charles Higham. Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M., and the Secret Hollywood. New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc. 488 pp 1992: 168-9. London: Sidgewick & Jackson 1993. London: Pan Books 1994. New York: Dell 1994.
• “Gloria Swanson – Marriages”. http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/gsmarriages.htm
• “Wallace Beery”. Internet Movie Database. www.imdb.com/name/nm0000891.
• “Wallace Beery”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Beery.
• “Sweedie”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweedie.
• “Ted Healy”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Healy.

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 - 1915) efficiency engineer.

Taylor is best remembered for his career as an efficiency engineer. Copley's biography calls him the 'father of scientific management'. He organized the management of Bethlehem Steel, Cramp's Shipbuilding and Midvale Steel. He patented one hundred inventions, and devised the Taylor-White process for treating high-speed tools.

He was also a star in the amateur theatricals put on by his cricket club. He was most celebrated for his impersonations of young ladies. He is said to have done this with such fidelity that even his wife was deceived.

He was also a tennis player of note , and won the first doubles tournament in the 1881 US National Championships.

• Frederick Winslow Taylor. The principles of scientific management. New York : Harper & Row, 1911. 30 other editions up to 1998.
• Frank Barkley Copley. Frederick W. Taylor: Father of Scientific Management. Harper & Brothers, Publishers 1923:88-9.

EN.Wikipedia.

Keith Moon (1946 - 1978) drummer.

A 'lovable transvestite and rabble-rouser'.

Keith was raised in Wembley, London. He was a failure at school, except for music. He left at 15. He was the drummer with The Escorts, and then The Beachcombers, and joined The Who in 1964. He was married to a woman from 1966 to 1973.

He was noted for playing fast and loud, and one occasion he literally exploded one of the drums as a climax. He became famous for his destructions of hotel rooms and friends’ rooms. He destroyed plumbing by dropping fireworks down toilets. He drove a car into a swimming pool in Flint, Michigan – some say that it was a $50,000 Rolls-Royce, but there has been controversy about exactly which brand of car it was. In 1970, he ran over and killed a friend while escaping from hostile skinheads.

A heterosexual drag queen, his favourite drag was as the Queen. As Dougal Butler, his personal assistant puts it, Moonie 'frequently takes it into his head to act the ginger beer, especially if he can get hold of a dress or two'.

In the movies he portrayed a groupie who dressed as a nun in Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, 1971, wicked Uncle Ernie in Tommy, 1975, and a dress designer given to sampling the product in Mae West's Sextet, 1978. The tabloid press relished tales of Moon on the road with a pal referred to as Barry the Poof and his transvestite boyfriend.

He died from an overdose of Clomethiazole (Heminevrin), a medication taken as part of a programme to wean him off alcohol. He died in the same apartment that Mama Cass Elliot had died in four years earlier. He was 32.

• Dougal Butler with Chris Trengove and Peter Lawrence. Full Moon: The Amazing Rock and Roll Life of the Late Keith Moon. William Morrow and Company. 1981: 113.
• Boze Hadleigh. The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music World. San Diego: Los Hombres Press iv, 237 pp 1991: 173-4. Republished as Sing out!: gays and lesbians in the music world. New York: Barricade Books 1997, London: Robson Books 1999.

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (1857 - 1941) 1st Baron Baden-Powell OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB.

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. hero of the siege of Mafeking, the founder of the Scouts, and thus of a new type of drag, was also an amateur female impersonator.


He had a very distinguished career with the British army in India, southern Africa and elsewhere, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-General.


All through his life Baden-Powell was keen on amateur theatricals, from Charterhouse public school where among other roles he played female operatic roles. With his music master at school he shared the ability of being able to sing in a convincing female soprano. In the army he made a speciality of female roles and would often make his own dresses. His stage specialty was what he called his skirt dance.


From 1881, he had a particularly close friendship with a younger man, Kenneth McLaren, whom he would call 'the Boy', and, after comforting him after McLaren's mother died, the two men became very close. They took a bungalow together and Baden-Powell's letters home were constantly referring to his new friend. They shared many activities, in particular polo and pigsticking.


At this time Baden-Powell wrote a short story 'The Ordeal of the Spear' about two officers, 'an unusually good pair of friends' who both wanted to marry the same woman. They decide that whoever inflicted the first wound in a bout of pigsticking would be the one to propose to her. The 'boy' drew first blood, but before he has a chance to propose, the young woman was thrown from the back of an elephant and trampled underfoot. This allowed the friendship to continue unchanged.


In addition to his drag shows, Baden-Powell balanced his love of manly activities with sketching, choosing fabrics and furnishings and designing embroidery patterns. He was quite uncomfortable with women in a context where he might be considered a prospective husband, but could get on with them quite well where all hints of sex were removed, e.g. in considering fabrics and embroidery.


He maintained a number of correspondences with girls, but let them lapse as they matured into women. He did not marry until the age of 55, when he chose an androgynous 23-year-old, Olave Soames.


At a time when British officers were very conscious not to socialize with their men, and hardly treated them as human, Baden-Powell spent much of his free time with the men under his command. He took them scouting, of course he participated in theatricals with them, he also joined them in gymnastic displays involving physical contact, and he gave them counselling. On the other hand this was only extended to young men; middle-aged men where more likely to experience his snobbery.

• Tim Jeal. The Boy-man: the Life of Lord Baden-Powell. William Morrow and Company, Inc 1990: 35,54,66-71,73,chp 3,144.

EN.Wikipedia

There was previously a Wikipedia page called "Robert Baden-Powell's sexual orientation", but which has since been removed.    Here is its Archive.  

The drag queen who killed Rasputin and sued MGM

Felix Felixovich Yusupov (1887 – 1967).

Alternatively transliterated as Feliks Iusupov. Also known as Feliks Graf Sumarrokow-Elston.

Yusupov was descended via his mother from the fabulously wealthy Yusupovs, a family of Tartar origins. As he describes in his autobiography, he spent time with gypsy bands and in drag. He claims that he was cruised by Edward Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, then king of the British Empire, while he was in drag at a theatre in Paris.

On 16 December 1916 he was a leader of the group that murdered Rasputin. After the Revolution, Felix, his wife and daughter seized some family treasures and the British Navy helped them escape via Yalta. They settled in Paris.

They sued MGM in connection with the 1932 film, Rasputin and the Empress, in that the character who killed Rasputin could be based on only himself, and that it was libel to suggest that his wife had been raped by Rasputin. They were awarded £25,000, an enormous sum. This resulted in the disclaimer afterwards placed at the end of all Hollywood films: “The preceding was a work of fiction …”.





Yusupov wrote an autobiography: Avant l’exil, 1887-1919. Paris: Plon 310 pp 1952. Translated By Ann Green and Nicolas Katkoff as Lost Splendour. London: Cape 288 pp1954. Reissued Circlet Press 307 pp 2004. Translation online here.

Rudy Giuliani (1944 - ) lawyer, mayor, presidential candidate

Rudy was born in Brooklyn, New York, the grandchild of Italian immigrants with both police officers and criminals in his family.

As a lawyer, he made his name prosecuting high profile cases against organized crime.

He was Mayor of New York 1994-2001. He was awarded a KBE in 2002 for his part in the 9/11/01 attack on New York City.


Sir Rudolph was a candidate to be Republican Presidential Candidate 2007-8.


Unusually for a top politician, he is willing to appear in costume, including drag, on stage. In 1997, he wore a sequined dress and a wig from Rupaul’s wig-maker to play opposite Julie Andrews in her Victor-Victoria persona. Later the same year he played Rita Delvecchio’s mother in a sketch on Saturday Night Live. In 2000 he played a skit with Donald Trump where he is a matron buying perfume.

• Sara Kugler. “Rudy Giuliani in a dress: Will voters care? Republican presidential candidate, former NYC mayor could face backlash” MSNBC, April 14, 2007. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18108978.
• John Dickerson. “Rudy in Leather and Lace: The theatrical journey of America's mayor”. Slate. May 8, 2007.www.slate.com/id/2165788/nav/tap1.
• “Rudy Giuliani”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani.
• “Mayorality of Rudy Giuliani”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayoralty_of_Rudy_Giuliani#Drag_appearances