Frankie Jaxon (1895 – 1953) female impersonator, singer, actor

Frank Devera Jackson was born in Montgomery, Alabama,. He and his sister were orphaned. They were then raised by a widowed aunt in Kansas City, Missouri. At age 19, the aunt died, and the rest of the family moved to Chicago.

From age 15 Frankie Jaxon, as he became, toured as a singer and as such joined the Henry McDaniel Minstrel Show. He worked in medicine shows in Texas and then worked regularly in Atlantic City and Chicago. He did a stint in the army 1918-19, and was promoted to sergeant before being honorably discharged.

Within months he was starring; he sang, danced, and performed as a female impersonator in Atlantic City. He returned to his family in Bronzeville (more), Chicago’s  African-American district, which he made his home base. He supplemented successful home-town shows with short tours by small companies of black performers. In 1925 he joined Mae Dix (1895 – 1958) and her Chicago Harmonaders. He was the only black and the only known queer man in the troupe. When they played in southern US states, he had to be escorted to and from the theater and whenever he needed to leave the hotel. Despite this he won rave reviews. This publicity translated into major bookings in Chicago. His appearance at the faltering Grande Theater on South Slate Street is said to have saved the owners from bankruptcy.

He was known as “Half-Pint” because he was only 5’2” (1.57m). At the same time he was a jazz singer appearing with King Oliver, Tampa Red and Thomas Dorsey. He had a small part in the Duke Ellington film, Black and Tan, and in King Vidor’s Hallelujah, both 1929. He had been signed to play a female role in The Mortage Man as a target of an unscrupulous banker – but the film was never made in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash.

The Pansy Craze 1930-1933 suited his act perfectly, but it ceased to be acceptable after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Jaxon however was on the bill for the opening ceremonies of the Chicago World Fair 27 May 1933.

Through the 30s, he was often on radio with his band, the Quarts of Joy. The shows included bawdy humor, and Jaxon often played the women’s roles in the songs – usually about sexual topics. He had a convincing female voice. It was these radio appearances that made him a household name. Some of his songs were originals, but others were cover versions with more risqué lyrics – such as “My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll”, previously recorded by Trixie Smith. Jaxon’s last recording was “be Your Natural Self” in April 1940. This was just after the Chicago Defender had repeated rumors insinuating that the Rev Clarence Cobbs was gay, and Cobbs had sued for libel. The song warns [gay men] to "Watch your step" and "Be careful what you say”. Yet despite being cautious, they should still be "your natural self".

Shortly afterwards he walked away from his show-biz career. In the spring of 1941 he moved to Washington, DC. He found government work, some say for the Pentagon.

It in unclear when he died. Most accounts have him dying in a veterans' hospital in 1944. Elledge however dates this as happening in 1953.

• Jim Elledge. “Play It, Whip It, Pat It, Bang It”. In The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century. Chicago Revew Press, 2018 : 159-172.

 Red Hot Jazz.    EN.Wikipedia      Discogs    Allmusic    QueerMusicHeritage    

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Unfortunately we have no photographs of Frankie in drag.

Some say that Jaxon’s version of “My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll” gave its name to the genre Rock and Roll which emerged over a decade later. Anyway it is the first known recording to include an orgasm.

Henry McDaniel Minstrel Show was not black-face minstrelsy. The troupe were real black people. I was unable to find an account of Henry McDaniel to link to. He was a remarkable man, born a slave, fought in the US Civil War, a Baptist minister, a carpenter, banjo player and ran his own minstrel troupe. His is remembered today only as the father of Hattie McDaniel, the first black actor to win an Oscar.

Did Jaxon have a wife? A census taker visited 5149 Calmut Avenue and Evelyn, a white woman, listed herself as Jaxon’s wife. They also had two lodgers: a white woman and a black man. In 1933, the Chicago Defender announced that “Mr. and Mrs. Frankie (Half Pint) Jaxon are expecting a blessed event”. Jim Elledge searched marriage and birth records in Illinois, New York and New Jersey and failed to find any confirmation at all. He suggests that there was a male couple and a female couple living at 5149 Calmut Avenue - and that all the rest was camouflage. In which case we can name Frankie’s husband as Cliff Oliver. Neither Evelyn nor Clifford, nor any child accompanied Frankie to Washington in 1942.

Gloria Swanson (1906 - 1940) performer.

Original version: October 2010


Walter Winston was born in Atlanta, Georgia.  His family, like many other African Americans, moved north to Chicago for a better life.  In the 1920s Winston took the name of a Hollywood Star and as Gloria Swanson won several prizes in Chicago’s drag balls.

In 1928 the Sepia Gloria Swanson (as she was billed) was hostess at the Book Store in the city’s Bronzeville, a speakeasy with a mainly black clientele which became popular as it was known that she was a permanent fixture. Her theme song was fats Waller’s “Squeeze Me”, which she rewrote to make it raunchier.  She was also known for her version of Sophie Tucker’s “Some of these days”.  She moved to the nearby Pleasure Inn on East 31 St, and white thrill seekers also started to come.  She then opened her own club on East 35^th St.  She literally entertained all night: the audience was so enthralled that the sun was up when they left.  As such she was a major figure in the new Pansy Craze.  Noted in her audiences were the composer William C Handy and boxer Jack Johnson.

Swanson had already performed in New York in 1932, and in summer 1933, on the eve of the end of Prohibition, Gloria moved uptown to Harlem, and quickly became the headliner at the black-owned popular Theatrical Grill on 134th Street. She sang bawdy parodies, and danced a little, and was always well-dressed in evening gowns.  She was noted for her rendition at the Harlem Opera House of “I’m a Big Fat Mama With the Meat shaking on my Bones”. A year later Swanson was starring with Gladys Bentley at the newly opened Ubangi Club.  She also performed with major jazz performers such as Fletcher Henderson.

She was a creature of the night, breakfasting in the evening and dining at dawn. She wore mainly evening gowns, was rarely in street clothing, and almost never in male attire. She was plump, jolly and bawdy, and also a good cook. She was completely accepted by the underworld and bohemian types who came to her club. Apart from those in the know, many of her clients never suspected that she was not a woman.

This lasted until Fiorello La Guardia became mayor of New York in 1934 and as part of his reforms had the police stamp out the pansy subculture. One-by-one they picked off the queer nightclubs.   The Ubangi, almost the last to survive, closed in April 1937.

Swanson returned briefly to Chicago in 1934, and then performed in Baltimore and Philadelphia 1935-6, and then returned to Harlem as a headline act.   However she was forced into male attire offstage, and as such, Gloria's admirers failed to recognize her.


She also became ill, and had to withdraw from public life altogether. After several hospitalizations for heart conditions starting in 1936, the Sepia Gloria Swanson died in 1940 at age 33. Over 200 attended the funeral.

• “ ‘Gloria Swanson’ Buried in Harlem: Entertainer Won Fame as a Female Impersonator”.  Chicago Defender, May 3, 1940.
• George Chauncey. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Basic Books 1994: 251.
• Richard Bruce Nugent edited by Thomas Wirth. Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugen. Duke University Press. 2002: 221-2.
• Chad Heap.  Slumming:  Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940.  The University of Chicago Press, 2009:  91-4, 233, 245, 256, 266-7, 270, 324-5n70.
• David Freeland.  Automats, Taxi dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure.  New York University Press, 2009: 160.
• St Sukie de la Croix.  Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall.  The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 143-5.
• Jim Elledge.  The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago’s First Century,  Chicago Review Press, 2018: 143-4, 155. 
• James F Wilson. Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance.  University of Michigan Press, 2010: 194-5.

Queer Music Heritage.

The Cabin Inn, Chicago

The (Cozy) Cabin Inn opened in 1933 at 3119 Cottage Grove Avenue in Bronzeville, in Chicago's South Side, at the southern side of the Century of Progress fairgrounds. Impersonator Gilda Gray was the hostess, and did an imitation of the fan dance made famous by Sally Rand at the just finished World's Fair. It was owned by Jack Hardy and Nathan "Big" Ivy, who hailed from Arkansas and was a successful entrepreneur friendly with Chicago Negro politicians.

In Summer 1934 the show featured impersonator/blues singer Luzetta Hall and the dance team of Blue and Jean, The Lady and Gentleman of the Carioca. The star was the Brown Mae West (Dick Barrow) – not to be confused with the Sepia Mae West. Nat Ivy placed advertisements in the local newspapers: "When you have seen our Floor Show ... you have seen Chicago at its Best".

In late 1934 and early 1935 Mayor Joseph Kelly had the police clamp down on pansy and lesbian bars in the Near North Side but left Bronzeville alone. White patrons who enjoyed this type of entertainment started going to Bronzeville.
In October 1935 the Cabin Inn hosted a double wedding: that of midget dancer "Bullfrog Shorty” to Muriel Borsack, and that of impersonator Jean Acker and Vernon Long. Luzetta Hall was Jean's bridesmaid and guests came from as far away as Philadelphia and Indianapolis. It is said that Alfred Finnie took inspiration from this event in founding the Finnie's Balls which started that year. However the police came and closed the club. The impersonators were given a choice: "put on your pants or go to jail with the management".

The Inn was open again within a week, allegedly having paid bribes. The police returned in December and cited the Cabin Inn for violating its entertainment license. Barrow had a gig in Los Angeles and quickly went to it.

The Chicago Defender reported December 21 that twelve had been arrested: the two owners, two bartenders, the floodlight operator and seven female impersonators, three working at the Cabin Inn and four guests. In South State Street Court Judge Eugene McGarry dismissed all the charges: "The testimony does not show any specific violations of ordinance ... It appears that these men were dressed in female clothes. The testimony shows that it was a masquerade party. Female impersonators appear on stage every day. In the absence of any such testimony I have no choice but to find the defendants not guilty and that will be the order."

The Cabin Inn re-opened with Varieties of 1935, featuring a team of impersonators led by Valda Gray. In 1938 The Cabin Inn relocated to 3520 South State Street, still with Valda Gray.

By 1940 Nat Ivy had run out of influential friends and lost his entertainment licence.

• Chad C Heap. Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago press, 2007: 94-6.
  
• St. Sukie De la Croix. Chicago Whispers A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 146-8, 152.
  
• Tristan Cabello. "Queer Bronzeville: African American LGBTs on Chicago's South Side, 1900-1985: The emergence of African-American queer cultures on Chicago's South Side, 1920-1940". Windy City Times, 2012-02-29. www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Queer-Bronzeville-African-American-LGBTs-on-Chicagos-South-Side-1900-1985/36389.html.
  

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Heap says that the Inn was originally called the Cozy Cabin Inn and changed its name in 1935 when it relocated to South State Street.  De la Croix says nothing about ‘Cozy’ and has the move to South State Street in 1938.   De la Croix says that the December trial was re the October wedding;  Heap implies that it was re the December raid.

De la Croix makes some odd stylistic choices for a gay man.  He describes Bullfrog Shorty’s wedding as genuine without any quotes, but does put quotes around Luzetta being Jean’s “bridesmaid”.

We are not told if the marriage of "Bullfrog Shorty” to Muriel Borsack was registered with the State of Illinois. 

Ray Bourbon (?1892 – 1971) performer.

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.

• “Female Impersonator Gets Sex Operation in Juarez”. El Paso Herald-Post. May 23, 1956. Online at: www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-bourbon3.html.
• 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.
• Rob Cole. “Death in prison for the queen of them all”. The Advocate. November 11-24, 1970. Online at: www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-bourbon6.html.
• “Jail ‘escape’ bitter irony; Bourbon wishes he’d been shot”. The Advocate. Dec 23-jan5, 1971. Online at: www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-bourbon6.html.
• “Rae Bourbon dead of leukemia at 78”. The Advocate. August 18-31, 1971. Online at: http://www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-bourbon6.html.
• Dick Leitsch. “The Life of Rae Bourbon: ‘One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Cigar!’ “. Gay. September 13, 1971.
• Rae Bourbon. The Autobiography. Unpublished. 300 pp 1971. Summary at: www.coolcatdaddy.com/bourbon-autobiography.html.
• 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.
• “Ray Bourbon” in “Pansy Craze”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansy_Craze#Ray_Bourbon.

Jean Malin (1908 – 1933) female impersonator, male impersonator, MC.

Victor Eugene James Malin was born to Polish/ Lithuanian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York.

As a teenager he won prizes for his costumes at the drag balls in Manhattan. After one win, still in drag, he wandered into a nearby cafeteria, and was attacked by four thugs, but was able to beat three of them unconscious.

By his late teens he was a chorus boy in Broadway shows, but he lost jobs because he was considered too effeminate. So he concentrated on performing in drag in Greenwich Village, under the name Imogene Wilson (he copied the name from Mary Nolan who used that name as a dancer in the Zeigfeld Follies). 

As he became more successful he mainly performed in a tuxedo as the emcee, in the swishy style, and is regarded as one of the originators of the Pansy Craze 1930-3. He was called a ‘male impersonator’ because of the clothes that he wore.

He appeared in small sissy parts in Hollywood films, and as a female impersonator in Arizona to Broadway, all in 1933.

He is known for his recording of ‘I'd rather be Spanish than Mannish’.

He died in a fluke accident. While parked on a pier, he confused the gears and reversed into the water. He was pinned under the steering wheel, but his passengers survived.

His wife was Lucille Helman who was later a notorious madam in Manhattan who was convicted in 1936 and 1942 of sending prostitutes across state lines.

• George Chauncey. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books 1994: 314-8, 320-1.
• J.D. Doyle. “Jean Malin”. Queer Music Heritage. www.queermusicheritage.us/jun2004jm.html
  
• Michael Guillen.  “Queer Cinema – Spotlight on Jean Malin”.  The Evening Class.  http://theeveningclass.blogspot.com/2007/05/queer-cinemaspotlight-on-jean-malin.html.

Alfred Finnie (? – 1943) hustler, ball organizer.

There had been interracial drag balls in Chicago since the late nineteenth century.

In 1935, following the raid on the double wedding at the Cabin Inn, Alfred Finnie organized a small extra ball on the South Side at 25¢ to get in, mainly attended by blacks.

Each year it grew, and by the 1950s Finnie’s Balls attracted thousands both gay and straight, black and white, and was featured in Jet and Ebony magazines.

Apart from the balls, Alfred worked as a club doorman and street hustler. He was killed in a gambling brawl in 1943, but the balls continued in his name.

• “Gays and Lesbians”. Encyclopedia of Chicago. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/509.html. 
• Baim, Tracy. Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community. Chicago: Surrey Books, 2008: 29. 
• St. Sukie De la Croix. Chicago Whispers A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 146, 152-3.

What happened to ... Lady Austin (1908 - ?).

Austin S. was a barman in Baron’s Court, London.

In 1932 he organized a “Hotel Staff Dance” in a private ballroom at 27 Holland Park, that was attended mainly by domestic servants, and hotel staff, mainly men, but many dressed as women.

The event was raided by the police; 33 men and 1 woman were arrested. The subsequent trial became the most widely reported 'pansy case’ of the 1930s.

Lady Austin had been running such balls for some time. She said to the police “There is nothing wrong in that”.

• Matt Houlbrook. “'Lady Austin's Camp Boys': Constituting the Queer Subject in 1930s London. Gender & History. 14,1 pp31-62, 2002.
• Matt Houlbrook. Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis.1918-1957. The University of Chicago Press 2005: 244-5.