DRAG HISTORY- UNSUNG HEROINES

The Stonewall riots, as we all know by now, were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the LGBT)community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. 

They are widely considered to constitute the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights. It's been said since then, that the bar was mafia owned, and that it's clients were actually a mix of middle class white male gay men and various parts of the gay community from lower class to poor. There are many different stories as to it being a drag hang out and not, but there is no denying, that night, there was many from the community present in the drinking hole, and that many of the drag queens and cross dressers were not taking shit that night. A straight male friend of mine always said if he is ever in a fight, he hopes one of his drag queens friends are present because they don't take shit, and I have to say they don't! But that night were some brave souls that must be remembered.

Marsha P. Johnson was a transwoman who became an important face to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community in New York City. She was recognized by being herself and fearing no judgment of the harassment and ridicule of dressing and living as a woman, while having the masculine features of a man. The hardships of a transgender individual were nothing new to Marsha who herself was living on the streets of New York without a permanent home or financial and living arrangements. This tended to be a normal struggle of  drag queens and transgender individuals. Marsha P. Johnson felt these people who wanted nothing more than to be their selves deserved support from the growing LGBT community in New York. Along with fellow transgender activist Sylvia Rivera she founded the Street Transvestite (now Transgender) Action Revolutionaries to help others out there facing the struggles of an unaccepting society.Marsha was an eccentric woman who was known for her exotic hats and jewelry which stood out to the public and attracted attention to her. When she was wearing these items or any female clothing she was Marsha P. Johnson. But there were times when she went back to her male persona of Malcolm. Along with STAR and GLF activism, Marsha posed for a collection of artist Andy Warhol’s paintings and photographs. “Ladies and gentleman” was the title of one of Warhol’s works that Marsha posed for in 1975. In the painting Marsha is not mentioned by name, or any of the male to female transgenders, which was to protect them at the time.Marsha passed away on July 6, 1992. Her body was found in the Hudson River in New York. Police and investigators ruled her death as a suicide, but people who knew her and were close to her insisted she was not suicidal. Witnesses saw Marsha being harassed earlier in the day and wanted a full investigation of her death as a murder. There has been no criminal investigation to the death of Marsha P. Johnson.

The name Stormé DeLarverie may not ring a bell, but it should. Some have referred to her as “the Gay Community’s Rosa Parks.” She fought the police during the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969 and has been identified by many – and has identified herself – as the legendary “Stonewall Lesbian” whose assault by the police became the pivotal moment in the street disturbances that spurred the crowd to action. She was also a singer who toured the country as the cross-dressing emcee of the famed Jewel Box Revue, in which she was the only female performer. Radio City Music Hall, the Apollo Theater, and the Copacabana are a few of the venues where she has graced the stage, either with the Jewel Box Revue or as the frontwoman of various bands. She was the subject of at least three documentaries, including Stormé, which was produced by her friend Sam Bassett. She passed away at 94 years old in her residence which was a sparsely furnished room on the sixth floor of a nursing home in Brooklyn.

And most people do not know her name. She was Sylvia Rivera, who occupies a unique place in LGBT history. Rivera helped lead the charge on the night of the Stonewall riots in New York City, considered the beginning of the LGBT rights movement. As drag queens fought back against a police raid at the gay bar, it is said she was heard shouting “I’m not missing a moment of this – it’s the revolution!”While Rivera’s presence at this landmark event has been disputed, there is no denying that she was an LGBT civil rights pioneer. Yet she remains little known, even within the LGBT community. Rivera lived a turbulent life. She was born in 1951 in New York to a Puerto Rican father and a Venezuelan mother. Rivera’s stepfather threatened to kill her and her mother when Rivera was three. Shortly afterwards, Rivera’s mother killed herself. At ten years old, Rivera was on her own in Times Square, eking out a living as a sex worker. It was an unbelievably dangerous existence, not only because of the drugs and violence on the streets, but because of the continual threat of police brutality.Yet living on the street also gave Rivera great empathy for others in the same situation. After the Stonewall riots, she became part of the nascent gay rights movement – at a time when transgender people were not necessarily welcomed.With her friend and fellow activist Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) and opened a shelter for homeless transgender youth. She was also an early member of groups like the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front, which were the forerunners of today’s LGBT advocacy organizations.Rivera passed away in 2002 from liver cancer. She was 50. Since then, she has been recognized with a street bearing her name in New York City, and tributes from LGBT community organizations. New York is also home to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project,, an organization that works to secure the rights of gender non-conforming people.

And this year in  New York City, the  State of New York is to host Stonewall 50/WorldPride, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall and  it is believed that 2019 will be the largest international LGBT pride celebration held in history.

DRAG KINGS OF THE CASTLE

Drag Queens have  become a popular fixture in the entertainment industry over the years, but their trousered counterparts – Drag Kings – are less widely known of. In fact, women have been dressing as men and ‘performing masculinity’ on stage for centuries, from regency actresses in breeches to music hall stars in top hats and tails. Here is a rundown of the long history of the drag king.

Throughout history, women have generally been prevented from acting in public, from as far back as ancient Greece. Instead, women’s parts were played by male actors in drag, which probably started the whole drag thing, and well into the Shakespearean era. The first woman to tread the English boards was in 1629, as part of a visiting French company – she was booed off the stage.

Vaudeville consisted of variety acts including comedy sketches and sing-alongs to popular songs. Both male and female impersonators were sought after acts.

Vesta Tilly was the most successful male impersonator of her day, touring both Britain and America for more than three decades. A child star, Tilly first appeared on stage when she was three years old, with her father who was a comedy actor. At six, she appeared dressed as a boy for the first time, singing opera. After this, she preferred to perform in exclusively male clothes.

Tilly was largely a comedic actress, most famously in the part of the London ‘swell’ Burlington Bertie, strutting across the stage in a tuxedo and flirting with the girls in the audience. Her songs such as ‘Following in Father’s Footsteps’, ‘The girls I’ve left behind me’ and ‘Naughty Boy’, portrayed a rakish young ‘man about town’, though she also performed more sentimental love songs directed at women.

Another popular entertainer was Ella Shields, an American woman from Baltimore who became famous in the London Halls for her parody of Vesta Tilly’s ‘Burlington Bertie’. Shields’ version was ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’ – a young man who dressed the part of an aristocrat without the money to match.Shields toured the world as a male impersonator, and was known as ‘Bertie’ rather than Ella almost everywhere she went.

During the heyday of Music Hall (from the mid-1800s to the 1920s) it was also common for male impersonation acts to play soldier boys – adopting the uniforms of the British army in the Boer and First World wars. Hetty King popularized a number of songs from the trenches of World War One in her 1916 act ‘Songs the Soldiers Sing’.

The first male impersonator to become famous in America was an English performer, Annie Hindle, who immigrated to New York City in 1868. Hindle toured the country and was extremely successful, earning rave reviews wherever she went.

While Vesta Tilly, Ella Shields and Hetty King all generally dressed in women’s clothes in their private lives and all married men, Annie Hindle’s career came to an abrupt end in 1886 when she fell in love with and married her dresser – Annie Ryan. Hindle dressed in male attire for the Baptist ceremony, giving the name Charles. This was not to be her last marriage; by 1892 Ryan had passed away and Hindle was re-married to a woman called Louise Spanghel.

By the 1920s Music Hall and Vaudeville were in decline due to the advent of cinema as well as the American Depression. Social norms and gender identity continued to be challenged in other ways – step in Gladys Bentley.A hugely talented jazz pianist and singer, Bentley began her career as a nightclub singer in a gay speakeasy in Harlem.

Bentley, a lesbian was big, bold and irreverent. She performed dressed in a white tuxedo and top hat, sang raunchy songs backed up by a chorus line of drag queens and flirted wildly with the women in the audience. She even claimed to have married another woman. The rise of McCarthyism in America meant that Gladys Bentley had to tone down her act. She began to wear dresses, married a man and, even more tragically, attempted to ‘cure’ herself of homosexuality. Bentley was not the only LGBT woman to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. Other popular Jazz singers included Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, both of whom had relationships with other women.

And we can't forget this legendary king.On 28th June 1969, the New York police carried out a raid on the Stonewall Inn.

Things began to escalate when a woman – described by witnesses as a ‘typical New York butch’ was escorted into a police wagon from which she repeatedly escaped, running back into the crowd each time.Since that night, the woman has been called ‘the Rosa Parks of the gay community’ and has been identified by witnesses and by herself as Stormé DeLarverie, a butch lesbian drag performer. DeLarverie had already made a name for herself on the entertainment circuit as a drag king, and had been photographed by Diane Arbus. She performed as part of the Jewel Box Revue, America’s first racially integrated drag revue during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Even after Stonewall, Stormé DeLarverie continued to serve New York’s LGBT community. In the ‘80s and ‘90s she worked as a bouncer in various lesbian bars and was also the Chief of Security and later Vice President of the Stonewall Veterans Association.

A modern day king I enjoy immensely is Murray Hill.

A former fixture of the downtown Village scene, Murray Hill is making a wing-tipped footprint in the mainstream arena, traversing stages, states and seas to find his next act, whether as an emcee to a burlesque show, a standup comedian, a film sidekick or a television personality. Riding on the success of such shows as RuPaul’s Drag Race, Hill’s success has also become emblematic of the burgeoning transgender performance scene, once just simply known as “drag”.He is Mr Showbiz, the hardest working man in the biz and a true delight every time he hits the stage. His self-deprecating humor and entertaining skills are legendary.

Next time you have the chance to see a  drag KING show...go! Their just as entertaining as the queens.

JEWEL BOX OF GLAMOUR

It wouldn't be a Drag History Month without thinking about the great divas and the touring troupe, The Jewel Box Revue. The Jewel Box Revue was a famous drag/female impersonator touring company that began in 1939 and ran well into the late 1960s. Sort of a all drag Lawrence Welk if you will. Danny Brown and Doc Benner were lovers and longtime producers of the revue, and were said to be pretty tough customers who never backed down from a fight and were known to run a very tight ship. They were hard on their employees but could be brutal to anyone who messed with “their girls.”

Creating America’s first gay community was not what Danny and Doc initially had in mind when they created the revue. They felt that Vaudeville had sidelined female impersonation acts into little more than burlesque shows, and both were passionate about reviving drag as an art form. Danny and Doc also intentionally catered the show to a heterosexual audience and tried their best to be viewed as legitimate entertainment by locals and authorities, to stay clear of any legal charges of sexual deviance. But behind the protective spin of publicity, it cannot be denied that the revue fostered one of the first gay-positive communities in America, if not the first. It was a place where “gayness” was accepted before the concept of gay-identity had even been fully conceived. Many of the performers viewed Danny and Doc not only as his bosses but as no-nonsense parental figures. Danny and Doc took great efforts to protect their girls and the other members of the revue from the often brutal homophobic realities of life in the pre-Stonewall era.

The show became incredibly popular throughout the United States. Stars of the revue such as Mr. Lynne Carter, whose talent and skill as a dancer was legendary, became quite famous and included the Rat Packer and toe-tapper Sammy Davis Jr. as a fan. The drag revue was most often comprised of “25 Men & One Girl.” The one girl was none other than Miss Storme DeLaviere who served as the sole male impersonator for the revue. Storme would garner iconic status within the LGBT community year later in 1969 for being one of the first people to fight back against police officers during the raid on the Stonewall Inn. Despite government crackdowns against gay performers and female impersonators, the revue successfully toured America and Canada anyway, for nearly 30 years. At the height of its popularity the revue headlined at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem to rave reviews.

I think it's interesting though that some of the drag queens back in the day used male names instead of the campy names we now have today. It had something to do with letting the audience know they were in fact men. Some of the notable divas performing there.

LaVern Cummings was a long-time performer in the traveling troupe of The Jewel Box. Cumming's career seems to have spanned the post-war period into the sixties if you judge by her clothing and hair.

Gita Gilmore was one of the original members of the revue and often impersonated Mae West. Miss West even invited Gita to a show once and was asked backstage to meet the bombshell herself.

Ricky Renee went on to become one of the most well known Jewel Box dancers and can still be seen performing in Europe where she now resides.

Ricki Raymonde had a most amazing operatic voice and could sing a high C, then immediately drop to a deep baritone which would gasp audiences.

The talented Barry Scott, who often left the audience in gasp with his beauty, coiffures, fashion and singing talents.

Jane Korday was with the Jewel Box longer than any other member and was known as the boy with the million dollar legs and was also the revue's hair dresser. Some of the other notables were Don Marshall who was one of the few black men performing in drag at the time, Mr Titanic who was every one's favorite blond bombshells, and Chunga Ochoa who was the featured dancer and choreographer for the review.

In the end Danny Brown and Doc Benner were successful and saw their dreams of reviving female impersonation as an art form come to fruition. The Jewel Box Revue became very successful and toured throughout the country for over three decades, even headlining at famed venues like the Apollo in New York City. But their contributions resonate far beyond their impacts on the field of female impersonation. In a very real sense Danny and Doc are the true godfathers of the modern gay community. The show was billed as “25 Men and 1 Woman,” but hundreds of gay entertainers and female impersonator would come to work with the revue over the years, and their influence on the burgeoning gay rights movement still resonates to this very day, one particular performer somewhat more so than others. The African-American lesbian drag king Storme Delarvarie was the “1 Woman” of the Jewel Box Revue.

She spent decades living, working and traveling with Danny and Doc’s tough but protective community of touring entertainers. Those experiences and life lessons would prove invaluable in Storme’s later life, and her actions continue to inspire generations of gay people. Storme Delarvarie is credited as being one of the first people to bravely fight back against the police as they raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City on the night of June 27, 1969. Her courage helped to spark a riot that begat the modern gay rights movement. She sadly has since passed back in 2014, as many of the performers have. I do get the feeling though,somewhere out there in the cosmos, Danny Brown and Doc Benner couldn’t be prouder.