The Boys of Fairy Town by Jim Elledge

Author:Jim Elledge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
Published: 2018-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

12

All Have Waitresses Who Are Lads in Gal’s Clothing

Either put on pants or go to jail.

LORENZO BANYARD RECALLED THAT in the early 1930s, he would watch scores of female impersonators traipse down to “the street corner swishin’.” It was a familiar scene in Bronzeville when he was an adolescent. Banyard had moved to Chicago the same year that Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights and was very aware of some of the queer men in the neighborhood. “I’d be standing at the corner,” he continued, watching them, taking it all in, “’cause I admired them, you known, they had this long hair . . . and the makeup and every thing. . . . Plus they was making money, too, for dancing.” A few years later, Banyard, who had realized he was queer when he was twelve, became a female impersonator himself and adopted the name Nancy Kelly. He appeared on the Cabin Inn’s stage with Valda Gray, Petite Swanson, the Sepia Joan Crawford, and the Sepia Mae West, the queer, African American female impersonator superstars of Bronzeville. All of them performed at its hottest nightspots.

Whether appearing as solo artists or in chorus lines, Bronzeville’s female impersonators appeared on the same stages as its musical giants, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Cab Calloway. Their glimmering sequined gowns, expensive wigs, high heels, and ever-flawless makeup guaranteed fans would not simply lionize them but follow them puppy-dog-like from one cabaret to another, from theater to dance hall to cabaret. To be sure, there were other talented female impersonators around Bronzeville—Jean LaRue, Nina Mae McKinney, Peaches Browning, Doris White, Frances Dee, Dixie Lee—but they were only good, perhaps better than average, but had never quite earned superstar status. One of Chicago’s entertainment reviewers claimed that there were countless female impersonators on the Windy City’s stages but that didn’t mean all were equally talented. He noted that “quite a few . . . can dress and look the part” and yet too many of those “have no stage ability.” Some “can sing, but cannot dance; others handle their feet well on the floor but cannot sing.” The reviewer concluded, “It really requires a combination of dance and song to win a place in one of these floor shows.”

Queer men had become fixtures in Bronzeville almost as soon as its first cabaret opened its doors. Although the owners of the cafés and cabarets where the female impersonators performed were flaunting Chicago’s ordinance against individuals wearing “a dress not belonging to his or her sex” in public, and although female impersonators might face a backlash from some of their family members, neighbors, and strangers because they cross-dressed and were queer, they also earned respect and even envy from many others. The cabarets in which they performed offered them better-than-average salaries. While Lorenzo Banyard made twelve dollars a week at his day job as dishwasher at a YMCA, his alter ego, Nancy Kelly, earned ten dollars a show, three shows a night, during the weekends. In short, he earned five times as much as a female impersonator during the weekend than he did at his day job the rest of the week.

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