Keeper of the Flame

Writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten was an American Renaissance Man who epitomized the witty and rambunctious cultural scene of the Roaring Twenties. Today he is less celebrated than he deserves, and his clever novels of sophisticates and bohemians, such as The Blind-Bow Boy and The Tattooed Countess, as well as his trendsetting critical essays, are rarely mentioned. This is due partly to the lasting controversy surrounding the title of his best-known novel, Nigger Heaven, set in Harlem, despite his being a lifelong champion of African American causes. Among his achievements, Van Vechten set up the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale University. Carlo, as he liked to be called, had a profound influence on future generations of artists, writers and photographers. 

The following is an article of mine published in The Village Voice 30 years ago this month! My how time flies. The piece (slightly abridged and revised) examines the scrapbooks that Carl Van Vechten had left to Yale after his death in 1964 and which had been recently unlocked. The eye-opening insights into the homosexual underground in New York provided by Van Vechten were a surprise and a delight to historians of gay culture. George Chauncey's ground-breaking study Gay New York, which explored the queer scene of the early 20th century, came out the same year this piece was published. James Smalls' book, The Homoerotic Photography of Carl Van Vechten, from 2006, delved deeper into the "Public Face; Private Thoughts" of this overlooked genius. Edward White's thoughtful biography of Van Vechten, The Tastemaker, which discusses the collections in detail, appeared in 2014. James Polchin's 2019 investigation of gay crimes, Indecent Advances, contains several references to them as well. Bruce Kellner, author of Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades (1968), quoted in my article, died in 2019.

Lately it seems as if Van Vechten's star is on the rise once more, thanks to numerous blogs and podcasts discussing his career and circle of friends. So I am reposting this article here so new readers can find it. I had been under the impression that it was available online in the Village Voice archives. But the paper's issues from the 90s and beyond do not seem to be included yet. NOTE: all photos used here for illustration purposes are from the Library of Congress collection of Van Vechten's photographs, not necessarily from the scrapbooks.

Carl Van Vechten, self-portrait. Library of Congress

 Carl Van Vechten's Secret Life

by Brooks Peters

"Come on in, Sucker!" "Recall the Gay Old Days!"

Thus begin Carl Van Vechten's 18 volumes of homoerotic scrapbooks that were locked away for 25 years after his death, following his strict orders, at Yale University, and which are now housed at the elegant Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Filled with elaborate collages assembled from news clippings, arty male nudes, racy letters, sketches and gay erotica from the '20s, '30s '40s and '50s, these once-secret diaries provide a rare and insightful glimpse into New York's early "subterranean set."

Opened in 1989 with little fanfare, Van Vechten's scrapbooks are a treasure trove of historical documentation. An incorrigible pack-rat, Van Vechten kept every scrap of paper from the most ridiculous to the least sublime. Nothing escaped his eye: coat check stubs, movie tickets, matchbooks, even an extra-large condom, as well as engraved invitations to a party on the Ile de France hosted by "Herr Ibiter Tittoff and General Kutscha Kokoft." Only someone with Van Vechten's mischievous sense of fun (Dorothy Parker, who didn't care for him, put it best when she said he always had "his tongue in somebody else's cheek") could have compiled these monuments to bad taste. Cataloging was his trademark. Like Jean Cocteau, he considered art to be the rehabilitation of the commonplace. These scrapbooks, while scurrilous and at times downright sophomoric, attest to that lifelong creed.

Whether these tomes were meant to be a time bomb or simply a time capsule isn't clear. Until the boxes containing them were unwrapped, no one had a clue they existed, not even Van Vechten's close friends. "For years, we had all been sitting around taking bets on what would be in them when we opened them," says Bruce Kellner, Van Vechten's biographer. "We had all planned to have a big party and an unveiling and break out the champagne. But Donald Gallup, who was Carl's literary trustee, said, 'No, I will open these myself and see if a party is justified.'" When the seals were broken, the gift proved to be "a surprise and a disappointment," says Kellner. Instead of written material (Kellner had hoped for some additions to Van Vechten's daybooks), what Van Vechten had enveloped in so much suspense appears to be a practical joke. Or was it?

Originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Carl Van Vechten first made a name for himself as a music critic at The New York Times, where he helped popularize Stravinsky, Strauss, and jazz. Moving on to dance criticism (he introduced New York to Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky) Van Vechten later contributed to Vanity Fair and H. L. Mencken's Smart Set. As a literary critic, he helped rekindle interest in the work of Herman Melville and championed his good friend Gertrude Stein. He ended up being her literary executor.

Van Vechten also found time to write seven stylish novels, including Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works; Spider Boy; and Parties, as well as books of his essays. In the 30s, he abandoned fiction to pursue photography. His celebrity models included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tallulah Bankhead, George Gershwin, Mabel Mercer, Leontyne Price, and Paul Robeson.

Paul Robeson, Library of Congress

 

Though he married twice and spent time in jail for failing to pay his first wife's alimony, Van Vechten's homosexuality was hardly a secret. One collage proclaims: "I've been leading a double life and I don't intend to stop." Van Vechten spent much of that double life in Harlem, where sexual liberation was an intrinsic part of the jazz revolution. In one essay, gay historian Eric Garber relates Van Vechten's frequent visits to a popular manor uptown, a center of New Negro creativity where leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman, rented rooms. Occasionally the manor's guests would engage in what one observer called "the diversions of the cities of the plains." The scrapbooks provide compelling evidence that similar escapades often occurred south of 125th Street.

A Freudian could have a field day with these scrapbooks. Throughout them, Van Vechten displays a morbid obsession with phalluses and castration anxiety, clipping dozens of headlines that exclaim such comments as "Well of all the meatless wonders!"; "IND Queens Lines Cut Off!"; "Big Ones Don't Get Away From Carl." Occasionally, the juxtaposition of images alone is amusing, as when Van Vechten places a suggestive snapshot of a man pleasuring himself next to a clipping from Ripley's Believe It Or Not of an actor playing Popeye, who could put the tip of his nose in his mouth.

Many of the nude photographs are typical of Van Vechten's signature style -- the subject is posed against a sensual, exotically textured background, perhaps cellophane or tiger skin, and lit severely among shadows. In Volume 17, there are revealing shots of Dame Judith Anderson (you can tell by the famous mole on her chin) and dancer Hugh Laing, who recreates many of Nijinsky's notorious poses. 

Hugh Laing, Library of Congress

 

Not all the pictures are by Van Vechten. Many are simply period erotica, which is of historical interest in itself. The most sensually charged nudes, set against a Venetian backdrop, were done by Van Vechten's close friend Max Ewing, author of Going Somewhere. A provocative rear shot was submitted with "best wishes" by Man Ray. Baron von Gloeden's kitschy nudes grace many a page, as do beefcake stills of Joe Dallesandro. Also included are stunning portraits by Van Vechten of Marlon Brando from 1948 when he was making a splash on Broadway in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Brando 1948 Library of Congress

 

Whole volumes are dedicated to erotic drawings by Van Vechten's pen pals George George (a sculptor and soldier he met at the Stage Door Canteen where he often helped out), Dick Sharpe, Thomas Handforth and Roi. A sketch by Tchelitchew of Charles Henri Ford appears in the collection in 1940. Many of the most appealing images remind one of Cocteau. They might even be by Cocteau -- it's hard to tell -- since few are signed. Later entries could be by Andy Warhol. The sheer number of the drawings is staggering. Van Vechten himself gave up trying to sort them all. The last volume, which is not bound, contains dozens more slip-cased in envelopes.

There are also play programs, including one from May (sic) West's Pleasure Man, on September 24, 1928; and ads for Blair Niles's pioneering 1931 gay novel, Strange Brother. Strewn across the pages are rare copies of Weimar era homoerotic magazines, schedules of "For Bachelors Only" cruises to Europe, and souvenirs from early queer bars such as Finocchio's in San Francisco. Van Vechten pasted in promotional material for a '30s flick called Chained, a "forceful picture of the Third Sex," shown at the Acme Theatre on Union Square. The producers warned parents to protect their "children against the vicious morals of the world's worst influence... the super curse of civilization." 

Drag figures prominently, too. Van Vechten documents a Carnegie Hall recital by Francis Renault, "the Last of the Red Hot Papas," performances by Julian Eltinge in The Fascinating Widow, and a revue by Karyl Norman, "the Creole Fashion Plate," at the Pansy Club at 48th and Broadway. A '20s article in Rosener's Pan proves an invaluable source for the lingo of the times, listing terms like "she-rake" for lesbian, "he-hussy" for drag queen. The editors warned would be partygoers not to join in the outré festivities: "We pray you, do not listen to this insidious propaganda, but hie you to the nearest Greek restaurant, see there what a nation has come to because it allowed such shenanigans." Van Vechten also assembled numerous articles about early transsexuals such as Christine Jorgensen and John Breckenridge, the inspiration for Gore Vidal's ribald satire Myra Breckinridge. 

Gore Vidal by Van Vechten

 

Van Vechten's scrapbooks also reveal the homophobia rampant in pre-Stonewall New York. While the gay world made inroads in society, the straight media openly mocked them. A tabloid called Brevities published an article in 1932 entitled: "Fag Balls Exposed: The Third Sex is Flooding America." That same year, the New York Amsterdam News decried the popularity of the Hamilton Lodge drag parties at Rockland Palace in which thousands of cross-dressers jammed the ballroom. Things deteriorated into a "revolting revel" when the "impersonators started making promiscuous passes at the spectators." By the '50s the media's tone had turned even harsher. A clipping in 1953 stated that along the "Bird Circuit," a strip on the East 50s, "it's Old Homo Week all year long." A similar diatribe by Robert Sylvester in the Daily News two years later had this to say about gay bashing: "Let us agree, for the sake of argument, that a homosexual silly enough to pick up a stranger deserves his lumps... it probably isn't important if a homosexual is roughed up by a hoodlum. But... when there are no available homosexuals any unprotected citizen makes a satisfactory substitute."

As the scrapbooks continue, their tone becomes more pointed and disturbing. Perhaps Van Vechten became more politically aware. Or maybe a desire for thoroughness compelled him to document the rise in gay-related crimes. The garish headlines say as much as any memoir can about the era's double standards, a time when blackmail and murder were a constant threat and suicide seemed the only dignified way out: "Man Found Hanging in Girl's Lingerie," "Male Model Admits Killing Art Salesman," "Theatrical Set Designer Murdered, Bound to Couch Flaming as Pyre," "Chorus Boy's Pal's Death in Bathtub Ends Queer Romance." But even amid the litany of horrors, Van Vechten never lost his sense of humor. On one particularly gruesome clipping, "Architect beaten on head with a statuette he was making of his roommate," Van Vechten scribbled: "Art Criticism?"

Van Vechten's last laugh appears in the front of the final scrapbook, where he announces: "This book could cause a lot of trouble... But it's worth it!" Then he appends a cartoon of a ghost sporting the caption: "A Warning to the Curious," as if Van Vechten, like some pharaoh of yore, were putting a curse on his buried treasure. Labeling his scrapbooks "One of the most significant contributions to American reference work we have had in English," Van Vechten poked fun at his own efforts. Yet despite the bawdy jokes and glib tomfoolery that's evident throughout, Van Vechten had the foresight to realize that 25 years after his death, scholars would have evolved far enough along to accept, and perhaps even value, his erotic obsessions.

The Summer of '74

 

[During a break from blogging these past few months, I have focused more on writing poems and short stories, including the tale below that I submitted to a local arts magazine not too long ago. They ended up using another of my pieces, so I thought why not present it here.  The timing couldn't be better. Lost and Found, while fiction, is based on an actual incident that took place fifty years ago. Copyright 2024.]

 

LOST AND FOUND  

A Short Story

by Brooks Peters

The bus was nearly empty, and overwhelmingly hot. The air conditioner wasn’t working. Most of the windows were cracked open, but a few of them didn’t function properly and remained shut. I chose a seat in the second to last row. The window there was down and there was a hint of a breeze, something I was grateful for since the back of the bus smelled pretty awful. I looked across from me. An old lady with a baby, perhaps her grandson, sat with a handkerchief covering her nose. Two nuns had boarded and were struggling to place some items in the overhead rack. I was about to get up and help them but a sailor jumped up and got the job done.

It was late July, early afternoon. A Pointer Sisters song played nearby on a transistor radio. I gazed out my window and watched as the few remaining passengers waited to get on. The driver was stowing people’s bags into a compartment below. There was a young man standing there alone. Straw-like hair, a tank top, cut-off jeans that looked a size too small for his athletic build. He had on paint-stained construction boots without socks. I noticed the thickness of his calves, as if he’d spent his whole life hiking up hills. Suddenly he looked up at me and I quickly turned away. But not before I had a chance to see his face. It was hard-looking, kind of rough, maybe from a couple days’ stubble, or lack of sleep. I’d dealt with guys like him at school, the ones that never seem to go to class and hang out by the bleachers smoking or drinking. I hoped that he wouldn’t sit anywhere near me. 

I felt restless. I’d left my friend's place outside Philadelphia earlier that morning in kind of a frenzy. He was a former cabin mate of mine from camp a few years back. He'd invited me down to Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks of fun and relaxation, and plenty of sunshine, since my activities involved helping out on the family's strawberry farm. I'd developed quite a tan and a few new muscles from all the hard work. 

The family packed me up and drove to the bus depot for the trip to the Jersey Shore, but as usual we were running late. His mother always took her time putting on her face, as she put it. And his dad had trouble walking and wasn’t able to drive. It had been a nervous trip to the station. When we finally arrived, my buddy slipped something in my hand. “In case you get bored on the bus,” he said, with a wink. It was his copy of the bestseller Jaws by Peter Benchley which I had asked him about during my stay. He had inscribed it to me. I was touched and thanked him, giving him a hug. My friend's mother handed me a lunch bag with a chicken salad sandwich, a carton of apple juice, and a slice of her famous strawberry rhubarb pie. Everyone was playing his part, but I have to admit I was relieved I was going.

The gig in Cape May was a lucky break. An aunt of mine, a former actress, knew a director there, looking for someone 17 or 18 to play one of the Jets in a dinner theater staging of “West Side Story.” I couldn’t imagine how they’d pull that off. But I didn't hesitate to accept. I needed the money and a few weeks on the beach seemed ideal. I could have stayed with my Dad in Connecticut, but he was traveling so often for work, and Mom was off on one of her seasonal retreats. I looked at the novel I'd been given. Horror at a beach resort. Not very reassuring, I thought with a faint chuckle, for my trip to the Shore, but it would pass the time.

As the driver cried out, “All Aboard,” I noticed that muscular guy I'd seen earlier outside. He lazily made his way down the aisle. There were plenty of vacant seats, but he sidled right by them. Our eyes met and an odd look crossed his face. Was it a smirk? I was sure he would turn back and take one of the spots closer to the front, but he kept on coming. I turned and stared out the window. A moment later I heard the sound of his knapsack sliding into the rack above and he dropped into the seat next to mine. He hadn’t asked if it was taken, but why should he? It was obviously free.

My neck felt sore from leaning sideways toward the window, but I wasn’t about to turn around. “Smells like a sewer in here,” I heard him say. But I didn’t respond. I had noticed another smell. His sweat. Not exactly a bad odor, but it was offset by the faint residue of tobacco smoke.

The driver started the engine and we finally rolled out of the station. I clutched the book. I thought maybe I’d start reading it. But I didn’t want to encourage the guy next to me to start a conversation. I closed my eyes and thought about how long this ride was going to take. 

No more than ten minutes had elapsed when I felt the guy’s leg pressing against mine. Maybe it was just the movement of the bus, but no, there was no mistake. He was deliberately pushing his knee against my leg. If I reacted, even slightly, he would think I was awake. Sweat beaded up on my neck and brow. I slowly shifted my weight to the right. I thought I heard him laugh. But he might have just been clearing his throat.

I feigned a yawn, adjusted my seat, and opened the novel: "The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail..." I had only read a few pages when I heard a strange, loud click -- a sharp snap, like something being popped open. I wanted to see what he was doing, but kept my eyes forward, rereading the lines I’d just finished. My eyes made little sense of them. Next I heard an odd scratching sound, like sandpaper rubbing against wood. I carefully looked down to my left. The guy was holding a sharp, shiny knife, the blade about three or four inches long. He was moving it back and forth across his denim shorts just above his knee.

I stopped breathing. A cold drop of sweat fell from my armpit and slid down my rib cage. I inched over, creating a gap between us. Should I pull the cord above the window and get the driver’s attention? My book fell to the floor under the seat. The dust jacket had come off partway. I leaned forward, and reached down for it. My hand was shaking. My neighbor chuckled and I heard him close the knife with a snap and slip it in his pocket. I didn’t make a sound. Although I could feel my heart pounding.

“You a big reader,” he said, after a long pause. His voice was deep, raspy. I didn’t respond. My face felt hot. My pulse raced. I stared at the country views outside. He jabbed me in the ribs with his thumb. “Hey, I asked you a question.”

 I turned back abruptly, and faced him. “Maybe. What of it?”  

“Nothing. Just curious.”

 “So am I.” I managed to catch my breath. “Do you always play with knives on buses?”

 He grinned. “I wasn’t playing. I was cleaning it. I use it sometimes in my work.”

 “And what kind of work requires a switchblade?”

“Sometimes I need protection. I sell stuff -- crystals, leather goods, pipes, and jewelry. You’d be surprised how often people try to steal it. But I’m ready for ‘em.” He grinned. “Wanna see some?”

“No that’s fine. I’ve got a bit of reading to do.”

“Don’t be like that,” he said. “You got all the time later to read that dumb book. Here let me show you.” He lifted himself halfway up and reached above with his left arm for his bag. His shirt pulled up, revealing a taut, flat stomach, tan and smooth. He slid back down and opened the knapsack. Inside were tiny plastic sleeves filled with brass bangles and small glass beads, polished stones. He pulled one out containing a ring made of dull metal. Nickel or silver, I couldn’t tell which.

“You don’t look like the type to wear a ring,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but it came across as snotty. He noticed.

“It’s not for me, man. It’s for the buyers. People like you.” 

“I can’t afford stuff like that,” I said. “I’m still in school. And besides I can’t wear jewelry. My fingers swell up.”

“Not a big deal,” he said, with a hoarse laugh. “It’s not all jewelry. Wait, maybe this one.” He dug into the bottom of his bag and pulled out a copper bracelet. “A lot of kids are wearing these now. It releases metals your body needs. Try it on. It’s only seven bucks.”

“That's a bit steep.”

He threw it back in his bag and shoved it under his seat. “No problem, man." After a pause, he said, "I’m on my way to Atlantic City. You going there too?”

I shook my head. “Not far from there.” He didn’t need to know my exact destination.

“Oh yeah? One of those beach towns? Stone Harbor, or maybe Wildwood? The boardwalk at Wildwood can be fun.” He punched me lightly in the ribs. “Very wild nights, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled to himself. “So where you going then?”

“I’m working at a theater company. In a dinner show. We're doing 'West Side Story.’”

He laughed, and pointed at my clothes, my khakis and short sleeve shirt. “You don’t look like the kinda kid to be in a gang. So you a dancer?”

I didn’t like the way he said the word dancer. “Not really. More of an actor. It’s a summer job.” Frankly it was none of his business. Better to change the subject. “What about you? You live in Philadelphia?”

“Nah. I’m from Chester. I’m meeting some buddies of mine at a concert near the boardwalk. Maybe sell some of my stuff. There's gonna be a couple of metal bands. You a fan?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Okay, I see.” He laughed, then combed a hand through his hair, exhaling heavily. “Look, I better grab some shuteye. I had a crazy night last night.” He winked, and jabbed me in the chest again. “Kinda spent, you know what I mean?” He spread his legs wide and leaned back. His thigh pressed up hard against mine again. This time I didn’t slide over even though I could feel the handle of his switchblade rubbing against my thigh. 

After a few minutes, I dug out the bag of sandwiches and opened it quietly so as not to awaken my neighbor. I was about to open the carton of juice when the driver made a sharp swing to pass a car and jerked the bus hard to the left.  My head fell over onto the guy’s shoulder. It was exposed due to his tank top. His skin felt hot and slightly damp. I immediately pulled back. He seemed to be asleep but when the bus straightened itself, he moved closer to me and now leaned his head onto my shoulder.  I felt pinned to the wall. My right cheek was practically flat against the window. But if I pushed him away, I thought, he might get stirred up. I let him stay there. I was too tired to make a scene. The hum of the bus created a relaxing rhythm. I opened the novel and read a few more chapters. Gradually I nodded off too.

It must have been about forty minutes later when I woke with a start as we lurched into a large city station.  I looked to my left. The seat next to mine was empty. I checked the aisle. Passengers were getting off. I could just make out the pair of nuns and the sailor disembarking. The old lady with the kid had disappeared. The driver cried out: “Last call for Atlantic City. Next stop Ocean City.”

I studied the crowd by the bus getting their things. The blond was there, his knapsack on his back, clutching his duffel bag under his right arm. He saw me then raised his left arm and made a gesture. It wasn’t a wave. He was pointing at me, or something next to me. I couldn’t grasp what he meant. He smiled, pointed again, his voice rising. “On the seat! Next to you!”

I glanced over, looking for one of his bags, thinking he’d left it behind. I didn’t notice anything. But then in the corner of the seat something caught the light, one of his pieces of jewelry. I reached down and tried to grab it. But to my surprise it was attached to the cushion. I swung around, looking for the guy to tell him that I found it. But he was gone.

The bus roared into gear and we began to move. I turned back to his seat, unfastened the pin and held it in my hand. It was my turn to chuckle. My traveling companion had left me a souvenir — a swirl of rhinestones in the shape of a question mark.

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The Riddle of Jessie Reed

 

 (As anyone who has followed this blog knows, I am obsessed with the story of Jessie Reed, the ill-fated Ziegfeld Follies showgirl who married my grandfather Leonard Minor Reno. Several years ago, I published my account of her extraordinary life, "Haunted Melody" HERE on this blog.

Afterwards, I posted a follow-up discussing the problems I've had in finding out her roots. Since then I have come across new material that has helped answer some of those questions and dispense with others. Hence this update on the anniversary of her death. The older version has been retired. 

I recommend to anyone reading this new post to read "Haunted Melody" first. I hope you will indulge me in this detailed deconstruction of her vital statistics. )

 

Perhaps the greatest enigma about Jessie Reed is who she really was. When I first learned of her, after my mother died, I found some papers related to my grandfather discussing his seven-year marriage to her. I also found a book about the Ziegfeld Follies written by Marjorie Farnsworth that claimed Reed's real name was Jessie Rogers. But I began to doubt that, especially since the account had other errors and didn't have any documents to support its statements. A lot of it seemed to have been compiled from third-hand sources. I decided to go and find out more on my own. 

It's been quite an undertaking, literally and figuratively, like putting together a mosaic of Jessie's life from the small bits and pieces I've been able to cull from archives and historical records. She wasn't a diary writer and left no personal papers that I am aware of. Everything about her was mercurial, ephemeral and maddeningly elusive.

The first official document that I found was Jessie Reed's death certificate. She died on September 18, 1940, "age 42" which would put her birth year at 1898, if her birth month preceded September. (Her obit in Variety and elsewhere said she was 43.) There's not much information on the death certificate, aside from a few medical details. She died from pneumonia. Her birthplace was given as San Antonio, which might be inaccurate. Her father's name was given as Jessie Richard. No mother's name was given. The informant is a person named Wilson Brett, a man that I have not been able to find any record of. He may have been a friend or just a hospital official. And I suspect the mention of San Antonio had more to do with the fact that Jessie's daughter was living there at the time. It's possible she had been contacted by the nursing staff. It's doubtful she would have known much about Jessie's roots since they were completely estranged.

Thanks to the death certificate, which had her Social Security number written on it, I was able to chat with someone from the SSA office near me who explained that he couldn't give me a copy of her application, but he was able to tell me that her name was listed as Jessie M. Reed. And her birth date as July 1897. She had applied to the program in 1936 around the time that newspaper reports first surfaced that she was hard-up and on relief.

How then did the name Rogers get attached to her? Apparently her first husband, Ollie Debrow, referred to her by that name during his murder trial in 1917. Or so I thought. I checked some of the court transcripts and didn't see that name mentioned. It turns out that the source for this alleged quote is a heavily redacted transcript of Ollie’s testimony that her second husband Dan Caswell had used in his spurious memoirs that were serialized in newspapers across the country in 1922 after their divorce. Either Caswell had misquoted Ollie or perhaps the court stenographer had heard him wrong. It could be that “Jessie Rogers” was simply Jessie’s stage name at the time (she changed her name so many times), although I have been unable to find any mention of her using this name in the numerous newspaper clippings I found from the period. 

 

Apparently there is now a French Wikipedia page dedicated to Jessie Reed (here) that gives her maiden name as Richardson, citing her marriage license in 1912 to Ollie Debrow where her name was written as “Jessie May Richardson.” But just a year later in 1913 her name is listed as “Jessie M. Richards” on her daughter Ann’s birth certificate. So which is it? Richards or Richardson?  I suspect the wedding license version was a clerical error since even Oliver's last name Durborrow is misspelled as Durbarow.  I'm pretty confident that the last name is Richards.

One can easily go mad poring through Census records, as I have done countless times, on microfilm or online, hoping to find the real Jessie Reed somewhere in one of them. Despite countless hours, I have not found Jessie in the 1900, 1910, 1920 or 1930 censuses. I have combed every record, using every possible variation of her name (Reed, Rogers, Richard, Richards, Richardson, Debrow and Reno etc) and followed every possible clue to no avail. This is frustrating and surprising since there is almost always some record, no matter how off (a botched birth year, or a daughter incorrectly listed as a son, for instance.)

I did manage in the end to find her in one census, the 1940 one, in Chicago, living at the Metropole Hotel. Her name is given as Jessie Reed and her age as 42. The page was filled out in April so that would mean she was born in 1897 if her birth month was in fact July. But as we know, census records are often erroneous. Her profession, for example, is mistakenly written on the line below her entry, as “nightclub hostess.” The girl whose entry it was mistakenly written in wasn't old enough to be working at a nightclub, so it makes more sense that it is intended for Jessie Reed (she was indeed a "nightclub hostess" at the time.) The most interesting fact about this document is that it says she was born in "Alabama," not Texas. More on that fascinating detail below.

Where else to look? I focused on Houston where she married Ollie Debrow in 1912. There were a lot of people named Jessie Richards in Texas. Even some named Jessie May Richards, and Richardson. But I have checked every possible candidate and found that they are invariably someone else, or tied to someone's family tree, and then are scratched off my list. It also appears that the name “Jessie May” was a popular name in its day. Thousands of girls born between 1890 and 1900 had that name, making research all the more difficult. It wasn’t until 1928 that Jessie Reed started to use the name Jessica. Curiously, the name Jessica rarely appears in the 1900 or 1910 censuses anywhere in Texas and I’ve come to the conclusion that Jessie just made it up later in life because it sounded more mature and perhaps, in her mind, sophisticated.

Adding to the confusion of Jessie’s roots is her marriage license with Dan Caswell, the document that was of such interest to reporters back in 1920. That too should be a slam-dunk, at least in a normal, non-theatrical world, since most people rarely lie or misrepresent themselves on official documents during such happy (one assumes) circumstances. But in Jessie’s case, nothing is ever simple, and never cut-and-dried. She had a genius for disinformation. Jessie gave her birth date as July 3, 1898 on that document. And claims her birth name was Reed, the stage name she assumed when she moved to New York and posed as the sister of Nora Reed in their act, "The Reed Sisters." 

On her 1920 marriage certificate she names her parents as James and Anna Reed. This is odd since Nora's parents are named Ed and Sallie, but perhaps Jessie had dropped the sister act by then. No doubt Jessie was reluctant to give her name as the former Mrs. Debrow (or Durburrow, as it were), and she had already divorced Ollie in 1917. She used her alias here since it was the name she was best known by and because she didn’t want Caswell to know she had been previously married. She may also not have wanted the world to find out anything about her Richards family relatives. She may also have tweaked the birth year, perhaps because Dan was born in 1899 and she didn’t want him to think she was much older than he was. Dan too was chastised in the press for falsely claiming on his wedding application that he was an actor. He also misled people into thinking that he was a millionaire when the truth was more complicated. It's not inconceivable that both of them were well in their cups when they tied the knot. Accuracy was hardly their strong suit.

In an interview that occurred shortly after she wed Caswell, Jessie was asked if her maiden name was Reed and she insisted it was. The interviewer, perhaps hoping she’d slip up, asked her if her parents’ name was also Reed. Jessie said of course it was. But when asked about her previous marriage, and daughter, Jessie cut the interview short. She had a lot to lose. She was a Ziegfeld headliner and her name could be seen alongside such big stars as W. C. Fields and Fannie Brice. A hint of scandal could derail her career.

(1920 ad featuring Jessie Reed in the cast.)

The names James and Anna seemed like a perfect lead but I've never been able to find a couple in the 1900 Census named James and Anna Richards, or Richardson, with a daughter born in 1897. The 1900 Census is the only one I know of that included birth months as well as years, so it's possible to search all the Jessies in that census who were born in July 1897. And very often 1898. None fit the paradigm in Texas. Nor in Alabama for that matter.  

I had better luck locating Jessie by consulting the Houston city directories. In the 1910/1911 edition, which was compiled in July 1910, there is a listing for a “Miss Jessie Richard,” “cash girl at Alkemeyer” living at 1505 Elysian. This is the first time this person appears and the last. Alkemeyer was a dry goods store very similar to Levy Bros that Jessie had claimed to have worked at in one of her early Ziegfeld interviews. She may have worked at both. Alkemeyer is also the store Ollie had been caught breaking into in 1908.

Levy Bros in Houston early 1900s.

Alkemeyer's General Store, Houston

 

There were several other people named Jessie Richard or Richards in Houston directories of that period. Most were clearly men, as a white female would customarily be listed as Miss or Mrs. Some were African-American. Directories added the letter "c" for "colored" in those segregated days. I was able to check these people out and cross them off the list. A young woman named Jessie Richards who lived at 836 Arthur Street seemed a possibility, but she committed suicide by carbolic acid poisoning in 1915. Several articles were written about her. A Miss Jessie Richards living on Hardcastle Street was arrested in 1914 for felony theft and is described as being from Beaumont. So we can eliminate her too. Our Jessie Richards was in San Antonio in those days living and performing as Jessie Debrow. (Oddly, in some reviews she is called "Miss Ollie Debrow." She appears on stage and in the San Antonio directory under that name.) 

Another Jessie Richards, who worked at Nabisco Biscuit Company, seemed intriguing since Dan Caswell had once said that Jessie worked at a "cracker factory" in Houston before he married her. But this Jessie appears to be a man (no Miss or Mrs added), and a typo; he has the same address as "Jesse A. Richardson" in the previous year's listing, an "operator at the Cozy Theater," originally from Missouri. Born in 1888, he never married and is too young to be Jessie's father. And a glance at earlier census records shows he did not have a sister named Jessie. Could she have been a cousin or niece? Doubtful. He seems to be the only one living in Houston at the time and I could not find any family or marriage records for him. 

Another possibility is a fellow named James C. Richardson, paving contractor, who was living in 1912 at 709 Rusk Avenue, which just happens to be where Oliver Debrow and his family were living around that time. As with so many people who might fit into the mosaic of Jessie's life this man never appears in the directory again nor any of the census records for that area. He's a one-off. Intriguing, yes, but a dead end.
 
I opted to double-down on the "Miss Jessie Richard" who worked as a "cash girl" at Alkemeyer's, residing at 1505 Elysian. By using the street guide that accompanies the directory, I found a woman named “Mrs. Willie McCorquodale” also at that address. The number 2 appears after her name, which means she was living there with one other person. She lists herself as “Widow of Glenn.” A genealogical marriage index for Texas reveals a “Willie Richard” who married “G. McCorquodale” in 1907 in Orange, Texas. Richard, as I mentioned, was the surname given for Jessie Reed's father on her 1940 death certificate. Could Willie have been a relation? Perhaps Jessie’s aunt or sister? Or even perhaps her mother? The Houston directory includes Mrs. Willie McCorquodale’s profession as “operator at the American Laundry.” This fits with the anecdote told by reporters that Jessie was working at a laundry when she was younger. She could have been helping Willie at her job. An interesting aside is the fact that in the same directory Nora Flippen, Jessie's great friend, and the actress with whom she moved to New York in 1917, is listed as a "shirt folder" at Eureka Laundry in Houston.

It took some digging to find Glenn McCorquodale in the 1910 Census. His name was badly mangled. But he is still there in Orange, listed as a plumber, but also as “widowed.” This is funny, but telling. Both Willie and Glenn are listed as “widowed” in the same year even though they are both clearly alive. I suspect that means they were separated or divorced.
 
At first I had no luck finding any sign of Willie in the census from 1900 or 1910 or later. Nor in any of the Texas death indexes. She seemed to simply disappear from the records. (Her former husband, Glenn, however, did not. He was apparently shot and killed by his second wife in Orange, Texas in 1942.) But recently, I came upon a marriage record of a "Mrs. Willie McCorquodale" and someone named "Mr. Clint L. Hair" in Galveston on June 14, 1913. I had always looked for Willie's records in Houston, not elsewhere. Turns out Clint was also in the laundry business, a driver for the Pantatorium, and later the Model Laundry in Houston.

It was an easy step from there to find Willie's death certificate. In the past I had always been searching for either Willie Richard or Willie McCorquodale. But now I had the name Hair and found one for 1920. Her death certificate gives her maiden name as Clemons. This surprised me as I had assumed Richard was her maiden name. But this meant that she had been married prior to marrying Glenn McCorquodale.

After much probing, I found out that Willie is in fact in the 1910 Census, as “Richarts (wid),” living with her mother, Addie V Clemons, and siblings in Houston. Jessie is not there. And Willie is said to not have had any children. Confirming that her maiden name was Clemons led me to a fascinating break, an earlier marriage record for her, as “Willie Clement,” wed to a “J. B. Richards” in 1896, a year before Jessie was allegedly born. This took place in Caldwell, Burleson, TX where the Clements family (early records use Clements, while later ones invariably use Clemons) lived for many years on a farm and where I found Willie in the 1880 census with Addie and her large family, but incorrectly listed as an infant boy!

Willie's 1896 marriage record merely gives the names and the date, but no additional information regarding the families. I looked again at the 1910 Houston Directory and noticed a “Mrs. J. B. Richards” (widow) living at 611 Girard. This gave me pause because I thought perhaps these were two different people, but then I found Clint L. Hair living at the same address as Willie, and again in subsequent years with "Mrs. J. B. Richards" -- so she was indeed the same person, Mrs. Willie McCorquodale, who married him in 1913. I imagine they delayed getting married because C. L. Hair was previously married in 1903 to a woman named Lydia Ryan and their divorce was only finalized in April of 1913. He then married Willie in June. She only used the name Willie Hair from then on. They had three children together before her death in 1920. He remarried but died shortly after in 1922.
 
The significance of all this exhaustive research back and forth is that these new findings confirm that Willie Richards is indeed the same person in all the various Houston directories and census records. Why she was listed at two different addresses in the directory in 1910 I can't answer, nor why she is listed in the census that same year, living with her mother Addie on a different street. The timing between the three distinct records is brief. I can only think that for some reason she bounced around between the three residences. Perhaps she felt it was more proper to have a separate residence for her and Miss Jessie Richards.
 
I wouldn't blame anyone for saying, at this point, that there's no proof that this Miss Jessie Richards who happened to be living at 1505 Elysian isn't just a crazy coincidence. How do we know she was related to Willie Clemons Richards McCorquodale Hair at all? Well, that's a good question. But two facts I recently uncovered convince me that this was no case of mistaken identity, but that there was an important connection between these two people. 

First I had a lucky break when I located Willie Richards in the 1900 Census, living in Alabama with her husband J. B. Richards. Her name is twisted in the index as "Virllie" but if you look closely at the original document, and compare the lettering to others on the page, her name is clearly "Willie." Her husband is listed as “Jessie B. Richards,” born in Florida, now a farmer in Marengo County, Alabama. This stands out in my mind because on Jessie Reed's death certificate, as we know, her father's name is given as Jessie. And adding some support is the fact that in the 1940 census, as previously mentioned, Jessie gives her birthplace as Alabama, not Texas, as had always been assumed.

How do I know this Willie in Marengo, Alabama in 1900 is the same as Willie McCorquodale in Houston in 1910? One thing is slightly off. The record says she has been married six years to J. B. But we know they were married in 1896. That could just be a mistake. Not an uncommon occurrence in Census records. What clinches it for me is that I noticed that two of her Texas siblings, Capitola Clements, 16 years old, and Fred Clements, 7, are living in the same house with the couple. Fred is listed in other records as Willie's sibling and as a son of Addie V. Clements (Clemons). Capitola, I am not sure of, but I know that Willie's father had a sister named Capitola, so it is logical that he would have named one of his daughters after her. In the 1910 census Addie Clemons is reported to have had 12 children, four of whom had died. Capitola may be among them. Willie had a sister named Ola and I wonder if that was a shortening of Capitola. The only fly-in-the-ointment there is that Ola is listed in the 1900 Census with Addie in Burleson, TX earlier in the same month. Burleson is roughly 500 miles from Marengo. She could have traveled by train. Or Capitola could just be another sister, one of the siblings who died young. (One can't be too thrown by multiple listings in censuses, I've discovered. In 1920 I found Ollie Debrow listed twice, once in San Antonio and again in New York City. People got around a lot more than we think in those days.)

Adding to the intrigue, a daughter named Alma A. Richards is also in the household, 2 years old, born May 1898. It's tempting to think that this child could be Jessie May Richards. The year is appropriate since Jessie gave that year on her marriage license with Dan Caswell, and while most sources later on put her birth year as 1897, I am beginning to wonder if she may not have been born in 1898 after all. 

I found a very reliable article published in a New Orleans newspaper in August 1916, containing police reports during Jessie's so-called tryst with theater manager P. E. Payne (see “Haunted Melody.") Jessie is quoted as insisting she was only 13 when she married Ollie in 1912. (They had married in February.) The article also says that she and Ollie had come to New Orleans from "their home in Florida." Perhaps this is a mistake since they were on tour at the time in Arkansas, but it does tie in to the fact that Jessie B. Richards had roots in Florida. Perhaps the couple did spend time there.

 

Further complicating things is the fact that Willie's daughter Alma A. Richards does not appear in any subsequent census or other vital records. She vanishes. So does Willie's husband Jessie B. Richards. He is not present in any other censuses. Perhaps they both died. Perhaps Jessie B. and Alma moved to another state or country. Who knows? It's a frustrating conundrum because this seemed to be a key to finally unlocking Jessie's roots. I've looked hard to find any records of Jessie B. Richards' parents since his father is listed as being born in Ireland, and his mother in Virginia. Usually that would make it easy to find them. But not in this case, of course. Without any further details about the father and daughter, it's hard to nail anything down.

Okay, fine, but we still haven't established a concrete link between Willie Richards and Jessie Reed other than that street address in the Houston Directory in 1910 and the fact that Willie had been married to Mr. Jessie B. Richards. That concerned me, so I dug around a bit more. And I came upon a new fact that in my book convinces me they must be related. I found a death notice for one of Willie's brothers, Robert G. Clemons, who died of TB in 1918. An obituary was posted in the Houston paper mentioning that five of his sisters attended his funeral. One of them was Ola now "Mrs. Fulghum," another was Allie (Mrs. Wilson), and Willie (as Mrs. C. L. Hair) and a fourth named Mrs. J. B. York, most likely Ruth Clemons, the youngest of Addie's children. She was an actress. (I found a J. B. York, manager at the Empress Theater in Houston, at that time but so far no marriage record for the two.) The fifth sister was the key; she is listed as Mrs. Kate Debrow. This confirmed it for me, because I realized that this was the Kate who married Will Debrow, Oliver's older brother, in 1916. Their wedding registration lists her as Kate Clemons. This makes Kate Clemons the sister-in-law of Jessie Reed -- and perhaps her aunt, if Willie was in fact her mother.

I then was startled to find out that Ruth Clemons and Kate Clemons performed alongside the Debrow Brothers as the Clemons Sisters. Ruth seems to have joined the act shortly after Kate married Will in 1916. Just a few weeks before Jessie ran out on Ollie and fled to New Orleans, as documented above, she was performing in a show with Kate and Ruth. She got good notices too. And just a few days after the incident she was back on tour with Ollie and the Debrows in Little Rock, Arkansas. They went on performing together after Jessie left for New York, appearing in Houston at the Cozy Theatre in the 20s.

 

 

In the 1920 Census, "Dainty" Ruth was living with Kate and Will Debrow. Later she appeared to move to Los Angeles to make her mark as an actress. She's there in the 1930 Census, and appeared in a few product ads. But eventually she came back home and got remarried.  Kate Debrow died in 1936. She was buried in Houston as Kate Clemons.

One of the big questions I have regarding Jessie Reed and her early career is why no one ever came forward and discussed her Houston roots. Many of the Clemons family were still alive when she died in 1940. And at the peak of her fame. But none of the obituaries of Jessie I've found in the Houston papers and the San Antonio ones ever talked about Jessie's roots in those two towns. Did they not know that she was performing in vaudeville there? No mention of the murder trial in San Antonio appears in these write-ups either. Surely there must have been some reporters who remembered her, or family members who could have corrected errors in some of these articles or written their own tribute to her. If only they had told us who she was none of this archival sleuthing would have been necessary.

One last thing, I did ultimately manage to find some tangible relics of Jessie's life -- a few brief letters of hers, including her autograph, that I bought from a book dealer a few years back. They were sent in 1922 to John Myers O'Hara, a poet and wealthy stockbroker, and a lifelong bachelor, who was a close friend of Sara Teasdale. He was staying at the Plaza Hotel. Jessie was in-between marriages, vacationing in Palm Beach, and jotted down a few wry comments to him about how "nice and green" everything was in Florida, how she was "spending a few dollars here," as well as the telling statement: "remember I have not forgotten your promise." If one reads between the lines, it seems she was hinting she could use some greenbacks to pay for her expensive stay at the Royal Poinciana Hotel.  

O'Hara, above, is best known for his translations of Sappho's love poetry and the poem "Atavism" which was quoted in Jack London's Call of the Wild. He must have been fond of Jessie because he glued her note cards and a newspaper image of her in his copy of Arthur Symon's Lesbia. Perhaps it was meant with a touch of irony. The first poem in the volume is "The Vampire," a ghoulish bit of verse that offers such lines as "She may not rest till she have sucked a man's heart from his breast," ending with "his lips sigh her name with his last breath, As the man swoons ecstatically on death." How would you like to bet that he sent Jessie the money? 

I've decided to pause my research at this point. I have exhausted all outlets. Perhaps someone out there might know more about Willie's husband Jessie B. Richards and his time in Alabama. Or of Alma. Could he have had a previous marriage and daughter? Was Jessie May Richards a niece, or even a cousin of his? Was she related to Willie? Or one of the Clemons family? Let me know what you find out. My email address is on the home page. 

Ultimately, it's fair to say that none of this is vitally important. Jessie lived her life the way she wanted to, having closed the door on her past. She left a legacy of broken hearts, unfulfilled dreams. Perhaps it's fitting that Jessie remains an enigma. As Roald Dahl once wrote: "Sometimes mysteries are more intriguing than explanations."

 

Vaudeville Vedette: JULIAN ELTINGE

Back in December 1998, I wrote an article for OUT Magazine on the legendary female impersonator Julian Eltinge. OUT rarely did historical pieces, but I felt Eltinge's story was relevant to the societal changes going on at the time and as a role model for so many burgeoning drag performers. Imagine my surprise 25 years later to find that a new book has just come out exploring Eltinge's life, as well as that of two other contemporary theatrical legends: Bert Williams and Eva Tanguay. A Revolution in Three Acts by David Hajdu and John Carey is a marvelous illustrated history of their three lives, told through compelling graphic drawings, edited with wit and flair. 

 

    Reading it, I was inspired to go back to my article which I hadn't looked at in years. I was surprised by how much information I had been able to dig up back then, without the benefit of so many internet resources that we have today. Here it is on my blog in a slightly edited form for any and all to read.

JULIAN ELTINGE
    On a quiet Sunday morning in March of 1998 in New York City, Broadway's elegant but somewhat faded Empire Theatre, weighing 7.4 million pounds, was floated on tracks from its location on 42nd Street near Seventh Avenue to its new home, closer to Eighth. The Beaux Arts landmark, designed by architect Thomas A. Lamb in 1912, became the centerpiece of the new AMC Movie Complex, opened in 2000, part of the much ballyhooed redevelopment of Times Square. (In fact, only the lobby and entrance were relocated, the auditorium was razed.) The Empire's peculiar migration, a unique attempt to preserve the theater district's heritage while accommodating today's audiences, gave the media occasion to wax nostalgic for the bygone days of the Great White Way.

    Nearly ignored amid the hype was the fact that the Empire had originally been named The Eltinge, after Julian Eltinge, the legendary female impersonator who reigned over Broadway in the 1910s and '20s. Given the widespread celebration of Disney's new family-friendly Times Square, it was an ironic oversight, for the Eltinge is a vestige of 42nd Street's risque roots -- in 1942, when it was a burlesque house, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia shut down the Eltinge on morals charges -- and a symbol of what one gifted actor, rather than a phalanx of corporations could achieve. "It's amazing that one of the only theaters still standing on 42nd Street was built by a drag queen," says Charles Busch, of all of today's gender illusionists the likeliest heir to Julian Eltinge's legacy.

    Not since Edward Kynaston charmed Elizabethan audiences playing Shakespearean heroines had a man in feminine finery created such a sensation. Jerome Kern composed tunes for Eltinge. Erte designed his sets. King Edward VII of England, after inviting the star for a command performance at Windsor Castle, presented him with a white pit bull as a gift. On the silver screen, too, Eltinge scored in comic silent hits, introducing the joys of cross-dressing to the masses.

    In his day, Eltinge was an enormously popular star with a profound impact on show business for decades to come. Long before the Tony Award-winning shows Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage aux Folles set tongues wagging, Eltinge revolutionized the theater with The Fascinating Widow and The Crinoline Girl, the first musical farces to bring "glamour drag" onto the legitimate stage. Eltinge's more flamboyant vaudeville skits, where he literally let his hair down, had folks from coast to coast rolling in the aisles. Draped in silk from bejeweled head to painted toe, Eltinge spoofed dancer Ruth St. Denis in his exotic "goddess of incense" skit. Dashing across the stage, he would transform himself with lightning speed into a busty jungle queen, a rapturous nun, a spicy Creole, a nimble suffragette, or a brazen Salome. His sinuous Cobra Dance left gentlemen gasping. But Eltinge's most popular send-up spoofed the venerable Gibson Girl, flooring fashionable ladies with the star's refinement and poise.

    Not content merely to promenade in lady's attire, Eltinge also sang and danced, penning lyrics to novelty songs with coy titles such as "Two Heads Are Better Than One," or "Don't Trust Those Big Gray Eyes." Sometimes he was even known to play a blushing young girl in a revealing bathing suit, warbling "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" (an act considered too racy for some venues). But whether he was flouncing about in marabou feathers, surrounded by a flock of his scantily dressed chorus girls, the Vampettes, or standing in a spotlight at the proscenium's edge, blanketed in lace as a bride, it was nearly impossible to tell that Julian Eltinge was a man.

 

    And what a man he was: At 5 feet 8 inches and 180 pounds, Eltinge was far from dainty. But the star's small hands and feet made the illusion work. So did the lethal corsets that his Japanese dresser, Shima, would help him shimmy into, reducing a 40-inch waist to a 25. Eltinge also knew how to use makeup to his advantage, softening his chin and tapering his robust neck. At the end of each show, lest the audience be taken in by his masquerade, he would doff his wig to remove any lingering doubt. 

    Extremely popular with female audiences, who in the 1910s were for the first time venturing out to the theater on their own, Eltinge published his own magazine of beauty and fashion tips, Julian Eltinge Magazine. Inside, the genteel artiste posed in full wig, makeup, and gowns for ads selling everything from wardrobe trunks and cold cream to cough drops and girdles. Apparently women of the day found nothing bizarre in taking their cues from a female impersonator.

    "Eltinge represented the perfect girl's guide of how to behave," says Leonard Finger, a [now-retired] casting director and collector of theatrical ephemera. "Onstage, he moved like a dream, his lily white arms covered in rice powder. He was the girl next door, the kind you'd want to bring home to mother. But he was also a gay man's wish of what a feminine role model would be." Indeed, some of his tips to male fans can be read as veiled asides to men confused about their sexuality. "When you're accused of being peculiar, don't consider it in the light of a slap," Eltinge advised, oozing subtext. "It's really the peculiar man -- the different man -- who wins out."

    Who was this "Gay Deceiver," as the New York Times dubbed him early on? It's hard to say, for much of Eltinge's life is shrouded in mystery. Eltinge's managers generated reams of copy filled with fanciful half truths about him, and like many dissemblers, Eltinge himself spun stories whenever they suited his needs. By most accounts, he was born William Julian Dalton to Irish-American parents in Newtonville, Massachusetts. But several other sources list his hometown as Butte, Montana (hence his signature stage tune, "The Cute Little Beaut from Butte.") He actually spent several years there as a child. He adopted the name Julian Eltinge when he debuted in drag, according to one source, so as not to offend his family.

    Scholars don't even agree on the pronunciation of his name. Does it rhyme with fling or fringe? The answer can be found at the opening of the film The Band Wagon starring Fred Astaire. In a scene on 42nd Street, just before the famous "Shoe Shine" number Astaire mentions twice "the Eltinge Theatre." He clearly pronounces it to rhyme with tinge.  (NOTE: The new book "Revolution in Three Acts," cited above, however, argues that the name is pronounced to rhyme with "belting," quoting Eltinge. But a fascinating scene from The Voice of Hollywood in 1929 features actor Reginald Denny introducing Julian Eltinge. He clearly pronounces the name to rhyme with fringe. Eltinge dances elegantly in costume with a female chorus line and then speaks to the audience in his normal masculine voice.)

    Dates of his birth vary as well, athough 1883 is the most often cited. (His passport application from 1919 gives his birth date as May 14, 1881). At the outset of his career, Eltinge claimed to be a Harvard graduate who'd first made his mark in the famous Hasty Pudding Show. This helped lend legitimacy to his act and painted him as a boy from a good family, doing drag as a lark. In another tall tale, he claimed to have inherited a million dollars from an elderly Englishman who'd made a fortune in cutlery. 

    The truth was a bit less grandiose since his father, Joseph Dalton, was a mining engineer, excessively fond of a drink, who roamed the country, unable to hold down a steady job. Eltinge moved with his parents, before finally settling in Boston, where, at age 14, he landed a job as a clerk in a dry-goods store. At night, he hung out with a troupe of theatrical young clerks. Gregor Benko, a music archivist and collector of gay memorabilia, sees these loosely organized turn-of-the-century clubs as forerunners of modern gay associations. "While not overtly homosexual, these groups would attract men who were ambivalent about their sexuality," Benko says. "It was a safe place to be themselves."

    They also put on variety shows that lured Broadway scouts. To perfect his craft, Eltinge took dancing and singing lessons. As Eltinge told it, after a ballet class he began aping one of the heavy-set girls. The matronly drama teacher, Mrs. Wyman, caught him in his impromptu parody and exclaimed, "There is not a girl in the class who knows how to use her arms as well as you!" She suggested he make cross-dressing his career. Soon he began starring in a series of revues staged by the Boston Cadets, a group known for its inspired gender bending.

    While the kind of performances we now call "drag" were not out of the ordinary at this time, Eltinge brought a new and exciting energy to his turns in the spotlight. He realized he got bigger laughs when he imitated the mannerisms of a pretty girl rather than whooping it up in a clownish charade. He cleverly mimicked traits of well-known figures from Boston's elite Beacon Hill. By twirling his hair like a celebrated debutante or parroting the accent of a grande dame in the audience, Eltinge brought down the house. Soon he was playing swank parties in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Newport, Rhode Island.

    Hervey Jolin, a retired decorator in his 90s [he has since passed away], remembers seeing Eltinge in these early days before World War I. "I was just a child and my mother took me," Jolin recalls. "Eltinge was a knockout. There was no satire in his performance. He streaked across the stage in one costume after another: lace dresses, evening glitter, a turban. We all delighted in his shape and fashions. He was almost like a museum exhibit, a historical figure, like the Duchess of Marlborough." There was more to it than mere voguing. "He really devoted his career to showing how beautiful women were," Jolin adds. "Yet there was something freakish in his appeal. Mothers enjoyed watching him, but they'd always say, 'I wouldn't want a boy of mine to do that.'"

    As word spread of Eltinge's triumphs, Broadway producer Edward E. Rice cast him in a new farce at the Bijou, Mr. Wix of Wickham, with music by Jerome Kern. The show, which opened in 1904, ran only six weeks. But Eltinge, who appeared in skirts, was singled out. Wrote one reviewer, "If a man ever succeeded in lifting and almost totally obliterating the stigma which naturally attaches itself to this work, Eltinge has." Soon he was the talk of the town for his performance in Lifting The Lid at the Aerial Theatre atop the New Amsterdam (now owned by Disney) and his appearance at Madison Square Garden won raves. 

    Next Eltinge conquered Berlin, Vienna, and London, then sailed on to Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand. He dragged along 14 steamer trunks filled with his latest fashions, allegedly"made for him by the finest couturiers in Paris" (though he actually designed them himself). When not overseas, Eltinge hit the road, playing in everything from opera houses to mining camps. He was even scheduled to appear at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, but the show was banned when elders peeked at his costumes. Back in New York, his producer built the theater in his name with proceeds from his lucrative road shows.

 

    It wasn't long before Tinseltown beckoned. Eltinge starred in several silent pictures between 1917 and 1925, including The Clever Mrs. Carfax and The Countess Charming. Pouring his earnings into real estate, Eltinge lived in splendor with his parents at his farm in Fort Salonga, on Long Island's North Shore, and at his California ranch in Alpine, near San Diego. Villa Capitstrano, his lavish digs in Silver Lake, near Hollywood, was splashed across the pages of Architectural Record as the ultimate in good taste. Like a backdrop from Sunset Boulevard, this apricot-hued palace overflowed with ocelot and bear-skin rugs, antlered chandeliers, and Oriental fabrics. Here Eltinge entertained Hollywood friends such as Charlie Chaplin and opera diva Geraldine Farrar. Occasionally, just for fun, he would appear at parties en travestie, like the time he drove up to the Mayflower Hotel in Pasadena in a Hickson gown and "spurred bellboys and porters to their best endeavors," as the Los Angeles Times reported. No matter what Eltinge did, he generated headlines.

    Despite his remarkable career, Eltinge, who saw himself as an actor above all else, would bemoan the limitations of drag. His dream in life was to play Shakespeare's Juliet, but he never could shake the success of his camp routines or give up the staggering fees he commanded in vaudeville. "There are some disagreeable features about the work," he once confessed in a rare moment of candor. "But I suppose that is true of almost anything one might undertake. Before I took to skirts, I used to do buck-and-wing dancing, cakewalks. But now nothing seems acceptable unless I appear in skirts and do lots of kicking."

    There was also the question that persistently dogged Eltinge. Was the "queerest woman in the world," as one review insinuated, actually queer? Eltinge worked overtime to quash the rumors: He boasted he'd been engaged 10 times, then blamed his bachelorhood on his "bad temper." As a publicity stunt, he proposed to vaudeville star Eva Tanguay -- who often appeared onstage dressed as a man -- but the engagement was called off. In an effort to prove his manliness, he challenged Gentleman Jim Corbett, the famous prizefighter, to a bout in the ring and posed for photos that were reprinted around the world. Eltinge was constantly shot fishing or riding his horse, Fanny X (although the two pinkie rings and his precious lap-dogs belied any claims to butchness). When in a new town, he'd sometimes hire a flack to heckle him as the curtain rose. Then Eltinge would "beat up" the man and throw him out the door. Other times, there was no need for the charade: The hecklers were real.

 

    Little evidence remains of Eltinge's actual sexual persuasion, though many of his contemporaries assumed he was homosexual. "In the days of vaudeville, I did shows with some of the greatest female impersonators ever," Milton Berle, famous for his own drag turns, once said. "Karyl Norman, Bert Savoy, and Julian Eltinge. Of course I worked with straight men too." Eltinge's heterosexual blustering was, above all, good business. His work depended on his mainstream allure; any hint of scandal would have ruined him. There were varying statutes across the nation forbidding men from impersonating women, both onstage and off. The laws had a chilling effect: In 1927, Mae West, who quipped she'd learned how to be a woman by watching Eltinge perform, saw her racy play The Drag canceled before it opened in New York because of a threatened police raid. Eltinge had to devise ways to circumvent the censors; he played a man forced to appear as a "lady" in a plot device. Wrote one Cleveland reviewer: "There are two kinds of men who impersonate women. Eltinge is the other kind. There is nothing sissified about him."

    Paradoxically, the very innocence that had catapulted Eltinge to stardom became his undoing, as newer acts made him appear hopelessly old-fashioned. His competitor Bert Savoy became a smash hit at the Ziegfeld Follies in the 20s by camping it up as a bawdy harlot. There was no question what side of the fence he was on. The "pansy craze" that swept Manhattan nightlife in the late 20s -- when upstanding New Yorkers went slumming at drag balls and gay speakeasies -- made Eltinge's act seem antiquated and quaint. Karyl Norman, the Creole Fashion Plate, and Francis Renault, "the Last of the Red Hot Papas," thrived on the high camp of their double-entendre-ridden drag.

 

    Eltinge had boxed himself in, unable to change with the times. As the Depression hit home, he was forced to sell his share in the Eltinge Theatre (ironically, he never played there) and gave up the villa in Silver Lake. He lamented that he had made three fortunes and lost them all. Eltinge had trouble finding work, and escalating weight problems made it nearly impossible for "the daintiest of soubrettes" to perform. He all but abandoned films after losing big bucks making The Adventuress, a 1920 picture with Rudolph Valentino, then a virtual unknown. Two years later, it was recut emphasizing Valentino, by then a huge matinee idol, and released as Isle of Love, but the film vanished without a trace.

    Eltinge never fit in with the Hollywood set, whose pre-Hays Code wild ways rubbed him the wrong way (a costar and friend, Virginia Rappe, went into a coma and died after an orgy in screen comedian Fatty Arbuckle's hotel room, a scandal that rocked the town in 1921.) Eltinge also hated sitting around studios, a far cry from his quicksilver vaudeville days, when he had more than 40 costume changes in one evening. "I had to lie around in a tight corset and dress and shoes all day waiting to go before the camera," he wailed, "and people at the hotels would stare at me so much that I didn't dare take off those terrible gold slippers that pinched my toes! Imagine a woman going around in a rich evening gown, silk hose, and a pair of big, comfortable number 10s on her feet!" Even at wit's end, Eltinge had standards. 

    Things spiraled further out of control during Prohibition. In 1923, Eltinge was caught smuggling liquor over the border from Canada; after a lot of damaging press and a sensational trial, he squeezed out an acquittal. In 1929, he had a car accident in Los Angeles, crashing into a police vehicle. Rumors of his excessive drinking were rampant. He had once joked, "I get about a pound of flesh with every highball," but now he was overweight and slugging back beer. His later films reveal a haggard, fading farceur, without any of the delicate subtlety that had been his strong suit. Too ill to perform, Eltinge canceled a world tour and retreated with his mother to his spread in Alpine. He made aborted attempts to turn the ranch into a resort for men and even talked of opening an Eltinge Theatre in L.A. but the plans never materialized.

    Desperate to revive his act in the '30s, Eltinge performed at the White Horse, a sleazy Hollywood nightclub with a gay clientele. Local laws made it illegal for a man to don women's clothes, even in a theatrical setting, so Eltinge was forced to do his act in a tuxedo and point to the costumes on a rack, asking the audience to imagine what he would look like. It was a dramatic comedown for the queen who'd once dazzled a king. In 1940, he was banned from performing at the Rendezvous in L.A., on the grounds that it was a gay club. His swan song in Hollywood was a forgettable cameo in the 1940 Bing Crosby film, If I Had My Way.

    When he returned to New York that year, Eltinge made another stab at a comeback. Impresario Billy Rose cast him in a nostalgic revue at his Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in the basement of the Paramount Hotel. The new act was a pale shadow of its former self, and Eltinge grew more depressed. One night he had to interrupt his performance because of a pain in his side. He went home and never returned. Ten days later, on May 7, 1941, Eltinge died under mysterious circumstances. Kenneth Anger wrote in Hollywood Babylon, not always a reliable source, that the star committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills, which few questioned. It seemed to some an apt final curtain for an aging, over-the-hill fop. But his death certificate says he died of natural causes. Some have speculated that what really killed him were the after-effects of kidney damage from decades of abusing diet pills. Drinking alcohol and wearing corsets hadn't helped either. For years, he suffered from appendicitis and was operated on twice. True to form, Eltinge claimed the scar on his stomach was from a swordfish that had got the better of him.

    After Eltinge's death, comedian George Jessel composed a tribute that was a eulogy of sorts saluting his friend. Written in Eltinge's voice, its final lines eloquently sum up the enigma of the man once known as "the most beautiful woman in the world" -- "Sometimes after a performance, I would go back to the hotel with all my makeup on; and men would try to flirt with me. Sometimes I'd kid them a bit, unless they got too fresh. Then I'd pull off my wig, and tell them about the touchdowns I made on the gridiron. I never married -- and I was not a fairy! Anyway, as long as you live your life, doing the best you can, harming no one, it's nobody's business what your sex life is. And if you have none, that's nobody's business either."

The Broadway Butterfly Murder, 100 Years Later and Still Unsolved

DOROTHY KING: The Dark Side of the Roaring Twenties

 

 

It's hard to believe that it's been 11 years since I wrote my detailed blog piece on the murder of Dorothy King, known forever after in the tabloids as the "Broadway Butterfly." And 100 years after the fact -- she was killed March 15, 1923 -- her case still remains unsolved. It doesn't get any colder than that. For those of you who may be interested in refreshing your memories about the tragedy and the scandal that ensued, or are just now discovering her, here is a link to the article I wrote back then. I have to admit that while I was researching the case, I grew fond of Dorothy King. I had a picture of her on my bulletin board over my desk for the longest time. Even now I feel that she was treated very poorly by the press, as well as by her associates and family. The truth of her murder deserves to be told some day. Hopefully the answers will finally come.

https://brookspeters.blogspot.com/2012/02/death-of-flapper-dot-king-scandal.html