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[music playing]
The best thing about history is
to be able to go back in the past to discover yourself.
And the great difficulty for we who are marginalized,
be we women or Black or gay, is you
look at what is purported to be history, and we are invisible.
We don't exist.
ROBERT CORBER: Reconstructing the history of gays
and lesbians is difficult because we
don't have archives of letters, archives of diaries.
What we have are archives of arrest Records
We're lucky if we have an uncle or an aunt who
was gay and can support or help or give
you a window into our past and where we came from.
Often these letters and diaries
are destroyed by families who are
horrified to discover that someone in their family
was gay.
And so whenever you find a diary or a set
of letters written by gay people themselves,
it just opens up a world.
[music playing]
RENO MARTIN: From Mount Vernon in New York,
this is Reno Martin.
Good morning.
My friend Reno, he was one of my best friends in New York,
and I miss him.
I told him every little thing that I did.
It was all letter writing.
We felt like sisters or sisters that were
really brothers to the public.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: August 23, 1955 Dear Reno...
I'm supposed to be doing handwritten reports right now,
and I've got so much junk on my desk
that nobody knows what I'm writing.
And they love to read this.
It's like a confidential book report.
I look extremely readable today.
The people on the bus were dropping dead like flies.
It's a camp the way I walk around not bothered.
I'm wearing one of my stripette shirts.
It looks like an Ava Gardner blouse without tits.
As always, Daphne.
This is so wonderful that you were able to find these things.
When a historian like me hears from someone like this,
it's just incredibly thrilling because these sources
are so rare.
JOE E. JEFFREYS: Photographs tell us one thing.
Words tell us another.
The thing that's brilliant about these letters
is that they indicate to people that there
are other sources that have yet to be discovered
and yet to come to light.
[music playing]
Hello!
[applause]
(CHANTING) Gay and proud.
Gay and proud.
All the queens looked horrid except for Josephine.
Josephine, she was a fabulous drag queen.
My name is Lennie, and I'm from a very small town
near Hershey, Pennsylvania.
And this small town in Pennsylvania,
they're not too broad minded.
It's a farming area and very religious.
Believe it or not, I became the first male cheerleader
in Hershey.
I laugh about it now, but my one brother was kind of embarrassed
because everybody wanted to go into the game
to see the guy doing a cartwheel with the cheerleaders.
So I knew it was time to go.
I left there when I was 18, and I went to the military.
Back in the beginning, well, like Dorothy, I was born
in Kansas, Wichita, Kansas.
We lived on a little tiny small sort of a farm.
I mean, we had chickens, and we had a billy goat.
And I hated Kansas, even as a little kid.
We lived near a railroad track, and I
used to go out there and sit by that railroad track
and watch those trains go by and think,
I want to get the hell out of here,
even as a three-year-old boy.
My mother was very poor.
She was a working single mom.
She couldn't afford to send me to college.
So my brother had been in the Air Force,
and he suggested, you know, why don't you join the Air Force?
See the world.
And so I did.
I joined the Air Force.
And then I was shipped to Biloxi, Mississippi.
LENNIE: We were all the military, my fathers,
my brothers, everybody.
Well, when I got in, I was on a ship, and we had our own radio.
Marty Ryder his name was.
He used to run shows on the ship every year.
And he did a show called Sound Off of 1953,
and the star of the show was DeeDee LaRue.
And I sang a song and did a strip.
I went into France and bought a wig
and did a lot more than I was supposed to do.
I was supposed to be a guy that looked like a girl.
So we did two shows.
The second show I had to get an escort to come from where I got
dressed to go on stage because the guys
thought that a real girl must have got onto the ship somehow.
And if it wasn't, it was the closest thing to it,
and they were going to try to get it, I guess.
I got to get out of here because at that time,
you got thrown out.
And thank God, within two months, my time was up.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: November 13, 1957.
Dear Reno... did I tell you the time I met a number
around my neighborhood?
It was so butch it's a camp.
Actually he's fighting the gay scene.
He's really in love with his close buddy
who is in the Air Force.
The things that go on in some circles of straight life
are enough to make ours look prudish.
As always, Daphne.
[music playing]
ROBERT: I had never been in the South before.
Anyway, New Orleans was an hour and a half away by bus.
I was given weekend leaves, and they give you
a paper that has all of the places that are listed
that are off limits to personnel in the United States Air Force.
Well, of course all the gay bars were on this list,
so they gave me a perfect map to find everybody
in town that I wanted.
So I pranced down to New Orleans and had a wonderful time.
Discovered a whole new world in the French Quarter.
GEORGE: I actually was raised in New Orleans in a shotgun house.
So consequently when I'm asked when did I come out?
I jokingly say I was born in a shotgun house.
We had no closets.
I had a chifforobe, and I've always
been out to my knowledge.
Basically the first time that I remember being in drag
and making a production of it...
My mother always went to the straight balls, always.
My mother never missed a ball.
And she had this orange taffeta ball gown,
and I decided I was going to put it on one day and order
groceries from the corner.
And I literally put this orange dress on
and just pulled my hair down like in bangs
and didn't put any makeup on because I thought I was pretty.
So I called the grocery store and I said, this is George,
and I want to order some groceries,
but I want to Sam to bring them to me.
He said, OK.
So I ordered just two or three things
because it was just at the corner.
And he came to the door, knocked on the door,
and I answered the door in my orange taffeta gown.
And he went, little girl, are these your groceries?
And I went, yes, those are my groceries.
Thank you very much.
And I closed the door, and I left.
I went, man, this is pretty good.
This is crazy.
I can get away with this stuff.
ACTOR AS CHARLIE: Dear Reno...
Well, how do you like your new job in New Orleans?
Are there any flames down there?
Do the queens paint very much?
Take care.
Regards from all, Charlie.
ROBERT: My first carnival in New Orleans...
Of course at carnival everyone goes in costumes,
and many of the queens go in drag.
And a friend of mine whose name was JoJo, and he
asked me if I would like to go in drag.
I said, oh yeah.
I didn't have a wig, though, so he bleached my hair snow white,
and he turned me on to this guy who made me a gorgeous gown.
It was aqua blue velvet, and the top part of it
was black Chantilly lace, and it was encrusted with Aurora
Borealis And it had a big floating
collar and one side what's called a portrait collar.
It was just beautiful.
Of course, it's absolutely jam packed.
I mean, you're bumper to bumper.
It seemed like people were just parting to let me get through.
So I was getting a clue that, man,
you must really look good if you're getting
a pathway opening up for you.
And that's how the whole drag thing began with me.
In the service, you know, there's a whole patriotic thing
about a lot of people.
And I was that way when I joined but not when I came out.
I'm not patriotic at this point because I
finally got my discharge.
And when I opened the envelope, it
was an undesirable discharge.
That means when you're undesirable,
you're not just undesirable.
You receive no benefits.
You have no veterans rights at all.
The chaplain says to me.
He said, Mr. Bouvard, he said, you
have given this base the worst reputation
of any Air Force base in the United States
because of your gay activities.
So I told him.
I said, I would have been a great radio operator whether I
was gay or whether I was a unicorn,
and I tore the discharge up.
ACTOR: Dear Reno... remember that number that was bats over me?
Well, he's in New York now and out of the Navy.
He called me earlier this week.
I flipped.
The first thing he asked me was if my hair was still long.
His digs that scene.
Then he asked me about my Liz Taylor eyes.
Mary, I cracked.
That same night I did a cleaning of the brows
and started a slight application of mascara for that Liz effect.
I met him at a YMCA where he was staying
this was 12 applications later.
I'm James Bingood.
And if you don't know who that is,
you won't want to watch this.
[laughter] And you probably don't.
Yeah, I made a movie, and I was a drag queen, a fashion
designer, costume maker.
I did a lot of stuff.
I think I've always been unique, maybe
because in Madison all my life I've played
alone because I was different.
[laughter] And I just got to accept, well, that's life.
I didn't turn gay.
I was born gay.
I mean, I had the paper doll.
I had girly toys.
When I first saw those cartoons of little buildings
like they have them, I put them in my movie,
and they were like skyline, and then
there's little yellow windows and the blue sky.
First time I saw that, that's where I knew I wanted to be.
There was nothing like that in Madison.
So I got here.
ACTOR: Dear Reno...
New York's hotter than a firecracker,
and I'm not referring to the weather.
That's been pretty hot too, come to think of it.
JAMES: When I came to New York, it was like the movie
version of New York City.
It's sparkled, and it was colors,
and you could practically feel yourself ready to do
some Gene Kelly dances.
Maybe it was the fashions.
Women had big skirts that would "shk."
The minute I stepped off the bus,
I felt I was where I was meant to be.
It was fabulous.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: September 24, 1957.
Dear Reno... Josephine was with me at the Valley Sunday night.
I was with my number from Jersey.
We all danced and danced and danced and danced
and danced and danced.
My number had to catch the 12 o'clock busted at 42nd,
so me and Baker cruised the streets for a while.
I felt bummy and didn't feel like going
home to bed to prepare for work the next morning.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: Well, let me tell you what happened.
We spotted this hot-looking blonde
on the corner of the Bali.
He looked at us and did one of those famous retakes.
We couldn't read him for shit.
Josephine said let's ditch, so she asked for a cigarette.
He was much smiles.
He said he was looking for a good time.
Well, my dear, you never saw two party
girls go into action so fast.
We took him to Joey Ferrara's place.
Naturally he insisted on walking behind.
We didn't exactly look like any of his college chums.
GEORGE CHAUNCEY: You know, to have a queen in a bar was
a very risky thing because the laws against bars
serving gay people.
The mere presence of a lesbian or gay man in a bar
meant that bar was disorderly and could be shut down.
You'd be taken to jail and charged with some kind
of obscenity laws.
The safe route was you don't come out,
but these drag queen was really out there
and took a lot of chances.
And that way led often times to violence, being beaten up.
ACTOR AS CHARLIE: September 16, 1957.
Dear Reno... Saturday night, I decided to go to the Cork.
They didn't even want to let me in.
Later Daphne came in, and she had
to go through the same thing.
New York is very hot, cops all over.
Hardly know queens paint.
They have to be careful.
Love your friend, Charlie.
CLAUDE: First time I went in drag, I was with Billy, Daphne,
and with Josephine.
We were the freaks.
That's what they called us, the freaks.
We had shaved eyebrows that went up to here.
They were penciled on and the eyeliner and eyelashes
that went on forever.
We were as close to being female as you could get.
I was 15 in a black lace and sequined strapless
dress that I borrowed from a hooker and gold-sequined pumps
that I also borrowed from a hooker.
The only thing that was mine was my hair.
We all got into a taxi cab in our respective drags
to be taken out to the Cork club.
ACTOR: Claudia's back in town.
She was in Florida, you know?
She's back on the scene with Josephine.
I saw them both at the Cork.
The Cork is quite the scene for pancaked faces again.
I'm in the mood to paint like crazy
and make an appearance there tomorrow night.
ROBERT: The cork club I went to often.
It was the place to go.
That's where... come to think of it,
that's where I saw Josephine and Claudia a lot
was at the Cork club.
Josephine and Claudia, they were the upper echelon
of drag queens.
In the club was a section in the back
where there was four booths, and in those booths is where
the drag queens, we all sat.
But drag queens were accepted.
Drag queens were accepted.
Man, come on.
Sit down over here.
Sit over here with us.
Come on.
You drink?
What do you want to drink?
Only thing I had ever heard of was I'll have a 7 and 7.
You get him a 7 and 7.
You get my pretty young thing here a 7 and 7.
And I got a 7 and 7.
ACTOR AS CHARLIE: Dear Reno...
Well, Rose, did you receive my three letters?
Have I gotten in the swing again?
I went to the Cork Club this past weekend,
and you should see the trade that was there.
Gorgeous.
Josephine was there.
Josephine looks very good since she lost all that weight.
She told me she had written you a four-page letter.
Have you answered her?
Your friend always, Charlie.
Josephine was one of the most famous queens from Brooklyn.
She was a fabulous drag queen, beautiful.
And his hair was pulled back, Chinese, bangs,
and an enormous black ponytail.
Josephine needed to have a sponsor
because she came from the Dominican Republic illegally.
But I owned beauty shops, so I sponsored her,
and she did become a citizen working as a hairdresser.
ACTOR AS JO BAKER: November 19, 1956.
Dear Reno... how are you?
I wrote you a four-page letter dishing you all about the drag
and everything.
You didn't get it?
Well, anyway, I hope you get this one.
So you're still looking for romance, eh?
Well, the scene is off.
Forget about it.
There's no happiness for a fag.
I'm out today with Claudia.
I walked in.
The door were all opened.
I picked out four gorgeous sweaters and flew out.
Well, what a scene.
I'm starting my winter collection already.
Love, Jo Baker,
There was lots of things that I
didn't like about Josephine, one thing
that he was a kleptomaniac.
And I hope you're not alive, Josephine, and hearing this,
but a lot of these guys from Brooklyn
would steal anything that was not nailed down, literally.
They were wild.
I mean, they were very glamorous and everything,
but truthfully, both Josephine and Claudia
had the same problem with their hands
on other people's belongings.
ACTOR: Just a demented note to say hello.
I saw Josephine.
We got very dishy, mostly about the drag.
You remember that famous fringe place?
You know the one where we mopped?
Well, Frankie and Josephine went there
and mopped on the whole boat of silver lame
and the whole bolt of gold.
Isn't that a camp?
All this dish put me on the kick, you know?
I can't see spending all that loot for drag.
Those lucky bums got everything for nothing.
CLAUDE: There was once a place called Brooks Costumes.
Brooks Costumes was the biggest contributor
to drag queenism in America.
There's a picture in my mind of Josephine, and he went in there
and waited till the owner of the place went to the back
to take a leak.
And he went in and grabbed this enormous white ostrich feather
fan.
Picture a 5 foot 9, Hispanic man with no eyebrows running down
the street with a white ostrich fan that was taller
than he was.
No, [inaudible], I don't think.
ACTOR AS JO BAKER: November 19, 1957.
Dear Reno... oh, last night I was coming home in the rain,
and this kid followed me with an umbrella and a suitcase.
So I stopped, got under the umbrella with him not bothered,
and started to dish.
Well, anyway, he's my neighbor, and he's
in this play "My Fair Lady."
Isn't that a flip?
He's a little gay.
I think he could be a stead bang or something.
I called Billy Baker.
She surprised you haven't written her.
She's my silver bugle sheath for Phil's.
Love, Jo Baker.
Josephine had Billy Baker make him a silver lame
and rhinestone dress with fringe that hung down,
whatnot, and the fan.
You could see him clear across the ballroom.
ACTOR AS BILLY BAKER: Dear Reno...
I've been very busy with Josephine's dress.
It came out sensational.
I could not get to see her that night,
but I heard from Daphne she looked gorgeous.
The drag was supposed to be on a stick.
Take good care and write soon.
Always, your friend, Billy.
Billy Baker... his real name was Billy Norton Jr.
LENNIE: He was a very good dress maker.
He made a few of mine.
They were spectacular beaded gowns, just brilliant.
I inherited one from Lynn Carter, which I treasured.
I met Billy because Billy could sew and sew well.
He had a sewing machine, and he would make a living doing that.
He will make you a knock-out dress for $10.
They were lined up around the block.
ACTOR AS BILLY BAKER: Please forgive me
for writing this in pencil, but I'm at my new place
and didn't even have writing paper.
I am very happy to hear that you are working.
I am also working.
A dress designer I know got a gorgeous seven-room apartment
next to the Hotel Pierre.
He's the one I'm working for.
Always, your friend, Billy.
Billy Baker, Daphne, and Josephine,
we were joined at the hip.
We found each other.
We found where we all belonged, and we belonged together.
ACTOR AS BILLY BAKER: Well, enough dishing for now.
I'm putting a picture of Josephine in this letter.
I hope that you receive it and someone doesn't mop on it.
Your friend always, Billy.
Oh my gosh.
That's Josephine.
I did his hair, the wig for this dress.
He stood there, and it was nude chiffon with beads on it,
a few beads on it, and white draped over the breasts,
over the hips, and over the ass, and strategically
placed so that you couldn't really quite
see what you needed to see.
Josephine, oh my God.
I think it was [inaudible] apartment.
You must always remember that when you're dealing
with drag queens in situations like this,
they can't dress at home.
Him with his Spanish father seeing his son walk out, no.
Not happening.
TERRY: I was born in the east in a very small
town with a population of 350.
I never felt good about myself.
I can remember being embarrassed, terribly
embarrassed and hating myself because I
wasn't like my brothers.
When you grow up and you have a father who
says to you that you're worthless,
you're never going to be anything,
you're never going to have a life, what are you?
Who are you?
I don't know you, I wish you'd never
been born, blah, blah, blah...
If you're told that long enough as a child,
you start to believe it.
I've always hated myself to the point
that it kills my desire to do well.
It sort of plays off on that.
It sort of says, well, you're not good enough to do this.
You'll never... why are you doing this?
There's no point in that.
You have to fight that, or I had to fight that all the time
constantly regardless of whether I was in drag or out,
you know, because I didn't feel worthy.
That's the word I'm looking for.
I never felt worthy of anything.
And whether it had anything at all to do with my deciding
to have the transition, I don't know.
I'm not smart enough to know that.
There.
Not bad for an old man of 98...
I'm not 98 for Christ's sake.
What am I?
1990... I was born 1924.
How old am I?
Still got beautiful legs, though.
You realize how old am I?
1924, quick.
94.
And I've lived here 64.
And the landlord says when is that old son of a bitch
going to kick the bucket? because he
wants to get more money.
Don't you think that $256 a month is not fair?
Tish, to me, is a nickname because my last name
is Tischette.
So then when I was working the nightclubs,
they said, oh, use Tish.
You're going to wind up using it anyway.
I'm from Connecticut.
I've got two sisters and four brothers
who are French Canadian.
[french]
First of all, I'm the oldest one.
When my father died, he left me with five
brothers and sisters younger than me,
which meant I brought them up.
And they all got married and got lovely children and everything.
I'm Uncle Joe.
Hey, Uncle Joe.
I said, where?
And they say, oh, stop now because they've all seen me.
You know, they know what Uncle Joe does or did because I've
seen them in the audience, and they've come to the audience
to see me.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: Josephine got me all hopped up on drag again.
We were having coffee at the Waldorf about 4 o'clock.
And some butch-looking rube comes over
and asks us if we know where you can get big-sized high heels.
Well, that immediately set the drag ball rolling.
We were sitting with this psychiatrist we met in the bar,
much the eyeglass number.
He's making a study of characters like ourselves.
Very nice, though.
Bought us drinks and everything.
He was giving us the whole dish on the gay scene
and the old Greek times.
I'm sure I was born in the wrong era.
I think I would have mapped much more in a toga than
in nell pink tea pants.
The scene was really on in those days.
As always, Daphne.
The drag scene in the 1950s in New York would
have largely been private parties, which
were high-risk activities.
Could have easily and were frequently raided.
I mean if you're just going to make too much noise
or if your neighbor saw these oddly dressed people coming
up and down the stairs, right?
In bars and clubs, the clubs it was happening in
were primarily heterosexual clubs
that were protected by what the old-time performers called
the boys.
There's something we call a gay tax,
and the gay tax is because it is so desired.
You pay more.
So there was a heck of a lot of money
to be made in opening and running these gay bars
and also showcase places like the 82.
But it was illicit money, so who does that?
The mafia.
No, when I came to New York, I went to work in a nightclub
called the Moroccan Village, which was on 8th Street
and owned by the mafia.
When I used to work in the club and I sit back there
and I look in the back and I would see two or three
guys sitting with the owner, they were either the police
department or they were guys from the mafia
because the mafia had their hands in everything.
As long as they're treated as well
and they were content with us, we were content with them.
Well, we had to be content with them, but you know.
I think the mob saw it as an easy money-making scheme
because they didn't overpay us.
You may be sure of that.
And I think it was a good match because the gay people were
easy to control, really, I would think,
more so than an ordinary group, wouldn't you say?
JOE E. JEFFREYS: There are certain performers today
who were around in the '50s and '60s
who still get very upset if you call drag queens.
I was not a drag queen.
I was a female impersonator.
I was a female mimic.
I was a female illusionist.
A drag queen was somebody who walked around
the street in a dress and may have been turning
tricks or whatever, right?
A female illusionist, female impersonator, a female mimic
was an artist.
GEORGE: Glamorous female impersonators...
It was high gloves.
It was boas.
It was furs.
It was heavy, chunky jewelry.
You're a vocalist.
You're a stripper.
You had a craft that you had perfected.
ROBERT: I don't like the word drag queen, actually.
It was a detrimental term to me from the beginning.
And I use it myself now, and I still don't like it,
but everybody else does.
So if it's acceptable, I'll use it, you know,
if it makes you understand more what I'm talking about.
I always call myself a femme mimic.
A female impersonator got paid.
We didn't get paid.
Nobody gave us a dime.
This was a freebie.
Whatever drag we were wearing we stole.
That's it.
We stole them.
[music playing]
Let's see.
[laughter]
JAMES: Somebody told me about the 82 Club.
And I auditioned, and they hired me.
And then they told me I'd have to get
a gimmick because I had a little bulge in my [inaudible]..
GEORGE: It was a very plush, lush nightclub
down on the Lower East Side.
And it was a very nondescript opening.
It was just a canopy over a double door with stairs
that went downstairs.
It just goes way down.
It just seems like they go forever.
And you are in a basement.
GEORGE: And once you went down the stairs, you had to walk
into the club to see the stage.
And the stage was sort of raised
up in the middle of all this.
Fabulous, it really was.
They did about 10 acts, and it was a funny show.
The place was packed.
TERRY: And there were four dressing rooms, two
large ones and too small ones.
You know, you would just come in and put on your makeup
and get in your costume and wait for the show to start.
We would walk up ramps behind a closed curtain,
and when the overture would play, the curtains would open,
and then the number would start.
GEORGE: It was girls, drag queens, and butch lesbians.
The butch lesbians were the waiters in the nightclub.
The real girls were in the show.
Then the rest were drag queens.
And we used our own singing voices.
If we sang like this, you raised it an octave or two
and sang like that.
GEORGE: You had to be a live performer.
You were not allowed to lip sync.
You were not allowed to impersonate
another live performer.
JOE E. JEFFREYS: There's a long list of celebrities
that came to the 82.
You can hardly name somebody who wasn't
there at one time or another.
TERRY: Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Warren Beatty.
HENRY: Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds.
I mean, the Gabors came in.
The Kennedys came in.
TERRY: Judy, of course, was there.
Salvador Dali would come in and do
sketches on napkins and send them in the back to Ella-Funt.
And Ella-Funt would go, oh, what is this shit?
She'd throw it and throw it the garbage can.
She must have thrown away over 200 Salvador Dali sketches.
GEORGE: Adrian was a show stopper.
I mean, when she concocted that act
and brought out the head of St. John the Baptist on a platter,
people went insane.
[applause]
The audience was not very gay.
It was all, like, tourists.
The people that were coming to the shows
were your mom and dad.
They were heterosexual couples, by and large.
They would bring through literally tour buses.
It was just people had heard about this hootsie show
where the women were all men.
And the economics of that had to do
with straight people on a night out gawking at gay people.
HOST: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Mr. Ty Bennett.
[applause]
TY BENNETT: I'm quite sure you know
your reputations were shot to hell the minute
you came in this joint.
So now that you're here, relax and enjoy
it or we'll lock the doors and make you one of us
or just make you.
I think that's what the hell you all need.
I'm not sure.
You know what they say.
If you can't lick 'em join em.
I licked them and I joined them, and here I am.
[laughter]
It was hard to watch because the drag queens would circulate
in the crowd at certain points in the show,
and the guys much more than the women... the guys were like,
[gasp], don't touch me.
You know, I mean, very visceral kind
of reactions where you could see the stigma in the air.
You know, it was visible.
So it was a performance by stigmatized people
for the normals.
In spite of being mob run, we all felt rather protected.
ESTHER NEWTON: It was a way for them to survive.
I mean, survival in this world was a big deal.
It wasn't something you could take for granted.
TERRY: The general manager at the 82 Club
who was Pete Petillo.
His sister was Anna.
She was married to Vito Genovese.
GEORGE: Who I later found out was the head of the mob
of New York and New Jersey.
It was Anna's club.
TERRY: Anna was a very nice person.
She and I got along very well together,
and she did good things for me.
I tried to be a gay man.
I couldn't be a gay man because I didn't...
I wasn't attracted to gay men sexually.
So I thought, well, then let's do this transition
because that's the only way you're
going to have any peace in your life in the years to come.
I had been at the 82 for a couple of years
before I even started thinking about making my transition.
And I didn't feel like I could afford to go to the transgender
guru of the time.
And apparently I told that to Anna
because she said, well, I'll send you to my personal doctor.
He's over in Brooklyn.
I'll send you over there.
I went, and he treated me for 18 months.
And he would give me a shot once a week
and give me the pills you take every day,
and he didn't charge me a cent.
Not only that, he arranged for my surgery.
I took two years of thinking about it.
I took the hormones for 18 months
before I decided whether to do it or not.
You see, there were some who thought, you know,
that it was just the worst thing you could do because they
called it self-mutilation, and they dug up
words like that to describe it.
But I thought, yeah, maybe, but it's going to allow
me to have the life I want.
So to me, it's not mutilation.
It's rearrangement so that I can live my life as I wish.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: February 7, 1958.
Reno Zambambansteen.
Well, here's Hedda again giving you the latest dish.
This lady is a tramp, but unlike the song,
she does dish the dirt with the rest of the girls.
There's a young ex-Marine beauty working
here out on the platform.
I think he digs me.
He's staring at me right now.
Maybe it's the paint I'm wearing, full face.
He said hello today when he came in.
I nearly fainted.
I thought he didn't like me.
As always, Daphne.
A lot of other more gender-conforming gay people
were kind of horrified that all straight
people would think this is what all gay people were like.
REPORTER: What do other homosexuals think
about the so-called queens?
What are their feelings about themselves
and their place in society?
We think the swish or the queen
represents actually a small minority within
the whole homosexual grouping.
But to the public, this is the stereotyped view
or picture by which all homosexuals are judged,
it seems.
These people actually, in most cases,
are not even liked by the rest of their homosexual brethren
because they have perhaps rejected themselves,
and they feel that society has rejected them.
Drag queens were revered and reviled.
It was a form of embodiment of what gay people loved
about being gay and what people hated
themselves for about being gay.
ACTOR AS CHARLIE: Dear Reno...
As you must know by now, Jo and I have not
been seeing much of each other.
When we do, it's on the sneak.
Her sister and brother caught us at the diner one night,
and they both laid Jo out about being seen with me.
She told Jo to stay away from me because I look like a girl.
So now when I call, I have to give a phony name.
Your friend always, Charlie.
[italian singing]
ACTOR: Jerry's in jail for four months.
She was caught in drag at the Wagon Wheel.
Her friend Shelly was working there
in drag as the hatcheck girl.
She's that pale redhead.
Remember her?
She's always in the can too.
The cops had known Jerry.
She was sitting at a table with Shelly
when the bulls pinched her.
They never knew a girlfriend was a fraud too.
Poor Jerry.
She'll be out in the spring.
Choosing to even temporarily give up the power that
was invested in them by being born men was huge,
but it also kind of challenged the whole concept
of patriarchy.
When girls take on boys roles, we call them tomboys,
and we admire them.
But the boy who is a sissy is always stigmatized,
and it has something to do with stepping
out of a role that is associated with a certain kind
of privilege.
Why would you do that?
You must be sick.
And I think that for many Americans,
that was very disturbing, and the evidence is
its association or its understanding as a kind
of pathology, a mental illness.
They shipped me to a place called Bellevue Hospital.
By then I was closing in on 16.
And they put me in a place called PQ5, the whacko ward,
because I was gay.
And every day I had to have a sit-down session
with the shrink, and all they wanted to do
is get their paycheck.
Well, why did you run away, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Because I wasn't having a whole lot of fun
being beaten up every day.
That's why.
They finally released me because after a certain point,
they can't keep you.
I haven't done anything but run away.
The only phone number I could remember was Bobby Perez.
Bobby Perez was Josephine Baker.
Tell me where to meet you.
She said, tell me where to meet you.
And I hooked up again with Josephine and with Daphne
and with Billy Baker, and then I started
turning tricks because I had no other source of income.
So I had to.
It was a matter of, well, do you want to be hungry or you
do not want to be hungry?
Pick one.
And then I found out that I could make lots
more money if I did it in drag.
ACTOR: Claudia's back on the scene with Josephine.
They mopped four paste-ons from the Metropolitan Opera House.
They sold one to Terry, one to Ricky from Brooklyn,
and kept the other two.
Oh.
ACTOR AS JOSEPHINE BAKER: Dear René...
Well, the latest seed was that Claudia
and I mopped at the Met.
Ha!
35 paste-ons, all gorgeous... white,
red, brown, black, every color you
could think of, the end wigs.
There's a white one that's down to the ass.
Most of them flew already for $75 or $50.
I have a blonde paste-on ponytail that's fab.
Ah!
Well, I'm going to bed now, so write soon.
Good night.
Josephine Baker.
PS... burn this letter please.
That Met scene was in the papers.
Don't dish.
We were working again at Loew's State on Broadway,
and Josephine Baker came backstage with another queen
named Claudia with this bag of wigs,
beautiful lace-front wigs, which are the most
expensive kind of wigs.
So a lot of the people in the show
bought wigs because they were expensive wigs
selling for much less.
You could buy, you know, $1,000 wig for $70.
So we immediately... I bought one,
Lynn Carter brought one, a few of the other people.
Two days later, the police come back stage.
Of course, we didn't know where the wigs were from.
So they arrested everyone who had bought a wig on possession
of stolen property.
We went to jail.
[sirens]
INTERVIEWER: Police have recovered 17 of the 33 wigs
allegedly stolen from the Metropolitan Opera
three months ago by two young men who sold them
for fancy dress-ball adornment.
Police revealed Wednesday that the arrest of Robert Perez, 23,
hairdresser, and Claudia Diaz, 22, a waiter, for burglary
in connection with the wig lifting.
According to authorities, Perez and Diaz
heard about a gay Thanksgiving costume ball in Harlem
and decided to get the wig concession by hook or crook.
They gained entry into the Met by imitating ballet dancers
arriving for a rehearsal and danced off with $3,000
worth of headpieces.
Yes.
One, we did not get in with the dancers.
They still don't know how we got in there.
Do you have a piece of paper and a pencil?
These were all gates, and each one of these gates
was enormous.
Each one had a lock, and they used to use
these to move in scenery.
Some idiot in this thing didn't have the brains to make sure
that they were locked, and the one in the middle
was left unlocked.
And then we went up the stairs.
And after the last steps, I was standing stage level,
and I stepped out onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera
House, and I stood there looking up at that enormous chandelier,
and I got my cookies off.
I did.
I got my cookies off.
Josephine said, what are you doing?
I said I am saving this memory.
That's what I'm doing.
We went upstairs one more flight,
and it was the wig room, and I kicked the door open.
We went out the same way we came in.
Very simple.
We started selling some of them, the ones that we didn't want.
Some were in Brooklyn.
Some were in New Jersey.
Some were the Jewel Box Revues.
Some were at the 82 Clubs.
And one idiot ratting out the whole thing.
We gave them back synthetic, cheap wigs,
and cops didn't know the difference.
So the best they could do was the guys
for breaking and entering, which is a year at Rikers Island,
which is a whole other thing.
This wig I'm holding here was part of "Rigoletto," the opera.
This is a 60-year-old.
INTERVIEWER: Why do you still have it?
Part ego, part here New York police.
You couldn't find your way out of a closet,
and two faggots have both outsmarted all of you,
and you still don't know how we got in.
ACTOR AS JOSEPHINE: October 27, 1957.
Dear Reno... well, the ball is this Friday
at the MacAlpin Hotel, and I don't know what to wear.
I have a blonde wig that's the end.
And I want to pull a blond scene with a blue dress,
but I heard everybody will be there, so I'll wear the gold.
Well, that's all the dish for a while.
I have to start douching for tonight,
and I have to cut my lashes now before I forget.
Write me soon.
Love always, Josephine.
A drag ball is when a party is held
and everybody comes dressed as the opposite sex.
There were maybe 10 or 12 different drag balls.
A special permit that would allow this type of thing
to happen for one night at that venue.
CLAUDE: And what they were were an excuse for all of us
to get into drag, and we did.
We took advantage of it.
ACTOR AS CHARLIE: August 3, 1961.
Dear Reno... well, there's two drags the same night,
Mickey Marlowe's and Daisies.
Marlow got a fantastic ballroom with water
fountains and chandeliers.
It's really gorgeous.
Daisies got her permit already and the ballroom.
She's not dishing yet where it's going to be.
I'd love to make them both.
Do you think it's possible?
If I don't lose 30 pounds, I'm not going to none of them
in drag.
I'll just go painted.
Love, Charlie.
Yeah, Dayzee Dee's Thanksgiving Eve Costume Ball.
My drag name is Dayzee Dee, and I ran those balls
for seven or eight years.
The very first ball, I printed 1,500 tickets.
I figured if we sell 600 or 700, we'll be lucky.
That ball, we had between 1,2000 and 1,500 the very first year.
GEORGE: This picture here is when we went to Dayzee
Dee's ball in Brooklyn.
That's Bubbles and me and Brandi Alexander.
It was a fun night.
TERRY: Everybody who was anybody in the drag world went.
LENNIE: There I am on stage.
This is what Billy Baker made for me.
That was in '62.
Here's Tish, me and Tish.
It was elegant, number one.
It wasn't draggy, draggy, faggy, faggy.
They were giving out first prizes
for the most beautiful wardrobe, first prize for the most
beautiful hairstyle.
Everything was elegant.
CLAUDE: Everybody walked around and paraded.
It was like somebody had opened a gigantic pair of doors
and threw them open, and all these crazy people
and the way they looked were suddenly filling...
Literally filling this gigantic place in drag.
And at the end we'd see which one we
would name the queen of the ball or the king of the ball
or whatever.
Terry Noel, she came to my ball and won first prize.
She was beautiful, very beautiful.
It was really fun.
Dayzee's drag ball was not the only drag ball.
GEORGE CHAUNCEY: In Harlem, there was a very vibrant
gay society, as they called it.
It was a very visible culture, especially
in the African American press.
MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS: You know, you had all these spots
in Harlem that were known to be patronized
by gays and as much gay activity in Harlem
as you had in Greenwich Village.
And the thing that struck me was the discovery
that the most luminous luminaries
of the Harlem Renaissance were all gay and lesbian.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: Dear Reno...
All the queens are selling for Phil Black's.
It will be at the Rockland Palace.
Where else?
There are so many new nels in town.
But as Josephine says, they all fade into the crowd at a drag.
I'm going to paint like crazy tonight.
Nobody even noticed me last night.
Very next!
But tonight... As always, Daphne.
Phil Black was a female impersonator
that was kind of a celebrity in the gay world at that time.
And the queens started making their dress for next year
as soon as they got home that night.
It was like their life.
They went crackers.
Like we were at a move premier in Hollywood waving to us
and throwing kisses.
And there was no prejudice.
It was wonderful.
And that's one of the things that makes this so interesting
to me is that it is both the first time in American history
when you have African Americans and whites interacting
in a non-clandestine way.
This was a place where all the races mixed.
So this was kind of an integrated
space, which was unusual.
And it's also then one of the first instances in which
ordinary heterosexuals have some experience
of an interaction with gays without any hostile judgments.
CLAUDE: I felt at home, I feel, at the drag ball
because I was no longer the weirdo.
I belonged, which I had not belonged anywhere before that.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: October 26, 1955.
Dear Reno... just a few lines to say hello
and a word or two to let you know that I haven't
forgotten completely about you.
My God, with the upcoming drag, I've been in such a spin.
I haven't had any time to dish or anything with you.
As a matter of fact, I'm very upset and a little nervous
about some dish I heard about myself.
Daphne, he had the most beautiful
pair of legs you have ever seen on anyone in your life.
I know women that would give their souls for legs like that.
They came up to here, and there wasn't a hair or a bump
or a [snort] on them anywhere.
They were gorgeous.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: Many of the girls
have been saying they don't think I'll map as a blonde.
I'm beginning to wonder myself.
It is a shocking change.
Everything will depend on my makeup job.
If worse comes to worse, I'm fucking all respectability
and I'm shaving off my complete browettes.
There's nothing like that Lana Turner
pencil line of gorgeousness.
Fuck Liz Taylor.
I want to be a bum that night.
As always, Daphne.
He had a silver lame dress made that was like this.
It was also like this.
But on this side here hidden where you couldn't see it,
there was a zipper that opened up and opened...
Literally opened up to the hip line.
And he stood there, and the woman he stood...
Opened his legs, there were the legs.
And it was like, oh my God, and people would freak out,
and he looked fabulous.
He was wearing two wigs because the person who
was supposed to do his hair dumped him,
and he had everything but the hair.
And I wound up putting two blonde wigs on his hair,
the hairline showing, but...
With great big... and he looked amazing, absolutely amazing.
[music playing]
Oh shit.
Yeah.
Oh.
[crying]
Oh.
Oh shit.
I suddenly feel as though somebody had just stabbed me
because I remember that night, and I remember putting the wigs
on him and pinning them down, and his own hair
was as black as black can be.
Oh God.
I have to keep in mind that that's over.
That's over and finished.
And I'm sorry that it's over and finished, and you have no idea.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: November 20, 1957.
Dear Reno... well, it's me again, star reporter of the New
York gay set rat race.
I'm going steady with this number Bob
from my neighborhood.
Ella, I've had numbers that dug me, numbers that featured me,
and others that were even bats for me,
but this one takes the cake.
He calls me constantly, and when we're together,
it's much kissing me every two minutes,
holding my hands on trains, buses,
movie houses, lobbies, and just about everywhere we go.
To put it mildly, he's demented for me.
Much kisses and claiming he can't
sleep or eat ever since we met.
And, Mary, I love it.
I never felt so cunty.
I actually miss him and his compliments
whenever he's not around.
He came upon me like a shot in the arm, the kind I needed.
As always, Daphne.
We all used to laugh about old age.
I said, don't worry.
I have a house in Pennsylvania.
Well all go there, and we can spend the rest of our lives
reminiscing, but we're not going to do that until we're
in our 70s or maybe 80s.
We're still going to be living in New York.
And then starting in 1983, I guess, the first AIDS cases.
MAN: Gary, Tate.
MAN: My friend Micah.
And they knew it.
They knew it was going to happen.
TERRY: Were a lot of them who did.
MAN: Steven, Samuel, Mike, DeRost.
I met Geno in New York when we were
at Loew's Theater on Broadway.
And he was in the audience several different times.
He sent notes back to me, and we became very good friends.
After I got out of the New York, I moved to San Francisco
with Geno, and we lived on Guererro Street
close to the Castro area.
I just loved Geno.
I thought he was a beautiful person.
Geno and I went to be tested for HIV, and we both were positive.
And there was no cure for it then.
Geno two years later died of AIDS.
The reason I lost my right leg, it's because of a blood clot.
I don't do that well on the prosthetic,
but I'm OK on the wheelchair, and I can get around.
And I still clean my own house and do my own cooking.
And luckily I'm still here many years afterwards.
(ON PHONE) OK.
Jerry I know is coming over on the 12:30 ferry,
so just whenever.
Whatever you want to do, just deal with it, OK?
MAN: (ON PHONE) All right.
I want... I'll shave here...
Yeah.
MAN:... and nail down my eyebrows.
Yeah, because everybody else is putting on the whole face
but carrying the wig and the clothes
over to the thing, whatever.
The summer of '68, I won Miss Fire Island 1969.
It'll be my 50th anniversary of winning.
Today, the drag queens are still drag queens,
and some of the older drag queens are still there,
and there's a younger bunch of drag queens.
MAN: Gorgeous.
[applause]
Nice.
You've got that lipstick on pretty.
MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS: When I first came out in Akron, Ohio,
I would meet all these drag queens,
and they all just seemed to love me.
And to my consternation and discredit,
I would be on the street, and there would be some drag queen,
and she would start waving at me.
And I would just want to sink to the sidewalk and think,
oh no, she's going to come over because I
didn't want to experience the scorn
of being gay by association.
I felt like, you know, I could hide in plain sight,
but these people were not hiding.
MC: Can you Imagine?
She somehow has been Miss Fire Island for 50 years,
but she's only 13.
JOE E. JEFFREYS: The queens at that point crossing the line
was dangerous.
It was against the grain of what society was telling them they
should do, who they should be.
So you have to admire their bravery
and courage to do such a thing, much less
put themselves on stage.
But it also tells you then how committed
they were to the art form, to what it was that they
wanted to present to the world.
They were performing this resistance
and they were making political statements
and they were sort of lobbying and fighting for social change
and for acceptance by the very fact of existing.
JAMES: It can't be something you want to do.
It has to be something you have to do.
It's to speak to people and say something,
make them see something.
This is the most fucked-up fucking world.
It's just nothing's right.
Nothing's right.
[laughter] Well, Judy was good.
We should throw a drag march.
[drums]
[applause]
MC: There are so many legends on this stage.
Are you ready?
[thunder]
MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS: Just to be gay in general costs something
and particularly in the past.
And the one thing that I discovered
was that so many people had spent
a lifetime hiding from most people who they really were.
And yet in their 80s and 90s they
were coming to the realization that if they
didn't reveal their stories to someone,
they would die with them.
(CHANTING) Gay rights!
NIH need us!
Got no...
We did it, and nobody gives a shit.
MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS: It's now or never.
I mean, I don't want her stories to die with me either.
MAN: I believe in the gay power.
I believe in us getting our rights
or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights.
Revolution now!
GEORGE: I was in full drag, and these two little young queens
came up to me.
And they said, you know, we don't realize what you
older gay men went through that allows
us to do and be as we are now.
And it was very nice to hear that because we
thought nothing of doing it because we
were doing it for ourselves.
We didn't realize that we were doing
it for the next generations.
People fought and risked their lives and, in some cases,
lost their lives to win what we've won.
RENO MARTIN: Well, it looks like it's just about time to end
our rendezvous for today.
This is Reno Martin saying thanks for listening.
[music playing]
This is Reno Martin saying so long until tomorrow
when we'll rendezvous with the stars.
ACTOR AS BILLIE: Dear Reno...
Please forgive me for not writing sooner.
I feel awful, Reno, not being able to say goodbye to you.
I didn't find out you left until days after.
I didn't even have your address.
I called up Daphne and got it.
Well, Reno, take care of yourself
and forgive me for not writing you.
I miss you.
Your friend, Billy.
INTERVIEWER: Whatever happened to Billy?
He was murdered.
This kid, when he found out, went to the kitchen,
grabbed a knife, and stabbed him to death.
It made me sick to think that you survived everything else
from strangers and tough times, whatever,
and now the closest person to you is going to kill you.
ACTOR AS JOSEPHINE: Hi there.
Sorry I couldn't write sooner.
Here's hoping to find you in good spirits.
Well, the beach is marvelous to say the least.
The weather is fantastic, every night so far in the 80s.
Very romantic.
There's so much loot to be made down here
if you're a call girl, but I'm afraid I threw in the heels
for a while.
Well, René, I have to close for now.
I'll write you soon.
Regards, Josephine.
CLAUDE: Josephine died of AIDS.
And when he died, his family refused
to let any of his friends come to the funeral.
If I had known in time, I think his mother
would have let me come.
And I blame myself a lot for that.
I lost track of who I really was,
and that's something that I live with every day.
I don't want to talk about that any more.
ACTOR AS CHARLIE: Dear Reno...
Glad to hear you're doing well.
Your friends called.
I told them you moved to California for good.
As for settling down to pipe and slippers, forget it.
Once a "bomatza," always a "bomatza."
Well, I must dash.
Take care, stay well, and write soon.
Your friend always, Charlie.
ACTOR AS DAPHNE: Dear Reno...
I'm typing this letter at work, and
the only reason I'm not writing it out in longhand
is to fool my boss.
He thinks I'm doing my regular work.
Remember that beauty, Ace?
Well, he was back in town.
He digs Josephine.
He asked about her and you, of course.
They all asked about you.
I've really got to be going now, it's way past my time.
And besides, this documentary is practically long
enough for book publication.
I'm hoping you are in fine health and good spirits
when this autobiography arrives.
La de da for now.
Love, as always, Daphne.
My name is Michael Alagna, but my real name is Daphne.
[music playing]