1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Gladys Bentley, Real openly lesbian drag king in the 20's!

Discussion in 'Current Events, World News, & LGBT News' started by rainemc, Jun 9, 2009.

Thread Tools

Thread Tools

  1. rainemc

    rainemc
    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2008
    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    near new york city (new jersey)
    Gender:
    Male
    Yes, drag king IS a real term for a woman who dresses as a man. I didn't make it up.

    http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Bentley/BentleyBio.html

    Gladys Bentley (1907 - 1960)

    Gladys Bentley was born on August 12, 1907. She was the eldest of 4 children born to a Trinidad born mother, Mary Mote (Bentley) and an American born father, George L. Bentley. Gladys left home at 16 years old. Like many African Americans of her generation she ended up in New York City's Harlem, the capital of "The New Negro ". For Gladys, her lesbianism made her need to strike out on her own all the more urgent. As she would recall many years later in an Ebony Magazine Article, "It seems I was born different. At least, I always thought so....From the time I can remember anything, even as I was toddling, I never wanted a man to touch me...Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys clothes than in dresses".

    Bentley left Pennsylvania at 16 to be part of the Harlem Renaissance and come out as a bulldagger. She began singing at rent parties and buffet flats and moved on to speakeasies and nightclubs. later she would headline the popular speakeasy the Clam House as well as the Ubangi Club.

    She wowed audiences with her powerful voice and obscene parodies of blues standards and show tunes and was famous for her glamorous girlfriends. Very open about her sexuality, Bentley also performed at lesbian bars and once told a gossip columnist she had married a white woman while in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

    In the 1920s a large part of the elegant town houses and apartment buildings in both Harlem and downtown in Greenwich Village had been converted into cheap rooming flats. In both neighborhoods, artists and intellectuals flocked to this cheap housing in beautiful surroundings. In both neighborhoods, amongst all this creative talent, there was a large Homosexual population. In Harlem this great creative outpouring was also a celebration of optimism about the future of Black America. This era would later be known as The "Harlem Renaissance". The list of gay men, lesbians or bisexuals amongst the "Harlem Renaissance" is more or less a guide to many of the most talented people of the era. Langston Hughs, Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Moms Mabely just to name a few. Audiences of the prohibition era were always craving something new. There was a "Vogue of the Negro" , accompanied by a curiosity for "Pansy Acts" and "Hot Mama" lebian or bisexual singers.

    Advertisement for Mona's Club 440 in 1942, with the explicit use of the word "gay" featured prominently. The word "gay" during the 1940s also denoted "happy," and to the casual reader even the reference to "butch," meaning masculine in gay argot, might have escaped attention.

    However, the discerning, sophisticated, 1942 reader would quickly understand that Mona's Club 440 catered to an almost exclusively woman audience during World War II.

    Gladys Bentley carved out a place for herself amidst this curiosity, playing at rent parties and the legendary speakeasies of "Jungle Alley" at 133 between Lenox and Seventh Avenue. She would transform popular tunes of the day with raunchy naughty playful lyrics. Dressed in signature tux and top hat , she openly and riotously flirted with women in the audience. Her popularity and salary was ever increasing , as she was frequently mentioned in many of the entertainment columns of the day.

    Characters based on her appeared in novels (Carl Van Vechtens' "Parties", Clement Woods "Deep River", Blair Niles "Strange Brother"). Starting in 1928 ( at age 21) she began a recording career that spanned 2 decades. 8 recordings for the OKeh recording company were followed by a side with the Washboard Serenader's on the Victor label. Although on her recordings she did not dare have lesbian lyrics , she certainly played up this image in the clubs and in public.

    Lois Sobel, a popular columnist of the era, recalled Bentleys announcement of her marriage ceremony with her white female lover in New Jersey. Bentley briefly parlayed her fortunes into a Park Avenue apartment, servants, beautiful car etc. etc. In the 1930s the repeal of Prohibition quickly eroded the prominence of Harlem bistros. Furthermore, the Great Depression seems to have ended much of the "anything goes" spirit of tolerance that had pervaded in the 1920s'. Despite this, initially Bentley was able to hold on by cultivating her homosexual following. In the early 1930's she was the featured entertainer at Harlem's' Ubangi Club, supported by a chorus of men in drag. But by 1937 the glory days of Jungle Alley were very much a thing of the past. Bentley (now aged 30) moved to Los Angeles to live with her mother in a small California bungalow. She was able to maintain some success , particularly during World War 2 when many homosexual bars proliferated on the west coast (capitalizing on the influx of gay men and lesbians from the military) Once again, Bentley carved out a niche for herself in this subculture and environment. Many lesbian women came to see her shows at "Joquins' El Rancho" in Los Angeles and "Monas" in San Francisco, although on occasion she did have legal trouble for performing in her signature male attire.

    In 1945 she recorded 5 discs for the Excelsior label (still not daring to use lesbian lyrics in recordings) including "Thrill Me Till I get My Fill," "Find Out What He Likes", and "Notoriety Papa". However in the 1950s the limited tolerance that had been eroding since the Great Depression, finally collapsed disastrously. The McCarthy "witch hunts" were particularly vicious towards homosexuals.

    In light of recent revelations about J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohen and possibly McCarthy himself this movement was all the more hypocritical. Although gay and lesbian organizations like The Daughters Of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society were formed at this time, the lives of many homosexuals were ruined. Bentley, who for so long had been one of THE most open as regards her homosexuality, was of course a sitting duck for persecution. Out of desperate fear for her own survival (particularly with an aging mother to support) Gladys Bentley started wearing dresses, and sanitizing her act. In 1950, Bentley wrote a desperate, largely fabricated article for Ebony entitled "I am Woman Again" in which she claimed to have cured her lesbianism via female hormone treatments and was finally at peace after a "hell as terrible as dope addiction".

    She claimed to have married a newspaper columnist named J. T. Gibson (a man who soon after publicly denied that the two had ever wed). In 1952 she does seem to have married a man named Charles Roberts. He was a cook and 16 years younger than Bentley, who lied on the marriage certificate, stating her age as 36 rather than 45. The two eventually divorced. Bentley did manage to still perform, usually at the Rose Room in Hollywood.

    She recorded a single on the Flame label and appeared twice on Groucho Marx's' television show. At this stage, Bentley became an active and (truly) devoted member of "The Temple of Love in Christ, Inc.". She was about to become an ordained minister in the church when she died of a flu epidemic in 1960 at the age of 52. These desperate attempts to survive do not diminish her previous accomplishments.

    -This woman really amazed me what do you think of her?
    Also I have a question. this article mentions a semi-tolerance for gays in the 20's and 30's. What is that and what happened in the 50's that made everyone so anti-gay? Does anyone know anything about this. Thank you!
     
    #1 rainemc, Jun 9, 2009
  2. Just Adam

    Just Adam
    Full Member

    Joined:
    Mar 17, 2009
    Messages:
    4,435
    Likes Received:
    1
    Location:
    My AV room
    thts a good article :slight_smile:

    from what i learned from my histoy studies i figure in the 20's and 30's after all the troubles of the past war and economic issues people basicaly took the attitude what could be worse than that just go with the flow and enjoy life while you can but upto the late 30's the ever increasing world fear at the ever nearer coming war that they were promised would never happen again led them to return to the folds of govt control which for the past 2 decades had been sketchy at best, during the war and there after the govt really pushed on the values of tradionalism in society and the family home wanting to rebuild a strong infrastructure from the badly effected country of the time. as time pregressed though into the 50's these traditionalistic values which being practiced then were learnt at the turn of the century were all very close community religious values but mixed in with political propaganda.

    when youve got the govt telling you to be wary of strangers and anyone different in the fear and panic of communism and at the same time they leed you towards religion in its efforts to form a normality in populas.

    so religion thats always miss quoted and taken out of context and the govt condemning anything differnent or strange anyone not like you. i know it might sound weird but people were scared at this time and did take these views based on these factors and from them a generation from the late 40's was born to think like this that different was wrong you had to be wary of it not trust it some of course later thought this was stupid as people always do they always move away from whats the norm and a new norm gradually becomes accepted.

    i will say though in the 20 and 30's it wasent really accepted as such and religion was always a factor and in some parts of life always will but people became far more open after the horrors they had faced and just wanted to live life while they could and didnt want to worry about such matters. of course some were always against it but it was only later the openess closed from nothing more than fear propaganda and a driving back to traditional protectionism and relgion.

    thats my take on it anyway im sure others have theirs :slight_smile:
     
    #2 Just Adam, Jun 9, 2009
  3. stymied

    stymied Guest

    The twenties were a time of social liberation. The war was over, and the economy began to boom. Prosperity was widespread in the United States. With this prosperity came changes in the social fabric. People just wanted to have fun after the terrible "Great War", and have fun they did. Prohibition didn't slow anyone down; illegal liquor ran free, and mobsters, especially in cities like Chicago, were stronger than ever before. Women gained suffrage, and woman's fashions changed dramatically. Short harcuts (think Louise Brooks) and even pants became fashionable. The beginnings of jazz, and like the article mentions, the Harlem Renaissance, introduced new kinds of music, literature and art never seen before. This era became known as "The Roaring Twenties".

    However, the party always has to come to an end, and with "Black Monday" in October 1929, it did. Of course, this didn't happen overnight, but as the country began to slip into a Depression, the roaring nightlife slowed down considerably. With this came the steady decline of the wild, laissez faire attitude towards morality that the 20's had conveyed. A big step in this was the Hayes Production Code in 1930, which censored the increasingly taboo Hollywood movies. Before this code, many movies had portrayed homosexuality shockingly blatantly, but alas, no more.

    It continued this way pretty much up until the war, if I recall correctly. After the war, the engines of the economy had started booming, but this time, with a totally different effect than the 20's: this new generation of Americans, who had lived through the Great Depression, were (in general of course) straight-laced and unfrivolous. Soldiers returning from the war wanted nothing more than the typical American family, with a white picket fence and lots of children. Women's rights gained in the 20's and 30's, and the huge step in career minded women during the war saw a severe backlash. Many "good Americans" were angry with the defeminization of women. Young women began to want nothing more than a good husband and loving children. Gender roles became strictly enforced: homosexuals, who often toed this line, were viewed as causing the moral degeneration of good old American (Christian) society.

    And of course, in this cloying moral atmosphere, came the Eisenhower era oppressions and the McCarthy witch hunts. "The Red Scare" became something of a paranoia. Early homosexual activists were often closely linked to communism, with homosexual movements often doubling as communist organizations. Of course, people's view of homosexuality as mental illness certainly didn't help their case. So this was the backlash against the freedom from the 20's.

    I'm no American history expert, but that's my best shot at explaining the situation. Hope it helped it bit (helped me review for my history exam as well, believe it or not :icon_bigg)
     
    #3 stymied, Jun 9, 2009
  4. rainemc

    rainemc
    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2008
    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    near new york city (new jersey)
    Gender:
    Male
    Thanks. I actually just learned about all of this i just didn't know that this extended to gays (that was conveniently left out in my history lesson). I also didn't know it ended with the fifties. Both of your posts were interesting although i am a huge history geek. It's so interesting to see the cause and effect of it all. I love the twenties by the way. It's my favorite time period in American history based on my limited knowledge of that time period. It just sucks that Gladys had to renounce everything due to the reemergence of Christian values. Do you think that the gay pride movement could have another set back like the one you two mentioned?
     
    #4 rainemc, Jun 9, 2009
  5. stymied

    stymied Guest

    Hey! The 20's are my favourite 20th century decade too! High five!

    It certainly is possible for the gay rights movement to "fall back" a step, as it is with feminism or racial issues. History has, well, a history of repeating it's mistakes. The Western "empire" is not fated to remain in power forever, and as depressing as it is to think about, it is possible that humanity could slip into another Dark Ages like after the collapse of the Roman Empire, possibly set about by an environmental disaster.

    In terms of American society, I think that it's unlikely that another backlash like the one in the 50's would occur. There have been minor ones, like the AIDS scare in the 80's, against the gay community, and there will always be shifting between the popularity of liberalism and conservativism in the world, but the social climate has definitely changed since the 50's. Whereas in the 20's, homosexuality was seen as an abomination and was still largely hidden from the general populace, nowadays nearly everyone knows at least one gay person. Try as they might, evangelical, far right Christians would have a very difficult time completely reversing this almost half century of change.

    If you're interested in gay rights and backlashes, I suggest looking up Anita Bryant and Save Our Children. This was kind of another (less widely known than that other one in New York :icon_wink) huge landmark in gay rights, one where there was an alarming change in the flow of gay civil rights.
     
    #5 stymied, Jun 13, 2009
(You must log in or sign up to post here.)