100 year old gay games

Early drag queens like Jean Malin helped bohemian gay culture thrive — before mob violence, Nazism and Hollywood homophobia drove it back underground. Tired after finishing a fortnight-long booking, Malin accidentally put the sedan into reverse, sending it off Venice Pier and into the water.

The brightest star of the Pansy Craze — a spate of wild parties full of drag queens and bawdy songs — was dead at But the popularity of these drag or fag balls was such that by the s, as many as 7, people of all colours and classes were attending. Prizes were awarded for the best costumes and Malin was often among the prizewinners.

Painters, poets and performers were lured by the cheap rents and by an increasingly wild and lawless lifestyle. Prohibition had given birth to a black market for booze and a bustling underground scene, where bright young things slumming it in mob-run nightspots developed a taste for camp, cutting repartee.

LGBT people were flocking to cities as much for the nightlife as for the ability to connect with others. Paris and Berlin have similar night resorts, with the queers attracting the lays. Performers, including the acid-tongued Malin, quickly eclipsed the drag acts that had been a stage staple for decades.

At Club Abbey, Malin ditched the dresses and reinvented himself as a high-camp, waspish, obviously gay man — and it was this that singled him out. Prohibition had forced legitimate bars to shut up shop, and the mob-run speakeasies that sprang up in their place were openly flouting the law.

Crooked cops took backhanders to look the other way, but with serious violence breaking out between rival gangs keen for a slice of this lucrative pie, the authorities had to do something. And as many of these clubs had floor 100 year old gay games starring LGBT acts, it must have seemed that wherever the pansies went, trouble followed.

Sherman survived the attack, but four years later his corpse was found buried in a pit of quicklime. Fairies cruise in daisy beds of Boston, making the city a lavenderish camp of love. But Paris had a reputation for its laissez-faire attitude, and queer performers were encouraged by the success enjoyed in the city by American performers including bisexual dancer Josephine Baker and gay trapeze artist Barbette.

The scenes he had filmed for the upcoming Clark Gable and Joan Crawford feature, Dancing Lady, were consigned to the cutting room floor.

Pansy Craze: the wild 1930s drag parties that kickstarted gay nightlife

It would be decades before we would see anything as outrageous again. Photograph: Handout. This article is more than 7 years old. View image in fullscreen. Reuse this content. Comments … Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion. Most viewed.