Intersections of Gender and Race in American Vaudeville, 1900-1930 Kathleen Bridget Casey

319 Pages·2010·10.82 MB·English

by  Kathleen Casey

Cross-dressers and Race-crossers:
Intersections of Gender and Race in American Vaudeville, 1900-1930

by

Kathleen Bridget Casey

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

Supervised by
Professor Victoria Wolcott
Department of History
Arts, Sciences, and Engineering
School of Arts and Sciences

University of Rochester
Rochester, New York
2010
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Curriculum Vitae
Kathleen Casey was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts on April 22, 1981. She grew up
in upstate New York, attending the University of Rochester from 1999 to 2003,
graduating Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History. She began her doctoral
work in twentieth-century American history under the supervision of Professor
Victoria Wolcott at the University Rochester in 2003. She received four consecutive
teaching fellowships from the College Writing Center at the University of Rochester
and was awarded the Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship in 2009. In 2010, she received
the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies Dissertation Award.
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Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to express my gratitude in writing to those who have supported
this project. I owe many thanks to individuals whose interest, enthusiasm and faith
pushed this work along a bumpy road. Of course, I owe my greatest debts to my
advisor, Victoria Wolcott, and my second reader, Lynn Gordon, for their productive
insights on each chapter, their persistent encouragement, sage professional advice and
compassion. I have also benefited from two lively, interdisciplinary dissertation
groups, and am especially thankful to Krystal Frazier and Paula Booke, who told me
“to never fail to hear the silence to which I bring noise.” Their feedback and support
nourished this project immensely.
I truly appreciate the kinship of my fellow graduate students, particularly
Michelle Finn, who offered helpful feedback on chapters two and three and first
introduced me to Lillyn Brown. I would also like to thank Jeremy and Jamie Saucier,
who read and commented on excerpts of chapter one, and Aviva Dove-Viebahn, for
her friendship and willingness to read anything I asked her to. I wish to thank
Edward Nelson, whose fair-minded approach to work and life helped me see clearly
and buoyed my spirits during the last two years of this journey. His technical savvy
also saved me time and aggravation at key moments.
I want to thank my parents for pushing me when I was young, for never
discouraging me from making less than practical professional choices now that I am
“grown” and, most of all, for never asking me, “is it done yet?” I am particularly
grateful for the support of my oldest sister, Eileen, who bravely read early drafts of
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chapters one and two, despite the demands of her own career far outside the rigors of
academia.
This work would never have materialized without the dedicated staff at the
interlibrary loan and circulation departments at the University of Rochester libraries,
the Schomburg Center for Black Studies, the New York Public Library for
Performing Arts, the Houghton Theatre Library at Harvard University, and the
Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. I would like to thank the University
of Rochester’s College Writing Center for providing me with several teaching
fellowships that allowed me to work on this project continually. I am also grateful for
the generosity of the Department of History for funding research trips and
inaugurating new graduate fellowships at a crucial time in my graduate career. I
wish to thank the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies for
providing generous support for this project from its earliest stages to its final
completion. Finally, I dedicate my dissertation to Sarah Casey Hillick, my dearest
childhood friend, who passed away suddenly last year but who remains a part of me
forever.
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Abstract
This dissertation examines four early twentieth-century American vaudeville
performers, whose performances reflected the unstable and contradictory ways in
which turn-of-the-century Americans envisioned themselves. Vaudeville attracted
thousands of patrons from vastly divergent economic, social and ethnic backgrounds
to a shared urban space. There, performers used humor to invite audiences to turn a
self-conscious eye upon themselves, the “other,” and their fracturing culture. Across
the contested continuum that linked yet separated black from white, male and female,
and working from middle class, audiences came in droves to watch these sardonic
performances. They laughed and marveled at Eva Tanguay, “the wild girl” who
shouted songs while wearing skimpy costumes, Sophie Tucker, “the Jewish girl with
a colored voice,” Julian Eltinge, a manly “fellow” who impersonated ivory-faced
Victorian “ladies,” and Lillyn Brown, a renowned black male impersonator and blues
singer. In Harlem, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and London, these performers
played both to integrated and segregated audiences that paid as little as ten cents to
hear them talk, sing, joke and dance about the changes around them.
This study analyzes the advertisements, lyrics, music, costumes and critical
reviews of these performers, arguing that the development of gender and racial
binaries in the twentieth century was neither as inevitable nor as neatly distinct as
scholars have previously supposed. On the contrary, audiences and critics were
titillated by the notion of blurring and contradicting those binaries. In short, these
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performers tell elusive stories about the multiplicity of modern urban American
identities.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1

Chapter One: ‘The Wild Girl:’ The Gender and Racial Transgressions of the
Irreverent Eva Tanguay 22

Introduction 23

Gender Theft, Female Masculinity and the New Woman 26

“The Strenuous Life,” Neurasthenia and Energetic Eva 48

Savagery, Civilization and "The Wild Girl" 58

Conclusion 74

Chapter Two: “Making a [White] Woman of Himself:” Julian Eltinge and the
New Woman Revised 78

Introduction 78

Manufacturing White Manhood 81

Not for the Fairies: Inquiries and Understandings of Eltinge’s Sexuality 91

“Is it Art?” Dignifying Female Impersonation 100

The Body in Redefining Wo/Manliness 114

Competing Models of Racial Womanhood & American Beauty Culture 131

Conclusion: The Memory and Meaning of the “Man Who Made Female
Impersonation Decent” 150

Chapter Three: “She Is What She Aint:”
  Lillyn Brown and the Meaning of
Black Male Impersonation 154

Introduction 154
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“Little Man:” Learning the ‘Tricks’ of the Trade 161

Distancing Deviance in Male Impersonation 166

Deconstructing the Modern Black Dandy 190

“Crimes of Fashion” and Gender Theft 208

Conclusion 218

Chapter Four: “Where Whiteness Begins and Blackness Ends:” Sophie Tucker
as “The Jewish Girl with a Colored Voice” 223

Introduction 223

“The Girl Who Can Sing Coon Songs” 226

“Blackface denied my femaleness” 232

The Sounds of Race 250

The End of Blackface? 255

Racial Confusion about “the Ginger Girl” 268

“The Colored Sophie Tuckers” 275

Conclusion 289

Conclusion 290

Bibliographyx 295
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Table of Figures

Figure 1 - Tanguay pictured in her famous “penny dress,” holding a purse filled with
pennies she threw to the audience. Tanguay claimed to have personally designed all
her costumes. Rennold Wolf. “The Highest-Salaried Actress in America.” Green
Book Magazine. Circa 1910. 779. Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library. 22

Figure 2 - Tanguay pictured with an unusually placid expression on her face, though
her tousled hair conveys her irreverent performance persona. From “I’d Like to Be
An Animal in the Zoo.” Sheet music, 1. Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton
Library. 28

Figure 3 - Gibson’s rendering of stylish turn-of-the-century Gibson girls. Titled
“Picturesque America, anywhere in the mountains.” Charles Dana Gibson. Circa
1900. Cabinet of American Illustration, Library of Congress. 29

Figure 4 - Jack Johnson at age thirty-seven. George Grantham Bain Collection,
Library of Congress, 1915. 40

Figure 5 - Original caption reads, “These pictures are glimpses into Miss Tanguay’s
magnificent home consisting of thirteen rooms. Miss Tanguay lives alone. Her
household consists of a cook, a maid, and a companion.” Photographs taken by L.S.
White. N.p., N.d. Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL. 42

Figure 6 - As Salome, Tanguay lies in a recumbent position on a tiger skin rug, clad
in her famous “two-pearl” costume with her mouth open in apparent rapture. Green
Book Magazine. Circa 1910. 779. Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library. 60

Figure 7 - “I’d Like to Be An Animal in the Zoo” Sheet Music. 1. Harvard Theatre
Collection, Houghton Library. 65

Figure 8 - Tanguay pictured invoking her inner exotic animal, posing alongside other
‘wild’ animals in a leopard print dress in a newspaper photograph labeled, “Some
Animals You Seldom Meet With.” Chicago, Feb 20, 1910. RLC, Ser. 2, 164.
NYPL. 67

Figure 9 - In this photograph, supposedly taken at Jack Doyle’s “training camp,”
Eltinge single-handedly lifted boxers Joe Mandot and "Fireman" Jim Flynn. 1914.
RLC, NYPL. 116

Figure 10 – A theatrical poster depicting Sandow lifting “the human dumbbell.” This
image probably inspired Eltinge to pose for photographers “lifting” two men (see
figure 10, above). “The Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles.” Stobridge, Lith and Co.,
1894. Theatrical Poster Collection, Library of Congress. 117
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Figure 11 - Original caption: “James J. Corbett and Julian Eltinge who recently pulled
off a 4-round ‘go’ at Cincinnati.” Original photograph by Philips, Cincinnati.
Chamberlain and Lyman Brown Theatrical Agency Collection. RLC, NYPL. 120

Figure 12 - “Julian Eltinge Talking Crops.” Rennold Wolf. “The Sort of Fellow
Julian Eltinge Really Is.” Green Book Magazine. Nov 1913. RLC, Ser. 3, Vol. 432,
90. NYPL. 122

Figure 13 – Bessie and Minnie Gordon, “lady boxers,” who claimed to have
originated the sport of lady boxing. The sisters toured the vaudeville circuit as “bag
punchers” from 1895 to 1905. Note the incongruity of the laced boxing boots with
dresses and petticoats. The New York Clipper. Nov 15, 1902. 836. Library of
Congress. 127

Figure 14 - “Julian Eltinge in His Former Famous Vaudeville Specialty, The Gibson
Girl.” The Julian Eltinge Magazine and Beauty Hints. Circa 1912. 35. Townshend
Walsh Collection, NYPL. 134

Figure 15 - “Julian Eltinge Taking Julian Eltinges Boating.” The Julian Eltinge
Magazine. Circa 1912. 45. TWC, NYPL. 136

Figure 16 - “Making a Woman of Himself.” Philip R. Kellar. Green Book Album.
Dec 1909. RLC, NYPL. 141

Figure 17 - “Julian Eltinge Delights the Fair Ones.” The Julian Eltinge Magazine and
Beauty Hints. Circa 1912. 57. TWC, NYPL. 145

Figure 18 - Left to right: Lutice Perkins, Gavin Bushnell, Ed Cox, Lillyn Brown (as a
woman), William DeMont (Brown’s husband), Willie Gant, Johnny Mullins.
Published in Record Research. Vol. 2, Iss. 4 (Nov/Dec 1956). Cover. 157

Figure 19 - Lillyn Brown emphasizing her feminine beauty in a publicity still. 1920 -
Photographer: Earl-Broady Studios, Schenectady, New York. The Daniel Cowin
Collection of African American Vernacular Photography, “Fans in a Flashbulb,”
International Center of Photography. 169

Figure 20 - Lillyn “Elbrown” Brown, pictured second from the left, posing on stage
with the Norman Thomas Quintet. Norman Thomas is pictured driving the car. Circa
1929. Lillyn Brown Collection, Negro Actors Guild of America, Photographs and
Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Black Studies. 177

Figure 21 - Gladys Bentley. Published in “I am a Woman Again.” Ebony Magazine.
Aug 1952. 92. 184