At a table with friends including Marlene Dietrich. There were things you didn’t talk about in polite society, but when you were in the right circles, if you were at a speakeasy or if you were with people who were in the life, then basically you talk about that freely and do whatever you wanted to do.” Picture of Jean Malin (left) at his Hollywood club, Club New Yorker. “I think that there was a wink and a nod and people were ok with things,” said Joseph Hawkins, director of the ONE archives.
1940S GAY BAR LONDON MOVIE
Go to the ONE National Gay and Lesbian archives at the USC Libraries, and you can see sheet music from that era, with covers featuring photos of men and women dressed in drag, and titles like “Japansy” and “If you knew Susie, like I knew Susie.” There are also photographs of the Pansy Craze’s biggest stars, including Jean Malin dressed in a gown in the movie “Arizona to Broadway” or in a tux sitting at a table with Marlene Dietrich.
1940S GAY BAR LONDON ARCHIVE
Courtesy of ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive These upscale nightclubs that featured female impersonators and male impersonators were a real draw for bohemian Hollywood.”
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Lillian Faderman, co-author of “Gay LA: a History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians,” said of the era, “I think that sexuality was very fluid in Hollywood, particularly in the movie industry in the 1920s and the 1930s. It was called the Pansy Craze and it swept up not only Los Angeles, but many of the major cities nationwide. It was during Prohibition and all the clubs were underground but the culture was completely open and vibrant, filled with fluid sexuality and music that was often coded. This period, during the late 1920s and the early 1930s, was a golden era in Los Angeles for gay performers, entertainers in drag and the crowds of Angelenos – gay, straight, rich and poor – that loved them. “I’m curious about the gay club history of the 1930’s in Los Angeles, specifically the pansy clubs that were often outside the city limits and were illegal.” It’s an era KCRW listener Jim Lingenfelter from Indiana asked about when he submitted this question to Curious Coast. BBB’s revue of ten men dressing like women was apparently the hottest show in town.Ĭelebrities like Cary Grant, Howard Hughes, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West were all regulars at these clubs.
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The patrons would be given little hammers, and every time someone new walked through the door, they’d bang them on the tables. It was a wild and raucous place, run by a drag queen named Bobby Burns Berman. Just down the street, B.B.B.’s Cellar opened up on Las Palmas. Rae Bourbon, who was one of the most famous drag queens of his time, had a regular gig at Jimmy’s Backyard. The rooms had been converted to dance floors and on a warm night, music poured from the house and into the backyard which was filled with LA’s hottest crowd, all with a drink and a cigarette in hand.
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It was called Jimmy’s Backyard and it sat in a big craftsman style house on Cosmo Street, just east of Cahuenga.
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Three hundred men in tuxedos were celebrating the opening of Hollywood’s first gay nightclub.