Pansy Craze

The Pansy Craze was a period in which gay clubs and performers (known as pansy performers) experienced a surge in underground popularity in the United States. This phenomenon occurred between the years 1930 and 1933 in Manhattan.

Performance styles

By the end of the 1920s much of the public image of "gay" people was still limited to the various drag balls in the Village and in Harlem - but the early 1930s saw a new development within a highly commercial context, bringing the gay subculture of the enclaves of Greenwich Village and Harlem onto the mainstream stages of midtown Manhattan in a veritable Pansy Craze from 1930 until the repeal of prohibition in 1933, with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President. It is perhaps telling that after the repeal of prohibition, this tolerance waned. Any sympathetic portrayal of gay characters (termed sexual perverts) was prohibited by the motion-picture production code from being included in Hollywood films. Performer Ray Bourbon was arrested many times for this act, considered tame by today's standards.

The 1920s and 1930s saw the emergence of notable and visible gay and lesbian presence and subculture in various cities in the USA. In many ways, New York City set the tone, particularly in its "bohemian artistic enclaves" of Greenwich Village and Harlem, as well as in the cabarets and speakeasies around the Broadway Theater District centered on Times Square. Whereas the late 19th century restricted gay male activity to the seedy red-light district under the elevated train of the Bowery, with an even less visible lesbian life (largely restricted to private salons for upper class women and a quite limited dance hall life for the less well-off), Prohibition allowed the first emergence of a visible gay and lesbian life in a largely middle-class context. Prohibition forced a new mixing of all kinds of people—all in search of the same illicit drink, and economics made for a culture of at least mild tolerance if not outright "anything goes". As prohibition was quite bad for business in cosmopolitan cities, one is tempted to conclude that city officials and Madison Avenue conspired together to create the "Cult of the Urban Sophisticate" who was above the petty and outdated moralism of the Temperance movement. Not only did the 1920s see the emergence of visible, tolerated gay enclaves—but also the emergence of several gay-owned (or more often lesbian-owned) and operated speakeasies and clubs (precursors of the outright "gay" or "lesbian" bars). Likewise, there was an increasing association of gay and lesbian people with a kind of cultural renaissance, with many artists and writers gay and lesbian, and many of the salons that nurtured this talent, whether in the Village, Harlem or in sister commentates in Paris, run by women, quite often Lesbians.

Gene Malin

This change is probably best illustrated by the brief meteoric rise of the career/phenomenon of Gene (Jean) Malin. Gene Malin was born Victor Eugene James Malin in Brooklyn on June 30, 1908 to working class Polish/Lithuanian parents. He had two brothers and two sisters. As a child, Gene attended P.S. 50 in Brooklyn and then went on to Eastern District High School for a while. One brother became a police officer, and the other worked for a sugar refinery, but Gene had other inclinations early on.

Several columnists noted his talent and in 1930 (at age 22) Malin was booked at Louis Schwartzs' elegant "Club Abbey" at 46th and 8th Ave. It was at this point that Mailins' career and fate took a most interesting turn. Although Malin was at times assisted by "Helen Morgan JR.", a popular drag artist of the day, he did not appear in drag himself. The crux of his act was not to impersonate women, but to appear as an openly gay male. Here he moved on stage and amongst the audience members as a Tuxedo clad, elegant, witty, wisecracking Emcee.

Malin became the top earner of Broadway for a time. After headlining numerous New York Clubs, he took his act to Boston and ultimately to the West Coast.

In the early hours of August 10, 1933, Gene Malin was killed in a freak accident. He had just performed a "farewell performance" at the "Ship Cafe" in Venice, California. He piled into his sedan with roommate Jimmy Forlenza and comedic actress Patsy Kelly. It seems that Malin confused the gears and the car lurched in reverse and went off a pier into the water. Malin was instantly killed (pinned under the steering wheel) the other two were seriously hurt, but miraculously survived. It is staggering to realize that Malin was only 24 years of age at the time of his death. Although many in his audience probably saw him as one more oddity, in a short span of time Malin had made history.

Bruz Fletcher

Another artist that cashed in on the Pansy Craze with kind of a sophisticated and campy bitchiness in his recordings was Bruz Fletcher (1906–1941). His career only ran from about 1929 to 1940, including a long run from 1934 to 1940 at Club Bali in Los Angeles, a gay bar. When he committed suicide in 1941, at age 34, it was generally reported that he was despondent over his inability to find work as a gay performer. He had “a level of genius equaled by very, very few,” recalled one of his fans. He became a master of gay code and double speak in order to survive and flourish in a very homophobic era. A singer, composer, novelist, playwright, the darling of sophisticated night spots in the 1930s. He left behind three albums of complex coded songs and two novels. His drama filled life was a sad story of extremes and incredible plot twists. One of his more risqué recordings was called "My Doctor."(1935) His signature song "Drunk with Love" was daringly adopted by Frances Faye and became a standard in gay bars for decades to follow.

Ray Bourbon

Equally dramatic was the life and career of Ray (Rae) Bourbon. If a good deal of mystery surrounds Bourbon, so many years after his death in 1971, it is probably due to the fact that Bourbon excelled at generating numerous conflicting stories about himself.

In 1932, he was working full-time as a female impersonator at such clubs as Jimmy's Back Yard in Hollywood and Tait's in San Francisco. (At this last club, in May 1933, his "Boys Will Be Girls" review was raided by police during a live radio broadcast.) In the later 30s and early 40s he headlined at the Rendezvous in Los Angeles and starred in his own revue, "Don't Call Me Madam." Throughout the 50s and 60s Bourbon entertained at hundreds of clubs throughout the US and released dozens of albums, certainly the most prolific female impersonator to have done the latter. His appearances are still fondly remembered by many who saw him when he toured in big and small towns all over the country, providing many isolated Gay men with a glimpse of the loose-knit urban Gay community of the pre-Stonewall era. Ray’s comedy was, at once, highbrow and lowbrow, overtly Gay and covertly subversive. Despite his influence on Gays, he remained vague about his own sexuality. There is evidence that he had relationships with both men and women, was married twice, and fathered at least one son.

External links

• Musicals 101.com: Exhaustive site re: history of Musical Theater-- (includes substantial GLBT info) by John Kenrick.[1].

• "Queer Music Heritage": is both a radio show and a website, and the goal of both is to preserve and share the music of GLBT culture. Both are produced by JD Doyle. Special show on music of the Pansy Craze found here: http://www.queermusicheritage.us/may2010.html

• Gladys Bentley Profile at Queer Cultural Center: excellent site about one of the greatest openly lesbian performers of the Jazz Age: Queer Cultural Center - Bentley Profile.

• "Don't Call me Madame: The Life and Work of Ray Bourbon": This is probably THE definitive site re: Ray Bourbon. Part of a larger project courtesy of Randy A. Riddle.[2]

• George Chauncey: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (especially Chapter 11, "Pansies on Parade" about Prohibition and the spectacle of the pansy).

• Chad Heap, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 (University of Chicago Press, 2009), especially Chapter 6, "The Pansy and Lesbian Craze in White and Black."