Gladys Bentley

We've had all sorts of different acts in our series. Today, it's time to present a drag king.

Gladys Bentley was born in Philadelphia, in 1907. She was born to a Trinidad born mother and an American born father. Gladys left home at 16 years old. Like many African Americans of her generation she ended up in New York City's Harlem. 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".

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.

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 LGBT 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 Hughes, 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" lesbian or bisexual singers.

One of her first recordings, in 1928, was Wild Geese Blues:

Also in 1928, here's How Much Can I Stand?:

From 1929, here's Red Beans & Rice Blues:

Lois Sobel, a popular columnist of the era, recalled Bentley's 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 gay 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 LGBT 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 "Mona's" 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. Among them, there was Find Out What He Likes:

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 LGBT people. 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.

In 1953 she recorded Before Midnight on the Flame label:

At this stage, Bentley became an active and 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.