Explore userokay's 19 photos on Flickr!

During the Pansy Craze of 1930-1933 (mainly in Manhattan), gay clubs and performers, known as 'pansy performers', experienced a huge surge in underground popularity. In 1932, Rae Bourbon 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 the latter, in May 1933, police raided his 'Boys Will Be Girls' review during a live radio broadcast. In the later 30s and early 40s he headlined at the Rendezvous in Los Angeles and…

Part of the fun of researching 1920’s and 1930’s Queer subculture in New York City was coming across a wide variety of specialized slang and coded terms that flourished among homosexual…

Impersonator Harry Franklin circa 1920

Pansy Craze

Francis Renault, famous female impersonator from ‘The Pansy Craze.’ Some of the most popular stage shows in New York and San Francisco in the 1920s and early 1930s routinely featured a wide variety of talented representatives from the gay community. In addition to live vaudeville house performances there were also a large number of extravagant soirees that featured drag costume competitions and attendees, regardless of their sexual orientation, would often arrive decked out in gender-bending…

A new book tells the true stories behind Cabaret, and what was possibly the most thrilling gay party scene the world has ever known. Read an excerpt here.

This scene from 1934’s Wonder Bar involves a handsome man asking a dancing couple if he can cut in. The female partner, expecting his attention, agrees, only to see him dance with her male partner. An...

Early drag queens like Jean Malin helped bohemian gay culture thrive – before mob violence, Nazism and Hollywood homophobia drove it back underground