Kaleidoscopic

Busby Berkeley (born Berkeley William Enos, 29th November 1895 – 14th March 1976)

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like the original "Little Girl from Little Rock", The Incomparable Mr Harvey Lee!

Born Harvey Wilson Lee Goodwin in 1912, she's described by by Kaye Lundgren of CAHC (the Center for Arkansas History and Culture, where the grande dame's archive of papers, correspondence and articles is now curated) as "...the intrepid Arkansan who ventured forth into the bright lights and big cities of the United States’ East and West Coasts, as well as Europe, to pursue his passion and talent for the stage in the guises of singer, comedian, and female impersonator."

You can download Miss Lundgren's full article on the CAHC website, but here is an extract:

As a child, Harvey had a flair for singing and dancing and acting, performing shows, which [he] usually arranged and directed. Harvey's father, Ernest, supported his young son's theatrical interests by arranging canvasses and drapes for a makeshift stage in the family's backyard. Harvey enjoyed playing the parts of little girls in these amateur productions and he invariably received taunts and torments from his classmates.

At the age of fourteen, Goodwin witnessed the performance of a professional female impersonator, Mr. Jean Barrios, on a local Little Rock stage. Enthralled by Barrios' performance, Goodwin wrote to the performer regarding entrée into the world of female impersonation. Unfortunately, Goodwin did not receive a reply to his enquiry but this did not deter him. In fact, Goodwin diligently worked during his high school years to pay for dancing lessons which gave him dexterity of feet and hands.

After graduation from Little Rock High School in 1930, Goodwin attended business school and subsequently accepted a clerical position in Washington, D.C. There, he continued his dance lessons at the Hazel Richard Dance Studio. At this studio, he made his debut as a semi-professional female impersonator in 1933 performing a song and dance routine. Goodwin's youthful talents were noticed. In January 1934, Goodwin was asked to perform in costume at one of the first of the birthday balls of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1934, Goodwin received his big break when Club Richman in New York City offered him a position with a salary equal to his government employment. He proved quite the success, as noted in a Walter Winchell column dated December 24, 1934: "One of the girls at the Richman Club, who is really a feller, left a job with the government to switch his petticoats." Harvey's good luck continued during his time at Club Richman when he secured the part of a female impersonator in Warner Brothers-Vitaphone musical comedy The City Slicker. One day, while Harvey was on the movie set on Long Island, the head of the studio made an appearance and commented that Goodwin resembled the movie star Jean Harlow, then at the height of her popularity...

...In 1947, Goodwin acquired his signature partner, "Nikki," a Borzoi (or Russian Wolfhound). Nikki was a notable addition to the act as Harvey commented that "we create quite a mild sensation wherever we appear both on the stage, on the sidewalks, and in the hotels and trains." Goodwin formed his own revue of five female impersonators in 1950 and noted that his group was well received during their various club tours on the East Coast... in New York during 1952, he competed as a female impersonator at the famous Beaux Arts Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel sponsored by the Art Students League. Once again, the public took note of his talent. Dorothy Kilgallen, a well-known columnist and panellist for the then popular television show What's My Line, commented on Harvey's talent by stating, "That can't be a boy with that body and legs!"...

...Harvey Goodwin's career spanned the bulk of the twentieth century. During that time he saw many societal reactions to the gay community, ranging from acceptance to outright hostility. Though an artist, not an activist, he followed the gay-rights struggle with interest as his collection of papers attest. Vincent Astor wrote in his article "The Incomparable Mr. Harvey Lee," that Goodwin "never mentioned hardships or prejudice because he was gay."

Goodwin was a performer above all else and was ever aware of his audience as noted by the following quotation:

A certain amount of decorum and restraint must be practised and adhered to when one is engaged in the profession of a female impersonator as the great American public is always alert to detect and criticize any slight fault or mannerism that is out of the ordinary.

"A Certain Amount of Decorum" is a fitting epitaph for Harvey Goodwin, a man of letters, style, and talent.

Harvey Lee Goodwin suffered all his life from bouts of tuberculosis. He still lived a very full and eventful life, however - he gave his farewell performance in San Francisco in 1984 after fifty years in frocks, and died on 4th July 1992.

More Mr Harvey Lee at the incomparable Queer Music Heritage site.

It'ssss...

Many happy returns, Terrence Vance (Terry) Gilliam (born 22nd November 1940)

Most of them as a matter of fact wanted dreadfully to be photographed

Oliver Messell, stage designer

All picnics should be like this!

"Subtle and understated" were their watchwords Stephen Tennant, Paula Gellibrand, Edward ‘Boy’ Le Bas, Baba Beaton (twice), Cecil Beaton, Georgia Sitwell

A plethora of "Bright Young Things".

They knew how to party!

...She almost wished in this new mood of exaltation that she had come to the party in fancy dress. It was called a Savage party, that is to say that Johnnie Hoop had written on the invitation that they were to come dressed as savages. Numbers of them had done so; Johnnie himself in a mask and black gloves represented the Maharanee of Pukkapore, somewhat to the annoyance of the Maharajah, who happened to drop in. The real aristocracy, the younger members of those two or three great brewing families which rule London, had done nothing about it. They had come on from a dance and stood in a little group by themselves, aloof, amused but not amusing. Pit-a-pat went the heart of Miss Mouse. How she longed to tear down her dazzling frock to her hips and dance like a Bacchante before them all. One day she would surprise them all, thought Miss Mouse...

...There were two men with a lot of explosive powder taking photographs in another room. Their flashes and bangs had rather a disquieting effect on the party, causing a feeling of tension, because every one looked negligent and said what a bore the papers were, and how too like Archie to let the photographers come, but most of them as a matter of fact wanted dreadfully to be photographed and the others were frozen with unaffected terror that they might be taken unawares and then their mamas would know where they had been when they said they were at the Bicesters' dance, and then there would be a row again, which was so exhausting, if nothing else...

...There were about a dozen people left at the party; that hard kernel of gaiety that never breaks. It was about three o'clock.

'Let's go to Lottie Crump's and have a drink,' said Adam.

So they all got into two taxicabs and drove across Berkeley Square to Dover Street. But at Shepheard's the night porter said that Mrs Crump had just gone to bed. He thought that Judge Skimp was still up with some friends; would they like to join them? They went up to Judge Skimp's suite, but there had been a disaster there with a chandelier that one of his young ladies had tried to swing on. They were bathing her forehead with champagne; two of them were asleep.

So Adam's party went out again, into the rain.

'Of course, there's always the Ritz,' said Archie. 'I believe the night porter can usually get one a drink.' But he said it in the sort of voice that made all the others say, no, the Ritz was too, too boring at that time of night...

Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies was published 90 years ago this year - it was Waugh's intention to satirise the antics of these 1920s hedonists, but in doing so provided inspiration for Noel Coward's A Marvellous Party and Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes, which is partially based upon the novel.

[NB Click on any of the photos above to embiggen]

The only natural thing about any of this is the light

From an article by Abby Aguire in Vogue, May 2019:

If you approach Mother Ru from the side, as I did, the first thing you will need to process is the eyelashes. The skull-to-eyelash ratio is so physiologically improbable that it’s a good 30 seconds before I realize that Ru is not dressed as any of his familiar alter egos. Rather, he’s a modern facsimile of Queen Elizabeth I, clothed in a billowing gold-brocade skirt, a corset, and a halo of red dreadlocks.

He knows which side is his good side. He knows how the light is hitting. He knows to lower the lashes to half-mast and let them hover there as the camera clicks. And when, after a while, Leibovitz suggests he remove his headpiece, he knows to object.

“It becomes something else without the piece,” Ru says, gesturing to the rest of his puffy-sleeved costume. “The piece sells everything else.”

“Your hair becomes a crown,” Leibovitz says gently. The exchange goes on for two minutes. Finally, RuPaul puts his (combat boot–clad) foot down. Remove the piece, and he is no longer in character. “Everything here is overdone,” he says, motioning again to his look, and then to the surroundings. “The only natural thing about any of this is the light.”

It occurs to me that RuPaul has just offered up a definition of camp. (“The essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration,” Susan Sontag wrote in “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ”) More remarkably, he and Leibovitz have just unwittingly re-created one of the photographer’s most memorable shoots.

You see, twelve years ago, when Leibovitz took official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II in full regalia at Buckingham Palace, one of America’s most well-known portrait photographers asked England’s longest-reigning monarch to remove her “crown.” (It was a tiara.) A BBC film crew captured the exchange.

Leibovitz: “It will look better - less dressy - because the garter robe is so...”

Queen Elizabeth II: “Less dressy? What do you think this is?”

The queen of the United Kingdom did not want to take off her headpiece. And here in beautiful downtown Burbank, neither does the Queen of Drag.

RuPaul is 60 years old today.

All Hail!

RuPaul (born RuPaul Andre Charles, 17th November 1960)

Unlucky?

When the tea is brought at five o'clock
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
Is suddenly purring there.
- HH Monro

Friday the Thirteenth

Through art, you create your own world

Another day, another Guinness...

...but when that particular scion of the brewing and banking dynasty is Daphne - then there is nothing or nobody who can even come close!

"I just am who I am. And then when people label me eccentric or different, I'm kind of astonished because I think, 'This is completely normal. This is just how I am, it's how I've always been.'"

"If I think about it too much, I can't get dressed."

"I don't regard clothing as disposable, which is probably why I have so much of it!"

"When I think my hair needs a bit of help, I just glue another bit onto my head."

"I don't tell anybody else what to wear. I would never dream of it."

"I don't do event dressing, because every day is an event."

"Through art, you create your own world."

She certainly does that:

Daphne Guinness - Evening In Space [directed by David LaChapelle]

Many happy returns, Daphne Diana Joan Susanna Guinness (born 9th November 1967)

More Daphne here

Weekend Reading