The late 1920s birthed what would become a defining cultural phenomenon—the “pansy craze”—when LGBTQ+ culture burst into mainstream American entertainment from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The smoky haze of Prohibition-era speakeasies provided the perfect backdrop for drag queens, called “pansy performers,” to be catapulted into underground stardom, with major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami serving as epicenters of this unprecedented visibility and acceptance. As illegal liquor flowed freely, patrons witnessed titillating new performances by gender nonconforming entertainers that challenged social conventions. Elaborate gowns and carefully applied makeup caught the dim lights as “pansies” mesmerized audiences with their wit, sensuality, and gender rebellion.
Transcript for The Pansy Craze
Written by Elizabeth Garner Masarik, PhD
Recorded by Marissa Rhodes, PhD and Elizabeth Garner Masarik
Elizabeth: The late 1920s birthed what would become a defining cultural phenomenon—the “pansy craze”—when LGBTQ+ culture burst into mainstream American entertainment from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The smoky haze of Prohibition-era speakeasies provided the perfect backdrop for drag queens, called “pansy performers,” to be catapulted into underground stardom, with major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami serving as epicenters of this unprecedented visibility and acceptance. As illegal liquor flowed freely, patrons witnessed titillating new performances by gender nonconforming entertainers that challenged social conventions. Elaborate gowns and carefully applied makeup caught the dim lights as “pansies” mesmerized audiences with their wit, sensuality, and gender rebellion.
Marissa: What historian George Chauncy dubbed the “pansy craze” was a short period of time when queerness became fashionable and live shows by “pansies” –the verbiage used at the time for either effeminate queer men or female impersonators (what we would know as drag queens) — became the coolest form of entertainment for discerning nightlife goers. The pansy craze emerged from the collision of Prohibition’s criminalization of pleasure, rapid urbanization, economic prosperity, and changing social mores; it created unprecedented visibility for gender-nonconforming people and same-sex desire. This transgressive form of diversion created spaces where gender and sexuality could be explored, celebrated, and commodified.
Elizabeth: From the speakeasies of Greenwich Village to the grand ballrooms of Harlem, from Miami’s tropical fairyland to the nightclubs of Los Angeles, the pansy craze created a network of performance, desire, and transgression that connected queer communities across the nation.
Marissa: Yet this visibility came with a price: the commodification of queerness, the reinforcement of stereotypes, and ultimately, a violent backlash that would drive much of this culture underground for decades. Performers like Alden Garrison, a young black female impersonator who was born in 1908 into the poverty of Washington D.C.’s notorious alley neighborhoods, rose to become one of the most celebrated drag queens on the East Coast, only to die alone and penniless in 1938 as the pansy craze that had made them famous came to its devastating end.
Elizabeth: During this series we’re exploring themes present in her work is an important addition to the burgeoning field of the history of sexuality, which seeks to unearth suppressed and/or hidden-in-plain-sight histories of queer and gender non-conforming people. In that vein, we’ll be exploring the pansy craze of the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S.
I’m Elizabeth
And I’m Marissa
And we are your historians for this episode of Dig.
Marissa: Patreon: We are so thankful for all of our Patreon supporters – especially our Auger and Excavator level patrons: Karl, Alissa, Maria, Colin, Denise, Edward, Jessy, Judy, Karen, Lauren, Lisa, Megan, and Susan! We can’t thank you enough. Listener, if you enjoy what we do here but aren’t yet a patron of this show, it’s easy: just go to patreon.com/digpodcast to learn more.
Elizabeth: A word on naming and pronouns. I’ve chosen to use they/them pronouns in this episode if it is unclear what pronouns historical actors used because they were what scholar Jen Manion terms “transing gender.” However, I do recognize it can be problematic to use they/them as it implies a sense of gender neutrality. Today, people choose they/them for themselves as a very personal or political act. In using they/them for historical actors, we’re signaling that gender is and was more complicated than the binary allows for. Also, in some instances I’ve chosen to use the term drag king/queen instead of impersonator unless it is a quote. Many people who performed drag in the early to mid 20th century called themselves impersonators but I’m using king/queen to be more accessible to modern audiences. There is a new book by Jacob Bloomfield on Drag history in the UK that you can check out if you’d like a deeper dive.
Marissa: New York City in the late 1920s and early 30s pulsed with a new kind of energy unfolding in its nightclubs, theaters, and speakeasies. What George Chauncey would later identify as the “pansy craze” had its roots in the peculiar alchemy of Prohibition, urbanization, and a growing fascination with transgression that characterized the roaring twenties.
Elizabeth: The legal landscape created by Prohibition had unintended consequences that proved crucial to the development of visible gay culture. When the Eighteenth Amendment made alcohol consumption illegal, it didn’t eliminate the desire to drink—it simply drove it underground, into close association with other forms of illicit behavior. Speakeasies, by their very nature criminal enterprises, became spaces where social boundaries blurred.
Marissa: As Chauncy noted, “The speakeasies eroded the boundaries between respectability and criminality, public and private, and between commercial space and home life, for the hosts welcomed patrons into their basement hideaways as if into their homes, and encouraged them to mingle with the other guests and to spurn the conventions that normally governed their public behavior. By speaking the password and entering a ‘speakeasy,’ patrons entered an intimate theater in which each was expected to play a role; the most notable sign of this to most observers was the degree to which single men and women were encouraged to interact with each other.”[1] Participation in speakeasies encouraged patrons to test other social boundaries as well.
Elizabeth: The performers who would become the stars of the pansy craze easily stepped into this environment. Scholar Laura Horak writes about Jean Malin, who was perhaps the most famous of the pansy performers. Horak argues that Malin exemplified this new visibility. When Malin moved from performing strictly in the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village to a club on West Fifty-Fourth Street in 1930, they inspired so many imitators that a columnist quipped, “before the main stream knew what had happened, there was a hand on a hip for every light on Broadway.”[2] (Basically saying that a lot of “pansy” performers were appearing on Broadway.)
Marissa: For some hetero audience members, attending pansy shows was a way to demonstrate worldliness and sophistication. As Vanity Fair observed in 1931, patrons of Malin’s shows “smirked with self-conscious sophistication at the delicate antics of their host.”[3] There was a voyeuristic thrill in witnessing the transgression of gender norms, a safe way to explore the forbidden.
Elizabeth: Chauncey observes that the pansy craze was similar to the immediately prior enthusiasm that middle-class white audiences had expressed for certain Black entertainers, writing:
both fads allowed members of the dominant culture to shore up their identities by contrasting themselves with the otherness of the African American and the homosexual. At a time of bitter white ethnic rivalries, which resulted in the resurgence of anti-Semitism and the passage of the exclusionary immigration laws in the early 1920s, the spectacle of black “primitivism” allowed whites to express their solidarity with other whites by distinguishing themselves from blacks. At a time when the culture of speakeasies and the 1920s celebration of affluence and consumption might have undermined conventional sources of masculine identity, the spectacle of the pansy allowed men to confirm their manliness and solidarity with other men by distinguishing themselves from pansies.[4]
Marissa: The pansy craze in New York was also notable for its integration into mainstream entertainment. These weren’t performances hidden away in the darkest corners of the city—they were featured attractions in prominent nightclubs and theaters. The theater district of midtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village, and Harlem all had venues where pansy performers were the main draw. The integration was so complete that gossip columns and tabloid newspapers reported frankly on these shows and the presence of queerness in the entertainment business.
Elizabeth: Greenwich Village had been home to a queer subculture since the 1890s, but the post-World War I era saw an influx of what one local newspaper called “short haired women and long haired men” that created a distinct and visible queer community.[5] The Village developed its own restaurants, clubs, and social events, including lavish balls that became hallmarks of gay New York. These were semi-public events that drew spectators from across the city.
Marissa: Harlem had an even more visible gay culture. It was the destination for many Black families escaping the South during the Great Migration and Harlem quickly became both the cultural center of Black America and a magnet for those seeking unconventional lifestyles. The atmosphere of 1920s Harlem was significantly shaped by its gueer subculture. Gladys Bentley was a prominent drag king during the Harlem Renaissance. She was a blues musician and performer who challenged gender norms by wearing men’s formal wear, and singing risque lyrics in a deep, husky voice. Harlem queerness was alive in its blues singers, art and literary scene, public displays of cross-dressing, and most spectacularly, the Hamilton Lodge Ball.
Elizabeth: The Hamilton Lodge Ball represented the pinnacle of queer visibility in New York. At its peak in the early 1930s, it drew thousands of spectators. Literary figures like Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman made regular appearances, and celebrities often attended complete with their entourage. The ball was one of the city’s most talked-about annual events and was extensively advertised and covered in the press. It was formally hosted by the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization founded in the mid-nineteenth century, but the ball had evolved over the years from a simple masquerade into something far more extraordinary. By the early 1930s, at the height of its popularity, the Hamilton Lodge Ball drew thousands of spectators to witness the grand costumes of the drag queens.
Marissa: Similar events to the Hamilton Lodge Ball took place in cities across the country. Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Washington all hosted significant drag balls during the height of the craze. The drag balls represented the most spectacular manifestation of the pansy craze, transforming what had once been intimate community gatherings into massive public spectacles. Each ball had its own character and drew from local communities of gender-nonconforming individuals.
Elizabeth: For many spectators, the balls offered a safely distant encounter with transgression—a chance to witness the violation of gender norms while maintaining their own sense of respectability. The balls functioned as a form of urban tourism, allowing middle-class observers to sample the “exotic” without fully participating. This was what many called “slumming,” a term that developed in the late 19th century when white middle-class thrill seekers would venture into the “rougher” neighborhoods for a night on the town.
Marissa: For queer people and the queer curious, balls provided opportunities to express themselves publicly, to compete for recognition and prizes, and to build community with others who shared their experiences. The elaborate preparation that went into these events, like the creation of gowns, jewelry, and accessories, was a significant investment of time, money, and creative energy. Participants vied for titles like “belle of the ball” or recognition for the most elaborate costume.
Elizabeth: Balls had profound resonance in African American communities, where it intersected with existing traditions of performance, racial uplift politics, and community formation. It was in this context that Alden Garrison emerged as one of the most prominent drag queens, known for their exceptional presentations at balls and other “pansy” events. *Sidenote: there are modern remnants of these balls, particularly in what is called “ballroom,” which is “a nearly century-old performance-based culture composed primarily of gay, lesbian, transgender, and gender non-conforming people of color.”[6] There is a collaborative effort at Johns Hopkins called The Peabody Ballroom Experience that we have linked on the website so that you can see this modern iteration in present-day Baltimore.
Marissa: Alden Garrison was described as the “belle” of the eighth annual Pansy Ball at the Elks Hall in Baltimore, wearing a “flowing gown of egg-shell satin with studded rhinestones, [and] a tiara of similar crystals.” The description highlighted the importance of fashion and presentation at these events.[7] We have the picture of Alden Garrison described here on the blog at digpodcast.org.
Elizabeth: As previously mentioned, press coverage of the events was often contradictory. Ralph Matthews of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper simultaneously provided detailed descriptions of participants’ outfits while also describing the participants as “abnormal.” This mixture of fascination and condemnation characterized a lot of the mainstream reaction to the drag balls.
Marissa: The balls also served as important economic hubs in their communities. They provided employment for performers, musicians, caterers, and seamstresses and they generated revenue for the venues that hosted them and created networks of mutual support among participants. For someone like Garrison, who founded the Impersonators Club, these events were opportunities to strengthen community bonds and create sustainable support systems.
Elizabeth: Alden Garrison was born on June 4, 1908, in one of Washington, D.C.’s notorious alley neighborhoods. They grew up in poverty that was too common for many Black American families barely fifty years removed from slavery. At age twelve, Garrison began performing in The Rosetime Revue, a variety show staged in Baltimore and Washington between 1920 and 1924. The Chicago Defender described their early appearances as “specialty costume dances,” and they was noted as the youngest performer in the show.[8]
Marissa: Like many aspiring performers, Garrison eventually made their way to New York City, drawn by the opportunities of Harlem’s vibrant entertainment scene. However, it was difficult to navigate the unfamiliar entertainment world of New York City and Garrison eventually went back home to Baltimore in the late 1920s. Back in Baltimore they were able to make a name for themself.
Elizabeth: Garrison developed a reputation as an exceptional female impersonator (or drag queen). The extensive network of performers they encountered in New York, Baltimore, and Washington had exposed them to drag queens both as a performance genre and as a lived experience. Also, the growing public fascination with what were known as “pansy acts”—performances with homoerotic themes—created opportunities for performers like Garrison to get work and become local celebrities.
Marissa: Garrison’s rising prominence was covered extensively in the Baltimore Afro-American, particularly by reporters Ralph Matthews and Louis Lautier. These journalists provided Garrison with a degree of subjectivity and personhood typically denied to gender-nonconforming individuals. Rather than simply being treated as a “freak” or oddity, they framed Garrison as a complex individual with feelings, beliefs, and desires.
Elizabeth: Lautier, in particular, had intimate knowledge of the queer and drag queen community as he had previously worked as a promoter for the Congo Club, an exclusive pansy club in Washington, D.C. This positioned Garrison as a bridge between the gender-nonconforming community and mainstream Black newspaper readers as Lautier wrote articles that were simultaneously sympathetic and judgemental.
Marissa: The Washington drag ball scene of which Garrison was a part was notably different from its New York counterpart. Washington’s reputation for Black elitism and social rigidity made visible displays of gender nonconformity more controversial than in other urban areas. Langston Hughes sarcastically observed the difference between D.C. and New York City during a 1927 visit. He said, “Negro society in Washington, they assured me, was the finest in the country, richest, the most cultured, the most worthy.”[9] He went on to say that he was ready to get back to Harlem where people didn’t care so much where you were from or who your daddy was. The atmosphere of respectability politics in D.C. made drag balls particularly threatening to Black community leaders who feared they would undermine efforts at racial uplift.
Elizabeth: An incident at the Prince Hall Masonic Temple in 1934 illustrated the tension. Garrison organized an “Impersonators” dance at the prestigious venue, which drew the ire of nearby Howard University’s President Mordecai Johnson. He worried that the ball would cast a negative light on Howard University, one of the premier universities for Black students in the nation. Johnson reportedly called police to shut the “Impersonators Ball” down.
Marissa: But the ball had already been widely advertised and was expected to draw 1,500 attendees. Police issued an order to stop the ball but Garrison as other drag queens ignored police orders and headed into the venue. News of the fracas drew large crowds, who then stripped and beat the female impersonators while officers watched without intervening. So while queerness was celebrated in the press and in certain contexts, sudden shifts in public opinion and official policy could expose queer people to violence.
Elizabeth: Although the pansy craze flourished in the northeast, the phenomenon spread and took root in unexpected places where climate, economics, and social dynamics created unique opportunities for gender transgression and sexual experimentation. Miami, Florida became a hot spot for the pansy craze. The city’s deliberate construction as a tropical paradise for wealthy tourists created space for what boosters themselves called “fairyland”—a term whose double meaning was not lost on the sophisticated travelers who made the city their winter playground.
Marissa: Miami in the 1920s and 1930s was a carefully manufactured destination, built to appeal to wealthy Northeasterners seeking escape from winter weather and, increasingly, from the social constraints of their home communities. Historian Julio Capo, Jr. found that the city’s promoters worked tirelessly to create an image of exotic luxury that attracted the kind of free-spending tourists who could sustain an economy based on leisure and entertainment.
Elizabeth: In 1921, entrepreneurs building Miami Beach offered a monetary prize for the best promotional slogan for their new city. They hired an associate editor from National Geographic magazine to review the entries, and while his favorite was “Miami Beach—Florida’s Fairyland,” he ultimately did not recommend it. The editor’s reluctance to endorse the “Fairyland” slogan, despite preferring it, shows that people were aware of the term’s potential double meaning. By 1921, the “fairy,” an effeminate queer male, had become a widely recognized figure in American culture, particularly in the metropolitan areas from which Miami’s wealthy visitors originated.
Marissa: The connection between Miami and New York’s nightlife scene was extensive. Miami boosters closely followed and often tried to emulate New York’s entertainment innovations. In the early 1920s, a New York-based entrepreneur purchased one of Miami Beach’s casinos and hired entertainers directly from New York, including musical revues and performers who brought the latest metropolitan trends to Florida audiences.
Elizabeth: By 1932, the Miami Daily News was reviewing New York’s night scene and reporting that “scenery-eating actors have given way to pansy performers,” indicating both familiarity with and approval of the trend.[10] The clientele that Miami was designed to serve—wealthy, cosmopolitan, and seeking novel experiences—was precisely the demographic that had made the pansy craze successful in New York. Miami’s casino culture provided the perfect venue for this kind of experimentation. While technically open to the public, these establishments were exclusive, white clubs that required significant money and status for admission. The casino environment, with its emphasis on risk-taking, luxury consumption, and suspension of everyday rules, created an atmosphere where gender transgression and sexual experimentation could flourish.
Marissa: The city’s promotional emphasis on pleasure and indulgence aligned perfectly with the hedonistic aspects of the pansy craze. Miami marketed itself as a place where normal rules didn’t apply, where visitors could pursue pleasure without constraint, and where exotic experiences were readily available. This messaging would have been particularly appealing to individuals interested in exploring non-normative sexualities and gender expressions.
Elizabeth: However, Miami’s embrace of “fairyland” culture was constrained by the same forces that limited the pansy craze elsewhere. The city’s economy depended on maintaining its appeal to conventional wealthy tourists, which required balancing sexual and gender transgression with respectability. Too much visibility for gender-nonconforming individuals or too explicit embrace of queerness could threaten the city’s reputation and economic base.
Marissa: The pansy craze reached Los Angeles at the height of its popularity on the East Coast, brought by performers fleeing crackdowns in New York and other cities. When New York authorities began their systematic campaigns to clear midtown Manhattan of visible homosexual elements, many performers looked westward for new opportunities. California offered the promise of greater tolerance, a growing entertainment industry, and a climate that seemed to encourage hedonistic lifestyles.
Elizabeth: The most prominent of these transplanted performers was Jean Malin, one of New York’s brightest pansy stars, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1932 to serve as master of ceremonies at Club New York, an establishment specifically designed to cater to Hollywood elites. Variety magazine’s coverage of Malin’s show noted that Malin’s “femme impersonations” took up half the show at the 250-person club, sharing the stage with dancing German twins, a young Betty Grable, and Miss Eddie Adams, who performed alternately in male and female attire, suggesting that gender transgression had become an expected and appreciated part of high-end entertainment in Los Angeles.
Marissa: The city also developed its own homegrown pansy culture, not entirely dependent on East Coast imports. The 808 Club was a popular venue featuring a steady stream of drag queens, while the smaller B.B.B.’s Cellar featured its own “pansy revue.” B.B.B.’s Cellar represented a different model from the more upscale venues featuring East Coast stars. Variety noted that there was “no attempt to fool anyone on the revue’s sex” and that “costumes are mostly made by the boys themselves. None wear wigs, probably due to being paid off in sandwiches.”[11] This more modest operation catered to a different clientele than the sophisticated Hollywood crowd, but still drew enough business to stay afloat.
Elizabeth: Hollywood’s film industry provided a unique dimension to Los Angeles’s pansy culture. The presence of movie stars and industry figures at pansy shows created connections between transgressive nightclub entertainment and mainstream cultural production. These connections proved crucial to the development of queer representation in early sound films, as club managers and film producers began to recognize the commercial potential of pansy characters.
Marissa: Film historian Vito Russo observed that during 1933, “the existence of homosexuality was alluded to more often than at any other time in film history before… the early 1960s.” This proliferation of queer representation was directly connected to the pansy craze, as Variety noted that “producers are going heavy on the panz stuff in current pix… They are now apparently the stock comedy business easiest at hand.”[12] What had been confined to urban nightclubs and theaters were transmitted to movie theaters across the nation, introducing small-town audiences to characters and performances that had previously been available only to sophisticated urbanites.
Elizabeth: The transition from silent films to “talkies” was crucial to the cinematic representation of queerness. Film historian David Lugowski observed, “queer characters were common enough in silent film, but the means of presenting queerness in live performance often rested on innuendo in dialogue and vocal intonation.”[13] While gender-nonconforming characters had appeared in silent films, their transgression was primarily visual—communicated through costume, gesture, and physical performance. Films with sound added the dimension of voice, allowing for the verbal wit, vocal mannerisms, and linguistic play that were central to pansy entertainment.
Marissa: Character actors who specialized in pansy-like performances found themselves in high demand as Hollywood sought to capitalize on the popularity of gender-transgressive entertainment. Edward Everett Horton built a successful career playing perpetually bashful, flustered characters whose effeminacy was a source of both comedy and subtle transgression. Franklin Pangborn perfected the role of the persnickety, prissy hotel clerk or shop assistant whose exaggerated mannerisms signaled his difference from conventional masculinity.
Elizabeth: Their success wasn’t accidental—it reflected deliberate efforts by studios to capitalize on a proven entertainment form that had already demonstrated its commercial appeal in live venues. More established entertainers also incorporated pansy elements into their film performances. Eddie Cantor, already famous for his vaudeville and stage work, brought pansy humor into his movie routines, helping to normalize gender-transgressive comedy for mass audiences.
Marissa: Film stars like Jean Malin moved between nightclub and movie work, bringing their live performance skills to cinema while using their film exposure to enhance their nightclub appeal. This cross-pollination enriched both forms of entertainment while also creating networks of influence that connected Hollywood to pansy communities across the nation.
Elizabeth: However, the cinematic pansy also established representational patterns that have persisted in American film for decades. The positioning of queer characters as sources of comic relief, their confinement to secondary roles, and their frequent punishment or marginalization within narratives all became standard features of Hollywood’s approach to queer representation that have taken decades to overcome and still have a long way to go.
Marissa: As the pansy craze reached its zenith in 1931, the forces that would destroy it were already mobilizing. By 1930, New York police had embarked on a systematic campaign to clear the streets and clubs of midtown Manhattan of the most easily identifiable queer elements. The decline of the drag ball phenomenon paralleled the broader end of the pansy craze. As cities began cracking down on establishments that catered to gender-nonconforming individuals, venues became reluctant to host such events. The economic pressures of the Great Depression made it harder to maintain the elaborate costuming and production values that had made these events spectacular. By the mid-1930s, many of the most prominent drag balls had either been banned or had faded away.
Elizabeth: Furthermore, the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 removed the protective cover that criminalized alcohol had provided for other illicit activities. Suddenly, gay bars and clubs found themselves isolated on the wrong side of the law. Stringent liquor licensing laws gave authorities a powerful weapon for controlling “undesirable” establishments, and some bar owners, fearful of losing their licenses, became allies of the police in driving gay culture underground.[14] Others thrived as the gay bar scene covertly grew throughout the mid-century.
Marissa: The economic devastation of the Great Depression also contributed to a backlash against what were increasingly seen as the excesses of the hedonistic 1920s. As the country sank deeper into economic disaster, there was a reaction against visible manifestations of gender transgression and sexual nonconformity. Critics began to blame the nation’s moral failures for its economic ones, and the gay subculture became a perfect target for those seeking scapegoats.
Elizabeth: The pansy craze declined nationally. The economic constraints of the Great Depression made luxury tourism to Miami’s fairyland more difficult to sustain. In Hollywood, the decline of pansy representation in cinema was swift. The establishment of the Production Code Administration in 1934, under intense pressure from the Catholic Church, brought the brief flowering of queer representation to an abrupt end. The code’s prohibition of “sex perversion or any reference to it” banned the open representation of pansy characters, forcing filmmakers to develop more subtle and coded approaches to queer representation.[15]
Marissa: Historian Daniel Hurewitz found that the relationship between Los Angeles’s pansy culture and law enforcement proved more antagonistic than in some other cities. While San Francisco remained relatively tolerant during the 1930s, and Chicago’s fairies seemed “little worried about police oppression,” Los Angeles authorities regularly interfered with pansy establishments.[16] Police raided L.A.’s B.B.B.’s Cellar and Jimmie’s Back Yard repeatedly in 1932 and 1933, with initial liquor law violations giving way to charges of indecency. The owner, mistress of ceremonies, and piano player each received ninety-day jail sentences. Yet despite police interference, the pansy venues continued operating. Clubs that were raided frequently reopened because there was a demand for queer spaces despite police harassment.
Elizabeth: In New York, police continued campaigns to clear midtown Manhattan of visible homosexual elements, driving performers and audiences back to Greenwich Village and Harlem. Detroit issued an injunction in 1937 banning female impersonation as nighttime entertainment, claiming it would help reduce “sex crimes.” Baltimore followed with its own ban in 1938, effectively ending the career opportunities that had sustained performers throughout the region.
Marissa: This massive shift was particularly devastating for performers like Alden Garrison, whose careers depended on public tolerance for gender transgression. Historian Kim Gallon found that the combination of economic hardship and moral condemnation made it increasingly difficult to sustain the elaborate productions and sophisticated audiences that had made pansy entertainment profitable. Garrison’s final year exemplified this tragedy. The death of their godmother, combined with the collapse of performance opportunities and increasing police harassment, left them emotionally and economically devastated. They was arrested in Arlington, Virginia, for an undisclosed crime and wound up at Gallinger Hospital severely malnourished Garrison died there alone at the age of 30.
Elizabeth: The Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, and Afro-American all covered Garrison’s death, indicating that his reputation had spread far beyond the Washington-Baltimore area where they primarily performed. However, not all publicity was good. The title of one article was “No Tears for Alden.” Matthews eulogized: “Garrison, who brought laughs to excitement seekers who derived pleasure out of his odd abnormality, died as he had lived–a social outcast.”[17]
Marissa: Nationally press coverage of the decline of the pansy craze revealed a complete reversal in social attitudes. The same newspapers that had celebrated pansy performers during the height of the craze now published warnings about female impersonators as potential threats to public morals. Columnists who had once written sympathetic coverage of gender-nonconforming individuals began treating them as dangerous predators who threatened the fabric of society. Within just a few years, an entertainment form that had commanded center stage in major American cities had been driven almost entirely underground. Performers who had been celebrities found themselves unemployable, venues that had attracted sophisticated audiences were forced to close, and communities that had briefly enjoyed unprecedented visibility were scattered and pushed underground.
Elizabeth: While performers like Alden Garrison navigated the pansy craze from positions of racial and economic marginalization, the phenomenon also elevated white performers who could leverage their privilege to achieve unprecedented mainstream success. The actor Clifton Webb was able to survive and even thrive as an openly queer performer. Webb’s career spanned from the 1910s through the 1940s. Webb began as a child actor in the 10s and soon critics were already commenting on his lack of conventional masculinity. Unlike performers who hid their queerness, Webb embraced what were known as “nance roles” throughout the 1920s—French dancing masters, dandies, and “nuts” from Greenwich Village. He did this while maintaining an unusually close public relationship with his mother Mabelle that scandalized traditional gender norms and provided gossip columnists with endless material.
Marissa: Unlike many performers who were swept away when the pansy craze ended, Webb’s career actually peaked in the 1940s with his performances in plays like Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. His success demonstrated that audiences remained hungry for queer representation even after the official suppression of the pansy craze, and that sophisticated performers could continue to find ways to express and celebrate gender transgression within mainstream entertainment.
Elizabeth: The networks of relationship and cultural knowledge that sustained gender-nonconforming communities during the pansy craze didn’t disappear, they went underground, or more aptly this is where Chauncy argues the “closet” was created. It’s not a coincidence that the suppression of the pansy craze and the creation of “the closet” in America coincided with the rise of fascism in Europe and increased authoritarianism globally. The systematic elimination of gender-transgressive entertainment and queer visibility from American culture paralleled similar campaigns of forced heterosexuality across the globe. The persecution of sexual and gender minorities is historically connected to broader attacks on democracy and human rights. Seen in this context, the crackdown on the pansy craze was not a simple shift in popular culture but was indicative of more sinister elements of forced heterosexuality. The violent suppression of the pansy craze—from the mob that attacked Alden Garrison and other drag queens at the Prince Hall Masonic Temple to the police raids that closed venues across the nation—established patterns of persecution that would haunt LGBTQ+ communities for generations. The speed and thoroughness of this suppression demonstrated how quickly tolerance could transform into hostility when economic and social pressures were weaponized and turned against a minority group.
Bibliography
Mark Lynn Anderson, Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920 America, University of California Press, 2011.
Julio Capo, Jr., Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940, The University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
George Chauncy, Gay New York, Basic Books, 2019.
Kim Gallon, “‘No Tears for Alden’: Black Female Impersonators as ‘Outsiders Within’ in the Baltimore Afro-American,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 27, Issue 3, 2018.
Nicholas Edsall, Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World (UVA Press: 2023), 328.
Laura Horak, Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934, Rutgers University Press, 2016.
Daniel Hurewitz, Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics, University of California Press, 2007.
Notes
[1] George Chauncy, Gay New York, 308.
[2] Laura Horak, Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934, 173.
[3] Horak, Girls Will Be Boys, 173.
[4] Chauncy, Gay New York, 328.
[5] Nicholas Edsall, Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World (UVA Press: 2023), 328.
[6] https://peabodyballroom.library.jhu.edu/home/about/
[7] Kim Gallon, “‘No Tears for Alden’: Black Female Impersonators as ‘Outsiders Within’ in the Baltimore Afro-American,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 27, Issue 3, 2018.
[8] Gallon, “‘No Tears for Alden.’
[9] Gallon, “‘No Tears for Alden.’
[10] Julio Capo, Jr., Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940, 100.
[11] Daniel Hurewitz, Bohemian Los Angeles, 118.
[12] Quoted in Hurewitz, Bohemian Los Angeles, 120-121.
[13] Quoted in Mark Lynn Anderson, Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920 America, 129.
[14] Edsall, Toward Stonewall, 286.
[15] Edsall, Toward Stonewall, 286.
[16] Hurewitz, Bohemian Los Angeles, 121.
[17] Gallon, “‘No Tears for Alden.’
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