“Just go out on the street and ask any passing sailor. They’ll tell you I’m gay.”
TRQ: Rae Bourbon, Born August 11, 1892
Vaudeville drag performer, actor and recording artist Rae Bourbon, most known for his outrageous nightclub performances, was born in Texarkana, Texas. Born Hal Wadell, he referred to himself publicly as “Rae,” and privately as “Ray”. His death certificate states that he was born to Franz Joseph of Austria and Louisa Bourbon.
According to Bourbon, he studied and performed in London during the early 1900’s. He is thought to have acted in Rudolph Valentino’s Blood and Sand in 1922. By the 1920’s, Bourbon was a stuntman for male and female actors in the silent films of Hollywood before creating the “Bourbon and Sherry” vaudeville act with Bert Sherry. Bourbon performed in drag, playing off Sherry’s straight man persona. Bourbon did not impersonate famous women but created his own personas and characterizations.
Mae West cast him in two plays in 1927, Sex and Pleasure Man, which were raided by the police. Bourbon continued to work with West, appearing as extras in her movies and supporting roles in her stage productions. In 1931 Bourbon began modeling women’s dresses in a California department store. He also started recording risqué comedy sketches and songs, and performing in hundreds of trendy “pansy clubs” across the United States. He managed his own club, The Rendezvous, In Los Angeles. He also created the Boys Will Be Girls drag review in L.A. before it was shut down by the police, and then moved to San Francisco in 1933.
In the early 1940’s Bourbon took his show Don’t Call Me Madam: A Midnight Revue to New York City, to be performed at Carnegie Hall. His show had a sell-out audience that included Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. In 1944 Mae West brought him onboard her touring productions of Diamond Lil and Catherine was Great.
Bourbon continued releasing albums with gay content on the UTC (Under the Counter) label. The Wedding, You’re Stepping on My Eyelashes, and Around the World in 80 Ways were just a few of his albums available by mail order or for sale at his appearances. Filled with double entendres and sexual humor, Bourbon’s recorded performances in his Southern drawl, use satire to call out the hypocrisy of mainstream culture.
Bourbon often described himself as gay, though he had sexual relations with both men and women. He was once married and fathered a son. He never described himself as bisexual or transexual. Through the 1950’s and 1960’s, Bourbon continued his tour around the gay club circuit, from Seattle’s The Garden of Allah, New Orleans’ Dixie’s Bar of Music, to Atlanta’s Imperial Lounge. He also joined the Jewel Box Revue, a racially-mixed group of drag performers.
Over the years, Bourbon had several confrontations with the police, usually in connection with his presentation of gender and sexuality. However, in 1969, following an incident over an unpaid bill for housing his numerous dogs, Bourbon was charged with hiring an accomplice to murder a kennel owner after his dogs had been sold to a research facility. Bourbon was sentenced to life in prison.
In December 1970, however, following a phone call in which he let a jailer speak with West, who joked that if he were “ever in Hollywood, come up and see me sometime,” Bourbon managed to escape from prison through an unlocked cell door. Found a little while later sitting on a bench, Bourbon claimed he could not re-enter the cell because the doors had been locked. While in prison, Bourbon wrote his autobiography, Daddy was a Lady, which he planned to make into a movie. However, before it could be published, he died of a heart attack at the Big Spring State Hospital, on July 19th, 1971. He was 78 years old.
Though Bourbon’s risqué and raunchy humor was once considered daring, his style came to be seen as retrograde during the height of the 1960’s gay rights movement. However, this diminish neither his talent nor his pioneering of gay entertainment.
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