SHADY LADIES: SISTER ACTS, POPULAR PERFORMANCE, AND THE SUBVERSION OF AMERICAN IDENTITY Copyright 2010 Jocelyn L. Buckner Submitted to the graduate degree program in Theatre and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________________________________ Henry Bial, Chairperson Committee Members ______________________________________ Iris Smith Fischer ______________________________________ Mechele Leon ______________________________________ Nicole Hodges Persley ______________________________________ Sherrie Tucker Date Defended _________________________ ii The Dissertation Committee for Jocelyn L. Buckner certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ―Shady Ladies: Sister Acts, Popular Performance, and the Subversion of American Identity" Committee: ______________________________________ Henry Bial, Chairperson ______________________________________ Iris Smith Fischer ______________________________________ Mechele Leon ______________________________________ Nicole Hodges Persley ______________________________________ Sherrie Tucker Date approved:__________________________ iii Abstract ―Shady Ladies: Sister Acts, Popular Performance, and the Subversion of American Identity‖ is a project with two major components. First, it is a historical project based on original archival research conducted at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Hatch-Billops Collection, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I construct and contextualize the performance histories of black and white sister acts, developing an argument for how these artists created a space for dialogue regarding the social constructions of race, gender, and sexuality through their often antithetical representations of identities in their performances. Second, I develop a theoretically informed comparative analysis of these groups‘ performance and biographical histories. I articulate how women on both sides of the Jim Crow era color line negotiated and challenged social expectations. I examine two African American groups, the Hyers Sisters and the Whitman Sisters, and two European American groups, the Dolly Sisters and the Duncan Sisters. These groups are representative of the sister act phenomenon in that they are biologically related sets of women who entered show business in pursuit of the American Dream of economic and social uplift. I argue that the performances of these women, and others like them, can be read as appropriating and/or complicating the idea of ―family‖ to participate in and contribute to the development of personal and national identity in the United States. Writing the histories of four sister acts is a revisionist project aimed at including women‘s contributions and stories in the larger history of theatre and performance in the United States. ―Shady Ladies‖ explores how sister acts negotiated systems of power iv circumscribing gendered, racial, and sexual identities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This interdisciplinary project contributes to a variety of fields such as African American studies, theatre and performance studies, and American studies. v Acknowledgements While the content and errors of this project are my own, I have received much support in its formulation and success. I am grateful for financial support of ―Shady Ladies‖ from the International Philanthropic Educational Organization which funded my final year of dissertation writing with a P.E.O. Scholar Award, enabling me to commit full time efforts to the research and writing of the majority of the project. The University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities Interdisciplinary Graduate Summer Research Award provided financial support of research and writing and the Hall Center‘s Performance and Culture Seminar and Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Workshop provided forums for publicly presenting and discussing my work at various stages of its development. The University of Kansas Office of Research and Graduate Studies provided additional summer research funding and the Joseph R. Roach Dissertation Research Award given by the KU Department of Theatre provided initial research start up funding for the project. As important as financial support was the support I received from friends in New York, who allowed me to stay in their homes during my extensive archival research trips. Thank you Michael Hoagland, Joel Silver, and especially Stephanie Chiuminatto. Your hospitality and generosity made my research and this project possible. In addition to the financial support I have received, I am thankful for the encouragement I have received from my dissertation committee. Thank you Iris Smith Fischer for being both a mentor and a friend, and for teaching me how to be an editor, to slow down, and to ask thoughtful questions. Thanks to Nicole Hodges Persley for providing perspective. I appreciate Mechele Leon‘s advice when I was at a loss as to how to tackle the archives. Sherrie Tucker never failed to share her positive energy, effortless professionalism, and sage advice on life, career, and research. I am grateful to my dissertation advisor Henry Bial, who was readily available for conversations about the dissertation, perspective, and encouragement that helped me approach each stage of the vi project with courage, clarity, and composition. Thanks also to the staff of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Library for the Performing Arts, and to James V. Hatch for their research assistance. Additional thanks to Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, Rhonda Blair, Joe Franklin, John Gronbeck-Tedesco, Delilah Jackson, David Krasner, Norton Owen, and Joseph Roach for their mentorship, advice, and research support. I also appreciate the encouragement and camaraderie I have received from my colleagues, particularly Katrina Bondari, Anne Dotter, Jay Gibson-King, Jenna Kubly, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, and Aimee Zygmonski for sharing laughs, advice, frustrations, and resources. I especially thank my friends Chandra O. Hopkins for our marathon dates that saved my sanity, for being my office mate, and for transcribing my dissertation defense; Heidi Temple for always lending a willing ear, for making the effort to visit me in New York during my archival research, and for helping me laugh; and Jenny Woodruff, for her unending love, encouragement, empathy, and energy. Special thanks to Jasper for keeping me company during my daily writing schedule, and for helping me remember to stretch, play, and go outside. Glen Stengel, du bist mein Sonnenschein. Thank you for helping me to generate this and so many other endless possibilities. Finally, I owe my gratitude to my family for their support of my education. Thank you. vii Table of Contents Chapter One Page Introducing the ―Shady Ladies‖ 1 Chapter Two The Hyers Sisters: Pioneers of (African) American (Musical) Theatre 30 Chapter Three The Whitman Sisters: The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville 71 Chapter Four Double Take: The Dolly Sisters and the Development of American Identities 115 Chapter Five ―Sisters Under the Skin‖: The Duncan Sisters and the Appropriation of Blackness 151 Chapter Six Conclusion 188 Notes 196 Works Cited 207 1 Introducing the “Shady Ladies” Sisters Sisters There were never such devoted sisters . Two diff'rent faces But in tight places We think and we act as one.1 Introduction Sister acts have long been a fascination for audiences. They represent sameness, difference, connection, and rivalry evoking the kind of dramatic tension that theatre goers crave. We delight in their coordinating looks, clothes, voices, and choreography, and revel in their missteps. Their biological closeness but ability to be so different is a mystery and a source of endless fascination and entertainment. Sister acts harness our culture‘s curiosity about bonds between women, parlaying it into a ready made audience base for popular performances featuring their relationships. A sub-genre of the family performance troupe practice popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sister acts are pairs or groups of women billed as sisters to capitalize on the phenomenon of sameness and difference inherent in many sororal relationships. These teams are made up of both actual, biological sisters as well as women (sometimes even mothers and daughters) posing as sisters.2 Sister acts, like other 2 family oriented troupes, provide artists with a support system which makes a career in the uncertain field of show business a little easier. Though very popular throughout the twentieth century (think of the Boswell Sisters, Andrews Sisters, Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor, Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, the Pointer Sisters, the Emotions, all-female groups like the Supremes, and even today‘s celebrity and reality star sisters such as Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Venus and Serena Williams, Jessica and Ashley Simpson, Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe Kardashian, and Paris and Nicky Hilton), little has been written about this particular type of performance group. This project contributes the histories of four sister acts performing from the 1860s through the 1950s – the Hyers, Whitman, Dolly, and Duncan Sisters – to the larger history of American theatre and popular performance. Sister acts provide female artists with an opportunity to perform and contest identity in a particular way not available to non-related groups or single performers. The theme and backdrop of family reinforces