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Pasternacklj042.Pdf Copyright by Leslie Joyce Pasternack 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Leslie Joyce Pasternack Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Theatrical Transvestism in the United States and the Performance of American Identities: 1870-1935 Committee: Stacy Wolf, Supervisor Oscar Brockett Jill Dolan Lynn Miller Janet Davis Theatrical Transvestism in the United States and the Performance of American Identities: 1870-1935 by Leslie Joyce Pasternack, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2004 For Paul Acknowledgements I am deeply appreciative of the many people who supported me throughout this journey. These include my committee members, past and present: Stacy Wolf, Oscar Brockett, Jill Dolan, Lynn Miller, Janet Davis, Charlotte Canning and Jack Brokaw; faculty and friends at the University of Texas at Austin and Northeastern University: Mary Kay Lutringer, Janet Bobcean, Nancy Kindelan, Del Lewis, Carol Najarian, Emmett Price, Zeynap Bakkal, Ted Janello, Thomas Keating and Cindy Barlow; my coach, Bonnie Hill; my dear friends who led the way or journeyed beside me: Rob Sherman, Jason Shaffer, Laura Edmondson, Shannon Bradford, Jane Barnette, Judith Sebesta, Maria Beach, Frank Bartolomeo, and Jane Kessler; the scholars who generously shared their time and attention to guide me in my research: Thomas Postlewait, Alicia K. Koger, Alison Kibler, Annemarie Bean, Geraldine Maschio, Bluford Adams, John Lowe, James H. Dormon, Veronica Kelly, Bruce Parr, Delyse Anthony, Leigh Woods, Kim Marra, and Brett Crawford; the archival specialists at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Collection in Austin, the Theatre Collection and Schlesinger Library at Harvard, the Museum of the City of New York, the Goodspeed Opera House Library of Musical Theatre, and the Billy Rose Theatre v Collection at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, who include Melissa Miller, Annette Fern, Ellen M. Shea, Mary Ellen Rogan, Rick Hunter, and Lisa Viall; William Wesbrooks, for sharing his experience with Harrigan ‘n Hart; Francine Pascal for her gracious permission to use documents from the Michael Stewart Papers and her encouragement to tell Tony Hart’s story; John Bush Jones; many folks at New Hampshire Public Television, the Dell’Arte School, and the New England Gymnastics Training Center; my amazing students from Northeastern, especially Cass Nenninger, Tom Doran, and Danielle Kline; my girlfriends, without whom life is incomplete: Suzy, Ashley, Lisa, Debra, Michele, Kirsten, and Charlotte; the guys, who keep it interesting: NJ, Matt, Jon, Adam, and Scott; the Pasternack, Swisher and Runcy clans; my brother, Henry, you are still my hero; my mother, Elaine, you are my inspiration, my first and best mentor, and my major underwriter; Gary, for everything you do; Simon and our dear departed Max; and Paul, my heart’s companion, I love you. I would also like to acknowledge Jacob’s Talented Dog Athletes, circa.1919. If a pooch can hit a handstand on a bowling pin, anything is possible. vi Theatrical Transvestism in the United States and the Performance of American Identities: 1870-1935 Publication No._____________ Leslie Joyce Pasternack, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2004 Supervisor: Stacy Wolf This study documents and analyzes the work of several variety acts of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: the Russell Brothers, who were famous for their Irish Servant Girls characters before coming under attack by Irish American protestors; James McIntyre and Thomas Heath, who performed various blackface characters on the vaudeville stage long after minstrelsy waned; and Harrigan and Hart, whose musical plays included a multitude of ethnic types in an exaggerated mirror of the immigrant slums of New York. Each of these acts included female impersonation as a prominent component, and also created detailed “race delineations.” Every one of these performers was accorded expert status in the popular press as authorities on the behavior, dialect and slang of the racial group they depicted. These acts also all experienced a decline in popularity as female comedians, chorus girls, and glamour drag queens staked out theatrical vii territories in the twentieth century. Of these acts, only Harrigan and Hart have received extensive biographical attention; but the strange production history of Michael Stewart’s Harrigan ‘n Hart illustrates the effects of sexual anxiety on the writing of theatrical biography. Not until the 1990s would performers of multiple ethnicities and genders, such as John Leguizamo, Tracey Ullman, and Anna Deavere Smith, regain mainstream currency as authorities on race relations and sexuality. This study correlates the decline of a rich period of multivalent social impersonation with shifting perceptions of homosexuality, gender play, class consciousness and racial identity in the United States. viii Table of Contents I. Hourglass Authority Figures .......................................................................... 1 II. "Our Servant Girls": The Russell Brothers and the Ownership of Authenticity.................................................................................................. 60 III. Blackface Brides and "Ham Tree Girls": Female Images in the Minstrelsy of McIntyre and Heath ............................................................. 105 IV. Harrigan's Wench: Identity Play in the Work of Tony Hart ...................... 142 V. Writing Hart: Anxiety and Homophobia in the "Nedda Trilogy".............. 186 VI. Conclusion: Enter the Tough Girls--and Guys........................................... 214 Bibliography........................................................................................................ 230 Vita…………… .................................................................................................. 243 ix I Hourglass (Authority) Figures 1. Introduction In the archives of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, I discovered an undated, unattributed etching which appears to be a publicity poster for the late-nineteenth century variety theatre duo Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart.1 The printing at the bottom of the poster names the sketch depicted as “The Little Frauds.” Beneath the title are the actors’ names, Harrigan and Hart. Two things fascinate me about this image. First, this sketch is described and photographed in much of the contemporary press of Harrigan and Hart, but it is usually called “The Little Fraud.” This was their first act as partners and was first performed in 1871. In this etching, the title has been made plural to include both characters (or performers) in the "fraud." A second intriguing element is in the detailed faces and bodies of the characters. The etching depicts a man who is clearly Edward Harrigan, with the strong nose and heavy brow familiar to Harrigan fans and researchers from numerous photographs. But Harrigan's companion in the image is a perfectly rendered young girl in a fashionable dress, with an hourglass figure and delicate 1 laced boots. Her arms reach out beseechingly to Harrigan, so that her face with its coquettish smile and lowered lids is seen in profile. Harrigan appears to recoil from the girl, his legs, torso and arms all leaning away in one long line, while his arms rise protectively, one hand grasping at his own lapel and the other holding his hat up and away from the reaching girl. Her face bears no particular likeness to Tony Hart’s, but he did play a young female in the original sketch, and was associated with cross-dressed roles throughout his career with Harrigan. Confronted with this image, with Tony Hart's name boldly printed underneath it, I must conclude that the duo's audience read this girl as a symbol for Hart's on-stage female persona. But this substitution of symbolic femininity for Hart’s masculine reality may not have been easy or total. The strange plurality of the title suggests a metatheatrical comment on the fraudulent nature of performance. Are both of these men hiding something from the audience? Is the title a challenge to uncover hidden secrets? Is all theatre inherently fraudulent, or is it the seamless transvestism in this image that earns the accusation? There is also a struggle for power in the image. Harrigan’s character wears sartorial signs of power, in his stylish, light-colored suit with vest and hat. He appears tall and strong and easily capable of overpowering the young girl. Yet, he is threatened. The Harrigan figure’s physicalization of anxiety involves a two-step process: he validates the feminine identity of his companion, and he acknowledges the threatening potential of her female power. My reading of the 2 Harrigan figure anticipates potential readings of an audience member: while Hart’s identity as a doubly-gendered performer is understood and validated by the image, I also see the unease—perhaps pleasurable unease—evoked by his gender play. The tense alliances of male and female, attraction and repulsion, staged and off-stage performances of gender, all have been captured in Harrigan's rejecting posture. Harrigan seems to resist, in spite of the great success of his partnership with Tony Hart, sharing the stage with a potentially dangerous person who embodied both genders at once. Recent scholarship on cross-dressing,
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