Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the American Variety Stage by Gilliam M. Rodger (review)

In Gillian M. Rodger's first book, Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima (2010), the author traced the development of variety entertainment from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Exploring the class dynamics of the form's evolution, Rodger centered her study on Annie Hindle and Ella Wesner, two male impersonators whose careers brought into focus the changing relationship between class and gender, with implications regarding sexuality on the American stage.

Her latest book, Just One of the Boys, is an extension of this text, looking specifically at male impersonation in American variety. While Rodger again focuses on Hindle and Wesner, she introduces a number of other male impersonators, examining their performance styles, repertoires, and audience receptions to illustrate changes in variety as a whole. Rodger also expands her investigation to include male impersonators from English music hall, many of whom would also come to the United States.

Chapter 1, "Female Hamlets and Romeos," begins with an introduction to female cross-dressing on the nineteenth-century American stage. While noting that some women were performing male roles in legitimate drama, Rodger emphasizes the different attitudes audiences took toward cross-dressing in variety. Where cross-dressing on the legitimate stage was tolerated as a novelty justified by the actresses' skill, variety's perceived "low-class" status rendered it more flexible, as women were not constrained by propriety from performing cross-gendered comedy.

Hindle and Wesner make their first appearance in the second chapter, which discusses the emergence of the first male impersonators in variety. Rodger, who focuses on these two women "because together they established the performance ideal for American male impersonation that lasted until the end of the nineteenth century" (32), goes into detail about both performers' early public and private lives. While the author's description of their performance styles is interesting, it is her exploration of their private lives that I found most fascinating, especially when she teases Hindle's multiple marriages to women.

Both chapters 3 and 4 look at male impersonation in the 1870s by introducing the reader to two performers, using them to examine challenges male impersonators faced in variety. In chapter 3, Rodger focuses on the economic impact of the Panic of 1873 by presenting Augusta Lamareaux and Blanche Selwyn, who along with Hindle and Wesner found it difficult to sustain bookings in the wake of the financial crisis. Chapter 4 continues to explore the impact of the Long Depression, using male impersonators Maggie Weston and Minnie Hall to investigate the changing audience tastes. Rodger notes that while male impersonation helped Weston and Hall get their starts, they were able to sustain careers "by being flexible and by moving away from the specialization of Annie Hindle and Ella Wesner" (89).

Wesner's debut London season in 1876 serves as Rodger's entrée into an overview of male impersonation in English music halls, which are the focus of chapter 5. Citing the more established tradition of women playing male roles in English theatre, Rodger speculates that this conditioned audiences and "may have been responsible for their more feminine performance style" (106). This enhanced Wesner's popularity, as English audiences found her more masculine performance to be both novel and exotic.

Chapter 6 marks a significant shift in variety entertainment in the 1880s, as financial concerns and audience shifts drove a growing concern with "decency." This shift led variety managers to adopt "industrial models of entertainment" (115), which would eventually lead to the subspecialization of variety into vaudeville, burlesque, and other forms. While chapter 6 describes this increasing specialization, chapter 7 focuses specifically on male impersonation, returning again to Hindle and Wesner. Although both women persisted in their chosen specialty, neither was especially successful during this period, as both struggled to adapt to the new landscape. As Rodger notes, "There had never been...