Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall

13. Bronzeville

143 13 Bronzeville The black pansy parlors on Chicago’s South Side spawned many stars in the world of female impersonation, including “The Sepia Gloria Swanson” and Valda Gray. Many started out in clubs like the Cabin Inn—“South Side’s Oddest Club”—and Joe’s Deluxe. From the first Finnie’s Ball in 1935, the Queer Street Scandal in 1951, and trumpeter Ernestine “Tiny” Davis’s Gayspot Lounge, to the rise and rise of the Reverend Clarence Cobb and the First Church of Deliverance, the South Side was thriving. On December 10, 1930, Variety reported on a new fad, “The Pansy Craze,” and the growing number of pansy parlors in Chicago, but what the article failed to note is that many of them were on the South Side in African American neighborhoods. The most successful of these was James Pleasure ’s Pleasure Inn at 505½ East 31st Street. The popularity of the club was due to the resident female impersonator who masqueraded under the name “The Sepia Gloria Swanson” (real name Walter Winston); back then it was common for female impersonators in the black community to adopt the name of their white inspiration and prefix it with the word “Sepia.” Chicago also boasted a Sepia Mae West. Walter Winston was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 23, 1906, and moved to Chicago with his family at an early age to escape the racism of Bronzeville 144 the segregated South. After attending Chicago’s Forestville Elementary School and Wendell Phillips High School, he took to the stage, and by 1929 he was the doyen of Bronzeville’s café society. His theme song was Fats Waller’s “Squeeze Me,” to which he added spicy lyrics. In February 1930 Gloria opened Gloria’s Café, opposite the Sunset Café, at 315–17 East 35th Street. He was also in demand as an emcee, and on May 20, 1930, he was Mistress of Ceremonies at a banquet organized by James Pleasure at the Pleasure Inn, with celebrity guests like boxer “Young” Jack Thompson , and cabaret singer, dancer, and actress Caroline Snowden, who costarred with Stepin Fetchit in Old Kentucky, reputedly the first movie depicting a black on black romance. In early 1932 Gloria was in residence at the Monte Carlo, 6320 Cottage Grove Avenue, then spent the summer in New York, returning in October to the Radio Inn at 18th and Dearborn with his own show, the Bronx Beauty Revue, starring the cream of New York’s nightclub entertainers, including dancers Ruth “Race Horse” Johnson and Henrietta Epps. Gloria’s showstopper was Sophie Tucker’s “Some of These Days.” On December 1, 1932, he opened his Bronx Beauty Revue at the Pleasure Inn, but after a handful of shows the club was raided and closed down. In early 1933 Gloria traveled to Detroit to sing “Hot Nuts, Get ’Em from the Peanut Man!” at the opening of an extension to the Fisher Theatre, a multimillion-dollar movie and vaudeville house with an Aztec motif; the lobby was a jungle of banana trees, with a goldfish and turtle pond and colorful talking macaws clinging to perches to be fed grapes by audience members: Sellin’ nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts? Sellin’ nuts, hot nuts, I’ve got nuts for sale. You tell me that man’s nuts is mighty small, Best to have small nuts than have no nuts at all. Sellin’ nuts, hot nuts, you buy ’em from the peanut man. Early in 1934 Gloria was in New York sharing a stage at Harlem’s Ubangi and Clam House clubs with the 250-pound “Bulldagger of the Blues” Gladys Bentley. In July Gloria returned for his final appearances in Chicago, accompanied by jazz clarinetist Jimmie Noone and his Apex Club Orchestra. They opened at a new Harlem-style basement club, Bronzeville 145 the Midnight at 3140 Indiana Avenue, where the joint was hopping every night from 11 p.m. until dawn. It’s likely Gloria’s return to Chicago was prompted by Mayor Fiorella H. LaGuardia’s purge of raunchy club acts in New York. It’s not known if Gloria was one of those arrested, but male impersonator Gladys Bentley was taken in, as was her effeminate male chorus line at the King’s Terrace at 240 West 42nd Street. Although Bentley’s career was firmly rooted in New York, she sang in Chicago twice, most notably...