Gladys Bentley
It's hard to grasp the groundbreaking scope of the Harlem Renaissance until you know singer Gladys Bentley, the 250-pound cross-dressing lesbian who saw enormous success in the 1920s and '30s playing speakeasies and clubs like Ubangi, where she was reportedly backed by a chorus line of drag queens. Born in 1907 in Philadelphia, Bentley came to New York at 16 and settled in Harlem, where her powerful voice and shameless embrace of her sexuality made her a huge sensation.
She dressed in men's clothes almost exclusively, flirted aggressively with female audience members, and at one point told a gossip columnist that she'd married a white woman in Atlantic City. In their books of the period, several writers of the Renaissance movement (including Carl Van Vechten) based characters on Bentley's unique presence.
With the decline of the Renaissance's fervor, in 1937 Bentley moved to Los Angeles to live with her mother. She seems to have had a lesbian following at shows that she played both in L.A. and San Francisco, but with the rise of McCarthy-era anti-homosexuality, began separating herself from lesbianism. In the early '50s she told Ebony magazine that she'd been cured of her attraction to women via female hormone treatments, and she appeared in photos wearing a dress and cleaning house for her new husband, whom she eventually divorced. She continued singing at Hollywood clubs, and appeared on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life TV show twice. On January 18, 1960, she succumbed during a flu epidemic at age 52.
Hear Gladys Bentley's version of "How Much Can I Stand?" here.
For another take on Gladys Bentley, see Lesbian Life Guide Kathy Belge's Gladys Bentley: Bulldagger who Sang the Blues.
She dressed in men's clothes almost exclusively, flirted aggressively with female audience members, and at one point told a gossip columnist that she'd married a white woman in Atlantic City. In their books of the period, several writers of the Renaissance movement (including Carl Van Vechten) based characters on Bentley's unique presence.
With the decline of the Renaissance's fervor, in 1937 Bentley moved to Los Angeles to live with her mother. She seems to have had a lesbian following at shows that she played both in L.A. and San Francisco, but with the rise of McCarthy-era anti-homosexuality, began separating herself from lesbianism. In the early '50s she told Ebony magazine that she'd been cured of her attraction to women via female hormone treatments, and she appeared in photos wearing a dress and cleaning house for her new husband, whom she eventually divorced. She continued singing at Hollywood clubs, and appeared on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life TV show twice. On January 18, 1960, she succumbed during a flu epidemic at age 52.
Hear Gladys Bentley's version of "How Much Can I Stand?" here.
For another take on Gladys Bentley, see Lesbian Life Guide Kathy Belge's Gladys Bentley: Bulldagger who Sang the Blues.
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