“Music has charms to sooth a savage breast.”
Congreve, The Mourning Bride

When I heard the very sad news earlier this week that a friend and colleague Robert Hilferty had died, I was stunned. He was younger than me by two years. A former ACT-UP activist, music critic and filmmaker, he was a firebrand of ideas, opinions and passions. I was somewhat intimidated by his relentlessly upbeat personality and can-do attitude. Didn’t he ever feel the dread of attending a large gathering? Of working a room? He never seemed to shy away from assignments. He struck me as fearless. And I recall once when we both were in Lucerne covering the music festival there a few years ago, how he seemed to burn his candle at both ends. While I was making notes before going to bed about what I’d seen that day, terrified that I’d forget an important detail, he was out on the town soaking up the nightlife, dreaming up other stories to pitch. I envied him his inexhaustible energy. So to find out that Robert, below, has died, was a total shock and a kind of wake-up call.

The circumstances of his death are still not clear. He apparently endured a personal struggle with the aftereffects of a painful head injury. None of it makes sense to me. But should it? Does it need to? What’s important is that I try and recall the good times we shared and the contributions he made. I remember the expert help he offered me when he was an editor at Stagebill magazine. I recently combed my archives and came up with this piece I wrote about ten years ago under his direction. I can’t even remember if it ever saw the light of day. I have not been able to lay my hands on a hard copy. But I do remember Robert encouraging me to go deeper into my personal experience to describe the healing effects of music, in particular how it helped me get through the deaths of my parents a few years prior to that. It never occurred to me then that I’d be relying on it now to deal with his own absence. I even posted a song in his memory on Facebook. Tino Rossi singing Chopin’s étude, Tristesse.

Since I wrote this piece (and I am the first to admit that it is essentially quite trivial) there has been a revolution in technology. This essay was designed as filler for a small magazine handed out at concerts. Today I can put it on my blog, add photographs, redesign it as I see fit, and perhaps most amazingly, thanks to the marvels of YouTube, insert links to  performances of the selections of music cited in the article! I think Robert would be pleased to know that I’m finally beginning to understand and take full advantage of the internet.

The Sounds of Silence

I imagine it’s happened to all of us at some point in our lives. We turn to music to heal us. Pachelbel’s “Canon,” Handel’s “Largo” or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Or perhaps, as it has become fashionable today, a medieval chant, the rippling harmony of falling water, or a mesmerizing, monochromatic piece by Philip Glass. For some it’s simply the soothing voice of a crooner like Josh Groban, or for more traditional stylists, a Portuguese fado sung by Amalia Rodrigues, below.

I can’t remember exactly when I first recognized the relaxing effects of music. Was it when I was still a toddler in my crib and my father would play his favorite Tchaikovsky album on the stereo, unwittingly lulling me to sleep? I recall, in particular, a recording of the Russian composer’s famous “Violin Concerto in D Major” that always took my breath away. It still does, especially if it’s the amazing Maxim Vengerov on the violin. Now thanks to the internet, one can actually see and hear the great Heifetz render it in his fearlessly, fiery fashion, below.

Or was it later, while visiting my aunt and uncle in Ireland? During a bike trip across the country, my cousin and I had visited the Aran Islands. One night we’d gone to a pub and sitting beside the peat fire was an old blind woman with a voice that seemed to call across the centuries. Maybe I’m imagining the singer’s blindness (hindsight is often prone to exaggeration, especially when moved by melancholy speculation) but the effect of her heartfelt singing remains as clear as a bell. It seemed to banish any unpleasant thoughts or trifles, filling the room with an air of peace, even if it was a bittersweet one. Ironically, it is often the strains of music that alleviate the strains of life.

Later when I went away to boarding school as a teenager, I encountered occasional difficulties with my schoolmates, some of whom were hell bent on torturing me with their taunts and practical jokes. I suppose you could say I was a shy, nervous adolescent, prone to self-pity and day-dreaming. But at night, with the barbs and jeers ringing in my ears, I retired to my small dorm room, put on my brand new (and in those days enormous) headphones and drowned out my frustrations in a sea of gorgeous sound. In those days, I listened primarily to Bach and I particularly recall a recording of St. Matthew’s Passion that I had borrowed from the library in which the ethereal effect of Peter Pears’s eerie tenor erased all fears. Even then I wasn’t sure if it was the message of the words or simply the pure, radiant sound that I found so liberating. It didn’t matter. What mattered is that I got out of myself and into a space where beauty reigned, fairness ruled, and the music of the spheres was all around me. I also learned, as I expanded my repertory, to love his partner Benjamin Britten’s music, especially his War Requiem.

Sometimes I find music I will rely on in unusual places. I remember one afternoon about ten years ago while visiting a friend in New England. We’d gone to a trendy café, the kind with ice cream parlour chairs and piles of abandoned books for the taking. We were having an argument, about what I can’t recall, and neither of us at first noticed the classical music that was aired on the radio and piped through the restaurant. But as our tempers flared, I couldn’t help hearing the incredibly powerful music playing in the background. I had never encountered such an extraordinary mood of reconciliation, of rapprochement and acceptance! Suddenly as the symphony surged to a dramatic climax, my friend and I looked at each other and burst into smiles. For who could find room in his heart at that moment for anything but understanding and compassion? The piece turned out to be Richard Strauss’s ground-breaking tone poem, Death and Transfiguration. I immediately went out and bought a copy of the composition and have savored its life-affirming message often.

On another occasion, many years earlier, I’d gone to the movie theater across from the Plaza Hotel in New York City to see a screening of Visconti’s Death in Venice. Getting there had been a miserable experience of stalled subway trains, bumper to bumper traffic, pouring rain and general gloom. This was the 70s and New York had not yet recovered its giddy spirit. Furious that I was so late, I slipped into a seat, doffed my raincoat and umbrella, and let the film, with its extraordinary use of color and imagery, wash over me like a tidal wave. But it was the music that really felt cleansing. Visconti had wisely chosen the “Adagietto” movement of Mahler’s 5th Symphony to convey the tranquility and surrender Aschenbach feels while watching Tadzio on the beach with his family and playmates. The fact that Aschenbach is slowly dying, of course, doesn’t immediately hit home, and perhaps I was misreading the maudlin splendor of it all.

Adding to my sense of awe was the fact that the fashionable woman sitting in front of me had a closely cropped head of striking purple hair! I saw the entire film through the scrim, or more precisely, nimbus, of her violet crown. Later, listening to the music at home, I found it even more inspiring and majestic, especially hearing it in context with the rest of Mahler’s energetic and at times bracing symphony.

Wagner is the king of relaxing music, perhaps simply because of the seriousness and at times ponderous nature of his works. No doubt, their weighty length plays a part. Focusing your attention on any stretch of music for twenty to thirty minutes without pause is bound to have a quelling, hypnotic effect. Whenever I feel that I need succor for my sorrows, I put on the overture to Parsifal, all twenty magnificent minutes of it. Its snail-like pace, its rich tonalities, its lush harmonies with their feudal religiosity always do the trick. So too Wagner’s aptly named Siegfried’s Idyll which is not from his opera Siegfried. It was written for his son by that name and first played on Wagner’s wife Cosima’s birthday in 1871.

While staying at the Villa Triebschen, above, in Lucerne, Wagner hired a group of musicians to come and play the composition on the stairwell, as a gentle reveille for his wife and son. Its moving theme is based on an old German cradle-song. When I visited the site years later, and roamed its magnificent gardens, I made sure to bring a copy of the music with me.

Indeed, most of the world’s relaxing music owes its effect to lullabies. Villa Lobos’s delicious “Vocalise,” a feast of song without words, is a prime example. So too Rusalka’s hypnotic hymn to the moon in Dvorak’s opera. Both Bach (via Gounod) and Schubert’s Ave Maria sound as if they could be sung to a child to help him sleep. Listen to Beverly Sills version and you’ll never need an anti-anxiety pill again. I have a friend who listens to the trio at the end of Act Three of Der Rosenkavalier before going to bed when he feels stressed out. (Needless to say, he lives alone.) The soaring melody, the underlying lullaby, the sense of time passing and the unending promise of hope have kept music aficionados in its thrall since the opera’s debut in 1911. I find greater quietude by listening to Strauss’s less ecstatic Four Last Songs, especially the silvery Sena Jurinac rendition, because they so beautifully articulate Hermann Hesse’s sense of lyrical repose (the first three lieder are based on his romantic poems) and Strauss’s uncanny understanding of the resiliency of the human spirit.

Not everyone finds music so enchanting. Especially if it’s played poorly. I’m reminded of a famous anecdote about George Bernard Shaw, who got his start writing music criticism. One night while dining with a friend at a restaurant, the leader of the orchestra playing there recognized the critic and asked what he would like the group to play next. “Dominoes,” Shaw replied.

But it was another playwright, William Shakespeare, who best summed up the healing power inherent in good music. In his play King Henry VIII, the bard praises the magical effect Orpheus had on the world around him. It’s a message that half a millennium later still hits home:

“Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep or hearing die.”

One of the lost arts from the LP era of yore is campy album cover art. Today’s CDs just don’t cut it, and don’t have quite the same impact. What I love about vintage record sleeves is their unexpected wit and in-your-face graphics. Very often the image on the album cover was more important than the music on the vinyl, at least when I was a kid buying records at the local Korvette’s!

Today, it seems to me, people are more likely to pick up a CD at Starbucks or the supermarket simply because it’s being marketed to them as something “cool” and “trendy.” One rarely snatches up a new album because the photo on the CD cover either turns one on, or shocks one into curiosity. We’ve lost that connection between the artist promoting a performing artist and the customer. Nowadays, most of us jettison the jewel case anyway in order to house the CD in a more accessible sleeve.

We’re living in an age of programming, not discovery. We respond to what is au courant, not comin’ at ya. Perhaps that is why I am so nostalgic for the hilarious record albums of days gone by. You never knew what you were getting, but you were assured of at least a fun ride. Now with iTunes and various internet music-listening sites, the thrill of wacky cover art is vanishing even more.

When I was a teenager, I used to love deciphering the artwork and photography used to adorn my favorite records. I remember being mesmerized by the cutting-edge artwork on albums by Alice Cooper, the Moody Blues, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, David Bowie, as well as the sexy gender-bending images on those by the New York Dolls, above.

Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones album, was a particular thrill. I used to zip and unzip that bulging fly on the cover until the damn thing popped off. Took me years to find another one. I would run from used record store to various thrift shops asking the person in charge if they had “Sticky Fingers.” One time, in a godforsaken town in upstate New York, I ran into an old LP store during a blizzard, and having run out of breath, demanded of the proprietor in a gasping voice, “Do you have Sticky Fingers?!!!” He whipped around at his desk and shrugged his shoulders, revealing to me that in fact he had no fingers at all. He was a victim of Thalidomide and had flippers instead of hands. I froze in horror, not in reaction to his affliction, but to my stupidity. I have no idea if he thought I was pulling his leg or not. But he must have known which album I was referring to. It is one of the most famous album covers of all time. Recently I posted a copy of it on Facebook and stated that the model for the bulging jeans was none other than Joe Dallesandro. Immediately a friend posted a comment that it wasn’t Joe, but someone named Corey Tippin. I begged to differ, but was eager for some clarity. Then Joe Dallesandro himself chimed in and said it was definitely his crotch being shown. In such matters, I tend to side with “Little Joe.”

When I went away to prep school at 16, I plastered the walls with my favorite record sleeves. I had one of Ruth Etting, the 20s torch singer; a Rudy Vallee one featuring a flapper version of “Betty Co-Ed”; several by George Chakiris, of West Side Story fame, who was my idea of to-die-for back then; also Claudine Longet’s Love is Blue; and one of Russell Oberlin, the famous countertenor.

Later I added to that collection by finding a rare album of Michael Aspinall, (above), the male soprano! No wall is complete without a tribute to Tab Hunter, America’s Singing Heartthrob. I had several of his early albums which raised more than a few eyebrows at the school.

My brother, who collected rock albums with a zeal usually reserved for aficionados of fine wines, often showed me the brilliant artwork of esoteric (to me) artists such as Captain Beefheart, or Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (above).

But I was always more drawn to the pin-ups, the hunks, the movie studs. Fabian, Vince Edwards, Chad Everett, and Tony Perkins. Soulful eyes, crooning voices, dreadful songs.

This obsession with singing matinee idols and soap stars did not end with the 60s. In the 70s, Tiger Beat led the way inducing millions of girls (and as many boys) to buy vinyl mementos of their favorite juvenile celebs, most of whom had barely passed through puberty yet. Tino, Menudo (with or without Ricky), Tommy Puett, and that blond who played the gay guy in Dynasty. Who knew Al Corley could sing?

Occasionally, the graphic album covers inspired fantasies of pure lust. I studied John Schneider’s picture for hours, the one of him leaning over a pool table. I’d devoured him with my eyes on Dukes of Hazzard, but here he was, in my hands, just inches from me.

Later, as my tastes evolved and I grew more interested in theatre history and gay memorabilia, I started to collect albums merely because of their wacky covers or their racy subject matter. Whether or not I liked the music was immaterial and totally beside the point. I collected them as artifacts, touchstones of a burgeoning liberated sensibility.

Some of these albums are nearly impossible today to find. They’ve never been released on CD. And a quick glance at iTunes, Pandora or Grooveshark, has not led to any instant downloads. My archive is a window into these early days of gay liberation. I cherish these old camp classics because of their stamps of individuality.

Many of these historic albums were short-runs, one-offs, or self-recorded and sold at concerts or in the theatre. They never achieved wide distribution.

When eBay debuted, I began to buy up old LPs that were masterpieces of homoerotic kitsch, including this priceless flipside to a Bay City Rollers album. Does anyone else remember them?

It surprised me how often album designers featured male nudity in their cover art. I particularly like the Rugby Songs Volume Two album. Makes you wonder what was on Volume One! Forty years or more before Dieux du Stade started to market their beefcake calendars and DVDs of French jocks, rugby players were already flashing their buff physiques for a wide-eyed audience.

Ofttimes the nudity seemed completely gratuitous, as in Someone is Standing Outside, the Bill Medley LP, above. Michael Sembello’s album, which contained the hit “Maniac” from Flashdance, featured two disco bunnies, 80s gay stereotypes, on the cover, for reasons that still baffle me. Is that a jockstrap or a diaper that blond model is wearing?

Then there are the great transgendered divas of yore, the drag queens and female impersonators: Charles Pierce, Charles Ludlam, and the quipster par excellence, Quentin Crisp (whose light use of makeup and his long hair may not qualify him as a drag queen, but who certainly knew how to camp it up). One of my favorites is Ty Bennett, below, Queen For A Day! And how! I know nothing about T. C. Jones and his/her act, but the album art is a hoot! I have also amassed a collection of queer cast albums, including the Off-Broadway hit musical Boy Meets Boy ; and the comedy routines of Out of the Closet.

One mustn’t overlook the irrepressible Rae Bourbon, whose album covers got him into a lot of hot water, and caused me to take a lot of cold showers. His lurid life story deserves to be made into a TV movie of the week! Or at least a post on my blog. Stay tuned!

When all else failed, one could get carried away by the cutie on the cover, such as Rex Smith or Peter Frampton, and such provocative titles as “I’m In You.” That title always made me laugh. I’m sure there’s a parody of it somewhere called “Are You In Yet?” I also like cheesy movie tie-in albums, including Tough Enough with Dennis Quaid’s awesome abs! And punk icons, such as John Sex and his pre-Viagra Dippity-Do hair-do. Or divos such as Paul Lekakis and his boy toy bonanza, Boom Boom Room.

Not all these albums are testaments to good taste, or even good will. A few strike a homophobic chord. It’s hard sometimes to tell whether we’re meant to be in on the joke, or the butt of it.

Browsing the internet, I find that I am not the only one who treasures these viral vinyls. I’ve even found a few I don’t own and am desperate for. If anyone wants to trade a ManOWar, below, for a Man2Man by Parrish, let me know.

Recently a very dear straight friend of mine wrote and sent me a PDF of “The Worst Album Covers of All Time.” I cherish those hilarious images too. But what I’m sharing here is something harder to put one’s finger on, a cross between the tacky and the sublime: camp classics that ultimately are so good they’re “baaaad”.

The Creole Fashion Plate:

In the annals of vaudeville, one name stands alone: Karyl Norman. He, along with Francis Renault, and Julian Eltinge, were the reigning kings, or queens, if you will, of female impersonation. But while much has been written about Eltinge and other interpreters of drag, such as Bert Savoy, Tom Martelle, Jean Malin, Earl Lind and Ray Bourbon, little is known about Karyl Norman, who by all accounts was one of the most fascinating and glamorous of vaudeville’s gender-bending vamps, the original voguin’ vixen and one of the premier princesses of the so-called “Pansy Craze.” Karyl Norman paved the way for countless female impersonators who came after him. He also wrote many of his own songs, which puts him in a different league than Eltinge and his peers who always used songs written by others. Karyl’s legacy endures primarily due to his sheet music which shows up constantly on eBay, although many dealers are not aware that this stylish siren was in reality a man.

Most accounts of Karyl Norman, I’ve found, are just plain wrong. His name is often misspelled, both his stage name and his birth name. I’ve seen mentions of him as “Norman Carroll,” “Carl Newman,” “Norman Thomas,” and “Carole Norman.” Writers have claimed his real name was George Paduzzi. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre says it was “Poduzzi.” One account I read said that he was born in Australia; another that he was African-American and lived in Harlem. Yet another stated that he ran away from home at the age of 16 to join a minstrel show. The truth is less exotic but just as fascinating. Here is what I’ve managed to find out so far.

Karyl Norman was born George Francis Peduzzi on June 13, 1897 to a middle class family in Baltimore, Maryland. John Waters would be proud. George came from a long line of Peduzzis. According to census records, his family had been in Baltimore for generations, as far back as the 1790s. His grandfather Francis Peduzzi, born in Maryland around 1823, was a blacksmith and coach maker. Francis’s father had come from Italy and settled in Maryland. (A Peter Peduzi married Sally Shaw in 1797 in Baltimore; this might be Francis’s father.) By 1880 Francis had retired as a “grocer.” He had married his wife, Amelia Chanceaulme, back in June, 1845. She must be the source of Karyl’s fascination with Creole culture. The Chanceaulmes go back to the 1790s in Philadelphia. Martin Chanceaulme, born in the West Indies, around 1788, was a master craftsman and cabinet maker who did work for Winterthur. He moved to Baltimore by 1840 and is listed as white, with no “colored persons” in the household. Back in the 1700s, the word “creole” merely meant that someone was born in the colonies of French or Spanish descent. It did not imply necessarily that one was of mixed race.

Young George took the name Karyl Norman from his father, a carpenter, who was born Norman Augusta Peduzzi. It’s not clear when Norman died, but he’s listed on a passport application Karyl filled out in 1917, so he may have been alive at that point. I’ve not been able to find out any source for the name Karyl except that his mother, nee Mary Drusilla Hoffman, was born in Carroll County, Maryland. She was the devoted stage mother type, handy with a needle, who helped design Karyl’s outlandish and sumptuous gowns. She traveled with him whenever he performed and eventually moved with him to New York City in the 20s when he lived above the nightclub where he worked. They were inseparable. When Karyl went to Europe in 1921 to perform in England and France, he took his mother along with him. When he returned on the Olympic and was met by the press at the disembarkation, she was standing by his side. Mama Rose had nothing on her.

But why did young Karyl style himself as the Creole Fashion Plate? Well, it turns out that the term “creole fashion plate” was not a new notion. Other minstrel performers had used the phrase around the same time. A “fashion plate” was a Victorian expression referring to sewing patterns that were sent out in template form and then cut along the patterns to recreate the design. Magazines like Godey’s in the 1850s and 60’s often printed color plates showcasing the latest Parisian styles. It was the height of chic to be called a “fashion plate,” since it meant that one’s own handsewn creations were the latest vogue.

When Karyl first took his act on the road, he was dubbed simply — The Creole Fashion Plate. Flaunting his Creole roots was only natural. But there was also a long-standing tradition in minstrel shows of female impersonation. It goes back to before the Civil War, when traveling troupes donned blackface and imitated the high-spirited music of slaves. By the 1910s, touring “tabloid” shows were common. Parodying beautiful young black belles was part of the fun. Black minstrel stars also got in the act, using blackface on themselves to accentuate the farce. Bert Williams, for example, was one of the biggest stars in show business. Karyl found his own peculiar niche and used it to his advantage, although he does not seem to have ever used cork to make himself appear darker. Perhaps his swarthy Italian coloring was sufficient, although his 1917 passport application describes his complexion as “fair”. Some back then called him a “High Yaller,” a derogatory term for a mulatto similar to the term “blue negro” which was au courant in those sometimes shocking, less politically-correct days. Whatever the shade of his skin tone, it seems apparent that Karyl needed to play up the minstrel aspects of his stage act in order to find work. First because it fit into the minstrel tradition but also because it was less threatening to society for an exotic Creole to be prancing around in women’s clothes than some effeminate white guy from Baltimore.

But parade he did. In April 1916, Karyl performed in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland as George F. Peduzzi in Ned O’Brien’s minstrel show at the City Opera House. He was listed simply as “singer.” O’Brien, one of the top blackface comedians of the era, staged a number called “Darktown’s Bravest Fighting the Flames.” But it was “Geo F. Peduzzi” who won raves the next day as “an unrivalled female impersonator.” Karyl’s act was an immediate sensation. His costumes were over the top, yet never trashy. He had an innate sense of chic no matter how outre his routines. Thanks to his mother’s handiwork, his creations dazzled theatregoers, male and female alike. He twirled about the stage in satins and silks and marabou feathers. He also had a gift for singing, his voice traipsing along two octaves, chasing notes from the top of his lady-like trill down to the depths of his ringing baritone. Variety noted that he could switch from a “male voice to a female falsetto “with the agility of a Flatbush commuter changing trains.” Judging by his passport photo, below, he looked like what I imagine a Flatbush commuter would look like. But he’s described on the form as being “5 Foot 6 inches tall. Dark Brown eyes. Dark Brown Hair. Straight Nose. Small Mouth. Round chin. High Forehead. Oval Face.”

Despite his lack of looks out of drag, audiences clamored for more. Karyl was signed to the prestigious B. Keith syndicate and toured the country in Orpheum theatres alongside the Mellette Sisters, popular dancers of the day. First billed just as “The Creole Fashion Plate” without a name, it was left to audiences to decide if he was male or female. He was marketed as “Puzzling and Delightful!” “The Master Illusionist!” In Winnipeg, Canada, he won rave reviews: “He or she… possesses equally good soprano and bass voices. Seldom does a woman show more grace than the Fashion Plate, and seldom is a man more muscular.” As his fame grew, Karyl’s name was added to the marquee. Demand was strong. The new kid on the block, Karyl Norman, who had once worshiped at the heels of Francis Renault when he played Baltimore, was now giving even Julian Eltinge a run for his money. Karyl did find time amid his busy schedule to fill out a World War One draft registration card. But it would appear his services as a “theatrical performer” were not needed in the army.

In 1917, Karyl sailed to Australia to bring his novelty act to another continent. One can only imagine what the populace thought of his amusing Creole turns. Returning in February 1918 to Vancouver, Karyl continued to refine his act. He went back on tour. As silent pictures began to dominate the market, he introduced silver screen sirens into his routine, impersonating bombshells like Theda Bara, the original Vamp, and later Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson in Somerset Maugham’s Rain. Karyl billed his art as “character impression,” rather than female impersonation. But the audiences lapped it up no matter what it was called. Throughout the next ten years, he traveled the country, performing from Brooklyn to Oakland. He became one of the top headliners, as famous as Fanny Brice and Will Rogers. He did not always dress in drag. One of his most popular routines was dressing as a country bumpkin, a la Huckleberry Finn, which he performed in a play entitled That’s My Boy.

Whatever Karyl Norman may have been in his private life, he was a master showman on the stage and a whiz at publicity. In 1921 he announced that he was engaged to the dazzling acrobatic star of vaudeville, Ruth Budd. This seemed to press agents a match made in hype heaven. For Ruth Budd was as masculine as Karyl was feminine. They were the Eagle and the Dove cooed gossip columnists, but it wasn’t quite clear which was the Eagle and which the Dove.

Ruth Budd, above, had made a name for herself as “The Girl with the Smile.” Dangling from ropes in a tight-fitting white union suit, she dazzled audience with her “dainty” and “winsome” charm, but also her “muscles of steel.” She made her film debut as Darwa, a female Tarzan, in the 1919 flick A Scream in the Night. So when his engagement to this tomboy beauty was called off in 1922, few Broadway wags were surprised. As one newspaper put it, “He is the epitome of fastidious femininity — coy, shrinking, super-refined. He is the violet, the cut glass, the rare china, the dove.” And she, by inference, was the eagle.

What went wrong? Some blamed Rudd’s domineering stage mother who didn’t care for Karyl. Others said it was Mrs. Peduzzi who interfered, unwilling to share her son with another woman. Others claimed that Karyl had made the fatal mistake of offering to his bride-to-be suggestions on how to improve her act. She shot back that she’d been in vaudeville before he knew what a stage door looked like. Her accompanist Leo Minton took Karyl’s side. She fired him on the spot and performed the next four days without an accompanist. Karyl called her from a drug store and rescinded his engagement vows. Ruth Budd was no softie. She sued Karyl for a whopping $50,000 for “breach of promise.”

What those in-the-know knew, of course, was that Karyl was not the marrying kind. Unlike Eltinge who fiercely protested that he was not that way, Karyl was less inclined to mince words. Earlier in 1921, Karyl had been made an honorary member of the Ohio State University’s dramatic club. The boys who dolled up as girls in the annual “Scarlet Mask” put on an all-male show called “Oh, My Omar,” sporting Karyl’s seductive wardrobe. He had donated his costumes, worth over $3000, the papers said, because of his devotion to the cast. In 1924, he was slated to appear in the fabled Greenwich Village Follies, which catered to the Bohemian set. Cole Porter wrote the music and lyrics that year. But according to various reports I’ve read, Karyl seems to have been dropped in favor of Fifi D’Orsay when the show went on tour.

Once when the Marx Brothers were appearing with Karyl in some dingy dive on the road somewhere, Groucho was asked to introduce the vaudeville star. But Groucho got tongue-tied and called Karyl, “The Queer Old Fashion Plate,” and lost his job. So says Harpo in his memoirs. Others have claimed that quip as their own, including author Kenneth Rexroth who first saw Karyl in 1923 at The Green Mask, a “tea room” in San Francisco. He bitchily dubbed Karyl, a “queer ole chafing dish.”

Whatever his critics might have called him, Karyl had the last laugh. He continued to wow audiences from coast to coast. In 1925 Wood Soanes, writing in the Oakland Tribune, lauded him as “a top-notch entertainer,” the “premier female impersonator on the stage.” Norman, he went on, “brings youth and a feminine voice that Eltinge in his prime did not possess.” He “scored a tremendous hit with the Orpheumites who called him back for two encores and treated him to so many curtain calls that a speech was necessary to allow the show to proceed.” The following year, in July, Soanes added that Karyl Norman was set to appear in a new play called “The Half-Caste” by Jack McClellan. It’s not clear if that show ever made it to the stage.

In April 1927, however, Karyl Norman made the leap from “vo-de-ville” to the legitimate stage when he was given his own Broadway show: Lady Do, at the Liberty Theatre. A full-fledged musical, choreographed by none other than Busby Berkeley who would go onto fame in Hollywood, the show also starred lovely Nancy Welford. Karyl played several characters, including Rose Walthal who lived on a large estate in Roslyn, Long Island. Despite ho-hum notices — the Times said it ran to “two exceedingly long acts” — the spectacle, set in Paris and New York, ran for 50 performances and was a triumph for Karyl who had come a long way from little ol’ Baltimo’. The show also marked the Broadway debut of a handsome young Latin lover named Cesar Romero who waltzed about the stage with his partner Elizabeth Higgins, a young heiress.

Soon Hollywood beckoned. Karyl was signed by Vitaphone Pictures at Warner Bros to appear in a couple of shorts: Types in which he sang “Georgianna,” “Daisy Days” and “5 Foot 2″; and Silks and Satins, in which he crooned “Daddy Come Home” while gussied up in his Creole finery. In 1929 he was appearing beside Jimmy Durante at the Palace.

In 1930 Karyl, after returning from another triumphant tour of Australia and New Zealand, achieved fame of a different sort when he appeared as the headline attraction at a new nightspot called The Pansy Club at 204 W. 48th Street, on the corner of Broadway in New York. Part of the so-called Pansy Craze of the late 20s and 30s, this club catered to a different clientele than those of his old vaudeville days. The queerness of drag was coming out of the closet. No one who dropped by the Pansy Club could claim ignorance as to the sexual persuasion of the “queens” who vogued along its runways. Like the drag balls up in Harlem, the Pansy Club was a hideaway for a burgeoning underground gay subculture, but also a haven for aging flappers and party-goers who liked “slumming.” That these establishments were run by gangsters proved their undoing however.

In January 1931, the Pansy Club was raided by the police and shut down, as was Cleo’s Ninth Avenue Saloon at 46th Street. Just a few nights before Dutch Schultz, the notorious mobster, had been gunned down and stabbed, and very nearly killed, at Club Abbey, a notorious late-night hang-out where drag queen extraordinaire Gene Malin ruled the roost. Malin had previously starred at Club Rubiyat in Greenwich Village. While Schultz survived, others were killed and the police cracked down on all late-night clubs which violated blue laws. Some gay historians see the crackdown as motivated more by homophobia than concern for safety, but at the time it was defended as a direct response to organized crime’s involvement in Manhattan’s cabaret scene.

The raid seems to have impacted Karyl’s career. While he continued to perform at vaudeville venues — he was at the Orpheum in Oakland in October 1931, and at the Palace again with Jimmy Durante — he worked more often at nightclubs. Vaudeville was dying. Most acts now were used simply as filler between movies. Talkies were the new fad. Karyl did a few RKO gigs at movie palaces. But it was less thrilling than his glory days as a B. Keith headliner. In 1932, Karyl found work as hostess at La Boheme, a now legendary nightclub in Los Angeles. Outfitted with 350 seats, La Boheme was everything its name implied, and catered to Hollywood celebs and their entourage, but it closed shortly after opening due to liquor violations. By 1933 he had opened his own place: the Karyl Norman Supper Club where he co-starred with soubrette: Colette Convoy.

Come 1934, Karyl’s career showed no signs of winding down. He played the Parthenon in a show called “Harlem Scandals,” alongside “12 sepia beauties” in a huge “colored revue” with stage, screen and radio stars. In July that same year, he was performing opposite Morton Downey at the Mayfair Gardens in Baltimore. In 1937 he moved across the continent where he was a fixture at San Francisco’s Finocchio’s, perhaps the most famous club featuring female impersonators. Then his career petered out. I can’t find any trace of him for the next few years. Perhaps he got bored with the endless routine. But in 1943, columnist Leonard Lyons wrote that “Karyl Norman, the Creole Fashion Plate, is preparing a comeback with an impersonation of Lena Horne.” No doubt his career was experiencing its own “Stormy Weather.”

Most accounts state that George Francis Peduzzi, pictured above right in a photogravure at the height of his fame, died in 1947 in Hollywood, Florida. I haven’t been able to find an obit for him. But a “George Peduzzi” is listed in Florida’s death records for that year in Broward County. Most likely it is him. I like to think that he was enjoying the sun and fun of Florida’s white sandy beaches when he died, a mere 50 years old, an aging beauty with perhaps too much makeup on, sort of a Creole version of Aschenbach from Death in Venice. His death may have gone unnoticed by many, but for those in the know, Karyl Norman will always reign as the unrivalled diva of vaudeville.