Reg Bundy

Reg Bundy aka HIH Regina Fong born 26 May 1945 (d. 2003)

Reginald Sutherland Bundy was a British dancer, actor and television presenter best-known for his drag as HIH (Her Imperial Highness) Regina Fong.

Reginald Bundy was originally trained as a dancer. He worked on numerous West End shows as a dresser and eventually in the 1970s became a dancer in a variety of stage musicals. He also appeared in a dancing role in Bryan Forbes' film The Slipper and the Rose (1976).

In the early 1980s he teamed up with Rosie Lee (Roy Powell) & Gracie Grab it all (Graham) to form the now legendary drag trio The Disappointer Sisters, who performed across the London pubs and clubs.

Bundy first developed Regina Fong in 1985, and quickly achieved a regular spot at the Black Cap gay pub in Camden Town, London and also the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The Fong character was a Russian princess who had escaped to Britain following the Russian Revolution, a conceit which formed the basis of Bundy's show The Last of the Romanoffs, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival and later ran at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London - 'Her Imperial Highness was born to the Imperial Russian family of Saint Petersburg in 1905, but was almost immediately hidden away on the orders of the Czar due to her startling mane of red hair.'

Regina's stage act entailed audience participation, and used a variety of songs, jingles, and sound effects, and was one of the regular hosts of London’s Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival.

Bundy appeared in the Edinburgh and London productions of playwright Neil Bartlett's A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep and Night After Night, and also appeared in the BBC Radio Four adaptation of Night After Night.

His act, alongside that of other true originals, and close friends, like Lily Savage and Adrella, was instrumental in the rehabilitation of drag as a significant part of gay culture, where once it had been banished to the non-PC margins by critics who deemed it as irretrievably misogynist.

In 1993, Reg Bundy appeared at the Criterion Theatre in London alongside Kim Criswell, James Dreyfus, Sean Mathias, and Simon Fanshawe, in Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, a verse and musical celebration of lives lost to AIDS.

Throughout his career, he devoted endless evenings to hosting charity events to raise money for emerging AIDS charities.

And perhaps one of the greatest measures of his ability came when, alongside the likes of Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and other luminaries, he showed he was easily able to hold the attention of the audience in the vast auditorium of the Albert Hall at the annual Equality Show to raise funds for the lesbian and gay campaigning organisation Stonewall.

Reg Bundy - and HIH Regina Fong, the last of the Romanoffs - died of cancer on 15 April 2003, aged 56.

Julian Eltinge

Julian Eltinge born 14 May 1881 (d. 1941)

In the 1910s and 1920s, Julian Eltinge was one of the biggest stars of the day, the toast of Broadway and vaudeville, and an enormously popular and wealthy star of silent film. With music composed by Jerome Kern and other leading composers of the day, and lyrics often written by Eltinge himself, his theatrical farces were phenomenal critical and financial successes.

Regarded by many as the greatest female impersonator in history, today Eltinge is all but forgotten and his life and work virtually unknown to the public.

When not performing, he invested a great deal of effort into creating a masculine persona - boxing, horse-riding, (staged) bar fights, ladies' man - to deflect rumours of his homosexuality. There is no record of lovers of either sex although there were plenty of stories. He never married, as they say.

Despite great international success Eltinge's career began to fade in the 1930s. Times and tastes were changing, and alcoholism, and other personal and financial problems seemed to spin him into a decline. By the 1930s, the female impersonations that he had built his career had begun to lose popularity. Eltinge resorted to performing in sleazy nightclubs. Crackdowns on cross-dressing in public, meant to curb homosexual activity, prevented Eltinge from performing in costume. At one appearance in a Los Angeles club, Eltinge stood next to displays of his gowns while taking on his characters.

The performances in nightclubs continued and while performing in New York in 1941, Eltinge died in his hotel room of what is reported to have been a cerebral hemorrhage, though the circumstances are considered mysterious to some scholars.

Craig Russell

Craig Russell born 10 January 1948 (d. 1990)

Russell Craig Eadie, known by his stage name of Craig Russell, was a Canadian female impersonator.

His impersonations included Carol Channing, Bette Davis, Mae West, Barbra Streisand, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Midler, Anita Bryant, Peggy Lee and Judy Garland. While performing, he always spoke and sang in the voices of the celebrities he was impersonating.

His three-octave vocal range was such that his impersonations could do full justice to vocal talents such as Streisand, and he could even perform male-female duets - such as Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong - with both voices in the correct pitch and key.

As a female impersonator, Russell attempted genuine verisimilitude, but he also added a great deal of his own personality and comic sensibility.

He was one of the last of the school that actually sang or spoke live in the voices of the ladies he impersonated.

As a teenager, Russell became president of Mae West's fan club, and briefly worked and lived in Los Angeles as West's secretary. He eventually returned to Toronto, where he moved in with Margaret Gibson and worked as a hairdresser while pursuing his career as a stage performer. By 1971, he was a regular performer in Toronto gay clubs and had a burgeoning international following.

Russell fathered one child, a daughter, who was born in 1973 in Toronto. Father and daughter developed a relationship in the years prior to his death.

In 1977, Russell starred in the film Outrageous!, based on a short story written by Gibson about their time as roommates; one of the first North American films with a gay theme to receive widespead distribution.

After Russell's success in Outrageous!, he was able to play much larger and more prestigious venues than he had previously. He performed in Las Vegas, Hollywood, Berlin, London, and Paris. He even had a one-man, off-Broadway show entitled A Man and His Women (1977).

But at the peak of his success, Russell became unable to cope with the pressures of fame. His substance abuse and psychological problems increasingly affected his performances and his career suffered.

Although he publicly identified as gay rather than bisexual, Russell married his close friend Lori Jenkins in 1982.

In 1987, Russell starred in the sequel to Outrageous!, appropriately titled Too Outrageous!

Russell remained married to Lori until his death in 1990 of a stroke related to complications from AIDS.

Craig was cremated and laid to rest in Port Perry, Ontario.

Bert Savoy

Bert Savoy born 7 January 1880* (d. 1923)

Bert Savoy was an influential early American drag performer.

Bert Savoy - born Everett McKenzie - began his drag act 'doing a hootchie-kootchie dance at freak shows in Boston and polished it in the wilds of Alaska'. He nearly hit the big time in 1914 while understudying for James Russell of the Russell Brothers (known for their 'bitch' act: a pair of Irish servant girls) in Maids to Order when Russell dropped dead.

Savoy found greater success in 1915 when he begun a partnership as comedic partner to 'straight man', Jay Brennan (allegedly after Savoy had picked up Brennan on a streetcar). The team was a huge success; they headlined in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918. Savoy & Brennan are pictured left.

Savoy was one of the first of such acts to clearly be associated in the minds of the viewing audience as being overtly homosexual in theme and content. Most other female impersonators of the day, such as the international sensation, Julian Eltinge, went to great lengths to let you know that they were engaged in painstaking artifice. Eltinge's career was accompanied by a pull out the stops public relations effort to show him in any number of traditional 'virile male' activities, when off stage.

Although drag had always been a main staple of vaudeville, it was not really performed as or perceived as 'gay' until the appearance of Savoy, who was pure camp on and off the stage. The two routines which gave rise to Savoy's catchphrases 'You Don't Know The Half Of It, Dearie' and 'You Mussst Come Over' were preserved for posterity on a rare 1923 Vocalion recording made shortly before Savoy's untimely demise.

The story of Bert Savoy's death is legendary and, by all accounts, absolutely true: on June 26, 1923 Savoy, his half-brother and two friends were walking along the shore at Long Beach watching an upcoming storm when a thunderclap prompted Savoy to squeal, 'Ain't Miss God cuttin' up somethin' awful?' or something similar. He was immediately struck dead by a bolt of lightning. How camp is that? In fact, the lighting focused on a bath house locker key around Savoy's neck. One friend, whose hand was resting on Savoy's shouder, was also killed and the other left paralysed. His half-brother survived.

Brennan continued the act quite successfully for a while with Stanley Rogers, owing much to the fact that Rogers copied Savoy's mannerisms and catchphrases to a tee. Brennan later became a scriptwriter in the movies and died in 1961 at the age of 78.

Mae West is alleged to have based much of her act on Bert Savoy.

Bert Savoy at Queer Music Heritage

*Musicals101.com list his birthdate as 1876 but most sources agree on 1880.

Herbert Pollitt

Herbert Pollitt born 23 August 1871 (d. 1942)

Collector and connoisseur Herbert Pollitt, known as Jerome Pollitt, was an amateur female impersonator of late 19th-century England, who performed under the stage name Diane de Rougy, in tribute to the actress Liane de Pougy. He was a close friend of the British illustrator and writer Aubrey Beardsley - who created this ex-libris (book plate) for his friend.

He is known to have had an affair with the young Aleister Crowley - Crowley was 23 and in his final year at Cambridge. Pollitt was ten years his senior. Later he immortalised Pollitt in The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist - a collection of poems which are a blend of Persian mysticism and the glorification of homosexual love, written in the style of ghazals by an imaginary seventeenth-century poet. They are supposedly translated into English by an Anglo-Indian, Major Lutiy, helped by an anonymous 'editor', and are then discussed by an equally fictitious clergyman. The collection, however, is typically Crowley-esque: both spoof and serious.

Ray Bourbon

Ray Bourbon born 11 August 1892 (d. 1971)

If a good deal of mystery surrounds the life and career of Ray Bourbon so many years after his death in 1971, it is probably due to the fact that Bourbon excelled at generating numerous conflicting stories about himself.

He claimed, at various times, to have been born Hal Wadell in Texarkana, TX in 1892, Ramon Icarez in or near Chihuahua, TX in 1898, and the son of Franz Joseph of Austria and Louisa Bourbon. Many 'facts' regarding Bourbon's early life­, his claim to birth of Bourbon royalty, his claim to an education at Tulane Medical School in New Orleans, his claim to have been Pancho Villa's notorious 'Señora Diablo'­ are all unsubstantiated and probably products of Bourbon's own active imagination.

He claimed to have begun in the theatre in England in 1913, and this may well be true. He returned to the US by 1917 and, as Rae Bourbon, supposedly won a Photoplay contest and was awarded a studio contract as first prize. He would say later that he worked in several silent films, and it is reported that he appeared under the name Ramon Icarez as a fire dancer at the opening of the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1923.

By the mid-20s, Bourbon was working with Bert Sherry as the vaudeville team of 'Bourbon and Sherry' and later toured with the Martin Sisters. In 1932, he was working full-time as a female impersonator at such clubs as Jimmy's Back Yard in Hollywood and Tait's in San Francisco. (At this last club, in May 1933, his Boys Will Be Girls review was raided by police during a live radio broadcast.)

In the later 30s and early 40s he headlined at the Rendezvous in Los Angeles and starred in his own revue, Don't Call Me Madam. His Insults of 1944, which began at the Playtime Theatre in Los Angeles in January of that year, caught the attention of Mae West during its New York production in May, 1944 at La Vie Parisienne. She cast him in her 1944 production of Catherine Was Great and in her 1948 production of Diamond Lil.

Throughout the 50s and 60s Bourbon entertained at hundreds of clubs throughout the US and released dozens of albums, certainly the most prolific female impersonator to have done the latter. His appearances are still fondly remembered by many who saw him when he toured in big and small towns all over the country, providing many isolated gay men with a glimpse of the loose-knit urban Gay community of the pre-Stonewall era.

Ray’s comedy was, at once, highbrow and lowbrow, overtly gay and covertly subversive. There is evidence that he had relationships with both men and women, was married twice, and fathered at least one son. In his memoirs, Ray discusses his sexual attractions and relationships to both genders with equal enthusiasm, but never called himself gay or bisexual. He worked on stage in and out of drag. Bourbon was probably cashing in on the news of Christine Jorgensen when he claimed to have had a sex change in 1956 (almost certainly not true).

After a once quite successful career, by the late 1960s Bourbon had fallen on hard times. In 1968, Bourbon was barely eking out a living, travelling through Texas and working at the Jewel Box Revue in Kansas City. During this time he was implicated in the murder of the owner of a Dog Kennel where Bourbon had lodged a collection of some 70 dogs. The circumstances alone beg many questions, but Bourbon was convicted as the mastermind of the killing along with two conspirators. The 78-year-old Bourbon was given a 99-year sentence. He died a short time later, on January 19, 1971 in the Howard County Texas prison, while penning his unfinished memoirs Daddy Was a Lady.

Don't Call Me Madam - The Life and Work of Ray Bourbon

Danny La Rue

Danny La Rue born 25 July 1927 (d. 2009)

Born Daniel Patrick Carroll in County Cork, Eire, young Danny followed in his father's footsteps and served in the Royal Navy, but his career was to take a quite different direction. As Danny La Rue, he became probably the most famous female impersonator in the UK - or 'comic in a frock' - of the 20th century. Danny's very successful career extended to theatre, film, TV and records. He owned his own club at one time, and appeared in the West End in 1982 as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!

At the height of his fame in the 1960s, he was one of Britain's highest paid entertainers, although his impersonations of stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marlene Dietrich were little more than immaculate wig and costume changes. His tastefully bawdy camp humour was the epitome of British comedy. He was made an OBE in 2002.

For many years, Mr La Rue pretended to be a perfectly heterosexual bloke under the wigs, sequins and padding - he would often appear in masculine attire during his shows - but the drag went deeper than that, and as attitudes have changed in recent years, La Rue became more open about being gay. Danny lived for many years with his partner and manager, Jack Hanson, until his death in Australia following a major stroke.

Danny La Rue suffered a mild stroke in 2006 and cancelled all his work commitments, but he issued a statement in tribute to the late-John Inman in March 2007.

In late-2007 La Rue appeared in Spain in a tribute show called Hello Danny in which for the most part he was played by Jerry Lane with a full cast to recreate his early career, with La Rue appearing as himself to perform some songs and for an interview section.

Danny La Rue died on 1 June 2009 after a short illness.

Charles Pierce

Charles Pierce born 14 July 1926 (d. 1999)

You can call me an impersonator, an impressionist, a mimic, or a comic in a dress. But not a drag queen! A drag queen is someone who dresses up and goes to a ball! I'm an entertainer.

Charles Pierce was one of the great female impersonators, famed for his hilarious recreations of the great Hollywood stars such as Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn and especially, Bette Davis.

Starting out as radio actor in New York, where he began doing vocal impressions of movie actresses, he moved to San Francisco and starting working the clubs [in the 1950s] where he was faced with homophobia and the challenge of doing his act against a myriad of cross-dressing ordinances - sometimes having to do his routines in a tuxedo, with an array of hats, boas and handbags. With touring, as his fame grew and times changed, the act became more sophisticated and elaborate with props, fabulous make-up, wigs and costumes changes. He was popular with the Hollywood stars he so often mimicked.

By the 1990s, although he had become a cabaret legend, he began to perform less as his act, which was so reliant on campy vaudeville humour and the bitchy goddesses of Hollywood's golden age, fell out of favour with younger gay audiences, who either didn't get it or found his act dated and sexist.

Pierce made a number of TV appearances, not always in drag, and made a notable appearance in Torch Song Trilogy (1988) as Bertha Venation.

'The Master and Mistress of Surprise and Disguise' died of cancer at his home in North Hollywood. His ashes are interred at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

RuPaul

RuPaul born 17 November 1960

RuPaul - born RuPaul Andre Charles - is an American drag performer, dance music singer, actor and songwriter who gained worldwide fame in the 1990s; appearing in a wide variety of television programmes, films, and musical albums.

Though a catty attitude is often associated with drag queens, RuPaul intentionally set himself apart with a 'love one another' attitude. Although primarily known for his extravagant drag queen persona, he has performed as a man in a number of roles, usually billed as RuPaul Charles.

RuPaul's music career remains most noted for his 1992 smash hit, Supermodel (You Better Work). Strangely, [s]he was nominated for a Grammy award for best comedy recording for Strudelmodel, which was a spoof of Supermodel (You Better Work) appearing on a B-side to the single Back to My Roots. The track featured RuPaul affecting a German accent and altering the theme accordingly: 'Once upon a time there was a little black girl in the Brewster Projects of Hamburg, Germany...'

In 1993, he recorded a duet with Elton John (a remake of Don't Go Breaking My Heart) that went to number seven in the UK. This was his biggest hit on the UK Singles Chart.

Subsequent single and album releases have occasionally hit US dance charts but his music career has been plagued by general indifference.

In 1995, RuPaul was signed to a modelling contract for MAC cosmetics, making him the first drag queen supermodel.

Rupaul.com

Paul O'Grady

Paul O'Grady born 14 June 1955

Paul James O'Grady, MBE, is an English comedian and television personality. He is the creator of comic drag character Lily Savage, and is noted for his strong Scouse accent.

Born in Birkenhead, Wirral Peninsula, O'Grady was brought up in an Irish Catholic household in Tranmere, Merseyside. He attended Blessed Edward Campion School, Birkenhead. When he was 19, he worked as a clerk in a magistrate's court and met a woman ten years his senior, with whom he had a daughter, Sharyn. Three years after his daughter was born, Paul wed a Portuguese lesbian waitress called Teresa Fernandes in a marriage of convenience.

His jobs have included civil servant, barman for Yates Wine Lodge, office work in an abattoir and a woodsman. He has also worked in a children's home in Kirkby and spent some years as a peripatetic care officer for Camden council. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy, and in 2006 he was listed in The Guardian as one of the most powerful men in media.

In 1977, Paul went to Manila where he worked as a waiter in Gussy's Bar (also a brothel). It was here he got the idea for Lily Savage, his now famous drag alter-ego. He returned to London in the early 1980s and subsequently achieved fame with his creation of Lily, initially playing to gay clubs and pubs up and down the country. Lily was best known at the time for her eight year residency at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London He was in numerous double and treble acts such as 'High Society' with Adrella, 'L.S.D.' with David Dale and Sandra Hush, The Playgirls, again with Hunter and The Glamazons with Paul Banks. He toured Europe with some of these acts, appearing at and various night clubs and theatres in Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Holland, France and Israel.

After appearing at The Edinburgh Festival, for which he was nominated for a Perrier Award, he became more mainstream. Lily first became popular on television, making appearances on ITV daytime programme This Morning, and as the 'On the Bed Presenter' on The Big Breakfast. Lily was given several shows, by both BBC and ITV. For a few years Lily hosted the game show Blankety Blank for the BBC and later for ITV, as well as her own comedy show Lily Live! with ITV in 2000. Lily Savage also co-hosted the 1996 Smash Hits Poll Winners Party with Ant & Dec.

As well as numerous national tours, O'Grady has appeared on stage in Prisoner Cell Block H - The Musical, the musical Annie as Miss Hannigan, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as the Childcatcher and in the panto Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as the Wicked Queen. He has been quoted as saying 'I seem to be making a living frightening children'.

In 2000 he appeared in a travelogue show as himself, entitled Paul O'Grady's Orient, which was followed in 2001 by Paul O'Grady's America. These were amongst his first major television appearances out of drag. From 2002 onwards, he appeared less as Lily and more often as himself. In 2002 he presented Outtake TV, a bloopers show, and in 2003 starred as the lead character in the BBC sitcom Eyes Down for two series, as the vicious yet hilarious manager of a northern Bingo hall. He also appeared in Celebrity Driving School for the BBC.

Since then, he has had success as the presenter of his own early evening talk show, The Paul O'Grady Show, on ITV. He won the position after he stood in for Des O'Connor on the now defunct lunchtime chat show Today with Des and Mel. The Paul O'Grady Show somewhat controversially ran head to head with Richard and Judy, who are close friends of Paul, and gave him one of his first TV breaks on This Morning, on rival station Channel 4. He has guested on LivingTV's paranormal show, Most Haunted Live, after presenter Yvette Fielding was a guest on his show and invited him on. He holds many awards, and in December 2005 he won the Best TV Comedy Entertainment Personality category of the British Comedy Awards. In 2004, he won a BAFTA and is also the recipient of two Royal Television Awards and three National Television Awards.

On 10 January 2006, in a shock decision, O'Grady decided to defect from ITV and take his daytime chat show ( The New Paul O'Grady Show) to Channel 4 after the production company, Granada, apparently 'forgot' to renew his contract. It was said that he had wanted to produce the series with his own company and had wanted to from the start but Granada always refused.

O'Grady is openly gay. He is now very close to his daughter, who has married and produced O'Grady's first grandchild, a boy - Abel. His long term lover and business partner of 20 years was Irishman Brendan Murphy, who died of cancer on 9th June 2005, five days before Paul's fiftieth birthday. After the first show of series three of The Paul O'Grady Show there was a tribute to him.

O'Grady owns a 200-acre farm near Ashford, Kent. The farm is stocked with 28 animals, including a flock of geese which O'Grady refers to as the 'Geese-stapo'. O'Grady has a grey Shih Tzu dog called Buster, who usually appears on his TV show with him, or occasionally will be replaced by Paul's other dog, Olga. He also has another dog called Louie, who only appeared a few times in the first ITV series, before he adopted Olga live on air. O'Grady is a frequent traveller on the Orient Express, likes to dress well and has numerous hobbies.

In April 2002, O'Grady suffered a heart attack after weeks of complaining that he felt unwell. After an emergency operation and weeks of rest, Paul's health recovered and he gave up smoking for two years.

O'Grady went back to his 40-a-day habit after his boyfriend and business partner Brendan Murphy died in 2005. He had continued to work on the show at the same time as nursing his beloved partner. As a result, he suffered a second heart attack in June 2006. Again he was taken into intensive care. He was then given an angioplasty operation, before being moved to a cardiac unit. He again promised to give up smoking.

He has reportedly turned down an offer to return to ITV to replace Parkinson and has signed a long-term contract with Channel 4 to his continue teatime show.

Paul O'Grady was awarded the MBE in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours, announced on his birthday. "I'm the last person, I'd have thought, who would be given an MBE," he said. "What have I done to deserve it?"