Edgar Leslie and the Jazz Age Gender Benders
At twenty-two, he made his songwriting debut with “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” (the subject of our last post). Eighteen years later, Edgar Leslie wrote a novelty song on an equally surprising topic, this time with the aid of a rollicking score by James V. Monaco. It was so successful that over half a dozen versions were released in 1926 and 1927. Listen here to one of them:
I first encountered this ditty a half-century later on the Dr. Demento radio program. That was an era with its own gender controversies — the heyday of David Bowie and Alice Cooper. It was not too far removed from a time when even shoulder-length hair on men was viewed as a threat to the natural order. But Leslie’s song suggested that our grandparents’ generation had itself been ridiculed for being androgynous. That came as a revelation to me.
The Roaring Twenties were a period of social experimentation and rebellion. Women took up smoking, bobbed their hair, and adopted “mannish” styles. Cross-dressing was gist for humorous silent films and publicity photos. And in what became known as the Pansy Craze, female impersonators were popular on the New York nightclub scene. The 1930’s saw a retrenchment: ironically, while Prohibition ended and politics swung left, Hollywood was constrained by a puritanical motion pictures code and most of the the “pansies” were driven from the stage. Leslie probably intended his song as little more than light entertainment. Yet he captured something of the spirit of the age before the fall.
Among his more intriguing lyrics are the following:
Since the Prince of Wales in ladies’ dresses was seen,
What does he intend to be, the King or the Queen?
The Prince of Wales refers to the man who was then heir to the British throne — the future King Edward VIII. Was he really seen wearing dresses? In some online versions of the lyrics, the word “kilts” appears next to dresses in brackets. It is true that the Prince was photographed in a kilt, perhaps in an effort to appeal to his future Scottish subjects, but that’s probably not what Leslie had in mind. In October 1925, the Prince had entertained sailors aboard the H.M.S. Repulse by appearing in drag as a “red-haired vamp” in a farce entitled “The Bathroom Door.” The incident was covered in both the American and British press and reportedly embarrassed the royal family. The Prince may also have been a target, not only as a fashion-conscious celebrity who had recently visited the United States, but because of rumors about his private life. Those rumors persisted to the time of his coronation in 1936, when a song was released entitled, “The King is a Queen at Heart.” You may be surprised by