04/09/2025
In the twilight of the Roaring Twenties, a curious and dazzling phenomenon lit up the speakeasies, cabarets, and nightclubs of Americaâs urban underworld: the Pansy Craze. For a brief, glorious momentâbetween the end of Prohibition and the rise of the Hays Codeâs censorship clampdownâthe qu**rs took center stage. Literally.
The Pansy Craze was a cultural moment in the late 1920s and early 1930s when openly gay performersâreferred to as "pansies" in the slang of the timeâbecame unexpected stars of nightlife entertainment, particularly in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The term âpansyâ was both pejorative and empowering, depending on who was saying it and how. But these performers, many of whom were effeminate men or gender nonconforming in some way, were magnetic. They turned q***rness into an act, a rebellion, a razzle-dazzle spectacle. And the crowds couldnât get enough.
Imagine it: A smoky basement club, gin flowing under the counter, and the crowd pressed in tight as a slender, sharply-dressed man in a satin tuxedo and rouge sings torch songs with a wink and a knowing smirk. He might banter with the audience in a nasal drawl, lacing his monologue with double entendres, swishing and swooning with deliberate flair. And the audience? They werenât gayâat least not openly. They were a mix of flappers, bohemians, slumming socialites, and businessmen looking for a thrill. Watching the "pansy" perform was like watching a forbidden fruit danceâtitillating, transgressive, and in fashion.
This era birthed legends like Gene Malin, one of the first openly gay performers in American entertainment, who headlined clubs in drag and out, dazzling the crowd with biting wit and bold sexuality. Malin wasnât hiding behind coded languageâhe strutted through the front door in full bloom, proud and polished. In a world where homosexuality was criminalized, his very presence was revolutionary.
Another notable figure was Karyle Norman, known as âThe Creole Fashion Plate,â whose sultry voice and extravagant gowns earned him acclaim on the vaudeville circuit. Then there was Bruz Fletcher, a satirical cabaret performer whose songs were as biting as they were beautiful, often lampooning the hypocrisy of polite society with a wink to the crowd that got it.
The Pansy Craze wasnât just limited to men. Drag kings and gender-bending women took the stage as well, especially in Harlem, where q***r nightlife thrived in clubs like the Clam House, frequented by luminaries like Bessie Smith and Gladys Bentleyâa tuxedo-wearing, piano-playing le***an who brought down the house with her booming voice and b***y lyrics.
It was a moment when q***rness was briefly commodified and celebratedânot entirely accepted, but undeniably in vogue. There was a kind of unspoken contract: the straight audience got to peek behind the curtain of the so-called âdegenerate,â and the q***r performers got visibility, applause, andâif they were luckyâa paycheck. Of course, it didnât last. The Great Depression brought with it a shift toward conservatism, and the Pansy Craze was soon snuffed out by stricter policing, moral outrage, and eventually Hollywood's infamous Production Code, which scrubbed gay characters (and actors) from the silver screen and shoved them back into the closet.
But the legacy lingered.
For those of us who remember the coded winks of Paul Lynde, the flamboyant brilliance of Liberace, or even the sly subversion of Charles Nelson Reilly on daytime television, thereâs a direct line back to those smoky clubs of the 1930s. The Pansy Craze laid the groundwork for future generations of q***r performers. It showed that our presence could be magnetic. That q***rness could sell out a nightclub. That we had style, wit, and something to sayâlong before Stonewall, long before RuPaul.
Itâs easy to forget that q***rness was never truly hidden; it just shimmered in plain sight, dressed in sequins, singing torch songs under the klieg lights of a cabaret stage. And for a glorious moment, the world applauded.
