She Stoops To Conquer- With The 1950s Film Some Like It Hot In Mind –Take Three     

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He did not think that he could keep on living a lie.  He, John Samson to give him a name, although the particulars of his condition could apply to many more than one would think, maybe not numberless but let’s leave it at more than one would think, think out in the closeted, red scare, cold war early 1960s night when to be different in any of about twelve different ways drew the night-takers to one’s door, drew the night of the long knives in your direction. No John did not think he could keep on letting the whole wide world think he was just a reclusive oddball, a quirky nut- case.

Especially when old time friends, high school guys who thought they knew him a little, thought he was just one of the guys hanging around Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street in growing up hometown North Adamsville talking about slipping it, you know IT to some passing pretty, or double-dating down at Adamsville Beach with some girl classmate breathing all over him asked why he wasn’t like them, carrying a married ball and chain and kids on the way. Jesus the hell he went through back then just to get through the night without screaming. Or later guys at work, guys at the warehouse over in Southie, tried to date him up with women, usually but not always their sisters, or their sisters’ friends and he begged off with some very lame excuses, headaches, stuff like that just like a woman, yes, just like a woman he thought with a chuckle. But what was person like him to do in the year 1961 with the whole world arrayed against him, and his kind. His kind being a, uh, cross-dresser, a transvestite, hell, call him the way they described his kind, a flaming drag queen. His instinct, his survival instinct said keep your head down, keep to your secret world, keep the wolves of society away, and mainly keep his parents in the dark for as long as possible. And so he did, although who knows at what psychic cost.

That secret world of his was caught up in midnight dates with guys who liked to swing with drag queens, liked the idea of being with a “woman” without the hassle of being with a woman, without the forms dictated by a straight society.Guys who   got their kicks that way, guys who were willing to at least keep him company, play to his girlish vanity, in anonymous locations, usually far, very far, from his North Adamsville digs. Or later when he felt able to do so without blushing putting on silly little come-on-boys titter shows for strangers down in closed door social clubs in the South End of Boston, occasional wild side trysts in New York City, mainly the Village, and in summer, sweet summer down in Provincetown with all its delights.

No, he could not keep going on that way. His parents were becoming increasingly suspicious, suspicious enough to inquire incessantly every time they could about why he didn’t settle down with some nice girl. They were suspicious that he has no girlfriends, none, not even for public show to keep people at least guessing. They would be crushed to know that he had no interest in girls if he was truthful with them, was uncomfortable around them and always as far back as he could remember felt that way, and thus had no freaking desire to be interested in girls unlike two of his brothers who were raising broods to terrorize an unknowing world. What he was interested in was cross-dressing, wearing female attire and to be, frankly, admired as a girl, as a woman, to be a femme as he liked to call himself in his lonely minutes. So no girls as his parents called them, good or evil, crossed his path, and were moreover to be treated as competition, or to be asked for beauty tips, stuff like that.

His parents with whom he had lived at home off and on the previous several years after he had graduated from high school in 1957, usually after some unsuccessful affair went sour, or he got kicked out of some rented digs for being, well, odd, or some no-nonsense landlord’s idea of being odd, were beginning to speak to neighbors and relatives that Johnnie was “different” from their three other sons. Especially those two blooming brood-growing sons. Although the youngest, not yet married, a college kid, Albert, and maybe a little more worldly-wise that his parents and other brothers having broken out of the cloistered small town mainly Irish Catholic enclave unlike them, seemed to sense what John was all about, although he never said anything about it to him, never even later when he came out of the closet, and became famous.     

[We will hereafter use not this male name John, or Johnnie, bestowed, no what do they call it now, assigned at birth to him by his family and convention in the year of our lord 1939, the year of his birth, but his secret world name, Jackie, and use feminine pronouns to avoid any further confusion on the point of identification of one Jackie Samson.]

They, her parents, Delores and Paul to give them names, would say that Jackie had always been sort of a loner, sort of liked to look at the world differently from the other boys. Always had her nose in a book, unlike the sports-driven other boys. Those books and her secret hide-away public library visits from such things as sports and school dances and made up “dates”  unless absolutely unavoidable were what saved her lots of harassment on that score although she was not particularly interested in academics and had been a middling student, at best. Little did Delores and Paul know as well how different Jackie was from her siblings. How early on Jackie was fascinated by her girl cousins’ things, frilly girl things, when they came to visit or she went there and, naturally, her mother’s things, rummaging through her bureaus when she was home alone,  and abhorred sports, dirty boy talk, and male swagger in general.

That fascination with women’s things, especially frilly things hit home to her at first when she had, alone and secretly in downtown Boston, seen Some Like It Hot, and almost had an orgasm when she saw Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed in drag even though they were just using it as a ruse, using it to avoid some unpleasant bad guys who were hunting for them back in bootleg Chicago gangster days. (She would see that film several more times at that time, as well as later, and have that same reaction).  Moreover little did they know what she herself had begun to realize that she liked, really liked, to dress like a girl (woman) hard as that was for her to understand at first. She would always be confused by those feelings because while she loved to dress up she didn’t necessarily feel like a girl (later woman) like some of her friends, her secret friends, who were almost praying they could be women and were always talking about some kind of expensive and experimental operation to do just that being performed over in Europe some place. One friend, Lucy Love, was actually saving money to go to Europe and have the operation.   

She had Georgette (birth name, name assigned at birth, okay, George Sampas) to thank for helping her break down her confusion about her feelings. Jackie had previously thought she was just weird, weird even by South End, Village, Provincetown conventions, when she wanted to assert her girl-ness without dreams of being transformed like some fairy- tale princess into a woman. Most of the homosexuals she knew turned her down when they found out her inclinations, couldn’t understand why she was not attracted to them like other men in a manly man to man way. That misunderstanding had exploded in a previous relationship when Clip (she preferred not to use his real name since he has a very big public position as head of an international company so Chip) flipped out when Jackie started to see a straight man occasionally who was willing to treat her like a woman, treat her like the real woman she felt inside even though no science, no medical advances could help align her body with her soul. Once she met one such straight guy, Clint, she knew that her affair with Chip, who never really accepted her girl-ness except when it came to sex, would soon be over although she really could have used a friend and a place to stay so she wouldn’t have to move back home and face that whole “different” song and dance. But see Clint had been dependent on his wife’s money, serious trust money and not to be sneered at according to Clint, and that wife would have flipped out and divorced him if she ever found out about his relationship with Jackie. Would take the kids, the house, the dough and all. So while Jackie clung to him (and he to her) she would, in the end, have to make her own way in the world elsewhere.                             

That is where Georgette came in and kind of saved her, kind of made her more comfortable with her feelings. They had met at Sally’s down in the Village (Sally, the owner, of course being not some girl Sally but the stage first name of the owner, ex-drag queen Judy Garland impersonator, Salvatore Domino) where Georgette sat at a table one night by herself in high fashion- pompadour blonde wig, fluttering black eyelashes, ruby red lips, and a gorgeous dress from one of the better New York fashion houses. She was in short in full drag regalia as befitted a queen of the night. Jackie, still too shy to go all out in drag even in such friendly environs, went up to her and remarked on her splendid attire. Georgette, maybe with a few too many drinks in her at that point in the evening, kind of snickered at that sentiment and asked what the hell Jackie thought she was doing looking like some housewife from Jersey in high tone Sally’s (Jersey where Georgette was from so she knew).

Jackie blushed and was flustered thinking, feeling anyway that she looked pretty good, brown wig, skirt and blouse, and sensible make-up, an outfit that Clint would have been  happy to take her out in. Georgette sensing she had been a little unkind mentioned some tips, better eye-liner, a little more lipstick to give a fuller look to the lips and, no question, get rid of that 1930s hair-do wig that was her real complaint. They talked a while and Georgette softened up and could be quite charming (although later Jackie found she could be just as unkind sober as drunk). That night Georgette took charge of Jackie’s look, for good or evil. And that started their friendship, their life together.                

After a couple of weeks Jackie was comfortable enough to wear fashionable dresses and accessories out in the streets, the hard bitten early 1960s New York streets (although for a long time not alone but always in Georgette’s company). At that point Jackie moved in with Georgette in her garret in deep Soho, then mostly abandoned warehouses but with cheap, very cheap rent.    That done though she, they, had hit a wall. Neither were working, Jackie finding it impossible to dress up at night and then work in some ill-begotten warehouse over on Seventh Avenue by day and Georgette was struggling to make a “career,” a vague sense that she could become like Sally, a high-shelf impersonator. She was then working on some Peggy Lee material and practicing her mannerisms.  

But, truth, they had no dough, no prospects of dough and a landlord who was not happy, and made his unhappiness well known, to have two drag queens a couple of months behind in their rent, cheap or not, mooching off of him. That is when Georgette put together the idea of a drag sister singing act rather than a solo career.  As it turned she had a great silky smoky female voice reminding one and all of late 1940s sulky Billie Holiday on bluesy numbers and Peggy Lee when she fronted for Benny Goodman on the sentimental stuff. Jackie was not bad on harmony as long as she did not try to hit the high range notes. After a few weeks they decided that they would go to Sally’s Monday audition night where the “girls” could get on stage and show their stuff in front of an audience, a mixed audience of drag queens and straight, a typical Village crowd, that Sally’s always drew on any given night. A tough slow Monday night after a drunken weekend Monday night audience though. Georgette decided they should go with Blues In The Night to play to the crowd. Georgette was in high-gear that night, had her come hither moves down pat, Jackie a little more wooden in her moves and a tad off in the voice department nevertheless held her own. The crowd loved it, and better, Sally saw something in them something worth giving them Thursday nights for a trial period. They thereafter became the talk of queer New York.        

And so for several years in all the drag haunts of New York City, P-town, Frisco town and some foreign ports they had a following and kept the wolves from their door. Eventually they each got a segment of the show Georgette doing torchy stuff, you know Billie, Peggy, a wicked Dinah Washington, a foxy Eartha and Jackie honed a presentable Judy Garland (which made Sally cry when she first performed it solo at Sally’s). Then they would do a final set together and done. But like all fashion, or all beauty for that matter, things fade. Middle age did nothing for them, weight problems, too much booze, too many cigarettes, too much dope when dope was cool and one was not cool if one did not get dope high, too many parties, hell, maybe too many lovers.The list they compiled to take stock one night could go and go. Moreover those guys who were crazy for Billie, Peggy or Judy were being replaced by an audience that was clueless about those legendary singers and who wanted Barbra Streisand, Christ, Barbra, or Bette Midler. Or after Stonewall and Harvey Milk wanted to get up there themselves. Welcome to the new age.

So as Georgette and Jackie got older they were in less demand, playing smaller venues in out of the way places, small gay social clubs who hired them for a night’s entertainment. One night somebody in the crowd called on “the blimps to retire and get facelifts while you are at it.” That was a kind of watershed. They eventually abandoned the act and opened a small bar in Frisco, a friendly town for their kind, any different kind. And it is still there, Jackette’s, including their own Monday night auction program for new talent, in that golden town although now under new management.          

The mention of new management part is not accidental. About fifteen years ago Georgette passed away and Jackie ran the place herself for a while. Then she too passed away a few years later, about ten years ago. The way I came across this story though, not a story usually on my radar, was that my old time high school friend, Peter Paul Markin (although we always called him just Markin, forget that stupid three name upper-crust Peter Paul stuff for a working poor kid), grew up across the street in North Adamsville from the Samsons. Although Markin was several years younger than Jackie he had heard stuff about a Jackie Samson, the famous drag queen, who had grown up and lived right across the street for him when he lived in California. Jackie’s parents had passed on by then, embarrassed and hurt that the son that they had tried to raise as a good Catholic boy had turned out, turned out the only word they would use to describe her, “different.” The three brother continued to raise their broods, or two of them did anyway, cursing their faggot brother and disowning her. Albert, for his own reasons, lived, lives with a women companion and they decided not to have children. He never did talk about the “difference” with Jackie just kind of accepted it with a sense of resignation, and maybe sorrow for his parents.

Markin investigated the story, filled in some of the details some time later. He was interested in Jackie’s career, how she felt, what it was like back in the day when queerness was beyond the pale, especially in their old neighborhood. Funny how times have changed I remember, and Markin does too, when our mothers, maybe Mrs. Samson too, would warn us away from The Shipwreck a bar located on a cove on the outskirts of my hometown, Hullsville, across from the Paradise Amusement Park because drag queens performed there like it was some kind of disease. I also remember times, and Markin does too, when a rite of passage for straight boys in our towns was to go to P-town and gay-bait the faggots, queers and dykes. Jesus.

One time a few years before Jackie died while Markin was on a trip to San Francisco after he moved back East he went into Jackette’s, introduced himself, and told Jackie that he was curious for the real story of Jackie’s life not the crude stuff that had gone around the neighborhood and how she survived it all that he later related to me.  They chatted for a couple of hours that day and on several other occasions. That first day though Jackie had invited Markin over to her apartment. That night they watched a DVD of Some Like It Hot on Jackie’s television, a favorite film of Markin’s as well, had a few drinks, and Jackie put on her old regalia and sang Cry Me A River for him. What do you think of that my friends.