Was Boy George the first drag queen Mainstream America met?

Charles Nelson Reilly

Rip Taylor

Paul Lynde

Boy George may have called himself a drag queen when he accepted Culture Club’s best new artist Grammy award, but it was just for effect. He never considered himself a drag queen and neither did the public. From vaudeville to Flip Wilson to the hundreds of entertainers on the “female impersonator” circuit (doing Barbara Cher Liza etc) I think most Americans were fairly familiar with the concept by the time George came along.

r1-r3 don't know what a drag queen is. Turn in your gay cards NOW, biches!

80 years earlier there was Julian Eltinge.

Boy George was great and SO famous back in the days of Culture Club!!!

"Mary Todd LIncoln"--we never found out what his real name was.

Culture Club. Boy George REALLY caught everyone's attention!!

r8, drag QUEENS, not Kings.

I have a very, very vague early memory of my babysitter angrily insisting that Boy George was "straight" - and having no fucking idea what straight was or why she was so worked up.

As a small child in the 80s I found Boy George creepy. Not just how he looked but the way he moved.

R5 You type British.

Rip Torn.

Sorry, I meant Rip Taylor.

As far as singers go wasn’t there Sylvester?

NOPE! Divine ALL THE WAY!!!!!

R17 OP wrote “mainstream America,” which I think means Ohio. I don’t think Divine reached Ohio until Hairspray.

Tim Curry. Rocky Horror.

I never thought of Boy George as a Drag Queen. He was always a male. He was never trying to play a female.

From May, 1984:

___

LONDON -- Princess Margaret snubbed Culture Club's lead singer Boy George Tuesday night, saying he looked like 'an overmade-up tart.'

The princess shook hands with the 22-year-old 'pretty boy of pop,' who was dressed in a pink sack dress and cashmere coat, but refused to be photographed with him at a radio deejay awards ceremony. Advertisement

'I don't know who he is but he looks like an overmade-up tart. I don't want to be photographed with him,' said Princess Margaret, according to a report in Wednesday's Sun newspaper.

It's impossible to underestimate the power of his two early videos Do You Really Want To Hurt Me and Karma Chameleon in breaking him him through in America. One forgets how deeply deeply puritical America was then, and and still is. Look at the way MTV banned Queen's fun and tame cross-dressing video, and ruined their US career. Unfuckingbelievable. The way Boy George's videos used a majority of black performers simply wasn't the norm then, and it established a progressive 'frame' in which his transgression was allowed to appear. Also: both videos were very carefully set in a theatrical context in the past, which made them less confrontational to mainstream America. The 1st video was like nothing else that had ever come before: it was so intriguing and weird and fascinating. The ethnicity gave him a big wedge in the door. That included the hebrew sweat shirt he was wearing. To criticise him might have lead to antisemetic accusations. It really was A++++ marketing. It'd difficult to think of a new performer who has been better served by their videographers.

Do You Really Want To Hurt Me. With the black face done by blacks.

Lori Shannon

Milton Berle

[quote]As a small child in the 80s I found Boy George creepy. Not just how he looked but the way he moved.

Thank you! He looked like a mannequin and the swaying back and forth while snapping his fingers creeped me out too.

Excuse me?!

no.

Such twatwaffles, the brits.

Flip Wilson; Some Like It Hot; Jim Bailey; Sylvester; Beverly LaSalle

Tell me you live in England without telling me you live in England.

Boy George & Culture Club was New Romantic. Nothing to do with drag. The style was influenced by glam rock.

He was my favorite!

Here ya go, 1970 with millions watching. Ed was very supportive.

Drag was popular way before Boy George. Some Like It Hot, for example. There were also stage acts like Danny LaRue in the UK.

And back in the day, they were called female impersonators.

[quote]Drag was popular way before Boy George. Some Like It Hot, for example.

Yeah but in "Some Like It Hot", it was a gag for the movie and used to save their lives and no one "knew". Not really the same as Drag Queens.

I think the reason people are bringing up comedic performers and female impersonators is that Boy George wasn't really a drag queen, so we're not really sticking to the topic of ONLY drag queens.

There were several drag queens and female impersonators who were popular in the 1910s through 1930s, pre-Depression, but none of them were really mainstream. Bothwell Browne and Julian Eltinge were quite popular in silent films, Eltinge starred with some of the biggest names in the silent era.

[quote] Yeah but in "Some Like It Hot", it was a gag for the movie and used to save their lives and no one "knew". Not really the same as Drag Queens.

[quote] Was Boy George the first drag queen Mainstream America met?

Mainstream America was well aware of drag queens, men in drag, and female impersonators BECAUSE of movies like Some Like It Hot. That was the point.

Everybody watched Flip Wilson. Even my puritanical parents thought Geraldine was funny.

And of course Milton Berle, who nobody thought was funny.

I saw him in one of culture clubs early appearances in new York. I hadn't heard of him and wasn't sure if he was a boy or a girl. Loved that evening on the pier. Was it their first show in NYC?

I've been a fan ever since add he's a party of my growing up gay but I've never thought of him as a drag queen. He wasn't trying to pass as a woman. That's just the way he dressed. Gay punk style? On that note, Brit approaches to drag are more nuanced and interesting.

William Dorsey Swann (1858 – 1925)

The first person known to describe himself as "the queen of drag" was William Dorsey Swann, born enslaved in Hancock, Maryland, who in the 1880s started hosting drag balls in Washington, DC attended by other men who were formerly enslaved, and often raided by the police, as documented in the newspapers.

As Patrick Swayze said of John Leguizamo in "Too Wong Foo," Boy George is "a boy in a dress."

Boy George was never a drag queen.

I mean, Christine Jorgansen was trans, but middle America didn't distinguish between drag queens and trans until 2015 or so, when Caitlyn and Lavern Cox were everywhere. My grandma had a lot to say about Christine, and she was born before women could vote.

Madam was a man in a dress:

Pardon ME, MadamE.

Mainstream American soldiers and mainstream American college boys were familiar with men doing drag throughout the 20th century. And probably before. So NO, OP.

He wasn't the first, as others have stated, and I think "what" he was was a bit of a question mark. Sometimes he was more specifically femme than others, but there were times he had a look that could be masculine or feminine - today we'd probably say he appropriated his look from other cultures.

People didn't see him as gay because he was promoted as being sort of a sexless teddy bear. But most gaylings knew what time it was.

maybe him:

wrong thread, pardon! Tammy, his cousin, just likes drag queens.

Certainly by the time the cat was MEOW! out of the bag.

Did the U.S. have Marilyn at all?

He was BIG for 5 minutes in all the Commonwealth countries, and made George insanely jealous even though they were friends.

R50 No, Marilyn is known in the US only as a curiosity at best, and as the hanger-on George depicts him to be. But we never had any radio play or chart action for Marilyn here.

[quote]I never thought of Boy George as a Drag Queen. He was always a male. He was never trying to play a female.

I didn’t know people considered him to be a drag queen.

[quote]I mean, Christine Jorgansen was trans, but middle America didn't distinguish between drag queens and trans until 2015 or so, when Caitlyn and Lavern Cox were everywhere.

My mom told me she and my dad and some of their friends used to go to drag shows (comedians and singers) back in the late 40 and the 50s (this was in the Boston area). My folks were about as Mainstream America as you could get. I also remember my mom watching Christine Jorgensen a couple of times on TV interview shows. Since my mom was a reasonably intelligent person, she knew C. J. was trans, not a drag queen. I think anyone who was not really stupid would know that difference.

I never considered Boy George a drag queen. Any more than I thought the band Poison were. Flip Wilson, Milton Berle used drag in their comedy acts but that didn't make them drag queens.

It was the whole Asian geisha look that probably got some doofuses confused.

Marilyn was 99% talent free. Boy George is quite talented.

Fuck you, R53. Differences in cultural awareness don't make someone stupid.

I'll bet your grandmother was a whore who wished she'd aborted your father.

This thread is all over the place. Flip Wilson wasn't a drag queen. He was an actor and portrayed a woman hilariously. People didn't look at her as a man in a dress. People loved her and look at her as they do Dame Edna, the man in the dress disappears.

Boy George said that in the early days of CC and they were trying to get a record deal one of the record companies said "the girl singer is very pretty."

Especially RuPaul, r39.

“What you see is what you get!”

[quote]Fuck you, [R53]. Differences in cultural awareness don't make someone stupid. I'll bet your grandmother was a whore who wished she'd aborted your father.

Maybe you need to get fucked.

Sylvester

Eleanor Roosevelt was the 1st.

Is George a top or bottom?

At his age I bet he's into SM.

[quote] At his age I bet he's into SM.

Gee, you think?