Meet Julian Eltinge, America’s most successful and highly-paid female impersonator from the 1900s to the 1920s. Enter a forgotten world of musicals and burlesques where men from college to the boardroom to the military enthusiastically dragged up for lots of applause and little retribution. Visit backstage vaudeville, discover a blossoming Hollywood, and rub elbows with silent-film royalty.
Author and psychotherapist Andrew Erdman highlights the first wave of drag and its biggest star at the time in the United States with Beautiful: The Story of Julian Eltinge, America’s Greatest Female Impersonator by Oxford University Press released last month.
Rich with detail, this immersive biography about a gender-bending vaudeville celebrity will appeal to history and theater buffs alike.
Eltinge’s story offers complex insight into cultural attitudes about masculinity and femininity, reminding us that humans have always contained multitudes. Drag was a staple of vaudeville, the most popular form of entertainment in the U.S. in the early 1900s. However, a push towards traditional gender roles in the 1920s lessened its visibility.
In the roaring ’20s, Julian Eltinge navigated high society as a brilliant female impersonator while fabricating a hypermasculine drag persona offstage. Beautiful is the first full-length biography of Eltinge who defined his era—and whose story can reflect much of today’s story about drag and visibility.
Erdman is the author of Queen of Vaudeville: The Story of Eva Tanguay and has also written comedy for the stage, TV, and online platforms. With a doctorate in theatre studies from the City University of New York and a master’s in social work from Yeshiva University, his books seek to uncover misunderstood aspects of the cultural past and how they relate to misunderstood parts of today. AndrewErdman.com.