Box 1

Scope and Contents

Publisher's name indicated in circular black rubberstamp impression on recto.

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION From the Collection: Postcards portraying cross-dressing and female and male impersonators in France, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Romania. Postcards include photographic and photomechanical prints, some hand-colored. All are printed between circa 1900 and 1930 and depict performers on amateur, café-concert, music-hall, and legitimate stages at the high-point of cross-dressing as a form of entertainment. Many depict gallant visual narratives of...

Scope and Contents

Stamped and mailed in France.

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION From the Collection: Postcards portraying cross-dressing and female and male impersonators in France, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Romania. Postcards include photographic and photomechanical prints, some hand-colored. All are printed between circa 1900 and 1930 and depict performers on amateur, café-concert, music-hall, and legitimate stages at the high-point of cross-dressing as a form of entertainment. Many depict gallant visual narratives of...

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION From the Collection: Postcards portraying cross-dressing and female and male impersonators in France, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Romania. Postcards include photographic and photomechanical prints, some hand-colored. All are printed between circa 1900 and 1930 and depict performers on amateur, café-concert, music-hall, and legitimate stages at the high-point of cross-dressing as a form of entertainment. Many depict gallant visual narratives of...

Scope and Contents

Montage of three portraits of Vernassier showing his transformation from middle-aged man to grand dame.

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Vernassier was a popular music-hall performer.

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Louis Vernassier had a long and prolific career as a music-hall female impersonator whose act involved playing numerous musical instruments (this postcard lists 12 different ones, plus "tous les instruments excentriques").

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Inscription: Addressed to Mlle Marguerite Beaujean. Black-and-white reproduction of a watercolor illustration signed Espinasse. Sarah Bernhardt appearing in one of her most celebrated trouser roles as the son of Napoleon in La Aiglon (1900) by playwright Edmond Rostand, who wrote the role for her.

Scope and Contents

Comic actor and singer Jeanne Bloch dressed as a portly, bearded man wearing a top hat and carrying a cane. Inscription at upper left on the recto indicates that Bloch was appearing at La Scala, a music hall in Paris open from 1874 to 1936.