Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

During the years of Prohibition, when the US outlawed alcohol through the 18th Amendment of the US Constitution, gay men achieved “unprecedented prominence throughout the city, taking a central place in its culture” (301). Times Square had developed a gay enclave because it had a large theater and nightlife sector, which drew gay men who worked in theaters, clubs, and restaurants. The fact these men were “artistic types” gave them some protection for their gay mannerisms and dress. Facilitating a gay enclave in Times Square was the fact that middle-class and wealthy single men lived in the apartments on the West 40s and 50s, while working-class and poor single men lived in the tenements, transient hotels, and rooming houses in the nearby Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. The area had few exclusively gay bars and restaurants, so large groups of gay men patronized such establishments in the area.

Competition with theatrical plays from movies and the impact of Prohibition on bars and restaurants caused Times Square by the 1920s to change from a “genteel theater district to a ‘tawdry’ amusement district” (305). This transformation expanded Times Square’s seedier elements, making it more difficult for police and anti-vice societies to control the activities of individuals like gay men. Likewise, the emergence of speakeasies and criminal organizations that got around the police through corruption and bribery meant more protection for gay patrons. Furthermore, Prohibition drove down costs at many expensive restaurants in Times Square, causing them to go out of business. Indeed, resentment against Prohibition itself sparked a “popular revolt” against the moral regulations imposed by anti-vice societies and the police. Resistance against Prohibition brought middle-class people in closer contact and even collaboration with gangsters and working-class, immigrant-run nightlife establishments that middle-class people would have previously avoided. Anti-vice societies were concerned that the speakeasies “were dissolving the distinctions between middle-class respectability and working-class licentiousness that had long been central to the ideological self-representation of the middle class” (307).

Because of all this, “fairies” (or “pansies,” as they became more commonly known), were more central to the culture of Times Square. Like African American cultural establishments and entertainers in Times Square, the growing presence of gay entertainers attracted white patrons who had the “desire to feel they were transgressing” (310). Even famous and wealthy New Yorkers in the era watched drag balls in the 1920s and 1930s despite media disapproval. LGBTQ topics were openly addressed in burlesque shows and several plays, such as Mae West’s play The Drag and Edouard Bournet’s The Captive, the latter of which became the subject for a campaign calling for a new state censorship law. The Drag had a scene in which a doctor called for the decriminalization of gay sexuality and featured gay actors playing gay characters. However, the cast of The Drag and Mae West herself were arrested in 1927. Despite such oppression of a play that featured overtly gay themes, openly gay performers increasingly appeared in nightclubs. The onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s made club owners more desperate to draw in audiences, leading to what was called the “pansy craze” in nightclubs, featuring female impersonators and campy gay performers. One such performer was “Jean” Malin, who worked as a female impersonator at gay clubs like the Rubaiyat. In the press and among the public, he “was regarded as a gay man whose nightclub act revolved around his being gay” (316). The pansy craze extended beyond New York, as “pansy clubs” appeared in Hollywood, San Francisco, and Atlantic City.

Films, novels, and newspapers reported and depicted the pansy craze through the early 1930s. While the tone of the portrayals was often mocking, “some […] could easily have represented a jaded gay insider’s view of his milieu” (322). Their accuracy in representing the gay subculture suggests that they may have been created by lesbians and gay men themselves. Overall, the pansy craze reflected a wider “sense of disillusionment” in the aftermath of World War I (327). Also, both the “Negro vogue” of the 1920s and the pansy craze allowed middle-class white people to define themselves and to envision alternatives to the middle-class moral order. At the same time, the pansy craze was a way for gay entertainers to assert themselves as something other than objects of ridicule.

Chauncey describes a “powerful backlash” to the early 1930s pansy craze. Using violence between rival gangsters at one nightclub, the Club Abbey, as justification, the police cracked down on venues featuring female impersonators and on drag balls in Times Square. Possibly prompting the crackdown were a negative newspaper campaign and an investigation into New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker’s administration for corruption, causing Mayor Walker to distract the public by attacking the gay subculture. Regardless, “It signaled a more fundamental shift in the cultural and political climate” (334). Some argued that the Great Depression resulted from the rise of consumer excess, which the entertainment at New York’s nightclubs and a disregard for traditional moral values exemplified. In addition, during the Great Depression many men lost their jobs, which “upset gender relations” (354); consequently, many blamed gay men and lesbians for further damaging traditional gender norms. Ironically, the end of Prohibition in 1933 contributed to a more oppressive atmosphere. New post-Prohibition laws regulating behavior at bars and clubs, and the end of the black market in alcohol, curtailed the more permissive culture of speakeasies, and the government reasserted the right to regulate people’s behavior. Government regulatory bodies including the State Liquor Authority (SLA), which regulated all establishments that served alcohol, explicitly targeted gay bars with the help of police. By 1954, “courts began to worry that the SLA had become so zealous in its punishment of bars serving the occasional gay man or lesbian that it posed a threat to the stability of the retail liquor business itself” (342). Following the SLA’s attempt to revoke the liquor license of the Fifth Avenue Bar, a popular gay hangout and part of the Stanwood Cafeteria, the government limited the SLA’s authority. However, the SLA retained broad authority to punish bars frequented by openly gay patrons.

Authorities like the SLA still identified gay men according to signs of effeminacy. The best legal defense for bars for encouraging “’disorderly’ behavior” by allowing gay patrons was to argue that customers who did not appear to follow gender norms were not necessarily gay. Such issues “codified the proper dress, speech patterns, modes of carrying one's body, and subjects of intellectual and sexual interest for any man or woman who wished to socialize in public” and led to a trend between the 1930s and 1960s in which most gay and lesbian bars lasted only a few months before police shut them down (346). The only gay bars that survived were those run by organized crime. An unintended side effect was that because most bars were reluctant to serve openly gay people, it drove gay customers to exclusively gay bars. Since flamboyant customers risked attracting the attention of the SLA and the police, however, even gay bars tended to ban gay men who would have been seen as “fairies” in past eras. Rich gay people went to New York’s high-end nightclubs but had to be discreet. For example, gay patrons frequented the bar at the Astor Hotel but were segregated and tolerated only if they were not “obvious.” Another option was to appear at performances by certain performers that the gay subculture embraced, like Judy Garland.

Chauncey notes that when the modern gay rights movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, gay spaces and “overt references to homosexuality” appeared to be mostly hidden (355). However, Chauncey argues that an “extensive gay world” developed (355). Defining that era was an unofficial understanding that gay people had their own spaces that were respected to an extent if gay people were not too overt. The “new regulations” that emerged after Prohibition were stricter, constantly forcing gay people underground or leading them to become even more subtle rather than subjecting them to occasional raids and arrests, as happened previously. Nevertheless, gay men were able to communicate and create art and literature about their world through double entendre or subtext, so the gay community “continued to flourish” but “became less visible to outsiders and was increasingly segregated form the broader life of the city” (358).

The spread of “gay” as a term for “homosexual” signaled a change in “male sexual categories” from being based on gender to being based on sexual desire (358). More gay men took on masculine personas and went to gay bars, while fewer straight men were “willing to become trade” (359). The new kind of gay man was treated with hostility in the Great Depression and World War II eras. Society increasingly considered gay men as “sex deviants” prone to abusing children, instead of harmless fairies subject to ridicule. Arrests of gay men in Manhattan actually increased drastically by the late 1940s. Some gay men continued adopting the identity of “fairy.” At the same time, increased hostility led to more gay rights activism, and activists enlisted doctors and psychiatrists to support them, setting the stage for the gay rights struggle.