Melbourne’s earliest drag history is hidden in photo albums, with men in frocks, and aspiring transsexuals in suburban settings. Being caught in women’s attire would mean disgrace and could land you in prison, and so it was a very private and discreet meeting when those early drag queens got together. A wonderful author, Marjorie Garber in her book “Vested Interests” |Amazon Link| discusses the proposition that cross-dressing is the basis of all culture. That barely helped the Australian cross-dressers who continued to be beaten and shamed by the Police.
Entertainers had a little leeway, but in the 1950s, the only man openly wearing female attire in public was Barry Humphries as his famous Edna Everage.
Some refer to Edna as our first ‘drag queen’ but Edna came from English music theatre performance traditions – as shown by her mega-stardom in England, the ‘home’ to Edna’s version of vaudeville.
The Les Girls All Male Review and Restaurant had its gala opening at The Ritz Hotel in St Kilda on Anzac Day – 25th of April, 1970. And that was the end of the old ways. The black and white version of all things was gone. Men looking like women? What was going on? Melbourne’s eyes were finally opening.
The publicity avalanche reached into rooms all over Victoria, and people everywhere saw there was another way to live your life. It was not only drag queens coming out of their closets. The acceptance of Les Girls and the associated cultural change also emboldened another community, and in 1975 a group of “cross-dressers” started the “Seahorse Club“. A place to meet in a safe place with confidentiality assured.
Les Girls was a true phenomenon, and Les Girls was a smash hit with the mums and dads across suburbia for the next ten years or so. Drag had come to staid, old Melbourne.
Les Girls started it all, so it begins there.