Minette - Recollections of a Part-time Lady

Well, at last I did get to sleep, and the next day when I awoke I decided to do what every young girl should do, and take a bath. As I was filling the tub, I noticed it was leaking out the bottom. I picked up the telephone and said, “Mr. Manager, Mr. Manager, I wish to report I got a leak in the bathtub.” “Gotta leak in the bathtub?” says he. “That’s all right, lady, the customer is always right.”

That man in front is Wacko, the best boss I ever had. No strings. No strings at all. He was just crazy about me. He said, “Minette, you da queen o’ the queens.” And I’d say back to him, “Wacko, if I’m the queen of the queens, you’re the king of the queens.” So everytime we’d meet someone, he’d always say, “Baby, tell ’em who the king of the queens is, baby.” And I’d say, “Why, that’s you, Wacko. Tell them who the queen of the queens is.” And he’d always say, “Why, that’s you, baby.” He never got tired of that routine.

He’d take me to this elegant Italian restaurant for breakfast — well, it is true I got up in the afternoon — and the waiter would be all dressed up in a tuxedo and he had a real linen serviette over the arm and the table was in this special little room, and they had 110 different sauces on the bill of fare. I usually ordered a mushroom omelet.

Wacko was an ex-runner during Prohibition. This was Providence, right on the water and all, so it worked out gorgeous. He was well known among the underworld, and very well loved. And I could see why.

He told me to bring my own show in and Wacko said, “You don’t work no seven nights for me, baby. No seven nights.” He was a terrific boss and we worked harder for him than anyone.

I brought in Jerry Whiting, a whiz crack piano player. And she could talk. People would come and she would get an idea and say something and make it all rhyme. Just like that. Even at the height of impersonators, there was no one quite like Jerry Whiting. She was extreme and campy. Of course she was a benny head, too, so she’s probably not with us.

We were working Wacko’s the Fourth of July weekend, 1951, when we got run out of Providence. I was lucky — I was working in the city limits in a jazz room, and there is a law that the state police can’t come into the city limits in Providence. But they went in anyway, and took all the female impersonators and put them in manacles and kept moving them from one different jail to another, and Wacko had these two different lawyers trying to get us out. The state police brought all these queens in chains to the Park Hotel and said they were looking for pot. We couldn’t get any — I would have loved to have had some, but we couldn’t get any in 1951. And the state police stole my jewel case, all gorgeous costume jewelry with a few real things, too. On top of this, a queen stole my Scarlet O’Hara dress and went east with the geese. All this gay gay costume jewelry gone. That broke my heart.

I’ve had some troubles, but I haven’t been lynched, like 12 impersonators were in Texas, and I haven’t been through as many scrapes as my sister Tommy Bishop.

Miss Bishop grew up in New Orleans and her grandmother ran a bordello, so Tommy learned Southern hospitality at an early age. Tommy was very outgoing, a real Elsa Maxwell at a party, and she was like this gypsy adventuress that was always traveling everywhere, all over the world, and always generous. Mostly she worked B-drinks in Dixie. A B-drink was where you got johns to buy you a drink, only B-drinks were phony booze so the bar would make money. You just collected the muddlers — the drink sticks — and at the end of the evening you turned them in and split the money with the bartender. Tommy was big in Phenix City, Alabama. It was a wide open city, like the whole world is today.

One time in Phenix City, the boss told her they needed a special kind of act, so Miss Bishop thought, “Oh, I’ll do a snake act.” Snake acts were very popular at that time. Only she’d never done one before. She bought a snake — it was probably a water moccasin instead of a boa constrictor — they were more available in Phenix City. So Miss Bishop begins her snake dance and she brings the snake up to give it a gay kiss on the mouth. Only the snake bites her. Tommy threw the snake right in a customer’s lap.

Everything happened to that queen. Once she was working bar maid in Miami, and she was waiting for a bus in full face and semi-drag. This guy drove up in a white roadster and says, “Hello, little girl, where are you going?” “Might be going with you, who knows?” she says. So Miss Bishop went with him, and he takes her out to a cypress forest as night was falling. He wants a blow job, so she’s going down on him and feels this cold steel at the back of her neck. See, he had a different kind of gun. She realized that when he came he was going to blow her brains out. “Oh Daddy, I have to take a wee-wee.” He keeps on holding to her by the belt, so she undid the belt and gave a lunge. He was left holding the belt, and he’s shooting away while she’s hiding behind a cypress tree all night until he finally left at dawn. Miss Bishop emerged from that swamp, all covered in Spanish moss, walked to the highway, and got a ride from some farmer. Honey, she must have been a sight on the side of the road. The next week, she found out he had escaped from a penitentiary and he had murdered four women in Georgia. It was front page material.

Another time, Miss Bishop was out over Central Park West hanging on a flag pole, without clothes, and her john was cutting the cord. She climbed down the rope to the floor below and they let her in. This was before topless and bottomless. You couldn’t work without nets in burlesque and here is Miss Bishop hanging out over Central Park West without anything.

Tommy just says, “Oh, I’m so outgoing.”

Well, you can get a little too outgoing. But everyone loved Miss Bishop, from the gypsies downstairs to the lumberjacks.

She worked in a lumber camp way outside of Seattle, and they had her trapped up there. Well, there was no real women up there so she looked like Gloria Swanson to them, or maybe Ann Sheridan. Mary, they were all getting into Miss Bishop, and she’s cooking, because she cooks gay. And when she got tired of that she escaped. It was spring camp and she went down the rapids on a log or something. When she got to Seattle she took a boat up to Alaska because that’s where the Seabees were landing. She’s very resourceful, Miss Bishop, so she took up with the police chief in Fairbanks and he set Tommy and another queen up in a little house. It was a little hut with a red light on a sled. That’s how they do it in Alaska.

And my sister Tommy has grace and manners, too, and that’s what makes her a beautiful queen. Miss Bishop is not the dainty type but everything she handles like a Mae Marsh. I remember when I first met Tommy at this meal with the Jewish Madonna, Jackie Phil man, and some other queens. Jackie had all these sound effects when she was eating. Terrible sound effects. Rumblings coming up from down below. Well, I looked up at Miss Bishop and there was this immediate camaraderie. We had manners. I still see my sister Tommy all the time when she’s not around the world.