The howdy club
The Howdy Club was a lesbian bar in the West Village — the last major, public-facing queer entertainment venue to survive Mayor LaGuardia’s “clean up the city” initiative until the mid 1940s. According to various sources and ads in various NYC newspapers, the club presented large, elaborate Revues — often parodying popular culture or events of the time for audiences of queer and straight folks from a spread of classes and backgrounds. The shows featured well-known theater and music performers as well as burlesque, drag and other queer and straight artists, including stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, "burlesque tease artist" Red Tova Halem, an Errol Flynn male impersonator identified only as Gail, and Clover Fern Mamone, who, sources suggest, performed at the Howdy Club as a headliner over a period of years.
“Downtown, nestled on West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village, stood The Howdy club, ‘where the Village begins and ends.’
A canopy bearing the words ‘Howdy Revue’ covered the entrance, from which female impersonators in glittering gowns beckoned passersby. The club was owned and operated by Anthony ‘Tony Bender’ Strollo, a member of the notorious and long-running Genovese crime family headed by Vito Genovese, with longtime Mafia partner Stephen Franse. It opened in 1935 and quickly became a popular lesbian hangout when spots for queer women were few and far between. The club also catered to other queer and straight crowds, including soldiers during World War II.
For a $2 cover, patrons crowded at short, round tables covered in white tablecloths.
At three different shows-10:00 p.m., 12:00 a.m., and 2:30 a.m. -they might see a swing orchestra, a singer, strippers, a comedian, or dance teams, but there were almost always gender impersonators.
On a 1940 postcard, the female waitstaff appeared in drag, donning sporty, collegiate-style football jerseys for each letter in the club's name, which itself has an interesting history. ‘Generally, [at the time] you did not give pictures of people who were not dead because they might be identified as gay, which was not something that you would do to a friend of yours if they weren't, shall we say, out in society,’ says historian Lisa E. Davis, who met and befriended some of the former Howdy male impersonators in the mid-1960s. Decades later, when it was safer to be out, ‘[male impersonator] Buddy [Kent] gave us the picture of the wait staff at the Howdy Club, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives used that for years as a postcard for the archives.’
Waitresses and waiters at the Howdy Club made good money. ‘The girls served the drinks and got big tips, so they didn't mind,’ Davis said. ‘The tips were fabulous.’
This is back in the time when an apartment in the Village was $60, so you could make, as they told me, $200 a weekend in tips.“
— Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City, Elyssa Maxx Goodman
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