Barberette (his predessesor), and associate of Man Ray

I'm growing lazy, especially since there was zero readers of this blog
today anyways -Barbette was very famous in Europe, and so American
Circus' would have been eager to capaitalize on a successful act,
Barbette was also really stunning.

I cut and pasted this from this site:
http://www.wornthrough.com/2010/12/13/anarchists-of-style-barbette/


Nonetheless, Barbette came to fame doing high wire and trapeze stunts dressed as a woman. His performances were, in his words, “not just an imitation of a women’s trapeze act, but, rather a mystification and a play on masculine-feminine contrast.” [2] Mirroring the enthusiasm of elite Parisian fans such as Jean Cocteau, Janet Flanner, in a 1930 correspondence for The New Yorker, described a chute d’ange fall as taking on “mythical quality of a new Phaethon deserting the sky.” Jean Cocteau, who considered Barbette a muse, called him “an angel, a flower, a bird.”

His Persona: While clothed as man in daily life, Barbette’s extravagant onstage costumes included a sequined cape and a dress adorned with 50 pounds of white ostrich plumes.

Cocteau described Barbette’s presence on stage as “a real masterpiece of pantomime, summing up in parody all the women he has ever studied, becoming himself the woman—so much so as the eclipse the prettiest girls who proceed and follow him on the program.”[3]

“On stage, against black velvet curtains appeared a young woman in a silvery-gold wig topped with plumes and feathers, with a train of rich lamé and silver lace, undressing on a couch of rich oriental carpets,” wrote author Jacque Damase in his history of the Paris music-hall.

“The woman then rose, naked except for the gems on her breast and belly, and began walking a [low] steel tight-rope. Her eyes shaded green, like some mysterious Asiatic jewel, she walked backwards and forwards along the tight-rope, dispensed with her balancing-pole, and contorted her thin, nervous body as the entire audience held its breath… Then Barbette leapt down on to the stage, gave a bow, tore off her wig and revealed a bony Ango-Saxon acrobat’s head: gasps from the astonished audience, shattered by the sudden brutality of the action.” [4]

His  Story: Born Vander Clyde in 1904 in Rolling Rock, Texas, Barbette’s mother changed his life. “The first time she took me to a circus in Austin,” he said, “I knew I’d be a performer, and from then on I’d work in the fields during cotton picking season in order to go to the circus as often as possible.” [5]

After graduating high school, he joined the sister-act, the World Famous Ariel Queens in San Antonio. His first act of gender-bending was pure business. In his interview, one of the sisters explained that “women’s clothes always make a wire act more impressive—the plunging and gyrating are more impressive,” Barbette recalled. “She asked if I’d mind dressing as a girl. I didn’t and that’s how it began.”

As Barbette began to develop his own act, the gender bending took on a more intellectual inspiration. “I’d always read a lot of Shakespeare, and thinking that the marvelous heroines of his plays were played by men and boys made me feel like I could turn my specialty into something unique. I wanted an act that would be a thing of beauty—of course it would have to be a strange beauty.”
After performing across the United States, Barbette traveled to Paris in 1923. He was soon taken up by society and the avante guard. He was cast in Cocteau’s first film, Le Sang d’un Poete (The Blood of a Poet), as one of a group of Chanel-clad theater-goers giving a standing ovation after the suicide of a card player. (He was “absolutely dismayed” upon seeing the film.)

In 1938, after performing at Loew’s State in New York, he was stricken by pneumonia and “a sudden crippling affliction of the bones and joints.” Hospitalized for 18 months, the great performer had to learn to walk again. He continued in the theater, although backstage as a trainer. But it seemed he missed the refinement of the good old Paris days. “I know I’ll be lucky” he told a reporter in 1969, “ if in return for my very handsome salary I succeed in persuading a few young trapezists just not to chew gum during the act. Imagine!”

Barbette committed suicide in 1973.
(Lisa and Monica collaborated on this post.)
For further discussion see:
Cocteau, J and Man Ray. Barbette, 1989
Goldbarth, A. Different Fleshes. Hobart & William Smith, 1979.
Tait, P. Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance. Routledge, New York. 2005.

and from Wikepedia (Herbert/Berta Beeson isn't in Wikepedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbette_(performer)

Barbette (December 19, 1899 – August 5, 1973) was an American female impersonator, high wire performer and trapeze artist born in Texas on December 19, 1899. Barbette attained great popularity throughout the United States but his greatest fame came in Europe and especially Paris, in the 1920s and 1930s.
Barbette began performing as an aerialist at around the age of 14 as one-half of a circus act called The Alfaretta Sisters. After a few years of circus work, Barbette went solo and adopted his exotic-sounding pseudonym. He performed in full drag, revealing himself as male only at the end of his act.
Following a career-ending illness or injury, Barbette returned to Texas but continued to work as a consultant for motion pictures and training and choreographing aerial acts for a number of circuses. After years of dealing with chronic pain, Barbette committed suicide on August 5, 1973. Both in life and following his death, Barbette served as an inspiration to a number of artists, including Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.