Gladys Bentley

Gladys Bentley was a part of the Harlem Renaissance as a performer – she played piano and sang in ways that drew huge crowds starting in the 1920s, and she was completely out as a lesbian. But her story takes some surprising turns.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:12Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:23Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:28Holly Frey?

  So today's topic was part of the Harlem Renaissance. As a musician, she played piano and she sang in ways that drew huge crowds, starting in the 1920s. She was unique in that she was completely out as a lesbian, unusual for the time. But her story takes some really surprising turns. She is, when she is talked about, it's often like gay icon, Gladys Bentley. But then there are some weird parts of her story that do get mentioned by people, but they don't get picked apart as much as I would like in terms of like really looking closely at them. So we're gonna do that. And this one gets a couple of heads ups. So first, there are some really sad aspects of Gladys's story regarding her sexual

• 3:12Holly Frey?

  identity and attempts at its erasure by her parents and even by Gladys herself. If that sounds painful to you, just be prepared or maybe skip. Because that was part of an article that she wrote about herself in the 1950s. That article has been questioned when it comes to whether she was purposely trying to redact her queerness as a self-protective ruse. Like I said, we're gonna pick that apart when we get to it. There is also a very brief mention of police brutality, and there are very brief discussions of song lyrics about domestic abuse, one also about a sex act. Those are all very quick, though. So just know those are in the episode. If those are things you might be sensitive to,

• 3:57Holly Frey?

  or if you have a younger history buff that listens, you might want to pre-screen.

• 4:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  From the very beginning, Gladys Alberta Bentley offers us some contradictions. She was born on August 12, 1907. Her place of birth is almost always given as Philadelphia, and that includes in obituaries. And she did grow up in Philadelphia. But during an appearance on the television show You Bet Your Life in 1958, Groucho Marx asked her where she was from, and without any hesitation, she said, "Port of Spain, Trinidad." Her mother, Mary, was from Trinidad and her father, George, was from Philadelphia. If she was actually born in Trinidad, it seems like the family must have moved to Philadelphia when she was very young.

• 4:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  She always talked about her childhood as taking place in Philadelphia exclusively and never apparently mentioned anything about Trinidad publicly outside of this one mention on one TV show.

• 5:00Holly Frey?

  Just starting it out, Gladys. Gladys, you know, not always a reliable narrator of her own life. She would write of her childhood many years later and how difficult her relationship with her mother was as a kid. She wrote, quote, "Many of us who have strayed from the paths of what society calls normal were once children in unhappy or broken homes. Children who are rejected, abused, unloved, exploited, or overprotected do not have a chance to develop that inner sense of security, which will keep them from feeling abandoned and afraid. However, not all children in situations of this nature react by feeling alone or fearful.

• 5:44Holly Frey?

  Some children become aggressive, decide to take the reins of their destiny in their own hands. That is the way I reacted to being an unwanted child." So she continues to recount how her mother really had her heart set on having a boy. She wanted a boy. She wanted a boy so much that when she learned she had given birth to a girl, she actually refused to nurse or even touch the baby. And for the first six months of her life, Gladys was raised by her grandmother.

• 6:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gladys also described not liking men from the time she was very young, noting, quote, "From the time I can remember anything, even when I was toddling, I never wanted a man to touch me. I would even run away from my own father. He felt terrible about his own child, avoiding him, but I would never go to him. I acted the same way with my uncles and all the rest of the males who came into my home." She also described hating her two brothers because they were celebrated while she was scorned. And she said that she started stealing their suits to wear when she was nine or 10, and her parents got very upset about that.

• 6:53Holly Frey?

  Yeah, also, she ended up with more brothers than that, but I think she had two that were born immediately after her that were closest to her in age. Gladys described herself as a "large and stocky child." Those are her precise words. And it was something that other kids frequently teased her about. She later told the press that she started writing songs when she was eight years old just to keep herself company because she was lonely and outcast among other kids. But that was not the only thing that set her apart from her peers. She also found herself developing a crush on her teacher, noting, quote, "In class, I sat for hours watching her and wondering why I was so attracted to her.

• 7:38Holly Frey?

  At night, I dreamed of her." It's unclear if Gladys's parents knew about this infatuation with her teacher, but it does seem that they understood, at least on some level, that Gladys did not align with the heteronormative social mores of Philadelphia. The family soon moved to another neighborhood, but still in the city, and Gladys's mother started taking her to a series of doctors. Biographers have interpreted this situation as attempts at conversion therapy. She noted later that she believed that her parents meant well, but that she didn't need a doctor, she needed love and affection. Though she and her parents did try to come to compromises

• 8:20Holly Frey?

  on things like her wearing non-frilly girls' clothes instead of her brother's suits, as Gladys reached her teenage years, things at home just got worse, and she ran away at 16 to New York, hoping to find a career as a performer.

• 8:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1927, New York passed a piece of legislation known as the Wales Padlock Law.

• 8:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was in response to Manhattan's growing community of performers, and a lot of those performers were queer and were pushing against the boundaries of propriety to explore stories and music that mainstream audiences and the authorities thought were indecent. One of the last straws that catalyzed the whales padlock law was Mae West's play Sex, which she starred in and also wrote under the pen name Jane Mast. That play was raided, and soon Senator B. Roger Wales had sponsored an amendment to the penal code that regulated indecent materials to include, among other things, a provision that the police could just shut down an establishment that was staging purportedly

• 9:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  indecent or sexually degenerate entertainment and then literally padlock it shut for up to a year.

• 9:34Holly Frey?

  So this is the New York that Gladys started her career in. And that law meant that a lot of the material that she would eventually perform and become really well-known for could get her into trouble. But over the years, as we'll see, she stayed booked and crowds continued to show up to hear her play piano and sing her often very raunchy songs. One of the main reasons for this was just a matter of location. The police tended to focus on Broadway in the theater district, and at that point Gladys was playing venues in Harlem. The law still applied there, but it was not really enforced that far north in the city. And as a consequence, a vibrant queer culture flourished there.

• 10:18Holly Frey?

  Drag balls and drag performances were common, and Bentley, as a cross-dressing-out lesbian, became a star.

• 10:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  We'll talk about how Gladys Bentley got started in New York after we pause for a sponsor break.

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• 11:06Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:11Holly Frey?

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• 13:56Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:12Holly Frey?

  Gladys Bentley is often talked about for being transgressive, but she wasn't just transgressive. She was also incredibly talented. When she got to New York, she started performing at rent parties in Harlem in the mid 1920s, so just as the Wales Padlock Law was coming into play. So a rent party was, as its name suggests, a way for tenants to raise the funds needed to pay ever-rising rent costs. For a small door charge, people could join the party, and then they also paid for drinks. Prohibition was in effect from the beginning of 1920 to the end of 1933, so the alcohol served at these parties was homebrewed. And to draw crowds, musicians were booked to play. And these parties became these really boisterous

• 14:57Holly Frey?

  community events where people would gather, drink, and dance. And it was all within the confines of a private residence. Sometimes in places like Brownstone's, multiple units would hold the party at the same time. So it got to be this immense house party. Innovations in jazz and dances that would become popular on the swing scene in the decades that followed came directly out of these neighborhood gatherings. And Bentley was a very popular draw.

• 15:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gladys became well-known for performing songs in what was known as eight-to-the-bar style, meaning unlike the more standard four beats per bar of music, each bar would get eight beats, so a very fast, uptempo style. If you are a musician, or if you talk to a musician about music theory, there's a way more complex discussion about how this can be represented in time signatures and what actually comprises a bar of music. But for a layperson, what you need to know here is this was just a very fast, super upbeat style. In 1955, Rob Roy wrote an article about what made Bentley's performances stand

• 16:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  out, and that was their uniqueness. Nobody was really doing this eight-to-the-bar style aside from some copycats. Roy said that the trade, that being the theater district around New York's Broadway and 52nd Streets, quote, "preferred listening to the original," and Gladys was the original.

• 16:28Holly Frey?

  In addition to being very skilled at uptempo, playing and singing, Gladys was also a very clever lyricist, and she would improvise new words to popular songs. Often, her new verses were very dirty. In contrast, though, to her bawdy lyrics, she dressed like a dandy. She usually performed in a white tailored men's tuxedo and a white top hat. She wore her hair very short in what would be considered at the time a very masculine cut. She normally had it slicked back. And this combination of highly polished visual presentation, her musical talent, and her very naughty lyrics made her just irresistible to audiences.

• 17:11Holly Frey?

  And she didn't confine this persona to performance only. She dressed in menswear all the time, and she was as flamboyant and bawdy offstage as she was on. She self-identified as a woman and she's often referred to as a drag king in modern discussion, but the term drag king didn't really exist for almost a half century after this. She was also not putting on this persona just for performance, the way a lot of drag artists do, although her promoters did often bill her as a male impersonator. So it's all a little bit tricky here. As is always the case when we're talking about someone who was queer before the terminology that we would use today existed, it is hard

• 17:53Holly Frey?

  to know precisely how Gladys would identify today.

• 17:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Buoyed by her popularity, she got an agent and the agent got her a record deal. For eight recorded songs, she got $400, which she was very excited about, but she knew she could not live off of that forever. So she also started going to music clubs and bars that had musical acts. She would basically ask if she could play when the billed musicians were on their breaks. She would just play for tips while other people were having downtime. Then she got a lead on a piano player opening at a club called The Madhouse and she went for an audition. The club wanted a male player, but when Gladys showed up, they let her play a set and the audience really loved her. And she said that after her first song, a

• 18:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  white man handed her a $5 tip and said, quote, "Please play something else. We don't care what it is. Just play. You're terrific." Bentley was hired on the spot, making $35 a week. In those early days, she went by the stage name Barbara Minton or Bobby, and her act became so popular that she drew huge and diverse crowds. Black and white customers alike flooded into the club. Her pay was soon raised to $125 a week plus tips. She was such a draw that the club changed its name to Barbara's Exclusive Club so that everybody in the city knew where to find her. A 1949 write-up by Bill Chase for the New York Age recalling the exclusive club

• 19:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  noted, quote, "The dynamite Gladys Bentley used to draw celebrities like flies to syrup."

• 19:33Holly Frey?

  From there, Gladys got bookings all around Harlem, including a long run at a place called The Clam House. This was a very well-known speakeasy that catered to the queer community, although straight people also flock to it just to hear Gladys's shows. And she started making a lot of money because, as Tracy just said, she appealed to audiences across just about every demographic. As a consequence, she was able to move into a luxury apartment on Park Avenue, and she had a full staff there. She also talked about driving a very nice car. For a while, she had a live-in romantic partner named Beatrice Robert. In 1932, celebrated black cartoonist E. Sims Campbell,

• 20:15Holly Frey?

  who is on my shortlist, if I can find enough material to research for it, created this gorgeous illustrated map of Harlem's nightlife in pen and brush. And this piece, which is now in the collection of Yale's Beneky Rare Book and Manuscript Library, features as one of the locations, The Clam House. It is labeled as Gladys Clam House, and you can see the performer drawn seated at the piano and playing. And then there's lettering next to this part of the map that reads, "Gladys Bentley Wears a Tuxedo and High Hat."

• 20:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  In Walter Winchell's gossip column on Broadway in February 1933, there is just a one-line mention of Gladys, and that reads only, quote, "Gladys Bentley's penthouse on West 54th is so naughty." While there are zero details conveyed about exactly what that means, it indicates that she was well-known enough to make a gossip column with no explainer needed of who she was. She was so popular that she was also getting bookings in midtown Manhattan. But this got her into legal trouble with Harry Hansberry and Nat Palin, who were the owners of The Clam House. They had a multi-year contract with Bentley and had made the club

• 21:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  all about her and her acts, so for her to start taking bookings somewhere else, they said, was a breach of her contract. As legal maneuvering dragged on with this, Gladys took other bookings anyway, and that led to different legal problems.

• 21:44Holly Frey?

  In 1934, Gladys was performing at a club in midtown Manhattan known as King's Terrace. She had several drag queens performing with her as backup singers, and she performed songs with lyrics that some audience members found quite shocking. One song that she sang pretty often was a riff on the song "Alice's Blue Gown", which was written by Joseph McCarthy and Harry Tierney for the musical Irene. And while the original song is a very sweet and innocent number about a dress that is Alice Blue, inspired by the color of a dress worn by Alice Roosevelt. If you want to hear the original, there's a beautiful Judy Garland recording. But Gladys's version switched up the lyrics to make this song about anal sex.

• 22:29Holly Frey?

  And she would often encourage the audience to sing along with her, which a lot of people did, and they loved this irreverent act. But some of them were downright scandalized, and they reported Gladys to the authorities. This was the year immediately following the end of prohibition. And as police were no longer kept busy trying to hunt down illicit alcohol operations, they turned their attention to the perceived problem of indecency. And that meant that they started raiding gay clubs and clubs where gay people performed. So King's Terrace became a target.

• 23:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  One newspaper article about this opens with kind of a run-on sentence. Quote, "With the New York City New Deal and City Government, under the aegis of Mayor Fiorella H. LaGuardia, comes at last the secret police campaign to clean up the nightlife and cabaret entertainment that was revealed Thursday when Harold L. Allen, Second Deputy Police Commissioner, ordered almost 30 managers and entertainers to appear before him to explain irregularities ranging from violation of the curfew to presentation of lewd entertainment."

• 23:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  And so reform came at last, as it must to all, one supposes, to Gladys Bentley, race entertainer at the King's Terrace.

• 23:49Holly Frey?

  So this article went on to quote Harold L. Allen describing what police saw when they raided the club. Quote, "We have received complaints that the entertainment in certain places is vile, and we have investigated. I am not easily shocked, but some of these shows are certainly vile and they should not continue." So he talked about the various clubs that had been investigated, and then he described Gladys's act. Quote, "Following a commonplace song, Gladys Bentley begins a number entitled, 'There's a Hell of a Situation Up at Yale,' which is followed by a scene worthy of a Northwestern stag lumber camp song fest. A chorus of eight liberally painted male sepians with effeminate voices and gestures

• 24:34Holly Frey?

  assisted the singer in throwing this piece of filth at a blushing audience. The chorus men were dressed in vivid satin pajamas, only slightly less extreme than the colors of their faces. The chief and filthiest offering of the evening, however, is a personal tour of the tables by Miss Bentley. At each table, she stopped to sing one or more verses of a seemingly endless song in which every word known to vulgar profanity is used." This sounds like the parents in Footloose that don't want dancing to happen. He's just so worked up. Allen then stated that the entertainment was so offensive that some of the audience

• 25:17Holly Frey?

  left, and also mentioned that Gladys and her dancers accepted drinks from patrons, and described this as something that would normally happen in what he called "lower-class clubs." King's Terrace was shut down by the police. They literally put a padlock on the door to prevent anyone from entering. They, of course, were invoking the Wales Padlock Act. Incidentally, just for clarity, because you might be wondering, the issue with the song, "There's a Hell of a Situation Up at Yale," was that that song is about masturbation.

• 25:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gladys continued to live her life openly, although for a while she was back to only playing in Harlem. She booked a long run at the Ubangi Club at the corner of 131st Street and 7th Avenue. But the white crowds just followed her back to Harlem. She did not seem to change anything about her act or about herself. She even told the press that she had married a white woman in a civil service in New Jersey. That claim has never been verified. The woman's name has never been known. Same-sex marriages would not have been legal. So if Gladys and a woman did get married, if they did find a judge willing to marry them, that almost certainly would have required a deception to suggest that one of them was a man.

• 26:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gladys probably could have pulled that off, but she was also really well-known. So she probably would have been recognized unless it was a really clueless judge who wasn't aware. This one remains kind of a history mystery.

• 26:49Holly Frey?

  Yeah, nobody has ever figured out if there was really a woman, if they had maybe a service that wasn't a legal service, like what may have gone on? Just big question marks. Eventually, that King's Terrace scandal was all but forgotten, and Bentley started getting booked in Midtown again. She headlined at Tondaleo's in Midtown, as well as other venues. She still had her rich alto voice and its range that passed from these low, growly segments to higher trills. She did this cool thing where she would do the higher notes through like a closed mouth, through her teeth, with incredible skill. It was so cool. There's a video we'll talk about later that you can see. Her playing was as good as ever, as she banged out blues numbers.

• 27:34Holly Frey?

  A lot of the songs that she was famous for, maybe surprisingly, in addition to those filthy ones, had lyrics that were about heteronormative relationships. Although less surprisingly, those relationships were not good and they often featured narratives of abuse. For example, in a song called "How Much Can I Stand," she sang the lyrics, "Said I was an angel, he was born to treat me right. Who the devil heard of an angel that gets beat up every night? How much of that stuff can I stand?" In a similar vein, her song called "Worried Blues" includes the lyrics, "What made you menfolk treat us women like you do? I don't want no man that I gotta give my money to."

• 28:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  But songs like that, which she sang from the beginning of her career, continued to be part of her act. As she got more famous, she also got more and more refined from a production value standpoint. She hired somebody else to play the piano while she sang, and the verve of her stage presence started to get a little too smooth around the edges for people. It led to a drop off in crowds. Additionally, as the Great Depression wore on, a lot of clubs started closing, and that was especially true in Harlem. Still, Gladys was still being written about with glowing praise. During her run at Tondalaios, critic Alvin Moses wrote of her, quote, "If there is any name on our morning patrol along the Broadway Rialto

• 28:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  that outrates Gladys Bentley as a draw, you call me up and tell me who is the owner of it."

• 29:07Holly Frey?

  Gladys eventually decided to leave New York, and we will talk about that and the infamous article we referenced at the top of the show after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

• 29:21Speaker 01

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• 29:52Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 30:37Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 32:37Holly Frey?

  As the 1940s wound down, Bentley headed to the West Coast. And while she did get bookings there, the audiences of California were less enthusiastic about her style of presentation and music. Outside of New York, she had the sharp realization that not everyone was as willing to let a performer buck against social norms and basically make that the focus of their act. So she started to tone her act down. And while she still wore men's suit jackets and ties, they were more increasingly paired with skirts instead of trousers. And this wasn't just a matter of aligning with the Los Angeles attitudes toward gender presentation. There was actually a legal element to this because at least at one of the venues she

• 33:22Holly Frey?

  played, which was Joaquin's El Rancho, they had to get a special police permit for her to wear pants onstage. Her billing sometimes also came off as really odd as well, making her seem like a novelty act instead of an accomplished performer. One ad for her run at a venue called The Dollhouse on Ventura Boulevard touted, quote, "The one and only Gladys Bentley. She's fat, tan, and terrific." I would not want that as my billing, but whatever. Her days of doing whatever she pleased in terms of her gender expression and identity really did seem to be coming to a close, and her career was faltering.

• 34:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  In August of 1952, an article written by Gladys appeared in Ebony magazine with the title, "I Am a Woman Again." Also fascinating and also troubling read, kind of a roller coaster of a narrative in which she shares the story of her early life and her problems with her family and her rise to fame. And then it describes what she calls "the miracle that made her a woman," writing that it, quote, "came about when I discovered and accepted the love and tenderness and true devotion of a man who loved me unselfishly and whose love I could return, the awakening in me of the womanliness I tried to suppress."

• 34:44Holly Frey?

  So Bentley's account describes a man who she names only as Dawn that she met through friends and found that she had feelings for. She described being confused and scared about these feelings and not knowing what to do with them, but also knowing that she wanted to marry him and he was also very obviously interested in her. And she describes reading about how if you are feeling doubt about being with someone you truly love, that you have left God out of the union. This was in like a religious book that she had. And she also says that all of this concern led her to visit a doctor. She went to that appointment wanting, she said, to talk about her weight, but when the doctor gave her

• 35:27Holly Frey?

  a full examination, she described feeling relieved because that was what she actually wanted. And this doctor told her that she had a developmental issue with her sex organs and he started her on a course of thrice weekly, quote, "injection of female hormones." And that, she said, finally overcame the male hormones in her body. And then, she said, she felt free to get married to a man.

• 35:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  This article has a lot going on beyond that. After she describes this miracle, she starts the next paragraph by saying flatly that her marriage to Dawn did not last, but that she got married again. Quote, "Today I am happily married and I hope and pray this marriage will last," to J.T. Gibson, well-known West Coast theatrical columnist. This is where it gets even wilder. The Ebony article must have actually come out to news stands in July. A lot of publications put out their monthly issues. In this case, the August issue, they actually dropped the month prior. Because not only did J.T. Gibson die

• 36:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  in July of 1952, but one of his friends, photographer Maseo Sheffield, gave a statement to the press, saying that Gibson was really angry about this article because it was not true. According to Sheffield, one of the last things Gibson said to him was, quote, "I am not and have never been married to Gladys Bentley. I'm going to sue The Blank magazine for publishing a story stating that I am her husband in that confession article of hers." And then Gibson was found dead in a friend's car a few hours after this conversation. He had parked and then he had an aneurysm rupture while he was getting out of the vehicle.

• 37:17Holly Frey?

  So this denial of the marriage is also a mystery because Gibson was dead and we cannot verify Sheffield's account. And that account is problematic for a couple of reasons. So, one, it first appeared in a Hollywood gossip column written by Harry Levitt. Then it got kind of picked up and repeated in a lot of places, but that was the earliest mention I could find. And two, Maseo Sheffield was a very problematic figure. It's sort of interesting that he's described as a photographer in every reference to him because he was a disgraced LAPD detective who then transitioned into the film industry and became an actor.

• 37:58Holly Frey?

  He also produced a few films, but photography never appears in his professional credits. He was actually charged with murder in 1927 when he raided a home on a tip of illicit alcohol and he shot a young man named Samuel Faulkner there, which sparked protests in the city. Sheffield was tried for that murder but acquitted. Several LAPD cops who testified against him lost their jobs. And soon after Sheffield also left the force to pursue a film career. So we don't know if he just managed to somehow get out from under that if people didn't realize that he was that detective that had been part of that scandal.

• 38:41Holly Frey?

  So we don't know, was Sheffield just trying to get his name in the paper with his claim about JT Gibson's denial of a marriage to Gladys? The alternative there is that Gladys did lie in her story, which was printed in a very large publication. Or there's also the possibility that she and Gibson had some sort of understanding that Sheffield either didn't know about or that he was trying to posthumously distance his friend from Gladys for some reason. We are never going to know, but just know that there's a whole lot of murkiness around this whole part of her story.

• 39:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to all of the writing about her life, this multi-page article also included a number of photos of Gladys. She wasn't in her tuxedo or dapper suits anymore. She's in a dress in every picture. And some of them, she's shown with other well-known musicians, including Louis Armstrong. The other photos, though, show her doing domestic chores typically associated with women. Each of them has a short caption about the activity that's being featured, and then an additional piece of information. So one of them reads, quote, "Taste-testing dinner she has prepared for husband JT Gibson. Miss Bentley enjoys domestic role which she shunned for years.

• 39:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  She lives in modest, tastefully-appointed home directly in rear of similar home she purchased for her mother." In another photo, she's making the bed. And then yet another, she's selecting jewelry. There are no pictures of either of the husbands that she mentioned in this piece.

• 40:19Holly Frey?

  So this entire article seems like such a departure from the life Gladys Bentley lived in the years prior that it seems confusing and almost shocking. But this is also an instance where context really, really matters. This article came out in the middle of the lavender scare when homosexuality was not just seen as deviant, it was criminalized. In 1947, five years before Bentley shared this story in Ebony, the US Park Police, which is part of the National Park Service, had instituted a sex perversion elimination program. And there was also legislation introduced in Congress that labeled homosexuals as sexual psychopaths.

• 41:03Holly Frey?

  Most of these laws targeted gay men, but somebody like Gladys, who was a very well-known and very out lesbian performer, wasn't going to fly under the radar in a country that was gripped by this misguided notion that same-sex attraction was criminal and dangerous. Most modern queer scholars and historians, when looking at this article and thinking about all of its nuance, see it as an effort on Gladys Bentley's part to straightwash her reputation to try to save her music career.

• 41:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, this was really, I mean, we've talked about like laws about obscenity and earlier laws about things like crossdressing. But this was a time when more queer people were becoming more visible and there was a big backlash against that. So like, as a movement for equal rights was growing and developing, like, there was just an onslaught of laws and social mores and all of that that she would have been targeted by.

• 42:04Holly Frey?

  Yeah, and a lot of people willing to stoke fear of anyone who was not heteronormative.

• 42:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. In September of 1952, Gladys got married again, and this time there were pictures. Her new husband was Charles Roberts, a 28-year-old cook from Sacramento. Gladys was 45 at the time. Newspaper reports said that they had been dating for only five months, and if that's the case, that means that they were seeing each other while she claimed that she was married to her second husband. But also, we just don't have a lot of information about Charles or about their life together, and so that has led to some speculation that it too might have been for show.

• 42:43Holly Frey?

  In the 1950s, Gladys wrote a book about her life titled If This Be Sin, but it was never published, and there doesn't appear to be a surviving manuscript. In that article, there is also a photograph of her typing on a typewriter, allegedly working on this book. She mentioned the book in that same You Bet Your Life appearance that we mentioned at the top of the show, and Bentley also played piano on that program as she sang Them Their Eyes. And you can find this video online. It is so clear why she was a beloved performer. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only actual footage that we have of her performing. Her presence and her energy, just incredibly compelling.

• 43:26Holly Frey?

  Her vocal style and the way she phrased the verses with her breath was really unique. She would sing lines in this sort of staccato style with each word, given its own very brief, punchy moment. It is 100% easy to see why people would have flocked to her shows.

• 43:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  At the beginning of February 1960, Gladys got a cold, and that quickly got worse. She developed pneumonia, and she died at home on February the 8th. She was only 52. Her obituary mentions that she lived with her mother. No husband was mentioned as next of kin. So we don't really know what happened regarding her third marriage. When her mother Mary died six years later, she was buried next to Gladys.

• 44:12Holly Frey?

  I love Gladys.

• 44:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Holly Frey?

  I have so much to talk about on Friday.

• 44:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Holly Frey?

  Uh, but right now I have listener mail that's not about anything this serious at all, but I love it so much. It's not even really about history.

• 44:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 44:26Holly Frey?

  It's about Bluey.

• 44:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I know this email. I read it this morning and was delighted. I'm excited for people to hear it now.

• 44:35Holly Frey?

  I love it. It also validates some feelings I've had about Bluey and real estate for a while. This is from our listener Ian who writes, hi ladies. In a recent behind the scenes episode, one of you mentioned you like watching Bluey as escapism. Listen, I watched it this morning while I had coffee. This letter continues, so I thought you might find this new story from 2020 interesting. A real estate agent who must have watched too many Bluey episodes, no such things, with their kids realized that the Bluey or Heeler family home is a Queenslander style house. It has at least 15 rooms, has a massive backyard with a full sized tree in it, and is in a major suburb of Brisbane. They calculated the Heeler family home would be worth at least $4 million Australian.

• 45:19Holly Frey?

  That's about US 2.8 million. Listen, that was six years ago. I bet it's worth a lot more now. Queenslander style of home was developed in tropical Queensland, Australia in the age before air conditioning. They're made out of wood. They have wraparound verandas to keep sun out and improve cooling, and they are elevated off the ground to provide extra cooling and avoid flooding. For a while, you could have stayed in the real Bluey house. A real Queenslander home was decorated as the Heeler family home and was available on Airbnb. But I think that home has now become a regular family home. Lucky family. Whilst we are at it, Peppa Pig is another TV show which has been popular in Australia. There was however, one episode which was not played on Australian TV.

• 46:02Holly Frey?

  In it, Peppa told her friends that spiders cannot hurt you. This episode was not banned. It is just that ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, decided it was not a good idea to show this episode in a country where spiders can actually hurt you. As for Pet Tax, I have attached a couple of pictures of our cat, Trim, and our dog, Ringo. Ringo sadly died of old age over a year ago. In one picture, you have Trim cuddling up to Ringo. The other picture, you have Ringo next to a statue of the original Trim, who was Matthew Flinders' cat and was the first cat to circumnavigate Australia. Thanks for keeping me going at the gym, Ian. Okay, I love everything about this email.

• 46:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Holly Frey?

  I also love this cat and dog. They are the cutest things on the planet.

• 46:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Holly Frey?

  That dog, I just know that dog got kissed on the snoot 27 times a day minimum. Well deserved.

• 46:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think Peppa Pig is a British show. I don't know.

• 46:58Holly Frey?

  Is it?

• 46:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  But like, but I don't know. First, but like, there are also spiders that can hurt you in North America.

• 47:06Holly Frey?

  Yeah, Peppa Pig's huge here. I don't think it's ever been.

• 47:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  I would say that there are more spiders that can hurt you worse in Australia.

• 47:15Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I mean, but most house spiders are.

• 47:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Most spiders you're gonna see are fine.

• 47:22Holly Frey?

  Listen, I live with a

• 47:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  In North America.

• 47:25Holly Frey?

  Significant level arachnophobe, so I understand the fear of spiders, even though

• 47:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Holly Frey?

  I love them. It's my job to corral them and escort them outside.

• 47:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  I do not dislike them, but I do know what black widows and brown recluses look like, and those are the kinds that live in places I have lived.

• 47:45Holly Frey?

  Yeah. You are right. Peppa Pig is British, by the way. You could tell that that's a show I've never glommed onto.

• 47:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I have no idea what the venomous spider situation is in Britain.

• 47:54Holly Frey?

  Uh, it isn't. I think that's what's up. To the best of my knowledge, I don't think they have any dangerous ones, but I could be wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong, anybody. If you wanna correct me. You can do that in an email.

• 48:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  If British listeners want to write in about whether there are venomous spiders.

• 48:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I feel like I have heard a factoid that they don't have them, but I may have a false memory. If you want to correct us, you can do that at [email protected]. If you want to look up our show notes, see any of the articles, papers, et cetera, that got used for this episode and any other, you can find those at missedinhistory.com.

• 48:36Holly Frey?

  We also would love it if you would subscribe to the show. You can do that on the iHeart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.

• 48:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 49:03Speaker 07

  Hey folks, it's Matt Altman.

• 49:05Speaker 08

  And Joel Larsgaard from the How To Money Podcast.

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• 50:44Speaker 11

  Hello?

• 50:45Speaker 12

  Hey, it's me, your wallet.

• 50:47Speaker 11

  Oh, hey.

• 50:48Speaker 12

  I was just wondering if we could maybe take it easy this week?

• 50:51Speaker 11

  Absolutely.

• 50:52Speaker 12

  Really?

• 50:52Speaker 11

  Yep. I'm shopping at Food Lion.

• 50:54Speaker 12

  Wait, you mean low prices?

• 50:56Speaker 11

  And MVP savings.

• 50:58Speaker 12

  Oh, you do care.

• 51:00Speaker 11

  Obviously.

• 51:01Speaker 12

  Okay, I feel better.

• 51:02Speaker 11

  Good. Now, let's go get some snacks.

• 51:06Speaker 13

  At Food Lion, low prices and MVP savings make it easier to shop for what you need without spending more than you have to. When your wallet needs a little TLC, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.