The Velvet Inquisition

Abstract

Abstract With the Depression, the rise of the Soviet Union, and Nazification underway, reactionary panic amplified antigay, anti-drag fervor in the United States during the 1930s. Julian Eltinge had never been especially political, and when he was, he tilted rightward. But he was forced to oppose a crackdown on drag artists in Los Angeles. The stage had literally been set for public uproar over drag thanks in part to the trials of Mae West and her depictions of the backstage lives of transvestic entertainers. West, who had written the controversial plays Sex (1926) and The Drag (1927), was arrested for Pleasure Man in 1928. Eltinge, running out of money, launched an artists’ retreat and resort but it foundered amid a faltering economy. A single talkie, Maid to Order (1931), did nothing for him. After a residency at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe in New York, Eltinge passed away in March 1941.