Since it’s Pride month, this week’s morning open threads will highlight the struggle and accomplishments of the LGBTQ community.
Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960)was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance.
Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry’s Clam House in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem’s Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men’s clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience.
On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Player” and the “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs”. She was frequently harassed for wearing men’s clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been “cured” by taking female hormones.
For two or three amazing years, Miss Bentley sat, and played piano all night long … with scarcely a break between the notes, sliding from one song to another, with a powerful and continuous underbeat of jungle rhythm. Miss Bentley was an amazing exhibition of musical energy – a large, dark, masculine lady, whose feet pounded the floor while her fingers pounded the keyboard – a perfect piece of African sculpture, animated by her own rhythm.
On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Player” and the “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs”. She tried to continue her musical career by playing in a number of gay nightspots but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. As times progressed and federal laws continued to change, there became a point where Bentley had to carry special permits to allow her to perform in men’s clothing. She was frequently harassed for wearing men’s clothing. She claimed that she had married a white woman in Atlantic City. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era, she started wearing dresses and married (within five months of meeting) Charles Roberts, age 28, a cook, in a civil ceremony in Santa Barbara, California, in 1952. Roberts later denied that they had ever married.
On May 15, 1958 she appeared as a contestant on You Bet Your Life, engaging in discussion with host Groucho Marx before accompanying herself on piano as she sang Them There Eyes.
Bentley also studied to be a minister, claiming to have been “cured” by taking female hormones. In an effort to describe her supposed “cure” for homosexuality she wrote an essay, “I Am a Woman Again”, for Ebony magazine in which she stated she had undergone an operation, which “helped change her life again”.
In 1933, Bentley found herself in the middle of a Supreme Court battle with Harry Hansberry and Nat Palein. Hansberry and Palein sued Bentley to prohibit her from taking her musical to the Broadway division. Hansberry insisted that the club had been built around the popularity of Bentley’s success and that he owned a five-year contract over Bentley and her raunchy songs. The duo insisted that Bentley left them high and dry at the rise of the club and wanted to pursue other interests that she could financially benefit from.
In 1931, Bentley had a public marriage to a white woman during a civil ceremony in New Jersey whose identity remains unknown. When she relocated to Los Angeles, she married J. T. Gipson, who died in 1952, the same year in which she married Charles Roberts, a cook in Los Angeles; they were married in Santa Barbara, California, went on a honeymoon in Mexico, and had a five-month-long courtship before their divorce. Roberts denied ever marrying her.
Bentley died of pneumonia unexpectedly at her home in Los Angeles on January 18, 1960, aged 52 It was initially believed to be the Asian flu but later turned into “pneumonia.” At the time of her death, she had been more involved in the church and had just been ordained as a minister despite never getting her official paperwork.
Aside from her musical talent and success, Bentley is a significant and inspiring figure for the LGBT community and African Americans, and she was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance. She was revolutionary in her masculinity: “Differing from the traditional male impersonator, or drag king, in the popular theater, Gladys Bentley did not try to ‘pass’ as a man, nor did she playfully try to deceive her audience into believing she was biologically male. Instead, she exerted a ‘black female masculinity’ that troubled the distinctions between black and white and masculine and feminine”.
Fictional characters based on Bentley appeared in Carl Van Vechten’s novel Parties, Clement Woods’ novel Deep River, and Blair Niles’ novel Strange Brother.
In 2019, The New York Times newspaper began a series called “Overlooked No More,” in which the editorial staff aims to correct a longstanding bias in reporting by republishing obituaries for historical minorities and women.Bentley was one of the featured obituaries in Overlooked No More.