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Bert Savoy Research Project 4

Bert Savoy was a pioneering American drag queen and vaudeville performer in the late 19th/early 20th century. He began his career touring with the famous drag duo The Rodgers Brothers, developing a campy and slapstick drag style. Savoy went on to perform across the US in vaudeville circuits with his partner Jay Brennan. Their daring and hilarious Broadway acts in the 1910s-1920s brought them great success and helped inspire Mae West's early persona. Sadly, Savoy's life was cut short when he and a friend were struck and killed by lightning on the beach in 1923 while jokingly scolding God about the weather.

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Henry O'Connell
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102 views4 pages

Bert Savoy Research Project 4

Bert Savoy was a pioneering American drag queen and vaudeville performer in the late 19th/early 20th century. He began his career touring with the famous drag duo The Rodgers Brothers, developing a campy and slapstick drag style. Savoy went on to perform across the US in vaudeville circuits with his partner Jay Brennan. Their daring and hilarious Broadway acts in the 1910s-1920s brought them great success and helped inspire Mae West's early persona. Sadly, Savoy's life was cut short when he and a friend were struck and killed by lightning on the beach in 1923 while jokingly scolding God about the weather.

Uploaded by

Henry O'Connell
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Bert Savoy was a

legendary vaudeville performer, singer,


actor, artist, and most notable one of the
first famous American drag queens.
Savoy was born Everett Mckenxze
around 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Savoy is said to have coined the
phrases “You don't know the half of it.”
and "You slay me.” There is almost
nothing published about Savoy's early
life and not much on his career as a
whole. His career-long acting partner,
Jay Brennan, was his executor at his
time of death and lost all legal records.
Like many other stars of the time,
Savoy's story lives on mainly in rumors,
legends, and scandals that made him
the icon he was.

While there is little documentation of Bert


Savoy's training in the arts, he is said to
have

received his foundation in vaudeville touring with


then famous vaudeville drag duo, The Rodgers
Brothers. The Rodgers Brothers starred in several
Broadway shows such as “The Rodgers Brothers
in Paris” and “The Rodgers Brothers in
Washington”. In their performances, they took a
far different route than some more mainstream
female impersonators of the time. Instead of
working to perfect their female voice
impersonations and glamorous costumes, they
threw themselves around the stage performing
campy slapstick routines that are often compared
to people's Magazines “Drag Queen of the
Century”, Divine.
Savoy toured vaudeville
circuits across the U.S.,
honing his drag act from the
mid-1890s through the
mid-1910s. At least one arrest
record still exists citing
“cross-dressing” as Savoy's
offense. He soon joined forces
with “straight” comedian Jay
Brennan. Within a few years,
Brennan and Savoy were
taking Broadway *by storm*.
Savoy's drag was daring,
naughty, and hilarious. His
rival at this time, well-known
female impersonator Julian
Eldrige, had risen to be a
mainstream performer with his
lethargic portrayals of
“realistic and glamorous
women” and his straight
offstage persona. Eldrige
stared in The Crinoline Girl,
The Fascinating Widow, and
Cousin Lucy on Broadway. In
almost every performance he
would go out of his way to
demonstrate his straightness,
before being forced into a
dress and wig through some
twisted plot point or another.
Unlike Eldridge, Savoy didn't
settle away from stereotypes,
he used them. He burst onto
the stage in full drag to
perform song after song,
shouting out a quip a second
to Brennan.
Strangely, while Savoy was seemingly
unafraid of appearing gay onstage and
off, he
still opted for a lavender marriage to
designer Anna Kremhker in 1905. The
marriage ended abruptly in 1923 when
Kremhker filed for divorce. Around this
time, Savoy and Brennan’s careers
took off. They performed in Miss 1917,
the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, and The
Greenwich Follies of 1922 to almost
entirely rave
reviews. In their
act, Savoy would
don a vibrant red
wig, and the most
fashionable gowns
available and strut,
prance, and mostly
stomp around the
stage telling stories
of her dear, and at
times raunchy,
friend Margie to a
debonair Brennan. Savoy's act is said to have inspired Mae West’s
early on-stage persona.

At the height of Savoy's career, on June 26, 1923, he was


wandering down the coast with his good friend and dancer, Jack
Grossman/Vincent, and several others, in the height of a heatwave.
Suddenly the weather changed and as thunder rumbled overhead
Savoy rested his hands on his hips and said “Well, ain’t Miss God
cuttin’ up somethin’ fierce. That’ll be quite enough out of you, Miss
God!” In that very instant with a clap of thunder and a flash of
lighting Savoy and Grossman were struck dead. Luckily, their
friends were unharmed and went on to tell the legendary, and
certainly an unexaggerated story.

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