Remembering the Cockettes

The Cockettes, the way-out San Francisco performance troope 1969-1972 features lots of drag, cross-dressing and dressing up.   Two of its members, Dahlia McGowan and Bobbi Cameron later transitioned. 

Sylvester James was also a member .   He went on to be a disco star and is especially remembered for "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", but remained faithful to his drag heritage until his death from AIDS at age 41.

Dahlia, despite being an alumna from the American Conservatory Theatre, had to work as a stripper after surgery.  She married, but her husband died in a bike accident.

Bobbi was in  two of the Cockettes films: she played the lead role in Tricia’s Wedding, 1971, and was Cynthia in Elevator Girls in Bondage, 1972.   She was then in Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult movie The Holy Mountain, and was assistant to actress Judy Carne.    Finally, after surgery she married either a cop or a dentist in Las Vegas, and became the lead showgirl at the Tropicano.

Here is a photograph of Bobbi.

courtesy of Clay Geerdes

This is found of p327 of new luscious 50-year anniversary tribute to the troope, which has lots of pictures, and cuttings, and even more pictures.

• Fayette Hauser. The Cockettes—Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy, 1969-1972. Process Media, 2020. 

Dahlia McGowan (195?–) performer

There were two members of the Cockettes, the early 1970s San Francisco psychedelic drag troupe, who completed the journey to womanhood. We have already discussed Bobbi Cameron.

The other was Dahlia McGowan who looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor. She won a scholarship to study acting at the American Conservatory Theater. Bambi Lake describes her as funny and sweet.

After surgery she worked as a stripper in the sailor bars in San Diego.

In the 1980s Dahlia married, but her husband died in a bike accident.

Later she returned to Hawai'i to live with her mother.

• Bambi Lake with Alvin Orloff. The Unsinkable Bambi Lake: A Fairy Tale Containing the Dish on Cockettes, Punks, and Angels. San Francisco: Manic D Press, 1996: 48-9.
  

Bobbi Cameron (1953 –) performer.

Toni grew up with three older sisters, and was frequently also taken to be a girl. The parents were embarrassed by this and kept Toni out of school, and locked Toni in the bedroom when relatives came to visit.

At 16 she ran away to San Francisco and joined the psychedelic drag troupe, the Cockettes, where she was known as Bobbi Cameron, sometimes Bobbi Venus. Bambi Lake describes her as looking like a 1930s Vogue magazine evening-gown model; Judy Carne says that she looked like Rita Hayworth.

Bobbi was in two of the Cockettes films: she played the lead role in Tricia’s Wedding, 1971, and was Cynthia in Elevator Girls in Bondage, 1972. Then she was recruited by the Chilean director, Alejandro Jodorowsky for a role in The Holy Mountain, 1973, as the factory girl seduced by Fon, the boss.

Actress Judy Carne visited the set of The Holy Mountain, and befriended Toni, who was already taking female hormones.  Judy accepted to play Sally Bowles in Cabaret in Toronto, and hired Toni as her personal assistant to help with makeup and wardrobe. She discovered that Toni had never learned to read, and taught her how.

Judy took a bad fall and completed the gig singing from a wheelchair. When the show moved to Chicago, she suggested Toni as a replacement for one of the chorus girls who had had to drop out. Toni’s number was ‘Two girls’, but she unfortunately sang it a few octaves too low, and one of the newspapers ran a headline: “In Cabaret, not all the Girls are Ladies”.

 Homophobic catcalls started coming from the audience. Local restaurants refused service to the cast, and their landlord tried to evict them. Judy lost several gigs in the next year or so.

Fon's girl in The Holy Mountain

Toni had genital surgery in Los Angeles. Later she married either a cop or a dentist in Las Vegas, and became the lead showgirl at the Tropicano. It is rumored that she had a brief affair with Sylvester Stallone, and had a small part in Star Trek: The Next Generation.


*Not the Canadian guitarist, nor the Scottish footballer.

•  Alejandro Jodorowsky (dir & scr). The Holy Mountain, with Alejandro Jodorowsky as the alchemist, Bobby Cameron as Fon’s Working Girl. Mexico/US 114 mins 1973.
• Judy Carne with Bob Merrill. Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside: The Bittersweet Saga of the Sock-It-to-Me Girl. New York: Rawson Associates, 1985: 203-6.
• Bambi Lake with Alvin Orloff. The Unsinkable Bambi Lake: A Fairy Tale Containing the Dish on Cockettes, Punks, and Angels. San Francisco: Manic D Press, 1996: 30, 45, 48-9.
• Fayette Hauser. The Cockettes—Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy, 1969-1972. Process Media, 2020: 83, 114, 238, 274, 327,

IMDB   

See also the article on Bobbi's brother Loren, a photographer. 

________________________________________________________________________________

Bambi calls her Bobbi; Judy calls her Toni.   I used Bobbi Cameron as the  title of the article as it is the name used in IMDB.

Judy says that she married a dentist; Bambi that she married a cop.

Hibiscus (1949 – 1982 ) performer.

George Harris Jr was born in Bronxville, Westchester, New York. His family moved to Florida and lost their money in real estate.

On return to New York, child George worked as a model in commercials, and at Caffe Cino and other off-off-Broadway theaters. At 13 he left home to live with an older man, with the understanding of his parents. One of his contacts was Jack Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker who was already cross-dressing his actors.

At 17, George had an offer to drive to California, and arrived in San Francisco in time for the Hippy thing. He grew his hair, became vegetarian and wore robes and headdresses. At midnight on December 31, 1969, The Palace, let him, as Hibiscus, and several others put on a show and the Cockettes were born. They put on periodic reviews using castoff junk for their props, and dressing in drag and as whatever they liked. They attracted the attention of celebrities, and were featured in articles in Rolling Stone and Paris Match.

One night after a performance he came home to find that his apartment building had burned down. He took a break, but on return found that he had been voted out of the group, and that shows were no longer free. He founded a new group, Angels of Light, which did their first performance in Grace Cathedral before the police evicted them. Allen Ginsburg did his first drag with the group and was was Hibiscus’s lover for a while.

Hibiscus left the group and returned to his family in New York, and started an East Coast version of the Angels. They were discovered by Swiss choreographer, Maurice Bejart who financed a European tour.

He died of AIDS at age 33.

• Mark Thompson. “Children of Paradise: A Brief History of Queens”. In Mark Thompson (ed). Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987: 61-8.
• “Hibiscus (entertainer)”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_%28entertainer%29.

Sylvester James (1947 – 1988) singer.

Sylvester was raised in Los Angeles. He was encouraged to sing by his grand-mother, the 1920s-1930s jazz singer, Julia Morgan, and he became a child gospel star singing in churches all over southern California and beyond.

However he fell out with his parents and ran away at 16. He lived on the streets in Los Angeles, and moved on to San Francisco in 1967. He performed in drag as Ruby Blue, singing Billie Holliday and the other women blues singers.

He became part of the San Francisco radical drag troupe The Cockettes and is in two of their films, Luminous Procuress and Tricia’s Wedding, both 1971. He also taught them to sing. He also played a female impersonator in the Bette Midler retelling of the life of Janis Joplin, The Rose, 1979.

As a rock singer he had limited success, even though the albums were dance oriented. He found fame as a disco and Hi-NRG singer. He is best known for singing the disco classic "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". Sylvester appeared on the Joan Rivers show in 1986 and talked about his husband Rick, and showed off his wedding ring.

He reacted to pressure from the record label to butch-up his image by attending meetings in drag. He went public when he was diagnosed with AIDS. And attended Pride events in a wheelchair. He died from complications from AIDS at the age of 41. A drag photo-shoot, which he staged as a gag provided the cover for his posthumous album, Immortal, 1989.

• Paul Oremland (dir). The Rhythm Divine: The Story of Disco. US 55 mins 1991.
• David Weissman & Bill Weber (dir). The Cockettes. US 100 mins 2001.
• Tim Smyth (dir). Sylvester: Mighty Real. US 11 mins 2002.
• Joshua Gamson. The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco. New York: Henry Holt and Co. 2005.
• Kevin E. Taylor. “Sylvester: A revolution recorded, televised & never compromised”. Gay Men of African Descent. www.gmad.org/Sylvester.htm.
• “Sylvester James”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_James.
• www.sylstar.net.