Ed Limato was a razzle-dazzle agent who provided “the bridge between old-time Hollywood and Hollywood present”, according to his client Richard Gere. Decades earlier, Limato had been a confidant to the drag queens and “femme illusionists” who frequented New York’s underground joints such as 82 Club and the Cork Club in the 1950s and 60s, back when it was perilous and even illegal to cross-dress in public, and bars could be shut down if caught serving alcohol to a man in makeup. The queens, who labelled themselves the Boomatzas, wrote to Limato in fluent drag lingo, spilling the tea about what they had mopped, the current state of trade and the secrets of their pancake scene – terms that won’t need unpacking for gen Z readers raised on drag brunches, RuPaul and Paris Is Burning.
Four years after Limato’s death in 2010, these letters were found by Craig Olsen; he went on to produce the 2020 documentary P.S. Burn This Letter Please, which used new interviews with the surviving correspondents to create a moving portrait of the pre-Stonewall era where sisterhood flourished in the face of ubiquitous police brutality. Having helped bring the stories to life cinematically, Olsen now returns them to the page. He structures this version as a literary detective story, eliding any mention of the film so that we appear to be reading about how he researched this book – though it wasn’t proposed until after the movie’s premiere. As he tells it, his quest into New York’s drag herstory is inflamed by the memory of how Limato had once reacted angrily to a Polaroid of Olsen dressed as a woman. What was the old bird hiding? “I was determined to have my questions answered.” Fortunately for him, Limato lends the project his blessing from beyond the grave. “You found them, kid,” Olsen imagines him saying after he discovers the letters. “You found them!”
It’s revealing to see the letters reprinted here, with florid cursive handwriting or inky typed lines on evocatively creased pages. Snaps of the queens in their finery, along with the clubs’ flyers and promotional postcards, add to the effect. Less persuasive is the author’s habit of interrupting the narrative with his own experiences of coming out and dressing in drag, or his special brand of analysis. “Her tender references in the letter below to ‘much kissing and holding hands’… tells us she is looking for real connection at a deeper level,” he offers needlessly after one excerpt.
The star of the story is Michael Alogna, AKA Daphne, whose Italian father collected her from the police station after she was arrested one time, and berated her when he realised she was a “Suzie”. Daphne is initially reluctant to revisit the old days until Olsen woos her with martinis and self-help mantras. “I looked into her eyes and encouraged her not to be ashamed of her past but to own it!” he gushes, signalling a fondness for exclamation marks that would make a teen diarist seem austere.
Over the next 200 pages, we meet the rest of these tender, acerbic, resilient Boomatzas, including Josephine (so-called because of the name tattooed on her back in tribute to Josephine Baker). When they aren’t earning a buck from sex work, the queens perform for a largely heterosexual and often star-studded crowd; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the Kennedys and Judy Garland are among those in attendance.
We learn about the influx of mob money into drag clubs; the extraordinary mafia wife Anna Genovese, owner of the 82 Club (where queens dominated the stage while the waiters were all women dressed as men), who made it possible for one queen, Terry Noel, to undergo hormone therapy and later gender affirmation surgery; about Josephine and a friend snatching 33 wigs from the Metropolitan Opera House; about Salvador Dalí sending sketches backstage to his favourite performer, who consigned them all to the bin. Some tales will be new even to those familiar with the film, such as the reign of “the Ripper”, who snipped holes in rivals’ dresses and mixed crushed glass into their makeup. That was small beer compared with the legitimised oppression that led to regular police raids, and even to Josephine ending up on a chain gang.
But too often, we are distracted from the subject by hectoring asides (“Forward-thinking people who seek information and enact change know that education is the key to understanding”) and eccentric prose (“The tears she produced fell from her eyes”). As Esther Newton’s 1972 work Mother Camp demonstrated, there are vital, vibrant stories crying out to be told from the history of the drag scene, especially now that it faces a resurgence of bigotry and hostility. Olsen, however, is not always the most reliable courier for them. The mystery he establishes at the start of the book – Limato’s later aversion to drag – isn’t solved so much as fudged. One moment the veteran agent is lambasting him for dressing as a woman, the next he is styling him as Marilyn Monroe. Olsen credits himself with reconnecting Limato to his youthful enthusiasms. “He wanted me to do drag!” he cries triumphantly. It was because of him that Limato “made peace with his past and started to accept femininity again … ” Is that what you call a #humbledrag?
• P.S. Burn This Letter Please: The Fabulous and Fraught Birth of Modern Drag, in the Queens’ Own Words is published by Sphere (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
