Already a big girl, her parents and siblings saw this masculine turn as shamefully unladylike, while her classmates teased her at school. When she brought little Gladys home, she refused to nurse the girl, leaving Bentleys grandmother to raise the infant on a bottle for six months. While performing at the Manhattan nightclub Kings Terrace, the masculine garbed smut-singing entertainer, as one audience member put it, quickly got the authorities to shut the whole place down with her performance. Gladys Bentley Death: and Cause of Death On January 18, 1960, Gladys Bentley died of non-communicable disease. It wouldnt be long before she shot to fame. For many years, I lived in a personal hell, she wrote. This article reflects that. James T. Wilson, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010); Irene Monroe, Honoring Notorious Gladys, The Huffington Post Blog (February 12, 2010), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/honoring-notorious-gladys_b_459929.html; http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Bentley/BentleyBio.html. 1,242 likes, 52 comments - Gladys Bentley Society (@gladysbentleysoc) on Instagram: "This incredible human is a living testament to the power of faith, will, resilience, and service . She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line . The 1950s were even more conservative than the early part of the 20th century. Your Scrapbook is currently empty. [26], In 2019, The New York Times newspaper began a series called "Overlooked No More," in which the editorial staff aims to correct a perceived bias in reporting by republishing obituaries for historical minorities and women. Sean Harris. She'd been lying about her age to conceal the fact that she was four years older than Vernon Presley. Inevitably, even the vaunted Ubangi club closed its doors in 1937, kicking Bentley out along with its regular clientele. Gladys Bentley, one of the most flamboyant blues entertainers of the 20th century, began performing in New York City as a singer and male impersonator. Gladys died of a heart attack and liver failure caused by excessive alcohol consumption. The after-theater club near Broadway was where a troupe of liberally painted male sepians with effeminate voices and gestures performed behind entertainer Gladys Bentley, who was no less provocative for early 20th-century America. The rumored marriage had all the makings of an early 20th-century scandalBentley claimed that not only was it a same-sex civil ceremony, but that the union was between herself and a white woman. Actor Lamont Bentley, Known for Sitcom Role, Dies in Freeway Crash Are you sure that you want to report this flower to administrators as offensive or abusive? But she still had one more legacy left. There is 1 volunteer for this cemetery. Please try again later. She began to resent her brothers and didnt want men to touch her, yet she also started wearing boys clothes and suits instead of skirts and blouses, partly in a bid to emulate who her mother wanted her to be. I think not only of the performative side but that Bentley was a working woman, says Reece, who described a letter in the collection which shows that Bentley reprimanded a club owner who failed to pay her. Bentley became an active member of the "Temple of Love In Christ" Church and was on her way to becoming an ordained minister at the time of her death from pneumonia at the age of 52. She was the oldest of four children and, in her own words, neither wanted nor loved, because her mother had wanted a boy and was bitterly disappointed. Historys most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily. [11] She mostly played the blues and parodies of popular songs of the time: "mocking 'high' class imagery with 'low' class humor, she applied aspects of the sexually charged 'black' blues to demure, romantic 'white' ballads, creating a culture clash between these two music forms". Names. Her mother had desperately wanted a boy, and when the nurses told her she had a little girl instead, the matriarch refused to even touch her baby. [22] Gibson denied ever marrying her.[23]. The timing of her downturn in health spurred theories that Gladys drank herself to death, wracked with worry and suffering from a broken heart while her son was serving overseas in Germany. He was inconsolable as he sank to his knees beside his mother's bed. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate, or jump to a slide with the slide dots. In the end, the booming, bodacious, and vivacious singer succumbed to the relatively common ailment of pneumonia, which came on quickly and didnt let her go. The Great Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke All the Rules
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