Gender Bending in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

by Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

Check out those bloomers!

We have a fantastic set of glass plate images in our collection of a group of friends or family in the early 20th century who seem to have been having a lot of fun swapping clothes. The men are dressed in skirts, women's hats, cloaks, accessories, and even some underpinnings. The women are in pants, men's hats, and even sport some fake facial hair. All in all, this group with their party scenes, complete with alcohol, counter some of people's preconceived notions about gender in the Gilded Age and Progressive eras. In a time we often assume is overrun with Victorian prudery, people played with gender norms and performance. The main way this manifested was in female impersonation. To be clear, this is not the same as our modern understanding of being transgender, gay, or a drag queen. Female impersonation, as discussed in this blog post, was a popular and respected theatrical specialization.

More from our glass plate negative collection

 The origins of men dressing as women in theater dates back centuries. Common in Shakespearean performances and in those by all-male troupes, female impersonation began, in part, as a necessity. Fast forward to the 19th century, and female impersonation was a staple of traveling minstrel troupes, which again, were mostly male. These roles were often played for comedic value, and in the case of minstrel shows, they often upheld racial and gender stereotypes.  

By the early 1900s, Julian Eltinge was the most famous female impersonator. Known for his uncanny portrayal of a woman in Vaudeville, on Broadway, and later in film, Eltinge was a celebrity. Eltinge toured the world, and made appearances in Elmira.

From 1918

But there were other performers, too, even if they didn't match Eltinge's fame. In 1892, Elmirans Fred Gibson and Harry Graves found fame in Vaudeville. In one act, the did "a small dude song and dance, changing in full view of the audience to a female impersonation skirt dance." Elmiran Matt Lockwood, an actor and costumer, was known for his humorous female portrayals, especially of old women. A performance by the Elmira Free Academy minstrels in 1910 featured, as its main plot point, a female impersonator who infiltrated a fraternity house. The humor came when "he unmasks to the dismay of his amiable fraternity brothers who have accorded him the most flattering courtesies." That same year, the members of Company L enjoyed a performance by a female impersonator named "Lottie Duval." The performance was so "clever" that some of the men didn't know he was a man until he took off his wig.

In 1923, the Cornell Masques performed "Listen to Me" at the Lyceum Theater, which featured student Al Force in the role of Peggy Lang. We have a composite photograph of Force in both his street clothes and his Peggy costume. The next year, former Elmiran George Bracken worked with the Neil O'Brien Minstrels, performing twice per show as a female impersonator.

Al Force as Peggy Lang

Cross-dressing in the theater served many purposes. It was sometimes about trickery, but often the actors were not really trying too hard to disguise their actual gender. And while I've focused primarily on female impersonation in this blog, male impersonation was also a popular theatrical attraction in this period. Ultimately, impersonation was supposed to be fun entertainment, and we can see from photographs like those from our collection, how this spirit of lighthearted gender-bending bled into the lives of non-actors.  

More from our collection

Cheers!

Marvelous Living Pictures: Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope in Elmira

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

Film is such a significant and omnipresent part of modern life that it is difficult to imagine an era with “motion picture shows.”  That is one of the reasons that I have long found the early years of film making so fascinating.  Once motion picture technologies were developed, they evolved quickly leading to the rise of the silents and beyond.  In this blog post, however, I want to bring us back to the earliest public introduction of moving images and the first time people from the Chemung Valley would have encountered this radically transformative medium.

In 1894 Thomas Edison and his assistants introduced the kinetoscope to the American public.  When he patented the invention years earlier, he named it from the Greek "kineto" meaning "movement" and "scopos" meaning "to watch."  Edison wasn’t the first to experiment with this technology, with Eadweard Muybridge and his Zoopraxiscope notably coming before.  However, his invention was the first to have such a public impact.

A Kinetophone- A kinetoscope combined with phonography technology, circa 1895

A kinetoscope is a personal film viewer.  A person looked through a peephole in the top of the machine as a film strip on a spinning wheel passed over a light.  Kinetoscope parlors popped up in major cities and individual machines would pass through other areas as a kind of traveling curiosity.  Businesses in Elmira first hosted kinetoscopes in September of 1894.  The Water Street carpet and drapery shops of Albert Samuel and T.S. Pratt both advertised their temporary possession of one of these new machines for public viewing.  The machine was also displayed at the Chemung County fairgrounds.  By 1897, the Elmira Telegram asserted that almost every man, woman, and child in Elmira had probably encountered a kinetoscope.  An article explained the technology behind the moving images to those who doubted what they saw through the viewers.

 

A handbill advertising a kinetoscope in Elmira in September of 1894.

In addition to creating the viewing machines, Edison and his team made many films from their "Black Maria" studio in New Jersey.  Many of the early kinetoscope films were targeted at male audiences, meaning they featured boxing matches and “salacious” ankle-showing dancing girls (literal “peep shows”).  While these sights would be considered tame by today’s standards, they did cause quite a bit of controversy when they were introduced.  The Women’s Christian Temperance Union protested the violence of the boxing films and were successful in getting those kinetoscope films banned in a few states.  Watch some of the early films below:

 

 

Film technology has clearly progressed from the kinetoscope days.  Just a few years after the kinetoscope’s introduction, the advent of projection technology turned film from an expensive curiosity into a mass culture phenomenon.  Still, in an era of HD, 3D, and whatever technology is soon to come, it is interesting to reflect on our cinematic roots and appreciate the pioneering work of late 19th century inventors.

Elmira's First Museum

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist 

It may seem weird to be writing about another museum on our museum’s blog, today we’ll be giving the Arnot Art Museum some love.  This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the Arnot Art Museum, Elmira’s first museum.  In addition to this blog post, CCHS and the Arnot will be celebrating the anniversary with an eight-month joint exhibit on the history of the arts in Chemung County which will open on January 12^th here at CCHS as well as a series of monthly art programs.  

The story of the Arnot Art Museum starts with Matthias H. Arnot, the youngest son of wealthy area businessman and banker John Arnot.  Matthias went on to become a rather prosperous businessman in his own right as well as an avid art collector.  Upon his death in 1910, he willed his home, his art collection and his fortune to establish a museum to encourage the study and appreciation of art in Elmira. 

The house at 235 Lake Street had been built by his father John Arnot sometime in the 1840s as the Arnot family home and needed a lot of renovations before it would be suitable as a museum.  While they chose to keep the facade the same, the entire inside of the building was completely gutted to form gallery, office and storage spaces.  The museum finally opened for business on May 17, 1913 as the Arnot Art Gallery (the name changed later).  Within the first month nearly one-fifth of the city had visited with a total 27,000 visitors in the first year. 

Matthias Arnot’s personal art collection formed (and still forms) the backbone of the collection, but he established additional funds to purchase new art to enhance the collections and keep them relevant to changing tastes and trends.  He also established funds to help to teach art appreciation.  Within the first year, the Gallery was already working with schools to arrange field trips and other educational programming.  Today, educational program in museums is by and large considered essential, but at the time it was practically revolutionary.  The Arnot Art Museum continues to have educational programming today, including the Chemung River School in which it partners with us.