The Filson Historical Society Blog

There is a long history of cross-dressing in theatrical productions.   Ancient Greek dramas, Japanese Kabuki theater, and Shakespeare’s plays all have a tradition of males performing female roles, as women were not allowed to appear on stage in these milieux.  In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, both men and women engaged in cross-dressing in vaudeville halls and the Pantomime tradition of Victorian and Edwardian English theater for comic effect, titillation, and as a nod to older traditions. Cross-dressing is also frequently found in the dramatic performances of same-sex educational institutions of that era, for obvious reasons.

Louisville Male High School Freshman Ballet, 1903

The Filson has a collection of early 20th Century photographs from Louisville’s Male High School that are as amusing as they are charming.  One photograph features the Freshman class of 1903 dressed as ballerinas, while the rest comprise a series of photographs of students dressed as familiar fairytale and nursery rhyme characters such as Little Nancy (Nanny) Etticote, Polly-Put-the-Kettle-On, Margery Daw, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, and a fairy princess, ca. 1901.

Gray as "Polly," Male High School Theater Production, ca. 1901

These photographs are fascinating on many levels; they provide insight into theater and costume history, attitudes regarding gender and masculinity in the early 20th Century, and the preservation of traditional storytelling and the Edwardian fairytale revival.  They also serve as a record of one of Louisville’s earliest and most prestigious high schools.

Cabell as "Margery Daw," Louisville Male High School Theater production, ca. 1901

John Mason Brown, a native of Louisville, was a prominent New York theater critic, who wrote for such newspapers as the New York Evening Post from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.  He was so respected, in fact, that he served on the Pulitzer Prize drama jury, from which he resigned in 1963 after the advisory board refused his recommendation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

The first page of the diary features these photos of a young John Mason Brown.

But in 1914, he was just a young teenager in Louisville, beginning a diary that he would keep almost daily through 1918.  The diary, which was recently cataloged and made available to researchers, reveals numerous insights into the life of youth in the city during the early part of the 20th Century.  It also sheds light on the city’s broader cultural scene, and the early tastes of a young critic, as Brown meticulously recounts each movie and performance he sees at the city’s numerous theaters.

The diary would be a rich resource for researchers interested in a number of topics, including education, childhood, and the social aspects of World War I, but would also satisfy the curiosity of anyone interested in the finer points of Louisville’s history in the early 20th Century.