Ella Shields | I'm Not All There / 1937

pretending madness

by Douglas Messerli

 

I’m Not All There / 1937

 

The best of these films is the last from 1937, when Shields performs a narrative monologue “I’m Not All Here.” Finally, the performer suggests a strategy for her male persona, pretending a kind of madness for those around her that gives her all sorts of permissions that culture would otherwise not allow her/him. Here finally, the male impersonator escapes the female in drag, suggesting a much more covert position behind her/his impersonations. The lyrics are telling, and given they are all spoken instead of sung, hint less at the patter of the lyrics than a dialogic encounter that puts Shields squarely in the position of the great English diseuses and monologuists such as Anna Russell, Joyce Grenfell, and Ruth Draper. 

 

Chorus: I'm not all there

There's something missing

I'm not all there

So the folks declare

They call me Loo by Loo by

Nothing but a great big booby

Point and say, 'That's where you want it,

And that's just where I've got it'

I know they think I'm slow

But let them think, let them think - I don't care.

 

Sometimes I run errands for the folks up at the Grange

With a five-pound note they trust me, perhaps you think that strange

But they never fetch a policeman when I say I've lost the change

Cos I'm not supposed to be all there.

 

Courting couples in the Park on any night you'll find

If you stare they break away, for love's not always blind

But they let me stand and watch them and they never seem to mind

Cos I'm not supposed to be all there.

 

Fellows kissing other fellows girls are in for it

Ten to one they'll be a fight and someone will get hit

But when I kiss other fellow's girls, they never mind a bit

Cos I'm not supposed to be all there.

     What these four shorts reveal is the remarkable talent of a now forgotten male impersonator who clearly got away it simply because of her charm and refusal to back down from her role-playing. As the London Times wrote, upon her death in 1952:

“With wavy auburn hair and dressed as a young man in evening dress, nervously fingering his white tie, she made a very charming and gay figure ... and though she adopted the tattered clothes and worn top hat of the traditional "broken down swell" act she did so with a difference, making of what might have been ordinary broad comedy something delicate and, in its way, almost moving.”

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

Ella Shields | Miss Ella Shields: The Ideal of Ideals / 1930

 

a phone line to sweet adeline

by Douglas Messerli

 

Miss Ella Shields: The Ideal of Ideals / 1930

 

In 1930 the Pathetone Weekly issued another of Shields’ performances, subtitling it “The Ideal of Ideals,” although whether they meant that literally or sarcastically is not clear. Beginning the song on the phone, Shields moves from wanting a telephone line to her singing about going back to her sweet Adeline. The song is charming and forceful, but not nearly as clever as the previous short, although her voice is quite wonderful, her dance gradually turning into almost an early version of the Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk” done to tap. Nothing quite so astounding, but still very memorable.

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

Ella Shields | Ella Shields: The Captain of the King's Navy / 1929

sharing with the captain

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ella Shields: The Captain of the King’s Navy / 1929

 

     In the same year as “Burlington Bert,” Shields sang her famous patter song, “The Captain of the King’s Navy,” a work that surely owes its entire sensibility of Gilbert and Sullivan. In this work, as in many of her later works, the lyrics clearly put the male impersonator in the position of being a lesbian lech, who is after the women which, at times, she won’t let even the Captain share.

      One of my favorite stanzas includes an upbraid from the Captain of King’s Navy himself:

 

When alongside the old gay key

I slipped off conspiracy

Stayed on shore an hour more

And met two charming girls.

I slinked them all around the two,

Spent all I could afford.

But what a blooming row there was

When I got back on board.

And the Captain said straight to me

Well my lad this is mutiny

You had two girls, golden curls,

Slinking round all day.

And he cursed and swore for the crew to see

And whispered when they’d gone to tea

Next time you’ll save one for me

Or I stop you serving in the King’s Navy.

 

      Shields dances quite delightfully in a manner that might remand some of Popeye the Sailor Man.

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

 

Ella Shields | Ella Shields: Burlington Bertie from Bow / 1929

when royalty gets hurt

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ella Shields: Burlington Bertie from Bow / 1929

 

The first of these short films, with Shields performing her signature song, is perhaps the least memorable. The full song, which has numerous stanzas, not all of them equally clever, ends rather successfully:

 

… I'm Burlington Bertie, I rise at ten thirty

And Buckingham Palace I view.

I stand in the yard while they're changing the guard

And the queen shouts across "Toodle oo"!

The Prince of Wales' brother along with some other

Slaps me on the back and says "Come and see Mother"

But I'm Bert, Bert, and Royalty's hurt,

When they ask me to dine I say no.

I've just had a banana with Lady Diana

I'm Burlington Bertie from Bow.

 

    The song influenced many other performances, including Julie Andrews’ performance of Bertie in drag in Star! and, more importantly, Irving Berlin’s “A Couple of Swells” performed most memorably by Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in Easter Parade (1948).

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

Douglas Messerli | Ella Shields: A Quartet / 1929, 1930, 1937

ella shields: a quartet

by Douglas Messerli

 

Beginning in 1929, British Pathé released four short films featuring male impersonator Ella Shields.

     Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1879 and educated in South Bend, Indiana, Ella Catherine Buscher (her birth name), Ella Shields began her career in 1898 singing vaudeville song-and-dance numbers with her sisters. In 1906 she married songwriter William Joseph Hargreaves in Lambeth, London, and by 1910 was already appearing at the London Palladium as a male impersonator.

      Legend has it that attending a party in which several musical halls performers were asked to perform, half a two-man act was out sick, Shields standing in for the second trouser. After that performance she rarely wore a dress on stage again.

       In 1915 Hargreaves wrote the comic ditty about a penniless Londoner who effects the manner of a well-heeled gentlemen, “Burlington Bertie from Bow,” which quickly became Shield’s signature song. She performed it until her death, including with a very young Julie Andrews in 1940, who has suggested it may later have been an influence on her performance in Victor/Victoria. Indeed, the septuagenarian Shields died while performing the number in August 1952.

      Already by 1916 Shields had separated from her husband, Hargreaves, divorcing him in 1923. By that time, she was well known primarily as a male impersonator, her songs filled with lesbian references and double-entendres.

Douglas Messerli | Two Porno Firsts [Introduction]

 

two porno firsts

by Douglas Messerli

 

In the very last year of the second decade of the 20th century, according to movie lore, small audiences caught glimpses of what might be described as dubious first-time events, the very first gay porno film and the first sex porno animated movie. In both instances I doubt the claim of these particular works representing the earliest examples of their genres, particularly since already in 1920 Le Ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly displayed in a single movie, heterosexual, lesbian, and gay sex acts as well as male masturbation.

 

   But if you’re fascinated by the idea of being “first,” these two probably fit the bill as well as any others we might later discover. The works under discussion include the pseudonymous The Surprise of the Knight from 1929 or 1930 which is generally hailed as the first all-gay film; and Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure, what is probably the first pornographic cartoon to depict male on male sex.

  Clearly, they were not the last, although immediately due to the increasing pressure of studio heads fearing precisely what did happen, and the actual arrival by 1934 of a strict censorship code, such activities were not publicly available again to run through a public projector for several decades. Of course, such films continued to be made, but were sold not only “under the counter” and hidden away from the prurient prying eyes of anyone who might be even the least sympathetic to censorship or government sexual oppression. You might even go so far as to say that with the issuing of these two works, LGBTQ sex was banned from public consumption for the next thirty years, not to become available again until the 1960s, and even then, mostly in underground and foreign cinema. For many Americans, the horror of depictions of same sex relationships of any kind is still with us. As I will argue later in these volumes, even among the most liberal of LGBTQ supporters among heterosexuals, there is still very little interest in actually having to witness movies about queer relationships and sex, even though every queer movie goer has seen hundreds of heterosexual movies and probably enjoyed many of them for their depictions of love and love-making.

       Enough said. These movies tell their own stories.

“Oscar Wild” | The Surprise of a Knight / c. 1929

the chameleon

by Douglas Messerli

 

“Oscar Wild” (pseudonymous director) The Surprise of a Knight / c. 1929 [Difficult to obtain]

 

The Surprise of a Knight was released under the pseudonymous attribution of “Oscar Wild” in 1929, a film which many proclaim to be the first USA gay porn film devoted exclusively to homosexual intercourse. Given the several short films I’ve seen from the early part of the century, there was a certainly a history of this long before in Europe. Moreover, even though it also portrays heterosexual sex, Le ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly (1920) most certainly does portray scenes of exclusive gay male sex. But I’ll accept this as the first American gay porno film, for whatever value one wants to make of that designation.

      Although the film has apparently been shown on the online film site, Mubi, it was before the time that I subscribed and now seems to be basically unavailable, although it is definitely available at the Kinsey Institute Collection of the Indiana University. However, I have not seen this film, although I’m not certain actually witnessing it is necessary to fully describe it or appreciate it, and I have been able to find stills from the picture, reproduced below.

       For all of its so-called exclusive male credentials, evidently the film begins with an elegantly attired short-haired woman who is completing her dressing as she awaits a visitor. She lifts “her” skirts to reveal a think patch of pubic hair, powders herself, and enters a drawing room where she offers “her” gentleman caller a drink. He refuses, so she drinks it instead. After a brief conversation, they engage in intense kissing, as in many such heterosexual encounters the “lady” pushing away his hand whenever the attempts to touch her breasts or genitals, finally coyly slapping him as to say, “You dirty man!” But apologizing for her coyness she begins to suck him off.

      Our “lady” friend finally lies face-down on the sofa, presenting her buttocks for his delectation, in the process revealing that she is wearing no undergarments.

      The gentleman begins to copulate—although the film does not show any actual penetration. After a few moments, the man withdraws, sitting back on the sofa for a brief rest. The “lady,” gyrates her buttocks, inducing the gentleman to mount her anally once more. Both reach orgasm and the gentleman pulls up his pants and walks off.

       The “lady” stands, raising her skirts to reveal “she” is really a “he.” At least, that’s the standard interpretation. But today, obviously, we might question whether this individual identifies as a female or male, and ponder whether or not this is really a representation of homosexual sex or sex between a transgender individual and a cis male. Obviously, if that is what we are observing, it would be a far more significant “first.”

      However, the film apparently wishes to argue for the gay-sex interpretation since the gentleman caller suddenly returns to help his lover remove his/her skirt and all apparel, as the younger individual dances about briefly as a nude young man, jump-cutting to a frame of him dressed in male business attire, winking at the audience and walking off screen.

      More recently there have been several different interpretations of this male-on-male sexual film. Critics Thomas Waugh and Linda Williams have both argued against the standard notion of the piece actually comprising a porn film. Williams argues that such hardcore pornographic films were primarily concerned with nudity and were focused on the display of genitalia and penetration during intercourse, while in this work costume becomes the central element. As Waugh argues, “The costume spectacle either steals the show or becomes a grotesque distraction.” And the fact that it represents a central character in drag merely reinforces heteronomy. The joke is the “surprise,” which of course would have been utterly no surprise for those who purchased the under-the-counter porno. I doubt that fact might transform the film into a work of “faux homosexuality,” since the penis is finally revealed and we recognize, if only after the fact, that the two lovers were both men; perhaps it was simply felt to be a safer way to temporarily “cloak” the subject. Males might, at least subliminally, imagine that the gentlemen (and themselves) had been deceived.

     The following year saw another such porn film, titled A Stiff Game, in which an African-American male engages in fellatio with a Caucasian man without any pretense of drag. But evidently there were no more such movies (although again I have my doubts) until the 1970s.

 

Los Angeles, March 6, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).

Unknown director ("E. Hardon") | Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure / c. 1929

the woody pecker

by Douglas Messerli

 

“E. Hardon” (director) Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure / c. 1929

 

It’s somewhat odd that in the same year that the supposed first gay porno film was made, the first porno cartoon was released. Something was in the air in 1929 or late 1928 when a group of animators, evidently from different studios, got together to create a collation of coarse sexual jokes and pornographic tropes they put them into cartoon form. According to the Disney animator Ward Kimball, the collaboration included Raoul Barré, Max Fleischer, and Paul Terry’s studio, but others suggest that Walter Lantz, George Canata, George Vernon Stallings, and Rudy Zamora St. were also involved. The raunchy cartoon was in rumored to have been created in celebration for Disney cartoonist Winsor McCay.

     Evidently, they could find no one to print it in the US, so they sent it off to Cuba for the job, which explains its possible 1928 date of creation and its 1929 release.

     Eveready Harton wakes up with a woody, on the top of which he spots a fly which he sprays with some sort of bug repellent, his cock taking off to hide behind a nearby rock. Harton lovingly entices it back into its proper place.

     Somehow in the process, his schlong has gotten even longer. He takes out a pair of binoculars to observe nature engaging in which everybody does, a pup fucking a large dog attended by excited voyeur pups, two snakes engaged in the act; even the birds do it. And in the process his own snake seems to be lengthening. He spots a woman, wide open, enjoying herself with a dildo she implants in every orifice possible. Pointing his now engorged penis in the right direction, he takes out a little cart to wheel his member over to engage with his newfound lady friend.

      She’s more than a little willing, pointing him to her nipples before her clitoris pulls in his cock. Since he’s asked the lovely maid if she’ll share his treasure, we can even describe it as consensual sex. But he finds in her difficult to penetrate. Since this is the crudest of sexual jokes, the animators make it clear that her previous amours have left a few trinkets behind: a clock, a shoe, and, alas, a crab that walks off with Eveready’s balls and cock, sending him on a run after it.

      Finally, after it tosses the crab off, he meets up again with his meat.

    Now, a little alarmed, so the intertitle tells us, “Eveready looks for a safe place and discovers a subterranean passage.” Meaning, he spots a damsel on the beach with a large pile of sand over her body, and he takes a dive into the mound of sand only to find a man at the other end of his cock, who has evidently been doing his work undercover, so to speak.

    Presumably because of the tightness of the man’s butt, he has great difficulty in disengaging, dragging his unintended victim for quite a way before finally being able, with great effort, to jerk himself free.

 

     Giving up on folks, our unrelieved hero comes across a farmer giving great pleasure to a donkey, and waits for a few moments for him to finish. But when he continues, he suggests he might move aside for him to allow the donkey his treasure instead. The two end up in a sort of duel of swords with Harton biting the tip of his competitor’s tadger, which makes it go limp. But when he turns toward the still-waiting ass, it hurries off, leaving behind a cactus into which Eveready’s prick falls, leaving a great many little pins in his penis for him to pull out.

     The intertitles tell us: “Discouraged and disheartened Eveready decides to blow the whole thing.” Spotting a wall with small gloryhole in it, he sticks it through and allows a cow to lick it off.

      So ended the second decade of the 20th century, with two pornographic works depicting same gender sex. The next decade would see nothing so naughty—or nice, depending upon your point view about the open depiction of sex. The 20s were over and the Depression brought on a lot of twittering over gay sissy boys and severely dressed dykes until finally even that was almost completely silenced as if sex of any sort were no longer a proper subject to project onto the screen of our dreams.

  

Los Angeles, May 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).