Queer Places:
25 W 52nd St, New York, NY 10019
Black Parrot Tea Shoppe Hobo-Hemia, 46 Charles St, New York, NY 10014
Arthur C. Budd (born 1902), known as “Rosebud,” worked as a female impersonator in “The Lady in Ermine” at The Century Theater. The play "Courting Mae West" opened in one of the popular drag cabarets in the Village that Mae West used to visit. In Act I, Scene 1, Mae waves to a cigarette girl in drag known as Rosebud. Mae explains to her date, "I just cast Rosebud over there in 'The Drag'. . . ." During the pansy craze of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Arthur Budd performed with Jackie Maye and Jean Malin in various Times Square cabarets.
Celebrating the 4th of July in 1922, the Village nightspot known as The Jungle (located at 11 Cornelia Street) presented, according to articles of the time, "a jazz band and two male performers, Rosebud and Countess," whose campy antics drew the hearty applause of a mixed crowd of slummers, male "degenerates" and "lady lovers (lesbians) of the Greenwich Village type".
In February 1923 the Charles Street Police Station in Manhattan was paying special attention to Greenwich Village. Deputy Inspector Joseph A. Howard and Captain Edward J. Dempsey of the Charles Street Station, and a party of ten detectives visited each tearoom and cabaret. Detectives Joseph Massie and Dewey Hughes of the Special Service Squad were assigned to the Black Parrot Tea Shoppe Hobo-Hemia, 46 Charles Street, to witness what they had been informed would be a “circus", and arrested five women and eight men. However on closer inspection, Ruby Bernhammer, from West Hoboken, New Jersey, did not meet their definition of a woman. Bernhammer was charged with disorderly conduct for giving an indecent dance, and they gave her name as 'Harry'. The other prisoners, all of whom were bailed out at the station house, were Lucy Smith, 22 years old, of 46 Charles Street, and Patricia Rogers, 24 years old, of 16 Charles Street, alleged proprietors of the establishment, charged with violating the Mullan-Gage law (the real name of the Smith, according to the police, was Vera Black, and the real name of Rogers was Nan Paddock); Arthur C. Budd; Paul Warring, 21 years old, of 75 West Seventy-second Street, a pianist at the Black Parrot and formerly employed at a Broadway cabaret. The next day the local magistrate dismissed charges against all but the proprietors of the Black Parrot. Budd lost his job at The Century Theatre, but was working again the next year.
In 1931 the Club Calais opened, featuring Arthur (“Rose”) Budd and Jackie Maye, “the male soprano.”
My published books:
Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (p.318). Basic Books. Edizione del Kindle.