A Gender Variance Who's Who

These are only snapshots. We know no more.

Zorana Pop-Simonović (1938 - ?)

Roxanne Algeria (194? - )

In 1936 Marlene Dietrich was in Paris for the opening of a new Maurice Chevalier musical at the Casino de Paris. Erich Maria Remarque, an ex-beau of Dietrich, also came to the show and the reception afterwards. His date for the evening was a 20-year-old woman, Frédérique Baule (born Suzanne Baulé). But it was Dietrich that Baule left with.
Frédé, as she preferred to be known, spent much of the next few years with Marlene who kept returning to Paris as often as her Hollywood career would allow.

In 1938 Marlene set Frédé up in business with a nightclub that was officially called La Silhouette (after Marlene's favourite bar in Berlin), but was generally known as Chez Frédé. It catered to lesbians and cross-dressing women, but also to celebrities.

Frédé's dress and haircut became quite masculine. Errol Flynn describes her in his autobiography:

"She dressed better than any man I had ever seen. … her over-all effect that of a sophisticated English schoolboy. Her man's haircut looked better on her than on any man."

Apparently La Silhouette was able to stay open during the German occupation. The club did so well that in the late 1940s Frédé moved to a larger place, Carroll's. Marlene, of course, was present for the opening, and also Erich Maria Remarque and Maurice Chevalier.

• Kenneth G. Mclain. "The Untold Story Of Marlene Dietrich". Confidential, July 1955. Online at: http://lastgoddess.blogspot.ca/2012/11/marlene-dietrichs-confidential-file.html.
• Errol Flynn & Jeffrey Meyers. My Wicked, Wicked Ways. NY: Berkley Publ. Corp, 1979. NY: Cooper Square Press, 2003: 221-3.
• Axel Madsen. The Sewing Circle: Hollywood's Greatest Secret : Female Stars Who Loved Other Women. New York: A Birch Lane Press Book published by Carol Publishing Group, 1995: 150. 
• Diana McLellan. The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood. New York: LA Weekly Books, 2000: 227, 244-5, 327-8, 355, 358.

• Denis Cosnard. Frede. Des Équateurs, 2017.

++ revised  24/01/11 to incorporate more sources, and to resort the facts chronologically.

Dailey was born and raised in New York City. He appeared in a minstrel show, and then in vaudeville before his first Broadway show in 1937. He was signed by MGM in 1940.

He served in the US Signal Corps during the Second World War and was discharged as a Captain.

In 1946 he was taking Linda Darnell's dresses from the Fox wardrobe department. Howard Hughes made him return them, but gave him a gift certificate for $5,000 at a leading department store.

He was teamed with Betty Grable in Mother Wore Tights, 1947.  He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in When My Baby Smiles at Me, 1948 – also with Grable. It is said that she also lent him some of her screen wardrobe - the best couture that Hollywood had to offer.  Dan became one of the top male leads at Twentieth Century Fox in the early 1950s.

Andre Previn, the composer, tells in his biography how Dailey turned up drunk and in female clothing for the press screening of It's Always Fair Weather in 1954.  Dailey co-starred with Johnnie Ray in There's No Business Like Show Business the same year, and was close to him afterwards. There were rumors that they were more than friends.

He married his fourth wife, Gwen Carter, in February 1955. In June Inside magazine wrote that "After every binge he shows up around the film colony, decked from head to toe in outlandish female attire". In September that year Uncensored ran an article dispelling the rumors that he was a transvestite (which was a way of repeating the stories without being sued).

In January 1957 Confidential ran "The Night Dan Dailey was Dolly Dawn" claiming that he had danced in a pink tulle dress in a New York gay bar the previous March. Betty tried to save Dailey's career by pointing to his wife and family, but his film career was essentially over by that point, although he continued in television into the 1970s.

In 1976, actress cum gossip columnist Joyce Haber was on television promoting her novel about Hollywood, The Users. Asked to dish some gossip, she mentioned that one of the top dancer-actors was a closet transvestite with a costly and beautiful wardrobe that many women would envy.

After the suicide of his only son (from his third marriage), he was an embittered alcoholic. He died three years later, just after he had played boyfriend Clyde Tolson in The Private Files of J.Edgar Hoover, 1977. He appeared in over 60 films.

• "The Night Dan Dailey was Dolly Dawn". Confidential. Jan 1957.
• Spero Pastos. Pin-Up: The Tragedy of Betty Grable.  Putnam, 1986: 76-7.
• Andre Previn. No Minor Chords: my days in Hollywood. Doubleday 1991. Toronto & London: Bantam 1993:64
• Boze Hadleigh. The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music World. Los Hombres Press, 1991:229-30. Republished as Sing out! : gays and lesbians in the music world. Barricade Books 1997,  Robson Books 1999.
• William J. Mann. Behind the Screen: How gays and lesbians shaped Hollywood. Viking, 2001: 314-5.
• Darwin Porter. Howard Hughes, Hell’s Angel: America’s Notorious Bisexual Billionaire, The Secret Life of the U.S. Emperor.  Blood Moon Productions 2005: 630.

EN.Wikipedia

Raymond Gumieney was born in Brooklyn, New York, the last of eleven children, and was raised by his mother alone. He sang and played French horn as a child.


In 1957 he talked himself in his first performing job. At first he was Ray Reynolds, but changed to Libby when hired as a a female impersonator at The Ace of Clubs where there was already another Ray. In 1959 he was hired by the Jewel Box Revue, but as a chorus boy.

In 1960 Ray was working in mufti as a bar tender at Main Street Lounge in Greenwich Village when actor Raymond Burr (1917 - 1993), who played Perry Mason on television, came in and ended up spending the night with him. Ray sold the story to Confidential magazine, and the story now was that Burr had innocently picked up Libby and never realized that she was a ‘man’. The story included a composite photo of Burr and Libby.

In 1962 Libby was a singer at Finocchio’s in San Francisco, and then worked at the Jewel Box Lounge in Kansas City. He retired in 1997.

• David de Alba. “De Alba on Reynolds”. Celebrity Interviews by David de Alba. www.david-de-alba.com/Reynolds.htm.
• Michael Seth Starr. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. 2008: 120-8.