Las Vegas Drag Performance and Showgirls Photo Album Documenting Vegas Strip Performers including Joey Skilbred (Jocelyn Summers), 1970s

Female Impersonators Joey Skilbred

Photograph

[Drag][Las Vegas] Las Vegas Drag photo album, circa 1970s, depicting female impersonators and performers during a formative period in LGBTQ+ performance history. Several images show drag showgirl Joey Skilbred, known professionally as Jocelyn Somers. The album provides direct visual evidence of Las Vegas drag performance culture as it developed in the 70s, supporting research into queer nightlife and drag performance in the post-Stonewall United States. The material documents Skilbred as part of the broader ecosystem of revue-style productions such as Kenny Kerr’s Boylesque and Frank Marino’s An Evening at La Cage, demonstrating the integration of drag performance into mainstream casino entertainment.

Album contains 63 color photographs mounted on thick stock pages, primarily soft-focus studio and staged performance portraits featuring drag performers, showgirls, and models in elaborate costume and stylized lighting. Models appear in feathered headdresses, sequined garments, veils, theatrical makeup, and illusion-based portrait compositions using mirrors and diffusion effects, consistent with commercial studio aesthetics used in Las Vegas in the 70s and 80s. Several images depict Joey Skilbred (Jocelyn Somers), including close portrait studies and performance-oriented compositions. Additional visual material includes casino-related imagery, notably a Las Vegas Star magazine cover (July 1978) and a Sands casino advertisement reading “Where The Fun Never Sets,” anchoring the album within a specific commercial entertainment environment. The sequencing suggests a working or portfolio-style compilation rather than a casual souvenir album.

The album documents a decade when Las Vegas was a major site for the professionalization of drag performance, where female impersonators achieved visibility through long-running revue productions tied to casino venues. Skilbred’s association with Boylesque and La Cage places this material within the early institutional history of drag as a commercial entertainment form rather than exclusively underground practice. The interplay between drag performers and cisgender showgirls and models within the same visual framework highlights the blurred boundaries between illusion, glamour, and spectacle central to Vegas Strip performance culture of the 1970s. Red leatherette binding with heavy cardstock pages; numerous mounted photographs of varying sizes. Three pages disbound. Images clear, vivid, and complete. Overall very good condition. An album documenting Las Vegas drag performance at the point of its integration into mainstream entertainment venues.

Item #23106

Price: $4,500.00