Archive of Finocchio’s Female Impersonators Ephemera and the Satirical Ballet of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, 1940s to 1970s

Finocchio’s

Pamphlet

American drag performance ephemera from circa 1945 to the 1970s, documenting two distinct theatrical settings in which male performers adopted female stage identities before paying audiences: Finocchio’s nightclub at 506 Broadway in San Francisco and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo during the company’s first years of national touring. Finocchio’s presented female impersonation as glamorous nightclub entertainment, advertising its performers as “accomplished female impersonators” and promoting a succession of feminine characters to be “impersonated, glorified and satirized.” Three decades later, the Trockadero brought drag into professional ballet touring through pointe work, classical repertory parody, and elaborate Russian ballerina personae. The material preserves both the commercial language used to sell these performances and the performers, designers, stage identities, costumes, and institutional structures through which two generations of gender performance reached mainstream American audiences.

Archive of three ephemera, San Francisco and Portland, circa 1945 to 1970s.
[1] Glamorous Unusual Finocchio’s. 506 Broadway, San Francisco, circa 1945 to 1946. Illustrated souvenir program with color cover signed in the image “Li-Kar,” combining performer portraits and biographies with costume drawings and nightclub publicity. Walter Hart is described as having begun his professional career at Finocchio’s eleven years earlier; the text names Sophie Tucker as “one of his biggest boosters” who gave him “many of the beautiful gowns he wears.” Nicki Gollucci, billed as “the singing star of the Finocchio’s” and the “Male Lily Pons,” is described as a former circus performer and Donna Prima dancer with a “beautiful natural soprano voice.” A full illustrated spread, “A Pageant of Costumes Designed by Li-Kar,” identifies Li-Kar’s art training in Los Angeles and Chicago, work for Chicago newspapers and motion pictures, dancing in Far East nightclubs, and theatrical costume commissions.
[2] Fabulous Finocchio’s Mailing Souvenir. 506 Broadway, San Francisco, circa 1940s to 1950s. Illustrated promotional mailing piece printed for postal use, showing the exterior of Finocchio’s and a stage ensemble of performers. The club advertises itself as presenting the “World’s Most Famous and Talented Female Impersonators,” with “4 Shows Nitely” and “Continuous Entertainment.” Designed to circulate beyond the nightclub itself, the souvenir presents female impersonation as a San Francisco tourist attraction and provides the recipient with a ready made advertisement to send through the mail.
[3] Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Portland, Oregon, circa 1970s. Performance program presenting the company as “A Celebrity Attraction,” with Sheldon Soffer as presenter, Eugene McDougle as general director, and Peter Anastos and Natch Taylor as artistic directors. The company list assigns performers elaborate Russian stage identities including Olga Tchikaboumskaya, Tamara Boumdiyeva, Ida Neversayneva, Suzina LaFuzziovitch. “WHO’S WHO IN THE COMPANY” extends the ballet satire through mock biographies: Tamara Boumdiyeva is “The Stalingrad Spitfire”; Ida Neversayneva is the “Socialist Real Ballerina of the Working Peoples Everywhere”; Vera Namethatunova “was discovered by kindly peasants adrift in a basket in the Neva River." The invented biographies, tutus, female stage identities, and classical ballet conventions place drag at the center of the company’s satire of ballet culture.

Finocchio’s had occupied 506 Broadway since the 1930s and developed a national reputation for female impersonation within San Francisco nightlife, attracting queer patrons, tourists, and visiting celebrities while operating in a period when cross dressing, homosexual association, and queer public assembly remained subject to policing and regulation. Its souvenir literature translated gender impersonation into the language of glamour, costume, comedy, singing, and theatrical virtuosity. Li-Kar’s presence is especially revealing: performer, artist, and costume designer converge in the same program, and his illustrated designs show that the production of femininity at Finocchio’s depended on skilled visual design as well as stage impersonation. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo emerged in New York in 1974 from the post Stonewall gay theatrical world and retained an explicitly comic vocabulary of male bodies, female ballet roles, pointe technique, and invented Russian identities as it moved rapidly from small New York performances into national touring. Its mock biographies parody not only classical ballet but the institutional machinery surrounding it, including company hierarchies, celebrity biographies, Russian ballet mythology, artistic pedigree, and the conventions of the printed theater program. Finocchio’s sold female impersonation as exotic nightclub spectacle, while the Trocks placed drag performers within the touring infrastructure and repertory conventions of professional ballet. Trockadero program with light handling and page wear. Finnochio's has pencil marking on cover, with corners showing light wear and handling. Overall good condition. A documentary sequence tracing the public presentation of male female impersonation from the costume, cabaret, and tourist culture of midcentury San Francisco to the post Stonewall drag ballet of the 1970s.

Item #23896

Price: $1,400.00