Highly choreographed performances ran like clockwork three times a night – 11:30pm, 12:30am, and 2:30am – to the sweeping tunes of orchestra leader Johnny Wilson. When queens performed, it was under a more euphemistic, hetero-accessible label like “female mimic” or “gender impersonator.” These were the years of Leave It To Beaver, and the myth of the Nuclear Family. When 82 opened its doors in 1953, declaring yourself a drag queen – let alone a gay, gender queer, or non-binary – was a dangerous move in NYC nightlife and cabaret culture. Ah, to have been a fly on the wall (or on the lip of a martini glass)… It wasn’t uncommon to run into Salvador Dalí mingling with drag queens and local politicians. “Once you made it there, you’d descend the steep stairs into an elegant, transporting nightclub decked out in the height of mid-century kitsch,” writes the New York City Historical Society, “mirrored columns, plastic palm fronds, elaborate banquettes, and white tablecloths” abounded.
So how did these queens pull it off in the era of Doris Day? The “ladies” of club 82 At once underground and well-known amongst a certain elite clientele, it was a hot spot for stars like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor to observe a glittering drag revue that was way ahead of its time. Tucked inside a nondescript door at 82 East 4th Street in Manhattan, “82” declared itself the “gayest rendez-vous”on the town in every sense of the word, falling somewhere between the Copacabana and RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Bedazzled drag queens, mobsters, and Errol Flynn playing a piano with his errr … manhood? It was just another Saturday night at NYC’s “82 Club,” c.