Beautiful The Story of Julian Eltinge, America's Greatest Female Impersonator

From the late 19th to the early 21st centuries, female impersonation was a hugely popular performance genre. Long before today's popular television shows, men in colleges, business, and even the military formed drag clubs and put on musicals and variety shows of all kinds with little fear of negative judgment. But no female impersonator was as famous, successful, or highly-regarded as Julian Eltinge (1881-1941). Eltinge, born William Dalton just outside Boston,
started playing female characters and imitating women with his mother's encouragement as a child while his father shuttled his family around the Americas in search of a mining fortune that never
materialized. The future drag star returned to Boston in his late teens where he quickly rose through the ranks of semi-amateur all-male musicals, then transitioned to vaudeville, and eventually starred in hugely successful musical comedies such as The Fascinating Widow (1910). For decades, the Julian Eltinge Theatre on West 42nd Street bore testament to his stature. But Eltinge longed to play serious roles which did not require him to impersonate women; it was a
lifelong struggle. He constructed a hypermasculine offstage persona-- a cigar-loving former Harvard athlete who beat up anyone who questioned his manliness--most of which wasn't true. But Eltinge's efforts were
essential in a culture increasingly focused on separating