The Paint and Powder Club - Early Baltimore Drag

  Although you may find drag at some of Baltimore’s finest gay venues such as the Hippo or Central Station, as early as the Fall of 1893 in the Charm City, the rather novel practice was exhibited when two young men of the ‘high-browed’ society set determined to shed their dapper trousers for padded corsets, white brocades, pink chiffon, and low necked gowns for the theatre.

Alfred Baldwin Sloane,
"Mustapha" author

  A group of young debutantes by the name of Reese Cassard, Harry Semmes Lehr, Alfred Baldwin Sloane, and others founded a peculiar amateur performance group known as the Paint and Powder Club, one of the oldest of its kind in America. Mr. Sloane (pictured left) penned the operetta entitled “Mustapha” and the members of the group studied dramatic and operatic art with the intent of raising funds through a charity performance for under privileged children to attend summer camp near the Relay at the Country Home for Children. With the exception of a break to give a dance along with local young women at Lehman’s Hall on January 3, 1894, they rehearsed throughout that winter.

Harry S. M. Lehr as Marie Papillon
in "Mustapha"

  The male only club first appeared with the public debut of Mustapha at Ford’s Grand Opera House on February 5th and 6th, 1894 during which another art group was introduced, the Maryland Mandolin Club. During the play, Harry Lehr (pictured right) played the character Marie Papillon of Paris, a freshwoman at Vassar College and Alfred Sloane played Mustapha IV, Sultan of Turkey (a winsome widower). While novel in Baltimore at the time, as was often the case in theatre, since early 17th Shakespearean plays in England, males played the female part dressed as a female.

J. Randolph Mordecai in
"Joan of Arc"

  The first performances received rave reviews and resulted in over $5,800 that went to the  Home. With newfound notoriety they went on to give performances in Washington, D.C. and Richmond. Within a year the Paint and Powder Club had become incorporated under Maryland law and they proceeded to the 1895 season by performing Joan of Arc on February 19th and 20th at Ford’s Grand Opera House (J. Randolph Mordecai is shown, left, in costume). By Easter of that year they traveled to perform for what was to be the largest audience in the history of the Harrisburg Opera House, followed by a performance to a Philadelphia audience composed partly by members of the University of Penn equivalent amateur group known as the Mask and Wig Club.

  Harry Lehr eventually moved to New York City and became a regular in the exclusive social set there and Alfred Sloane went on to become a Broadway composer, writing the scores “The Hen Pecks” and “The Never Homes.” Women were eventually allowed in the productions in 1931 and while most of the original founders died by the 1940s, this club with a drag origination, now over 100 years old, remains to this day still holding on to their charitable traditions.

(Source: History of the Paint and Powder Club)