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World-famous female impersonator dies at his home
On this day in 1973, Vander Clyde died at his Round Rock home. Clyde,
who achieved international fame as Barbette, a female impersonator and
trapeze and high-wire performer, was born in Round Rock in 1904. After
graduating from high school at age fourteen, he traveled to San Antonio
to answer a Billboard advertisement placed by one of the
Alfaretta Sisters, "World Famous Aerial Queens." He joined the act on
the condition that he dress as a girl, since his partner believed that
women's clothes made a wire act more dramatic. Clyde eventually
developed a solo act in which he appeared and performed as a woman and
removed his wig to reveal his masculinity at the end of the performance.
After adopting the name Barbette, he traveled throughout the United
States performing the popular act. In the fall of 1923 the William
Morris Agency sent him to England and then to Paris, where he was
befriended by members of both American café society and French literary
and social circles. His artistry was championed by French poet and
dramatist Jean Cocteau who, in a classic essay on the nature of art,
described Vander's performance as "an extraordinary lesson in theatrical
professionalism." His performing career ended in 1938, when he caught
pneumonia after performing at Loew's State, a vaudeville theater in New
York. Clyde continued to stage circus productions and train performers.
He spent his last years in Round Rock, where he lived with his sister.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- CLYDE, VANDER
- ROUND ROCK, TX
- HERTZBERG CIRCUS COLLECTION AND MUSEUM
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Famous fraud Frederick Albert Cook dies (1940)
- First permanent settler arrives at Point Bolivar (1838)
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