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

Beautiful: The Story of Julian Eltinge, America’s Greatest Female Impersonator depicts vividly, and in great detail, the extraordinary career of Julian Eltinge (1881–1941), born William Dalton just outside Boston, to Joe, his father, of Irish heritage who dreamed unsuccessfully of frontier wealth in the American West; and his mother Julia, daughter of a prosperous, Presbyterian factory owner, who became Eltinge’s lifetime companion.

Most readers will be unfamiliar not only with Eltinge himself, and the distinctive personae he developed but also with the importance of female impersonation as an established genre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the U.S. and the U.K.

There is of course a longer history of theatrical cross-dressing, going back to the Greeks and including Elizabethan England, which is also mentioned by Erdman.

Andrew L. Erdman also shows how in the hands of someone like Eltinge who was “atop the female impersonation boom—cross-dressing, if executed properly, could be considered not only acceptable, but downright manly. Natural, expectable.” It was even stated that dressing like women by all-male groups only served to enhance their masculinity, though that may have been a protest too far for some.

Eltinge was always at pains to stress that cross-dressing was his profession, and that he was a technician, as well as an artist. In his female persona he was an elegant, respectable, dignified, “dainty” and beautiful woman—or rather several women, as his act usually involved many different female impersonations in quick succession, all of whom avoided any suggestion of camp, or suggestiveness. Eltinge strictly eschewed the “pantomime dame” mode which was and is standard issue for female impersonators worldwide. Both men and women in the audience were impressed and entranced. The press even fell into the habit of criticizing “normal” women for not living up to Eltinge’s standard of grooming and beauty.

As craftsman and “engineer” he happily welcomed the press into his dressing room or “laboratory” where he transformed himself into “the opposite sex” with the aid of his Japanese valet/dresser, Ko Shima. This transformation involved inter alia compressing his 30 inch, and later 38 inch, waist into a 23 inch corset . . . the brand of which he later promoted (R&G brand at $1.50 apiece) as part of his mission to help American women make the best of themselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly the tight corseting and his repetitive pattern of dietary indulgence and fasting—he once lost 44 pounds over a short period prior to a performance—were considered strong factors in his later ill health and eventual demise.

An important aspect of Eltinge’s presentation was the image he projected of himself when not onstage as a hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-riding “real man” enamoured of all outdoor pursuits including farming his own land. This masculine image seems to have been received at face value, though there were occasionally cynics, who were smartly dealt with by Eltinge if they had the temerity to confront him with their doubts!

A popular opinion at the time according to Erdman and mentioned on several occasions, was that the masculinity was the baseline condition whereas “femininity necessitated—demanded—unceasing effort” of plucking, tucking, and perfuming. This is of course the perfect rationale for female impersonation. 

A curious aspect of his persona that also peeks through the narrative from time to time was his misogyny and contempt for women at some stages in his life—somewhat revised toward the end—though this did not stop him, or perhaps encouraged him, in his sales of his skin-care and cosmetic line to them, in conjunction with Max Factor; and provision of advice on dress and grooming dispensed through his magazine—Julian Eltinge magazine—and elsewhere.

Erdman describes in rich detail the evolution and vicissitudes of Eltinge’s career, which began (circa 1899/90) with the First Corps of Cadets of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, who were famous for their musicals, often arranged for fund-raising purposes, in which all parts were taken by men.

Erding notes the influence of British “burlesque” on the American trend for “skirting up” in musicals, and lists the many prestigious all-male American organizations—academic, military and professional—for which female impersonation was a central part of their musicals and sketches.

Whilst some commentators feared that female impersonation could “effeminate” otherwise healthy men, female impersonation remained “a growth industry.” Again, most of the “healthy men” were at pains to demonstrate their virility by participation in sports as well as female impersonation.

Eltinge’s journey through various vaudeville companies (always accompanied by “an armada of trunks”) and his move to movies sometime around 1910 are lovingly detailed. When movies turned out to be not so much his style he returned to musical theater and when vaudeville started to decline, he eventually took his retirement. Around 1932 he confessed to a gossip columnist that he was broke as he tried to launch a scaled-down tour of one of his previously successful shows, Fads & Fancies of the Fair Sex. A few years later another columnist noted that female impersonation “has come to a full stop. Such performers cannot be booked save in remote sections of honky tonks.”

Eltinge had enjoyed great success and public esteem in the States and in Europe. He even claimed that his bulldog, Smith, had been presented to him in London by Edward VII in gratitude for his performance.

Enjoying the fruits of his labors, Eltinge purchased a series of properties to house himself and his mother, which were tastefully appointed with Persian rugs and Sheffield silver, and surrounded by terraced gardens

This publication is richest in terms of description, and less successful in its analytical aspects. Erdman’s attempts to analyze his hero and his impact against contemporaneous sexological, and gender thinking, and socio-economic changes are not so coherent, though this would have been another massive book! Nevertheless, it might have been helpful here to have shown a clear timeline of main events in Eltinge’s life, juxtaposed with major socio-economic and political changes such the emergence of women into public life—including theater and politics—in the States and elsewhere. Eventually the average American woman would not be receptive to grooming tips from a female impersonator.

Erdman is not helped in this task by the fact that Eltinge left no journals or diaries about his private life, though he seems to have been engaged to several women over the course of his lifetime and was even photographed on honeymoon.

Perhaps the most reasonable summing up of the Eltinge mystery comes from “an erudite graphic novel” by David Hadju and John Carey, A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay and Julian Eltinge, mentioned here by Erdman.

Hadju and Carey show Eltinge as a complicated figure who in reinforcing a “feminine ideal” betrayed the “malleability of gender” though he himself was neither activist nor ideologue. Eltingue always strove for conformity to each of his opposite persona; the few women who cross-dressed usually had a more radical agenda.

Overall, this book is a fascinating read which would have benefited from some Eltinge-style fastidiousness in its editing. But that’s an Eltinge-style quibble.