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Jewel Box Revue.

Programs and ephemera from the pioneering drag performers. 1960-1968.

6 items (3 programs, 2 advertisements, and a photograph), various sizes. Various places, 1960-1968 and undated

The Jewel Box Revue was a long-running drag show launched in 1939 by Danny Brown and Doc Benner, partners who served as choreographers and producers. They variously gave their mailing address as Miami, New York City, or Locust Valley, NY, but the revue toured widely in the New York area and beyond through at least 1980. The show featured a multiracial cast, and frequently boasted "25 Men and a Girl." The famed Black drag king Stormé DeLarverie (1920-2014) served as master of ceremonies--they are widely credited as having thrown the first punch at the Stonewall uprising in 1969. A 4 December 2012 article in the Huffington Post asked: "The Jewel Box Revue: America's First Gay Community?"

Includes three Jewel Box Revue programs, each lavishly illustrated with covers on glossy stock, 24 to 32 pages, 12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.), moderate wear. One is titled "It's Been a Pleasure" and is dated in manuscript September 1962; another is titled "It's Been a Pleasure, 25th Anniversary" [1968]; and "Show Sensation of the Nation" (undated but apparently a bit earlier than the other two). Stormé DeLarverie can be seen in all three.

Also included are a weekly schedule flyer for the Apollo in Harlem, prominently anticipating the Jewel Box Revue's arrival on 20 January 1967; a full-page ad for the Jewel Box Revue clipped from Variety magazine, 6 January 1960; and and uncaptioned photograph of two of the revue's Black performers including the popular mainstay Sid Marshall (left).

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