maaarc
06-02-2014, 04:41 AM
Stumbled upon this and thought it was interesting to see the girls from way back when.
The original secret drag hideaway, called Casa Susanna, was discovered when a furniture dealer named Robert Swope bought an unmarked box of the club’s photos at a flea market in Manhattan. In 2005, he turned the collection of pictures into a book, Casa Susanna, and a lot of the men’s stories finally came to light after it was published.
The bed-and-breakfast was run by a husband and wife team; Tito Valenti was a court translator, who was also a cross-dresser named Susanna, and Marie was a famous wig maker in Manhattan, who happily cooked, and provided makeover lessons, for guests
And those guests just wanted to look like average women – not over-the-top parodies. They’re pictured eating dinner in 50s cocktail dresses, posing demurely in evening gloves and pearls, and strolling through the grounds in perfect make-up and high-heels.
One of the men, who didn’t want his true identity revealed, told the New York Times: “It was the most remarkable release of pressure, and it meant the world to me then. I’d grown up in a very conventional family. I had the desire to marry, to have the house, the car, the dog. And I eventually did. But at that point there were all these conflicting desires that had no focal points. I didn’t know where I fit.
“Whatever your secret fantasies were, you were meeting other people who had similar ones and you realized, ‘I might be different, but I’m not crazy’.”
The original secret drag hideaway, called Casa Susanna, was discovered when a furniture dealer named Robert Swope bought an unmarked box of the club’s photos at a flea market in Manhattan. In 2005, he turned the collection of pictures into a book, Casa Susanna, and a lot of the men’s stories finally came to light after it was published.
The bed-and-breakfast was run by a husband and wife team; Tito Valenti was a court translator, who was also a cross-dresser named Susanna, and Marie was a famous wig maker in Manhattan, who happily cooked, and provided makeover lessons, for guests
And those guests just wanted to look like average women – not over-the-top parodies. They’re pictured eating dinner in 50s cocktail dresses, posing demurely in evening gloves and pearls, and strolling through the grounds in perfect make-up and high-heels.
One of the men, who didn’t want his true identity revealed, told the New York Times: “It was the most remarkable release of pressure, and it meant the world to me then. I’d grown up in a very conventional family. I had the desire to marry, to have the house, the car, the dog. And I eventually did. But at that point there were all these conflicting desires that had no focal points. I didn’t know where I fit.
“Whatever your secret fantasies were, you were meeting other people who had similar ones and you realized, ‘I might be different, but I’m not crazy’.”