Cedar City • “Terrible,” the headline on the front page of the April 6, 1928, edition of Cedar City’s newspaper “The Iron County Record” proclaimed.
So what calamity was about to befall the then-small southern Utah town? It wasn’t crime, the economy or a wildfire. It was — as the rest of the headline proclaimed — “70 Citizens Turn Chorus Girls Wed.” Moreover, the outrage implied by the headline was more faux than factual.
[Related: Drag in Utah is older than the state itself]
“Wednesday and Thursday nights, appearing before footlights of the Orpheum Theatre in ‘Zion Follies,’ the strangest occasion ever heard of in Cedar City when these otherwise dignified, stiff professional men will throw caution to the winds and cavort as women and worse. To imagine this – Only remember paint and powder make even men look like what they ain’t,” the article read.
Further titillating readers, the newspaper informed them the male performers were rehearsing in preparation to greet the audience “as bathing beauties, chorus girls, dancers, flappers, vamps, comedians — making plenty of fun for old and young.”
Cedar City historian Janet Seegmiller, who provided a brief description of the show in her 1998 book “A History of Iron County: Community Above Self,” wrote the Zion Follies was a fundraiser for the United States Army 324th Cavalry Band to raise $5,000 for instruments and $1,500 for uniforms.
For Seegmiller, Zion Follies seems like a historical oddity — perhaps an outlier or a one-off rather than a recurring event. In examining the U.S. census, she found that most of the men who dressed as women for the show were in their mid-20s and not prominent members of the community.
Still, Seegmiller confides, neither she nor anyone else likely knows much about Zion Follies or drag shows of the period. For starters, the Orpheum Theatre was rebranded the Parks Theater in 1937 and was razed to the ground by a fire in 1962. Another obstacle is that everyone who took part in the show or knew much about it has passed on.
“I know of people who, if I could get to them, I could ask them,” she said. “But they all died and are now in heaven. I suspect we’ll never know for sure what went on.”
Rural drag an unsolved mystery or a recent revelation?
As much of a mystery as the drag show is to Seegmiller, it is a joyous revelation to historian Connell O’Donovan, who is writing a history of drag in Utah from 1871 to 2021. Until recently, he viewed the state’s drag shows as largely occurring in the state’s more metropolitan and cosmopolitan areas, although a few gems popped up in mining and smaller towns.
Utah’s first known drag performance, for example, was presented in 1871 by William Horace Lingard at The Salt Lake Theatre. Other female impersonators, like Utah pioneer leader Brigham Young’s son Brigham Morris Young — who performed as Italian singer Madam Pattirini — also displayed their fake feminine wiles at venues along the Wasatch Front.
But several months ago, a Latter-day Saint presented O’Donovan with a keepsake of uncertain provenance — a picture of his grandfather in drag in the 1920s, possibly at a church event. Then, when the historian learned about the Cedar City drag show earlier this month, he did some more research and had a eureka moment. The picture of his friend’s grandfather was from a 1928 Lehi Follies Show which also featured local men dressed in drag and a program that was almost identical to Zion Follies in Cedar City.
And that was only the beginning. The more old newspapers O’Donovan perused, the list of drag performances in rural Utah kept growing. Thus far, he has found there were Follies shows performed in 21 rural communities between November 1927 to June 1928.
Besides Cedar City and Lehi, drag shows took place in St. George, Beaver, Manti, Ephraim, Salina, Eureka, Mount Pleasant, Delta, Richfield, Price, Nephi, Payson, Spanish Fork, Springville, Pleasant Grove, Bountiful, Tooele, Vernal and Monroe.
“I was absolutely gobsmacked,” O’Donovan said, adding the shows are evidence that drag performances were more interwoven into the fabric of rural Utah life than previously realized.
Most of the earlier shows, he said, were fundraisers for Lions or Kiwanis clubs, but other beneficiaries included organizations like the Richfield Commercial Club and the Pleasant Grove Chamber of Commerce. All of the shows featured local casts of between 50 and 100 local men, about half of whom were costumed in drag.
“That’s about 700 men who performed in drag during that eight-month period,” O’Donovan estimated.
All the rural Utah shows in 1928 were produced by the Myrtle Colaw Company out of Greeley, Colo. O’Donovan said Miss Ruby R. Allen, who worked for the company, would correspond with various organizations to set up shows and organize casts in advance.
“Then she would arrive at the various towns three or four days ahead of each show and put the men through rehearsals, training (in ballet, for example), and costuming makeovers,” O’Donovan said. “Almost all shows were performed over two consecutive nights in each town.”
At some shows, a “Queen of Follies” would be selected from among the cast. In Pleasant Grove, a man “was selected from the ‘beauties’ in the cast to enter the Queen of Strawberry Days contest to compete with the ladies for the coveted yearly honor,” O’Donovan said
While the performances might have raised eyebrows, they apparently – unlike today – didn’t raise hackles. Indeed, far from uptight, some of the newspapers were downright effusive in their praise of the performances.
“If your city is tempted to remove the lid of decorum for just two evenings and let the spirit that is famous in Mardi Gras rule, let us remember that a good laugh is the best and cheapest of all medicines,” the Ephraim Enterprise trumpeted.
The Vernal Express lauded the performances for inducing a spirit of conviviality.
“The great value of a play like this lies in the good it does to the businessmen who took part in bringing them closer together. It breaks down formalities and barriers and removes suspicions and prejudices and spreads more of the Golden Rule spirit among them.”
For O’Donovan, such articles attest to the fact that drag shows were used for both “homosocial bonding and networking” and as a welcome release from the restraints of modesty and decorum. The long-ago performances also stand in marked contrast to the culture wars raging today over drag in Utah and across America.
For example, the Southern Utah Drag Stars sued St. George and city leaders last month, accusing them of discrimination for denying their permit to host an all-ages drag show at a local park. Earlier this month, a federal judge deemed St. George’s action unconstitutional and ordered city leaders to let the show go on.
Elsewhere, in January, armed members of the Proud Boys protested against a drag show at a tea shop in Sugar House, and regrouped for a second protest when the show’s organizers staged a show in a new location in March.
Moreover, the uproar in St. George over HBO shooting its “We’re Here” show last June led to the city manager’s ouster and the city paying the manager a $625,000 settlement to avoid a wrongful termination suit. That, in turn, prompted an unsuccessful attempt in the Utah Legislature to require public entities to provide public notices for permitted events that had an adult theme.
Higher altitude, calmer attitude
In Cedar City, the altitude is higher and the attitudes about drag seem calmer and cooler than in St. George, 50 miles to the south. Deena Marchal, president-elect of the Southern Utah University Pride Alliance, doesn’t know much about the city’s drag past but said drag shows today are not a hot-button issue.
“Many communities in the southern Utah area have different drag show events,” she said. “But they usually are off-campus, in private homes or in different [business] establishments. I think most of the shows are fairly amateur events.”
As part of Pride Week in April, the university presented a Drag Queen Brunch in the student ballroom, where students could enjoy a meal while watching performers prance about in their outfits and showcase their routines.
“We haven’t had any problems hosting drag shows — no picketing, pushback or efforts to shut them down — thus far, knock on wood,” Marchal said.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.