Mel "Angie Stardust" Michaels (1939 – October 21, 2007) was an American singer, actress, and drag artist of the 1950s and 1960s and the first black star of New York's

Club 82 Club 82, also known as the 82 Club, was a nightclub in Manhattan, New York City that employed Drag queen, female impersonators as entertainers. The nightclub had a second life as a music venue, but was eventually closed. History Predecessors ...

. She was also the manager of

Hamburg, Germany Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

's first all-male strip club, Crazy Boys, and was the founder and proprietor of Angie's Nightclub in Schmidts Tivoli Theatre.

Early life

Stardust was born in

Norfolk, Virginia Norfolk ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. It had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Virginia, third-most populous city ...

and raised in

Harlem, New York Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan ...

. She began performing at age 14 and was a transgender woman.

Career

Stardust performed at the Jewel Box Revue and

, both in New York City. She was one of the first drag stars to take female hormones, an act she was scorned for at the time, and either quit over or was fired for. In 1974, Stardust moved to

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, settling in

. There, she became manager of the city's first all-male strip club, Crazy Boys. In 1983, Stardust performed in

Rosa von Praunheim Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky (born Holger Radtke; 25 November 1942), known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, is a German film director, author, producer, professor of directing and one of the most influential and famous LGBT social move ...

's ''City of Lost Souls'', a film that helped influence '' Hedwig and the Angry Itch'', in which she played the proprietor of a restaurant called the Hamburger Queen and a boarding house called Pension Stardust. Two of her co-stars were

Jayne County Jayne County (born Wayne Rogers) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, record producer, and visual artist whose career has spanned six decades. Under the name Wayne County (inspired by Wayne County, Michigan), she was the vocalist of infl ...

and Tara O'Hara. The film was first screened as part of a punk rock roadshow. Shortly after the film was finished, Stardust completed her gender affirmation with surgery to complement the hormones she had been taking for years. Stardust founded her own club, Angie's Nightclub, in Schmidts Tivoli Theatre in

in 1990. By 1994, the venue was regarded as "one of the best places to hear free-form jazz." Stardust performed nightly until 1999 and came to be known as the Big Mama of Soul, as she was known for singing soul, jazz, pop, and musical theater standards. In 1997 she recorded a version of Stephen Stills' "Love the One You're With" backed by Hamburg blues band Shanghai'd Gutz, at M.O.B. Tonstudio in Hamburg, with engineer Horst "Hobi" Siewert and American producer Daniel Liston Keller. Only a few hundred copies were released on Keller and Siewert's AlgoRhythm Recordings. Annually since 2008, Angie's Nightclub has been one of the participating venues for Hamburg's Reeperbahn Festival. Acts have included Skinny Lister, Mo Kenney, Ezra Furman, Kristoffer Ragnstam, Andreas Moe, Leyya, Louis Berry, George Cosby, Vita Bergen, Joel Culpepper, Conner Youngblood,

Inna Modja Inna Bocoum, also known as Inna Modja (born May 19, 1984), is a Malian-French female singer and model. "Modja" means "bad, not good" in Fulfulde. Childhood and adolescence Born on May 19, 1984, in Bamako, Mali, in a Fula family, the sixth of sev ...

, Bess Atwell, and others. In 2017, Angie's Nightclub was still "one of the most popular clubs of Sankt Pauli’s night scene," according to the travel blog ''At 30,000 Feet''. As of 2020, Stardust's club is still extant and operates under the same name.

Discography

Filmography

References

{{Authority control LGBTQ people from Virginia American drag queens African-American drag queens African-American musicians American transgender musicians American transgender actresses American LGBTQ singers African-American LGBTQ people Transgender drag performers People from Harlem Drag performers from New York City Transgender women singers American expatriates in Germany Entertainers from Hamburg People from Norfolk, Virginia Drag performers from Virginia 1939 births