Harvard Theatre Collection - Francis Leon TCS 1

Francis Leon (born Francis Patrick Glassey; November 21, 1844 – August 19, 1922) was an American vaudevillian actor best known as a

blackface Blackface is the practice of performers using burned cork, shoe polish, or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment. Scholarship on the origins or definition of blackface vary with some taking a glo ...

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist enter ...

performer and

female impersonator An organism's sex is female (symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and males ...

. He was largely responsible for making the

prima donna In opera or ''commedia dell'arte'', a prima donna (; Italian for 'first lady'; : ''prime donne'') is the leading female singer in the company, the person to whom the ''prime'' roles would be given. ''Prime donne'' often had grand off-stage pe ...

a fixture of blackface minstrelsy.

Biography

Leon was born in California. He was trained as a boy soprano by Rev. Dr. Cummings in

Fordham, New York Fordham Manor is a neighborhood located in the western Bronx, New York City. Fordham is roughly bordered by East 196th Street to the north, the Harlem River to the west, Fordham Road to the south, and Southern Boulevard to the east. The neighbor ...

. He performed the first soprano part in Mozart's Twelfth Mass at St. Stephen's church in New York City at age 8. Leon entered minstrelsy in 1858. Only 14 at the time, he quickly rose to fame by specializing in portraying female

characters,

mulatto ( , ) is a Race (human categorization), racial classification that refers to people of mixed Sub-Saharan African, African and Ethnic groups in Europe, European ancestry only. When speaking or writing about a singular woman in English, the ...

coquettes in yellow makeup and elaborate costumes. Leon's 300 dresses (which he refused to call "costumes") were a key piece of his act, and some cost as much as $400.Toll 144. He came to refer to himself as simply "Leon" or "The Only Leon". His influence was such that by 1873, every major minstrel troupe had its own Leon imitator. In 1882, he earned more than any other minstrel performer. Leon received strong reviews. In 1870, ''

The Clipper ''The Clipper'' was a weekly labor-orientated newspaper published in Hobart, Tasmania, from 8 April 1893 until 25 December 1909, before its merger with the '' Daily Post'' in 1910. History The newspaper was founded by James Paton, proprietor ...

'' raved, "Leon is the best male female actor known to the stage. He does it with such dignity, modesty, and refinement that it is truly art."''New York Clipper''. Quoted in Toll 142. In fact, Leon's impersonation was so convincing that a reviewer in

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

remarked, "Heaps of boys in my locality don't believe yet it's a man in spite of my saying it was", and that Leon could "make a fool of a man if he wasn't sure." Another critic raved, "He is more womanly in his by-play and mannerisms than the most charming female imaginable." The idea that a male performer represented women better than women was echoed by another critic who noted, "Just as a white man makes the best stage Negro, so a man gives more photographic interpretation of femininity than the average woman is able to give". In 1864, Leon formed a minstrel troupe with Edwin Kelly. Leon and Kelly's Minstrels spoke of their freedom from vulgarity and featured elaborate scenery and refined

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

s with Leon as the female lead. Though these were at heart

burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

s, Leon insisted that everything was quite proper. He claimed to have studied

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

from a respected dancer and to have practiced for "hours every day" for seven years. He further asserted that he took voice lessons from famous opera teacher Errani. Ultimately, however, Leon's performances were not enough to keep the company afloat. By 1883, Leon had joined the San Francisco Minstrels. In January 1891, he was performing the character Carmencita at Niblo's theatre in New York. His last known appearance was in Chicago in November 1900, when he was attempting a comeback. One critic felt his days as a female impersonator were definitely over. An old friend, Malcolm Douglas, reminisced about him in a 1942 news article. He said that in later years Leon owned a large office building in Chicago and that he lived to an "old age." Leon died in Chicago on August 19, 1922 and was interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery.''Chicago Daily Tribune'', 20 Aug 1922: 9

Gallery

Francis Leon in costume.jpg File:Harvard Theatre Collection - Francis Leon TCS 1.643.jpg File:Harvard Theatre Collection - Francis Leon TCS 1.638.jpg

Notes

References

*Toll, Robert C. (1974). ''Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Leon, Francis 1844 births 1922 deaths American male dancers American male singers Blackface minstrel performers American drag queens 19th-century American dancers