Long Live The Queens

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The Show Must Go On

Carl Rizzi (who performs as Mame Dennis) and a community of Washington drag queens struggle to stay in the spotlight after being displaced by Nationals Park.

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They held lavish parties -- music and wine, high heels and lipstick -- at various members' homes, rechristened for the occasions: Blair House, Butterfield 8, Camelot, Hollywood House. For the hosts, that was the path to the growing list of titles. Tickets for the big award shows -- Miss Gaye Universe, the Oscars and Miss America, mostly held at the Cairo Hotel, which allowed drag -- were $10, some of which Liz pocketed. "There were token blacks, but Liz would not let them have any awards," Rizzi says.

Later, Mame broke with the Academy over Liz's refusal to give a dozen of Mame's close friends titles. Another drag queen had formed a drag performance organization, the Awards Club of Washington, and persuaded Mame to join her. Anybody who bought a ticket to their awards show could vote. Mame brought dozens of members to the new organization, and they voted her Best Actress.

At the urging of her friend Fanny Brice, the "house mother" of "Henry Street," Mame formed her own "house" -- a group of people banded together under a name and leader -- in 1970, and set it up like a family with drag daughters she could organize and mentor. Her house,

"Beekman Place," was named for the Manhattan apartment where Rosalind Russell's Mame Dennis lived in the movie "Auntie Mame." Washington's Mame prided herself on watching her daughters win awards and grow into the women they wanted to be. They, in turn, rewarded her with fealty and love.

"I definitely turned out to be a leader," Rizzi muses. It was yet another way that Mame transformed Carl. "It was very different from being in the closet and sitting at home." In 1973, Bill Oates, a businessman and Mame's dear friend, helped broker an agreement whereby Mame returned to the Academy as president for life, bringing her entire 40-person house into a newly incorporated, dues-paying, nonprofit entity, the Academy of Washington Inc. Fanny Brice was vice president and brought her Henry Street house as well.

Liz Taylor, who wanted the Academy to grow larger and still considered those who left to be her people, was made chairman of the board, and she and Mame made relative peace. (Liz moved to Florida in the mid-1980s and died a decade later.) Under Mame's leadership, more awards were created, including some for the growing ranks of non-drag Academy members -- gay men who appreciated drag and performed, but who didn't dress up as women themselves. She opened the Academy to blacks and women.

The executive board selected the big title winners. The Academy's most coveted titles, Best Actress and Actor, had to star in a 90-minute theater production with sets, costumes and a full cast of characters, of which the Academy had no shortage. In 1975, Mame won Best Actress. She can still recall her walk to the stage, escorted by her lover, that year's winner of the Academy's Best Actor, who went by the name Bobby Vinton. The audience clapped wildly, and the overture from the Broadway musical "Applause" played on tape.

"What is it Andy Warhol said? Everyone gets 15 minutes of fame?" Mame says. "I've had many, many 15 minutes."

The Academy continued to expand its awards list -- it no longer calls them Oscars since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences threatened to sue in 2002 -- and routinely hands out dozens of other acknowledgments during the year: the Cybill Shepherd Multi-Talented Award, for that versatile Academy member who can sew, do hair, put on makeup and perform; Miss Cherries Preserves, for someone who's been dressing in drag 10 years or more; Mother and Father of the Year, for those who have done a great job of mentoring their "children." The awards were usually followed by tears and emotional acceptance speeches. All the validation the rest of the world denied them, the drag queens lavished on themselves.

In his day job, Rizzi had become secretary to the director of the Office of Mail Classification at the Postal Service. He was punctual, didn't gossip, and for years he didn't let friends call him at work. "I knew what I was, but I still had this other world I had to live in, and the two didn't mix." He was convinced his colleagues knew nothing about his other life. He had been so careful. But he was wrong. In 1974, he says, postal inspectors escorted him into a room. Someone had sent them a picture of Rizzi in drag. For hours, they drilled him, Rizzi says. " 'We know you're a homosexual. Who else do you know in the Postal Service that's a homosexual? Tell us!' " Rizzi recalls them yelling at him. "I don't know where I got the courage, but I told them: 'That's a terrible picture. I have better ones at home if you'd like.' " When he returned to the office, his boss demanded to know where he'd been. Rizzi stepped into his office, closed the door and began crying. He told his boss what had happened.

" 'Carl, I know you're gay,' " Rizzi recalls the boss saying. " 'It doesn't affect your work.' " He says his boss called the postal inspectors office, and Rizzi never heard another word about it. He worked there until his 1992 retirement.

In the early 1970s, the Academy moved to a blighted, sparsely populated area in Southeast, where a string of gay clubs had begun opening. The location made for cheap rents, few noise complaints from neighbors and, not incidentally, virtual anonymity. It became the gay community's own corner of Washington.