Stan Munro is a female impersonator, drag performer and comedian born 1941 in Wales. [1] [2] [3] He has been performing since he was 13 years old touring with The Francis Langford Boys Choir. [4]
In 1963, Munro joined the long-running internationally renowned cabaret show Les Girls [5] [6] in Kings Cross, Sydney as one of the original cast members alongside Carlotta. [7] [1] While performing with Les Girls, Munro spoke Polari, popularising it with the other performers. [8]
In 1970, when the Les Girls arrived in Melbourne, Munro led the troupe and was the compère, performing for seven years. [9] [10] [11] He was the first female impersonator to perform at Pentridge Prison. [12]
Outside of Australia, Munro has performed across Asia, Europe and the United Kingdom [1] [13] [14]
In 1973, Munro appeared on the Graham Kennedy Show interviewed by Bert Newton following a performance by the Les Girls cast. [15] He has also starred in the 1970 Jeff Bridges film Yin and Yang of Mr Go, and Alvin Purple where he was the first female impersonator to be featured in Australian film. [12] [16]
Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and express oneself.
Polari is a form of slang or cant historically used in Britain by some actors, circus and fairground performers, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals and sex workers, and particularly among the gay subculture. There is some debate about its origins, but it can be traced to at least the 19th century and possibly as early as the 16th century. Polari has a long-standing connection with Punch and Judy street puppeteers, who traditionally used it to converse.
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and have been a part of gay culture.
Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration, especially when there is also a playful or ironic element. Camp is historically associated with LGBTQ+ culture and especially gay men. Camp aesthetics disrupt modernist understandings of high art by inverting traditional aesthetic judgements of beauty, value, and taste, and inviting a different kind of aesthetic engagement.
Drag kings have historically been mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of an individual or group routine. As documented in the 2003 Journal of Homosexuality, in more recent years the world of drag kings has broadened to include performers of all gender expressions. A typical drag show may incorporate dancing, acting, stand-up comedy and singing, either live or lip-synching to pre-recorded tracks. Drag kings often perform as exaggeratedly macho male characters, portray characters such as construction workers and rappers, or impersonate male celebrities like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Tim McGraw. Drag kings may also perform as personas that do not clearly align with the gender binary. Drag personas that combine both stereotypically masculine and feminine traits are common in modern drag king shows.
An Elvis impersonator is an entertainer who impersonates or copies the look and sound of American musician and rock singer Elvis Presley. Professional Elvis impersonators, commonly known as Elvis tribute artists (ETAs), work all over the world as entertainers, and such tribute acts remain in great demand due to the iconic status of Elvis Presley. In addition, there were several radio stations that exclusively feature Elvis impersonator material. Some of these impersonators go to Graceland Memphis, Tennessee on the anniversary of Presley's death to pay tribute to the beloved artist.
Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone who performs femininely and a drag king is someone who performs masculinely. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
An impersonator is someone who imitates or copies the behavior or actions of another. There are many reasons for impersonating someone:
Carlotta is the stage name of Carol Byron, also known as Carol Spencer and credited briefly on television as Carole Lea, a transgender Australian cabaret performer and television personality.
Alvin Purple is a 1973 Australian sex comedy film starring Graeme Blundell in the title role; the screenplay was written by Alan Hopgood and directed by Tim Burstall, through his production company Hexagon Productions and Village Roadshow.
Cross-dressing and drag in film and television has followed a long history of cross-dressing and drag on the English stage, and made its appearance in the early days of the silent films. Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel brought the tradition from the English music halls when they came to the United States with Fred Karno's comedy troupe in 1910. Both Chaplin and Laurel occasionally dressed as women in their films. Even the beefy American actor Wallace Beery appeared in a series of silent films as a Swedish woman. The Three Stooges, especially Curly, sometimes appeared in drag in their short films. The tradition has continued for many years, usually played for laughs. Only in recent decades have there been dramatic films which included cross-dressing, possibly because of strict censorship of American films until the mid-1960s. One early exception was Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Murder!, where the murderer is a transvestite who wears particularly frilly dresses and petticoats. Cross-gender acting, on the other hand, refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite gender.
An AFAB queen, diva queen or hyper queen is a drag queen who is a woman, or a non-binary person who was assigned female at birth. These performers are generally indistinguishable from the more common male or transgender female drag queens in artistic style and techniques.
John Lind (1877–1940), born with the surname Lindström, was a Swedish female impersonator, singer and dancer. Although mostly forgotten today, he toured the world in the early 20th century and was one of Sweden's most internationally famed artists.
The Newport and District Football League is a football league covering the city of Newport and surrounding areas in South Wales. The headquarters are located at Newport Civic Centre.
Tracey Lee was an internationally acclaimed Australian cabaret artiste and female impersonator who was active from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Niles Marsh was a female impersonator who began his career on the Broadway stage and then, from the early 1920s to the mid-1940s, rose to become one of the best known drag performers on the American vaudeville and nightclub circuits. He was one of many such artists who, during that period, encapsulated what was known as the Pansy Craze.
Jacqueline Ruth Weaver is an Australian theatre, film, and television actress. Weaver emerged in the 1970s Australian New Wave through her work in Ozploitation films such as Stork (1971) for which she won AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Alvin Purple (1973), and Petersen (1974). She later starred in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Caddie (1976) for which she won the AACTA Award for Best Supporting Actress in Film, Squizzy Taylor (1982), and a number of television films, miniseries, and Australian productions of plays such as Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Chad Michael Storbeck, known professionally as Chad Michaels, is an American drag performer and professional Cher impersonator. He was the runner-up of the fourth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, alongside Phi Phi O'Hara, and the winner of the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. In 2013, he released "Tragic Girl", his debut single and music video.
Charlie Hides is a British-American drag queen, impersonator, actor, and comedian. Hides is known for his YouTube channel, and his participation in the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. Following live performances in London clubs, Hides started a YouTube channel in March 2011. He has produced hundreds of videos satirizing popular culture, and impersonating celebrities such as Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Lana Del Rey.
Ellen E. Small, who performed as Nellie Small, was an Australian nightclub entertainer, jazz and blues singer, male impersonator and comic.