Overview of Broadway Blackface & Harlem Sex Tourism (The Bisexuals, Part 1)
This opening episode of You Must Remember This’s The Bisexuals season introduces Libby Holman, a legendary 1920s Broadway torch singer whose rise to fame intersected with racial appropriation, Harlem nightlife, and queer social circles. Karina Longworth frames Holman as a complicated figure: a gifted performer, a Jewish woman navigating anti-Semitism and class decline, and a celebrity who leveraged ambiguity around race and sexuality in ways that were both empowering and ethically fraught.
Key Themes and Topics
Libby Holman’s early life and ascent
- Born Elsbeth Holzman in Cincinnati in 1904, Holman came from a prominent Jewish family that later fell into financial decline.
- She faced anti-Semitism and social exclusion, including at the University of Cincinnati.
- After moving to New York in 1924, she struggled at first, then broke through in Broadway revues, especially The Little Show.
- Her signature hit, “Moanin’ Low,” turned her into a star and helped define her as a torch singer with a dramatic, blues-inflected style.
Race, Black music, and appropriation
- The episode examines Holman’s deep engagement with Black music and Harlem culture, while emphasizing that her relationship to Blackness was shaped by white privilege.
- Longworth discusses how Holman’s career benefited from a broader tradition of white performers using Black musical idioms and even blackface-adjacent performance styles.
- Holman’s act included dark makeup and a performance style that observers often read as racially ambiguous; some even believed she might be Black.
- The host is especially critical of the way biographies and publicity often romanticized this as natural talent rather than confronting the politics of appropriation.
Harlem as a center of nightlife, sex tourism, and queer experimentation
- Harlem is presented as a major cultural and social site for white bohemians in the 1920s.
- For Holman and others, it was a place to encounter:
- Black music and performance
- interracial nightlife
- sexual freedom
- bisexual and queer experimentation
- The episode places Holman alongside the era’s nightlife ecosystem, where white visitors often came to consume Black culture while also exploring desires that were more taboo in mainstream society.
Holman’s connections to major performers
- The episode situates Holman among several iconic figures:
- Tallulah Bankhead — glamorous, openly scandalous, and sexually adventurous
- Josephine Baker — a Black performer who found greater freedom and success in Paris
- Clifton Webb — close friend and collaborator
- Jean Eagels — the actress rumored to have had an intimate relationship with Holman
- These relationships illustrate how intertwined Broadway, cabaret, and queer social life were in the 1920s.
Jean Eagels and the mood shift at the end of the decade
- Longworth explores the rumors surrounding Holman and Jean Eagels, while noting that the historical evidence is murky.
- Eagels was a major stage and screen actress whose career was marked by erratic behavior and substance abuse.
- Her death in 1929 deeply affected Holman and symbolizes the end of the freer, more permissive cultural moment of the 1920s.
- The stock market crash and the coming of the 1930s mark a shift toward a harsher, less forgiving climate for women like Holman.
Important Takeaways
- Libby Holman was a star built on contradiction: Jewish and racially ambiguous, glamorous yet vulnerable, provocative yet self-aware.
- Her rise depended on a cultural moment when Black music, Harlem nightlife, and queer experimentation were being consumed by white audiences.
- The episode does not excuse Holman’s appropriation, but it shows how her career was shaped by the era’s racial and sexual politics.
- This installment sets up the broader season arc, which will eventually lead to Holman’s infamous connection to the Smith Reynolds murder scandal.
Why This Episode Matters
- It uses Holman’s life as a lens for understanding:
- 1920s Broadway culture
- the racial dynamics of Harlem nightlife
- early 20th-century bisexual and queer subcultures
- the way celebrity images were constructed through performance, rumor, and mythology
Season Setup
This is the first part of a larger story. Longworth signals that future episodes will:
- follow Holman’s rise in New York
- examine her entanglements with race and sexuality
- and eventually move toward the scandal that permanently altered her reputation