Venus  Magazine

The TRUTH About Gladys Bentley
August 12, 1907 - January 18, 1960

Publisher's Note: Some journalists have often tried to write into the history of folks what they want or need to be there. Near the end of her life Gladys gave her life to Christ, denounced homosexuality as a biblically acceptable lifestyle and answered her call to the ministry. Although she died prior to being ordained as a minister in her church, her life's example of spiritual change continues to inspire many.
To suggest that her decision was influenced by anything other than the call of God on her life is pure speculation. A woman who was strong enough to be 'out'-rageous in the thirties, Bentley would certainly have had the courage to continue, after her career was over, to live any way she pleased. The truth is that Bentley got tired of resisting God's call. She understood that eternity is closer than we believe. -Charlene E. Cothran

Gladys Bentley was born on August 12, 1907 in Philadelphia, PA. She was the eldest of 4 children born to a Trinidad born mother, Mary Mote (Bentley) and an American born father, George L. Bentley.

Bentley was a muscular and masculine girl; by the time she reached adolescence, she knew that her attraction to women made her irreconcilably different from many of the people around her. As a result, she suffered harsh treatment from family, classmates, teachers, and even doctors who
claimed they could "cure" her. She left home when she was sixteen.

Bentley moved to Harlem, where she found an underground social culture that included gambling, drug use, drag shows, and other behavior deemed illicit by the broader culture. In this so-called "sporting life," Bentley found the freedom to be an openly lesbian woman without risk of ridicule or abuse. She was not afraid to flaunt her lesbianism by flirting with women in her audiences and talking openly about her sexual escapades.

She began performing at rent parties and in some of Harlem's marginal clubs and became a popular blues singer among Harlem's fringe community. In The Big Sea, Langston Hughes described her dynamic style during this period: "Miss Bentley sat, and played a big piano all night long, literally
all night, without stopping singing songs like 'The St. James Infirmary' from ten in the evening until dawn, with scarcely a break between the notes, sliding from one song to another, with a powerful continuous underbeat of jungle rhythm."¹

Dressed in signature tux and top hat , Bentley openly and riotously flirted with women in the audience. Her salary increased considerably when desirable, white patrons, including Carl Van Vechten, started to come uptown to her shows. She began to play the Cotton Club and other more mainstream Harlem venues. These less "sporting" audiences didn't prevent Bentley from singing obscene songs and from creating her own salacious versions of popular tunes. Her style remained vibrant and rowdy. In Parties, Van Vechten modeled a blues performer on Bentley; "when she pounds the piano the dawn comes up like thunder," he wrote, "say, she rocks the box, and tosses
it, you can bet, and jumps it through hoops." ²

Characters based on her appeared in novels (Carl Van Vechtens' "Parties", Clement Woods "Deep River" and Blair Niles "Strange Brother").Starting in1928 ( at age 21) she began a recording career that spanned two decades. Eight recordings for the OKeh recording company were followed by a
side with the Washboard Serenader's on the Victor label. Although on her recordings she did not dare have lesbian lyrics, she certainly played up this image in the clubs and in public.

Lois Sobel, a popular columnist of the era, recalled Bentleys announcement of her marriage ceremony with her white female lover in New Jersey. Bentley briefly parleyed her fortunes into a Park Avenue apartment, servants, beautiful cars, etc. In the 1930s the repeal of Prohibition
quickly eroded the prominence of Harlem bistros. Furthermore, the Great Depression seems to have ended much of the "anything goes" spirit of tolerance that had pervaded in the 1920s'. In spite of this, Bentley was able to hold on by cultivating her homosexual following. In the early 1930's she was the featured entertainer at Harlem's' Ubangi Club, supported by a chorus of men in drag. But by 1937 the glory days of Jungle Alley were very much a thing of the past.

Bentley (now aged 30) moved to Los Angeles to live with her mother in a small California bungalow. She was able to maintain some success,  particularly during World War II when many homosexual bars proliferated on the west coast (capitalizing on the influx of gay men and lesbians from the
military). Once again, Bentley carved out a niche for herself in this subculture and environment. Many lesbian women came to see her shows at Joquins' El Rancho in Los Angeles and Monas in San Francisco, although on occasion she did have legal trouble for performing in her signature male
attire.

In 1945 she recorded 5 discs for the Excelsior label (still not daring to use lesbian lyrics in recordings) including "Thrill Me Till I get My Fill," "Find Out What He Likes", and "Notoriety Papa". However in the 1950s the limited tolerance that had been eroding since the Great Depression finally collapsed disastrously. The McCarthy "witch hunts" were particularly vicious towards homosexuals.

In 1950, Bentley wrote an article for Ebony entitled "I am Woman Again" in which she repudiated her former life, claiming to have "lived in a personal hell" of unhappiness and loneliness. She also claimed to have cured her lesbianism via female hormone treatments and was finally at peace
after a "hell as terrible as dope addiction".

She claimed to have married a newspaper columnist named J. T. Gibson (a man who soon after publicly denied that the two had ever wed). In 1952 she married a man named Charles Roberts. He was a cook and 16 years younger than Bentley, who lied on the marriage certificate, stating her age as 36 rather than 45. The two eventually divorced.

Bentley did manage to still perform, usually at the Rose Room in Hollywood. She recorded a single on the Flame label and appeared twice on Groucho Marx's' television show. At this stage, Bentley became an active and truly devoted member of The Temple of Love in Christ, Inc. She was about to become an ordained minister in the church when she died of a flu epidemic in 1960 at the age of 52.

Sources:
1 Langston Hughes The Big Sea NY: Knopf, 1940
pp. 225-26
2 Van Vechten Parties: Scenes FromContemporary
New York Life NY: Knopf, 1930