773-6511 • conroytullywalker.com 172 State Street, Portland • 1024 Broadway, South Portland Committed to providing valuable and personalized burial, cremation, and prearrangement services. Greater Portland’s Preferred Funeral Homes Lunch 11:30-2 Dinner 5-8:30 Closed on Mondays 284-6000 | 122 Hills Beach Rd., Biddeford | buffleheadsrestaurant.com Open through October! Join us for 2 for Tuesdays! Icons 64 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine know what became of Tom Martelle. Aus- terity tightened its belt on the glamour of the twenties, and throughout America, local laws such as Detroit’s 1944 ordinance pro- hibited people from appearing in the “dress of the opposite sex.” And with the shifting tides of culture, “The Foremost Delineator of Feminine Types” seems to be lost to the footnotes and ephemera of history. The Man Behind the Make-Up The art of female impersonation may have titillated a 1920s readership, but from a modern perspective, the gender bias and gender anxiety may be the most strik- ing fact of the story. Sharpe is quick to ex- pound upon Martelle’s masculinity, “Mr. Martelle is a real he-man. Off stage he has none of the feminine traits which I have found in other female impersonators and costume models that I have met.” Martel- le himself indulges in some hedged politi- cal correctness: “Girls, as a rule, act more than men. They are continually acting… I am casting no insult against their sex– If I was a woman-hater, I never would be working in this profession.” The Sun-Up story ends with beauty ad- vice for Martelle’s female fans. “When you get right down to it, you can’t fool the men a great deal. Powder is necessary, but rouge and lipstick look sad in the eyes of men, who often say, ‘I wonder what she would look like without that Junk.’” Apparent- ly the professional female impersonator failed to see the irony in his comments. But if a sexual history of our state is ever to be written, it is visible and crying for no- tice between the pages of magazines, biog- raphies, newspapers, and documents that a true, often colorful, understanding of sex, gender, and social history has always dreamed of coming forward to surprise and delight. n TheJeffersonTheateronFreeStreetwasaglamorous mainstayof thelocalartsscenebeforeitwastorndownin1933.