Thread by @ThaddeusRussell

One of the more striking but little-acknowledged features of military life during World War II was the ubiquitous GI drag show.
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“From Broadway to Guadalcanal, on the backs of trucks, makeshift platforms, and elegant theater stages,” writes historian Allen Berube, “American GIs did put on all-male shows for each other that almost always featured female impersonation routines.”

The Army Special Services Headquarters, which provided instructions for soldiers to stage their own entertainment, virtually codified the drag scene that is central to gay culture.

The Special Services handbook for one drag show contained illustrations for dresses to be worn by male soldiers, including instructions for making a “G.I. showgirl” gown out of an Army blanket and a tutu out of a military-issue “T shirt dyed pink.”

Many shows put on by soldiers were written by playwrights who were themselves gay and had developed the “camp” style of gay theater.

Several Army bases saw productions of Private Maxie Reporting, which featured an overtly gay character named “Pfc. Bloomingslip” who “wears a green carnation” and reports to Officer Candidate School because, as he says, “to be an officer would just be too, too queer!”

The most popular Special Services theatrical production was This Is the Army, which according to Berube “became the prototypical World War II soldier show and established the three basic wartime styles of GI drag.”

These were the comic “pony ballets” of highly masculine men dancing and singing in dresses, highly skilled drag performances of songs, and what would become the centerpiece of post-war gay entertainment: impersonations of female celebrities.

Reviewing one performance of This Is the Army, the New York Herald Tribune concluded that it “has everything except girls, and the terrible truth is that you don’t miss them.”

In 1943 the War Department and Warner Brothers co-produced a film version of the play that featured several major Hollywood stars including George Murphy, Joan Leslie, Alan Hale, and Ronald Reagan.

The great influx of women into the military services beginning in 1942 and many attempts to stage male-and-female productions did not reduce the demand among GIs for all-male drag shows, which remained a staple of military entertainment through the war.

Here's Ronald Reagan opening the curtain for a drag show in This is the Army.

Enjoy.