Gladys Bentley was born on August 12, 1907. She was the eldest of 4 children born to a Trinidad born mother , Mary Mote(Bentley) and an American born father , George L. Bentley. Gladys left home at 16 years old. Like many African Americans of her generation she ended up in New York Citys' Harlem , the capital of "The New Negro ". For Gladys , her lesbianism made her need to strike out on her own all the more urgent. As she would recall many years later in an Ebony Magazine Article , "It seems I was born different. At least,I always thought so....From the time I can remember anything ,even as I was toddling , I never wanted a man to touch me...Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys clothes than in dresses".

She began singing at rent parties and buffet flats and moved on to speakeasies and nightclubs. later she would headline the popular speakeasy the Clam House as well as the Ubangi Club. She would transform popular tunes of the day with raunchy naughty playful lyrics. Dressed in signature tux and top hat , she openly and riotously flirted with women in the audience. Her popularity and salary was ever increasing , as she was frequently mentioned in many of the entertainment columns of the day.

She wowed audiences with her powerful voice and obscene parodies of blues standards and show tunes and was famous for her glamorous girlfriends. Very open about her sexuality, Bentley also performed at lesbian bars and once told a gossip columnist she had married a white woman while in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Characters based on her appeared in novels (Carl Van Vechtens' "Parties", Clement Woods "Deep River", Blair Niles "Strange Brother"). Starting in 1928 ( at age 21) she began a recording career that spanned 2 decades. 8 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.

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 light of recent revelations about J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohen and possibly McCarthy himself this movement was all the more hypocritical. Although gay and lesbian organizations like The Daughters Of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society were formed at this time, the lives of many homosexuals were ruined. Bentley, who for so long had been one of THE most open as regards her homosexuality, was of course a sitting duck for persecution. Out of desperate fear for her own survival (particularly with an aging mother to support) Gladys Bentley started wearing dresses, and sanitizing her act. In 1950, Bentley wrote a desperate, largely fabricated article for Ebony entitled "I am Woman Again" in which she 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 does seem to have 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. These desperate attempts to survive do not diminish her previous accomplishments.

SOURCE: Celebrity Page by Laurence Frommer