From the New York Times
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
The performer who used the stage name Pepper LaBeija as a glamorous queen of the Harlem drag balls immortalized in the 1991 documentary “Paris Is Burning” died on May 14 at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. She, as she preferred to be called, was 53.
A woman who answered the telephone at her mother’s home but who would not identify herself said the cause of death was a heart attack.
Miss LaBeija (pronounced la-BAY-zha) appeared proudly in luxuriant female garb that was often golden and shimmering, and referred to herself in feminine terms, her friend Marcel Christian LaBeija said.
Marcel’s given name is Herman Williams, but the last name of LaBeija is used by all members of the House of LaBeija, the group of performers Pepper led.
When Pepper LaBeija was not onstage, she was William Jackson of the Bronx, who sometimes dressed as a man.
Pepper was the last of the four great queens of the modern Harlem balls; Angie Xtravaganza, Dorian Corey and Avis Pendavis all died in recent years. These four exuded a sort of wild expressionism that might make Las Vegas showgirls seem tame.
“This is the end of the golden age,” said Brian Lantelme, a photographer who has covered the balls.
The House of LaBeija was one of the first houses, founded in 1970. The female impersonator who first led it thought the name LaBeija seemed glamorous. Pepper took over in 1971 or 1972, Marcel said.
Pepper LaBeija was called “mother”; the house’s younger members were the “children.”
“A house is a family for those who don’t have a family,” Miss LaBeija said in the movie.
Marcel LaBeija and Mr. Lantelme said that Pepper was also survived by a son and daughter, but did not know these survivors’ names.
Miss LaBeija had diabetes, which had led to the amputation of both feet, and had been bedridden for most of the last decade. She last performed at a ball in 2001, when 30 attendants delivered her on a litter to the crowd’s jubilation.
“Her specialty was the Egyptian effect,” Marcel LaBeija said.
Pepper LaBeija was a legend to the members and patrons of the Harlem ball scene, a world of extravagant make-believe that crosses sexual boundaries and that was chronicled in “Paris Is Burning,” directed by Jennie Livingston. In an interview, Ms. Livingston spoke of Pepper’s “glamorous bravado” that stood out in a flock of Marilyn Monroes.
The public also glimpsed the ball scene in a Madonna video that featured voguing, a highly stylized and posed dance form used in the balls. Voguing was also featured at the Love Balls, which were held at Roseland in 1989 and 1990 and drew top fashion industry figures.
Though men have long dressed as women for many reasons, the modern institution of the Harlem ball began around 1960, said Marcel LaBeija, who is writing a book on the subject. The idea was to give gay blacks and Hispanics a place to dress up and perform. An earlier circuit for drag performers had been geared to white people, and black performers had sometimes whitened their faces to fit in.
The new balls did more than add racial justice. They set up changing categories within which to compete; these sometimes included Town & Country types, military personnel, corporate executives, schoolgirls and schoolboys and fashion models.
Trophies were awarded to those who best achieved “realness,” or resemblance to an archetype. The paradox was more bitter than sweet: performers strove to become the very people who would reject them. The best won trophies; no one won more than Miss LaBeija, who took away around 250, mostly for extravagant takes on high fashion.
Like many such performers, she had surgically implanted breasts. But she did not want a sex-change operation, explaining that women don’t have it so great.
The drag ball scene, as portrayed in “Paris Is Burning,” had its sad aspects as well. One man says that the biggest “realness” a man can attain is to be convincing enough to make it home on the subway without getting beaten up for being in costume.
For most of her life, Miss LaBeija’s world was the balls. Marcel said that Pepper supported herself by producing them and by teaching modeling.
In an interview with The Village Voice in 2000, Miss LaBeija said her life had grown more ordinary, and called herself an “old-way legend in recovery.”
I haven’t watched this movie in a while.
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