Impersonation

“ You have full possession of that rarest of all dramatic arts, the art of impersonation. See what most of the men and women on the modern stage are. They are always just themselves—in different parts, in new dresses. Of course, we have some real actors, men and women who can impersonate. You are destined to a place with the very highest, for you can create a part utterly unlike your own individuality ”

“ Here is certainly a very important suggestion, and one which, recognising justice as a blind goddess, is strictly in conformity with the impersonation. Nothing could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of undue influence than decisions obtained in this manner. ”

“ Isn't it natural that the talent for impersonation should also grow richer among a people who have finally won self-respect, who have learned how to walk, and to stand, and to talk as well as the rest of the world? ”

“ The reason given impresses me as a mere pretext to hide his appointment on the launch and prospective female-impersonation—because the pretext sounds just like me. I am one who has been compelled to falsify much because if my associates had been granted the truth, they would have impiously crushed me. In my university course in ethics, I was taught that it is proper to tell a lie if the persons deceived have no right to the truth. Always those whom I deceived had no right, because the truth would have rendered them insanely cruel. ”

“ To subordinate one's tones, gestures, and manners, and to live the character for the time being, requires no mean ability. Impersonation calls for imagination, insight, concentration, and adaptability. ”

“ Perhaps Z had the habit, to satisfy his mania for female-impersonation, of taking on his yacht as an audience young bachelors who owned launches usually anchored near his own. Perhaps a launch, on that Sunday afternoon ideal for yachting, was kept at anchor near Z's because its owner had plotted to teach Z a lesson, with the "good" intention of curing him of his habit of female-impersonation, believing—as nearly every one does at present because prohibited by public opinion from learning the truth—that it is a wilful bad habit. ”

“ To achieve my best success at female-impersonation, the stimulus of an appreciative and responsive audience of youthful Lotharios was necessary. Our hilarity was more and more attracting the eyes and ears of all other guests. Some recognized me as a female-impersonator. Calls began to reach me: "O you Jennie June, give us an impersonation of a prima donna!" The old-timers were remarking to new patrons of the "hostelry": "The little fellow with the red bow is a fairie!" ”

“ Not only must they be given to the persons best fitted physically to assume them, but a perfectly successful impersonation involved mental sympathy between the real and assumed individuals, else bearing and movements would be out of accord. When it came to fencing to ward off the guessers’ questions, which must be answered, betrayals would be inevitable, unless each actor understood the character he, or she, portrayed sufficiently to reply correctly yet misleadingly. ”

“ Pantomime is more essential to the development of impersonation, but dramatic interpretation gathers power from the psychological appreciation attained from the studies pertaining to personal development. In dramatic interpretation the voice is a much more significant feature relatively than is the detail of gesture in pantomime. Impersonation absolutely requires the finest detail of mannerism to be represented in the action. ”

“ It is the art of losing one's self in the character and the situation the dramatist has created. This means that the spirit of the character must take possession of the impersonator, and in [Pg 223] form his every thought and feeling, and so his every motion and tone. Remember, it is the spirit of the character that must determine the nature of the tone and gesture. The great danger in entering upon the study of impersonation lies in emphasizing the outward manifestation instead of the inward spirit of the character to be portrayed. ”

“ Q loved to roam the slums of large cities. [An earmark of cultured androgynism. They thus roam because realizing that in their Overworld, they are prohibited outlet for the feminine side of their duality. They roam with day dreams of how they would like to impersonate a female in the Underworld, where alone female-impersonators are welcome; and finally, in many cases, they are carried away by their mania for an actual female-impersonation spree.] ”

“ The most general allegation of impersonation of a government official, therefore, sufficiently charges this element of the offense. The validity of this portion of the indictment was not contested here. ”

“ But to an experienced actor this difficulty does not exist. To him, personation is easy; and, moreover, an actor is precisely the person to whom the idea of disguise and impersonation would occur.
"There is a small item bearing on this point, so small as to be hardly worth calling evidence, but just worth noting. In the pocket of the waistcoat taken from the body of Jeffrey I found the stump of a 'Contango' pencil; a pencil that is sold for the use of stock dealers and brokers. ”

“ If the candidate wishes to qualify for juvenile parts, then he must satisfy his judges that he is able to impersonate three young men who may have some resemblance to each other in appearance, but who are all different in character, in voice, and in deportment, or he may decide to be judged by his impersonation of middle-aged city clerks, bumpkins, or pedants ”

“ For the next few hours, I was in hitherto undreamed-of bliss because of being wooed by all four in 206|Phyllis Finds “Herself.”| their delightfully wild and rough way. Ever since my later teens, I have always yearned to be treated by young fellows as a girl, and on my female-impersonation sprees now and again, I have had such yearnings fully met. ”

“ The Overworld has enjoined complete silence about female-impersonators because of their thoroughly false view that any adolescent adopting the role must do so from moral depravity. They argue: “If I myself adopted the role, it could only be through unspeakable depravity. Ergo, the same is true for every male.” They overlook the fact that Nature did not 99|Female-Impersonation Instinctive.| make all anatomical males of like passions. What would be moral depravity for one is not for another.
Instinctive female-impersonators are sexual cripples from their mother’s womb. ”

“ I had heard that the Rialto is New York's stamping-ground for amateur female-impersonators. Accordingly I commenced devoting one or two evenings a week to its resorts. As. soon as I learned that "the Hall" is the home of cultured female-impersonation, I made it my own headquarters.
IV. The Masked Ball.
You inquire, Ralph-Jennie, if I have been blackmailed during my business career. I confess I have been more negligent than most cultured women-men, and as a punishment, have suffered more blackmail. ”

“ The androgyne who had adopted the name of a romantic woman had, during his twenties, before becoming thick-set, been a female-impersonator on the vaudeville stage.
"Mith Nighty!" one of the youngest hermaphroditoi shouted in a falsetto. "Queenie and I want you to coach us in female-impersonation. Next Friday at the Masked Ball we make our debut as public femaleimpersonators."
A senior: "The world would call our hobby insanity. ”

“ The really important fact is that all should be warned against such a proposition as lies in the hideous sentence, "Is not half the battle won when one perfectly physically realizes the character to be impersonated?" ”

“ Actors impersonate heroes, villains, model husbands, daring lovers, in a real way. They think, plan, and train themselves to impersonate the character, they make it so real that people think it must be a part of their nature. ”

“ For while the career of a female-impersonator is a purely physiological and psychological phenomenon, it is incorrectly regarded as deep-dyed immorality.
All impersonators belonging to the middle and upper classes also choose a masculine alias, represented in the Underworld to be their legal name. They do not wish to risk disgrace to their family name. ”

“ If we should catch you running around with any other, we'd murder you!"
I coveted to be their slave, Ralph, and did all I could for them without disclosing that I belonged to a wealthy family, because a female-impersonator of a higher social stratum associating incognito with gangsters must conceal his status. At Pug Heaven, I became an expert detective and actor—an accomplishment requisite for every upper-class impersonator destined to sprees in the Underworld.
A thousand times I desiderated female corporeality so that I could have married one of these magic gunmen. ”

“ Dean's. I shall prove the editor of this contemptible paper to be an unprincipled, cold- blooded libeller, destitute of every manly and honourable feeling; a wretch, who, from the basest and most mercenary motives, to raise his obscure paper into notice, and to promote its sale, could disgrace the name of man, by propagating the most notorious and unfounded falsehood against the private character of a public man. ”

“ It is not a pleasant task to expose an impostor; much less is it agreeable to expose four impostors; but to one who from the earliest times--and when I say earliest times I speak advisedly, as you will see as you read on--to one, I say, who from earliest times has been actuated by no other motive than the promulgation of truth, the task of exposing fraud becomes a duty which cannot be ignored. ”

“ The Eternal foresaw that it was to the best interests both of the human race and of myself that I should leave to others the coveted work of preaching the Gospel to the heathen and spend my physical prime in New York’s Underworld as an avocational female-impersonator. That was the cross that God willed that I should bear. The role of female-impersonator is the niche in the universe that its Architect had created me to fill. ”

“ The notorious impostor and biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood, calumny, and defamation. ”

“ Imagine an impostor arriving for the first time in a place where all the inhabitants are unknown to him, and attempting to personate a man who had dwelt there, who would have connections of all kinds, who would have played his part in a thousand different scenes, who would have confided his secrets, his opinions, to relations, friends, acquaintances, to all sorts of people; who had also a wife—that is to say, a person under whose eyes nearly his whole life would be passed, a person would study him perpetually, with whom he would be continually conversing on every sort of subject. ”

“ In the Autobiography, besides an exhaustive analysis of his own intuitions, beliefs, courses of reasoning, emotions, penchants, and instincts, the author merely outlined his manner of life and adventures, particularly while impersonating a female. ”

“ Still, if I am an impostor, civility can do no harm, while if it should turn out that I am not an impostor, then your present tone may make after arrangements all the harder upon you. Now will you oblige me by sitting down? I dislike, while sitting myself, talking to a standing man. ”

“ This clumsiness clings even to the photographs of public men, as they are snapshotted at public meetings. A sensitive politician (if there is such a thing) would, I should think, want to murder the man who snapshots him at those moments. For our general impression of a man’s gesture or play of feature is made up of a series of vanishing instants, at any one of which he may look worse than our general impression records. ”

“ I will [Pg 121] look out for myself, and my friends, if need be, the rest may protect themselves, as best they can."
"Are the Marburys your friends?" she asked.
"Have the Marburys needed my protection, yet?"
"There is an impostor a guest in their house."
"My dear girl, you assume he is an impostor for personal gain—I, that he is an impostor for purposes of State. I would receive him as a guest at Rose Hill."
"You are warned—we were not."
"Whom his Excellency sponsors, a citizen may entertain without discredit." ”

“ They were asked so suddenly and pointedly that the pretender was thrown off his guard; he looked confused, and stammered in his replies. Their eyes met; he felt that he was detected, and she saw that he perceived her now confirmed suspicions. A look such as is peculiar to an impostor—a glance that deformed his beauty, and filled his usually noble countenance with the hideous lines of cunning and cruel triumph—completed her faith in her own discernment. “How,” she thought, “could I have mistaken this man for my own gentle Eboli?” ”

“ How then can the multitude be deceived into subservience?—By the pretence of indifference to them. An impostor is always supposed to be in earnest. The commonplace impostor is so: he has staked everything on the appearance of being sincere. He, on the other hand, who is reckless in mendacity, who cheats with a laughing eye; who, while silently strenuous in a given cause, appears to take seriously neither it, himself, nor those on whom both depend, irresistibly strikes the vulgar as moved by something greater than himself or they. ”

“ If once you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your cries: prepare a tale however plausible or however true, the whole world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your innocence shall be of no service to you. I laugh at so feeble a defence. ”