About Leslie-Ann
Leslie-Ann, vocalist and bass player with the Los Angeles Warlocks back in the sixties, and has appeared with the Gay Asian Kittens and FAXL, and has worked extensively since 1959 as a Male Impersonator, trained by Ricky Renee, and has for many years passed as, and was accepted as, a male in her daily life.
She worked as a stockbroker and market analyst at Gardner, Stanley & Harris and wrote the weekly newsletter for several brokerage houses. She appeared as herself, Leslie-Ann, on KHJ-TV in 1969 with Family Feud's Richard Dawson, and was on several segments with Joe Pyne.
She appears in many sixties sitcoms and comedies as a male, and had a job as assistant personnel director at Franklin-Simon Oppenheim-Collins in 1958, and was floor manager at Hammacher-Schlemmer's in NYC in 1959 under her male impersonation character name!!!
She has played many comedy male characters in plays and on television, and has been known and accepted for many years as a man, although she has lived her daily life as a woman since she left the school systems in 1959.
Leslie-Ann's on-stage comedy includes illusionist impersonations of Humphrey Bogart, John F. Kennedy, Bullwinkle, Mr Magoo, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush, Martin and Lewis, Amos and Andy, Abbott and Costello, and many more.
She also does impersonations of her own sex. She does killer comedy routines slaughtering the likes of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, Barbra Streisand, Shelley Duvall, Hannah Montana, Lady Gaga, and many many more. Her vocal range is a full 6 octaves, starting with her natural low alto and working up into high soprano and down, down, down, 'way down into the deepest, darkest baritone!
Her children have become entertainers in their own right, and have made her a grandma three times over, to date. Still as active as ever, She does charity shows and public shows at least once a month, and is booked solid for club dates for the next decade. She broadcasts from her home dimension, L315a, on justin.tv/gorebaggtv . ======================================================================================================================
MY LIFE AS A BOY
My dad went into the army, leaving me and my mom suddenly alone in a small double hut near the army base in Columbia, South Carolina. He hadn't been allowed to tell his family he was shipping out; it was a big military secret. At that time, we couldn't obtain dresses, blouses or skirts for me because rationing had been imposed, and all that that entails; so my mom accepted our housemate Susan's discarded clothes from her young boy, my playmate Joe, who was exactly my age.
Cross-dressing me up as a boy continued throughout the war, and I was in fact treated differently as a boy than I had been as a girl. Things sort of "went" better.
My grandfather, a famous dress manufacturer, had my birth certificate altered to read "male". He paid Doctor Schwartz, whom I suppose is long-gone now, to provide papers that said I was male, although it was obvious at a glance that this wasn't true.
I never gave anybody who could or would turn me in, a glance at my naked body -- not ever.
I went to extreme lengths to avoid shower rooms, medical exam lines, nurse's offices and anywhere else I might be expected to disrobe, except of course at Doctor Schwartz's.
I'll never forget the time I was trapped into waiting in a large auditorium with hundreds of boys, for an unexpected physical exam at the Boy's Club of New York, which was only two blocks from our home.
I stood there not knowing what to do. In just a few moments, every young boy there was expected to disrobe down to nothing. I realized that as soon as I stripped down, I was a goner. At the very last possible moment, amid Christmas caroling coming from somewhere outside the packed and sweaty auditorium, came my Mom to the rescue, bearing with her the doctor's exam report for which my Grandpa had paid so dearly. I got out of there fast; my Mom turned in the paper, and they never asked me again. I was, as far as I know, the only girl member of the New York Boys' Club of America.
I found out years later that my grampa had paid over a thousand dollars to create the illusion that I was a boy.
Without my knowledge, and without the participation of my grandpa, it was arranged for me to go to a boarding military school in Georgia. Grampa would have been in total support of it, because he liked having a grandson with whom to play baseball, which I hated, and football, which I detested and never have figured out, and ping-pong, which I didn't mind at all. I wasn't the kind of girl who played with dolls. I liked dance, singing and crafts.
So, suddenly, without a bit of warning, I was shipped off to a military school down in Georgia, where I'd be in a dorm with thousands of boys! What was I to do? Surely, the game would be up and I would be expelled or worse, brought up in some sort of legal action.
Not to worry, I was told; Doctor Schwarz will fix you up. Sure enough, a week before I was to go into military school, I had a phony "member", actually a double-ended dildo, which works well enough to pass most muster, and it did. Nobody looked twice, and a towel can be arranged to look accidentally draped across the bosom -- I managed somehow to get through it for four long tedious and difficult years; the worst for me was hearing the boy-talk. God, it spoiled every relationship I might have had with men, for the rest of my life. I'd rather not have known what men really think. I have always preferred the company of women.
Throughout college and my early work-life, I relaxed, forgot all about my male persona, just lived life in a simple black dress, working as any normal girl would, in a normal girl-profession of the day before equal rights, which was as an interior designer, with a background at Otis Parsons. And I was, from time to time, actually dancing professionally, and selling paintings under my own rightful birth-name, Leslie-Ann, and I found myself actually performing comedy male impersonations every weekend at The Store, on Sunset Strip.
Then came the first pregnancy, and I spent the next two decades raising several kids, whom I had delivered at home using my own method of childbirth from our published best-selling book, "Joyous Childbirth" which sold millions of copies for Simon & Schuster.
I'll tell you just this about my first baby: My coach fainted. How sad that men don't get an education that includes women's monthlies. You can't tell a man that this happens -- he'll be horrified. And at a birthing, it's even worse for those poor dears. They just don't have the stomach for blood.
I'm a registered midwife & former chief admin of a birthing center in Los Angeles with over 3500 successful deliveries, no episiotomies, no rips, no tears, good solid ancient Greek method of birthing, great breathing techniques, crowning with warm olive-oil, delivery with a receiving warm-tub, which nobody in the last century or two invented. It's an old method, used for centuries...not that you could tell anyone that back in the '70s, when LaMaze was the latest craze. We were there first, just as we were with home hospice care. Keep it simple. Breathe. Groan softly. Use the 'Nam Squat if you can. Enough about childbirth for the moment.
So in 1971 I started my Academy of Ancient Dance. It was originally just for a close group, just us girls who happened to live up in Crestline, Bluejay and Lake Arrowhead, which was about 30 of us at any given time. We had tea, red wine, barefoot on plush white carpet movements training, warm wonderful friendships.
I had seriously considered a professional career as a ballerina during a brief time in girl-life normalcy back in 1956, before the military academy ordeal, when I lived as a totally ordinary drably-draped Junior High School school girl, with my Mom, Eve. We two girls lived alone in a beautiful little Westwood Village garden apartment overlooking the UCLA campus from the sports area side. The best part of living with my Mom was going shopping, buying dresses and separates and sports and makeup and hair things, and jewelry -- she was a jeweler and made many beautiful rings, bracelets and necklaces for me. It was wonderful to be just myself again!
My best friend Connie's doctor dad drove us to school every day in 1956. Connie grew up to be an actress. We reconnected through facebook, after all these years! She is so cool, and her life has been a wonder to behold.
I moved back to New York City, but because of legal complications and a thoroughly nasty divorce proceeding between my parents, both of whom had hired friends as lawyers -- never do that. So once again I was under the jurisdiction of the New York School System, and once again I had to be a boy, and was thus duly registered in Seward Park High School as a boy, very much against my wishes. The only plus side was that I had to get a whole new wardrobe -- I had no boy clothes whatever -- and I got to go shopping, which I do so enjoy!!!
While I was in New York City, I was lucky enough to be able to take after-school classes in concert-modern, classical ballet, jazz and African dance, all of which I'd been lucky enough to study when I lived in New York in 1957, but I had to register and take classes as a boy, so all my moves were backwards for me and when I took off the boy clothes and resumed my normal life as a girl, I had to literally re-learn dancing all over again!!!
My New York Best Friend Renee was a professional dancer, and so were all seven of her roommates. I went over to their fancy apartment for dinner one night and they told me that they were looking for a ninth girl to share the enormous Chelsea Towers rental of $1800 a month. There were enough rooms for everyone to have their own room, which made it nice for those who wanted to have their boyfriends over for the weekend. I said I'd love to move in with them, and they looked at each other and laughed; they'd known me as a boy for years!
Without a moment's hesitation, I did an instant striptease in front of their popping eyes, right down to nothing!
When those girls saw my very female naked body, they roared with laughter. They had been thoroughly had by my male impersonation all this time!!!
Needless to say, they asked me to move in with them that very night, and we've remained Girlfriends Forever. Thanks to our new age of social networking, I'm at last finally in touch with every one of them on facebook; we get together once a month on skype to chat about man problems, and giggle madly over our teenage issues with dating and dating and dating... for what else would a waitress making $1.25 an hour with tips spend $300 a month on makeup, another $300 on a pair of heels, another $300 on perfume, another $300 on a dress, $300 more on birth-control pills, and another $300 for a wicked hairdo, if it wasn't about dating???
1960 was the year I started college. My good fortune started when I scored in the 98th percentile in all the college exams -- SAT, CEEB, all of them. I was the highest ranking BOY in our regional testing area!!! I wished fervently that I could reveal my secret so I could be the very first girl to rank that high. I would have been, too.
Well, my college courses were very advanced and very, very compressed. We were supposed to complete our Bachelor's and Master's in just two years in this special course, which no longer exists. It was a failure, but a great experiment in education, making Elon University among the most enlightened in the American education scene.
My advanced math professor, Margaret, warned me that there were perils ahead. I was a math-physics major with a minor in English, my best subject. Margaret was the first lesbian I ever met knowingly. I admired her, but thought her lifestyle a bit risky for those days.
I was so sad that I couldn't join my girlfriend Gerri's sorority, but I was busy being a boy. I couldn't risk expulsion if I revealed my true sex, although I would have made a pretty good cheerleader, and I could twirl and toss a baton.
This conflict to be myself and the necessity to appear as a boy made for some very tight situations, especially when I took part in the Mel Wooten Players and joined the dramatics club -- they wanted me for my baritone voice!!! I had to laugh.
But my lower range singing voice never had time to betray me. It turned out that my college career had to wait a few years. I ran out of money literally overnight, when my Dad's taxi was hit with a moving van and he ended up weighing 88 pounds, sitting helplessly and supposedly permanently crippled in the VA hospital. He needed money for physical therapy, and all we had was my college fund. It couldn't have been used for a better cause, and much good came of it, but at that moment, when we signed the money away, I was broke, dead broke.
I was left empty. I couldn't believe this bombshell lightning strike on my life.
I forgot that I was a man in a men's dorm. I dropped my papers on the desk and took with me a small overnight case with a few toilet necessities -- I had begun my monthly just like any girl of that age and these I could not do without, so I had them tucked away safely in a little locked toiletries box -- and guided by my hormones and a really bummer headache, backache and abdominal cramps that would cripple a dead horse, decided, at that moment, the hell with this boy shit. I'm finished playing a boy!!!
I showered and, for the first time in years, shaved my legs and underarms, then opened my grandpa's long-disused World War II vintage leather valise that he had given me to go off with to college, in which I had packed my girl things. It was the only piece of luggage I had that could be locked, and that's how I had kept it. Now, I unlocked it and took out a few things, items I hadn't seen for quite a while, and clucked disapprovingly at the severe out-of-date fashions I saw before me.
I took out a pair of panties, put them on, put on my only decent-fitting bra, carelessly drew on a pair of black nylons, tucked them into a cute French garter-belt that I'd thought I had given away long ago, threw on a black dress and pillbox hat and a pair of black pumps and, with my "Jackie" coat over my left arm, just waltzed out the boys' dorm doorway and into the night. Well, okay, I'm being dramatic. It was late afternoon.
I wandered carelessly with my little overnight bag across the campus, not seeing anything, really, through my tears; then I suddenly laughed as I hadn't laughed for a long, long time -- in my natural girlish voice, as I passed a number of students and teachers -- who knew me as a boy but did not recognize me as a girl!!! I couldn't believe it! They stared right at me, but their minds refused to process the computation!!!
Keep in mind that when I left the dorm I hadn't even put on makeup!!! Frankly, I didn't really need to, back in those days before wrinkle-cream and desperate dry-skin measures brought on by advancing age, but there was nothing to prevent those people from recognizing me now, in spite of the fact that I was uncharacteristically wearing a short simple black dress and pumps.
I forgot about the pumps until just now. They were a pair of black pumps I had thrown into my old suitcase; I don't know why I did, they always sawed away at my Achilles' Tendon, and threatened to ruin every pair of hose I had, which that that moment was exactly one, the pair I was wearing, and I had no money buy another.
Finally I guess I just sauntered right off-campus and permanently out of the Advanced Students Early Masters Course at Elon University, without even checking with the Dean's office -- a big mistake for which I paid dearly later on -- and took a bus back to New York City, now reduced to a small overnighter, wearing a Chanel "Little Nothing" knockoff my grandpa had marketed under the Evie Porter label the previous season. He had some size 9 dresses left over from the season, and gave them to me; two were the same "Little Nothing", one in black, one in gray. I felt that my butt looked too big in the gray but didn't look too bad in the black so, before I left the city that fall, I had given the gray one to Sammi and kept the black.
I landed in NYC at the Port Authority Bus Terminal with exactly $2.15 in my purse, wearing a short black dress and hose and heels, however short they might have been. To tell the truth, without my usual boy persona, I felt totally ill-at-ease, very vulnerable, very much a potential victim. I had never felt that before when disguised as a boy.
You can't imagine my happiness and surprise when I caught sight of Luis, my Jazz dance teacher, coming toward me just as I got off the bus. How could he have known I was coming in on this particular bus? Nobody knew I was coming into town. Up until I had suddenly and impulsively bought the ticket and boarded the bus back in Burlington, North Carolina, I myself was in Scarlett O'Hara's position -- I had no idea where I was going to go, or what I was going to do, and frankly, nobody on the planet gave a damn.
I was alone, scared, a single girl in a big city.
Luckily, the girls were still willing to have me as a roomate, and I moved back in.
Renee got me a job in the chorus line of some dumb musical, and I suddenly had a ton of union dues to pay and I was a member of Equity and all that jazz. I ended up getting hired as a company dancer, along with Renee and our roommates Rita and Sammi, in an off-Broadway production, and that was a good gig while it lasted, about three weeks.
I began earning enough waitressing on the side to be able to amass a fairly serious collection of 1930s and 40s juniors -- they didn't make big sizes then, and at this time, I certainly didn't need more than a 9 to fill out.
Through some dumb luck, I ended up as a hostess at a fancy nightclub, the Golden Apple, uptown on Broadway between 108th and 109th streets. It was a great job, and the other girls and I ended up great friends forever, and I'm still in touch with two of them, Rickie and JJ, on facebook!!!
It was in 1964 that I started to get gigs as a comic male impersonator.
It was easy to get into a style -- my friend Ricky Renee was a famous impersonator who did male and female voices. He and my friend Frank Gorshin had graciously imparted to me a few of the basics of stage comedy, and I've been doing comedy male impersonation ever since.
As I age, I feel more and more masculine due to changes in hormones and so forth -- which helps the illusion -- so I'm one woman who is grateful for the aging process, although you can skip the hot flashes and depression, thanks!!!
You can catch my act anytime, on youtube, and I appear LIVE 5 nights a week these days, so stay tuned for more!!!