Midnight At The Palace: My Life As A Fabulous Cockette

by Pam Tent

David Weissman and Bill Weber’s 2002 documentary, The Cockettes , wowed audiences at the Sundance Film Festival and shined a bright new light on the Cockettes. Now one of the founding members of the legendary troupe takes us inside this flamboyant ensemble of countercultural radicals, who decked themselves out in drag and glitter for a series of legendary midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. Arriving in San Francisco in 1969 from suburban Detroit, Pam Tent met Hibiscus, a New York actor who had dropped out. One night, in burst of LSD-fueled spontaneity, Sweet Pam took to the stage in a cellophane hula skirt, when Hibiscus and a group of friends commandeered the stage of the Palace during The Nocturnal Dream Shows, a weekly midnight eclectic film series, to perform a chorus line dance to “Honky Tonk Woman.” The Cockettes were born! Pam Tent’s account recalls the heyday of the rebellious, gender-bending troupe, the inevitable infighting that accompanied fame, and finally how a Rex Reed column raving about the Cockettes led to a disastrous New York opening where the audience—which included John Lennon, Gore Vidal, Angela Lansbury and Anthony Perkins—walked out in droves. The Cockettes gave their last performance in the autumn of 1972. But despite their short life, the Cockettes’ unique burst of cultural experimentation and artistic outrageousness continues to influence the worlds of theater, music, fashion, gay politics, gay spirituality, and urban club life. After leaving the Cockettes, Pam Tent moved to New York City for a brief stint as a blues singer. Then it was back to the West Coast for a new career in film distribution and finally her current livelihood as an accountant. She still lives in the Bay Area, sharing her house with a small menagerie of animals.

Genres: Memoir, LGBT, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Queer

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Jenny Yates · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember the Cockettes, the drag theatre group of San Francisco, the original gender-benders. I lived in San Francisco in 1970 – 71, and a friend of mine was staying at their house. I remember the airy hanging fabrics and the lofts. I remember meeting Sylvester (introduced as Ruby Blue) and drawing up his natal chart. And I remember the ethereal beauty of the midnight show at the Palace.

So I was excited about reading this book. It does bring back the era. But I have to say that, if you don’t know the characters – and I remember only a few of them – then this book can get a bit tedious. There’s an ever-changing cast – and of course, this was true of the Cockettes, who were pretty fluid. But it’s hard to keep one’s attention on this shifting panorama. Living this scene, you would have been pretty stoned. Reading about it, you’re not (necessarily), and that definitely detracts from the experience.

[Lord Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally read this beautiful book when it was released sometime in the early 00s, soon after I saw the documentary about the Cockettes. This group of gender fucker drag queens has long held a tender place in my heart, and re-reading this again offered a nuanced glance at how drag can be truly revolutionary.

With all the recent proclamations of what is and isn't drag, it's refreshing to read about a group of weirdos from the 60s who are still more advanced in their approach to gender and drag than the current, now mainstream lexicon.

The Cockettes saw drag queens as drag queens: gay, straight, male, female all were just as welcome to be a cockette. Drag is a frame of mind and an art form, it isn't about what your birth gender is. I think mainstream players in the dragosphere might need a bit of a reminder on the subject.

Thought-provoking and inspiring, this book re-enters my life again and again and I love it!

[Mikaila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no recollection of obtaining this book and suspect I've had it since its release. Before reading this I had also never heard of the Cockette's but I can say with much certainty that if I had been alive during their heyday I would have been an enormous fan.

This book felt like a huge run on sentence, musically written. Each thought and memory drifting into the next. As I read I could see each person, their costumes, sets, all the color and glitter drift through my head. This was an interesting written history of the cockette's through memories peiced together.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pam Tent's memoir of the Cockettes is an engaging read and is an important historical document of the gender bending communal performance artists/drag queen spectactular fabulous group. I saw the documentary on the Cockettes a while ago and wanted to learn more. Recommended for students of gay studies, performance art and sexual anarchy.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tent one of the few surviving original members of the San Francisco theatrical troupe the Cockettes weaves together a fun autobiography of her involvement with the group and the history of Hibiscus, the Cockettes and the Angels of Light. I remember so many years ago being fascinated by the Cockettes, the Angels of Light and other forms of gender-fuck in the pages of After Dark magazine. Long before I met Vern I collected the magazines, not always legally (because fo the nudity you had to be 18 to buy them). I had first started reading them because of the sexy male bodies but over time became addicted to After Dark's detailing of everything that was happening in the gay world. While it puported to be a theatrical magazine (the subtitle was "The National Magazine of Entertainment," and that it did) it was filled with lots of sexy men, reviews of shows in New York and San Francisco, campy queens and enough gay content to keep any teenager feeling there was a whole world of people outside of my own little section of the universe who lived by their own rules. It was exhilerating each week to read about the exploits of people like the Cockettes and their fun campy performances. After meeting Vern I was given a glimpse of the world that the Cockettes inhabited by meeting older gay men, men who could at a moment's notice sing raunchy saucy songs from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s and who could make lyrics which in the hands of others meant nothing become suggestive and filled with sexual innuendo. I was enthralled. An entire generation of men who had rubbed shoulders with cabaret, lounge and torch singers and raunchy vaudeville performers. After Dark informed my own emergning camp sensibilities and showed me how little I actually knew about the genealogy of gay identity. While I was never able to experience the Cockettes in person Tent's book which was spurred by David Weismann and Bill Weber's, documentary The Cockettes outlines the history of young girl from Michigan and her quest to find herself amongst the hippies of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Tent's book outlines the magic of the period and how the Cockettes wove together song, dance, theatre and drag to create a new art form that to this day informs much of our culture. It is an exhilerating book to read embuing one with the joys and magic of this very special period in gay history.

[Vince · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is great as a chronicle of the Cockettes, but also of San Francisco, circa mid- to late-1960s. Pam gives many, many details of how people (bohemian early adaptors) were living that I never have come across anywhere else; the details of how the victorians were split up (mattresses and hanging sheets), just how quicksilver and transient some peoples lives were then. It's definitely an insider's book, a la Angela Bowie's Backstage Passes. Both of these just give you so much information you'd never get unless you were an insider then, during the time it happened, and the nuts and bolts of how things began, developed, flourished and ebbed.

Of course the story of moseying through GG park one afternoon to hear a show tune, look up in a tree and find the most exuberantly costumed creature up there singing it (Hibiscus), for me, goes down in history as having been one of the most magical experiences and of course I'm JEALOUS! Naturally, they were doing all this eons before anyone else. Other details not necessarily connected to the Cockettes: the commune scene, their variety and large number (300?), what Hibiscus was doing before he formed the Cockettes, etc.

I won't go on, but if you're festive and like the Cockettes, seeing the movie (though fab) isn't enough.

[Simone Roughouser · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is not the most beautifully crafted piece of writing, but if you are, like me, a sucker for san francisco lore that paints the town neon and fishnets, this is for you. i also enjoyed learning more about the freaky-queer hippies; it changes your ideas of a cohesive "scene", gives more a sense of an eclectic group of weirdos thrown together as outsiders (aint that the truth)...the antics the cockettes got up to are inspriring, and their outfits were to die for.

[Kime · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a HUGE cockettes fan, so I loved this book. I actually have an autographed copy from Sweet Pam herself! Faye is an enormous fashion legend- as is Hibiscus and the gang. This paints a picture of life in the times of sex drugs and freak fest SF. I just wish that I had been around to make some of the backdrops on that stage and wear a giant head piece. Good for the insider back stage stories

[Jaina Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is deceptively well-written. It's easy to gulp down this book and think, "Wow! What a trippy scene," without noticing how fastidiously perfect the seams are in this crazy-quilt memoir. The mere act of wading through the dusty piles of glitter and documents and editing it into a readable format is stupendous enough. But Pam Tent finds a place for every precious facet of this diverse and discordant (and dispersed) community, creating a rollicking story that never stalls or stutters.

[Elvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am mostly reccomending this book here so I can plug the corresponding movie, "The Cockettes."

It is so awesome a documentary, you will love it like a new glittery baby!

Please watch, and also, the book is pretty good too (but only as a supplement to the movie). Sweet Pam, the author, is super sweet.

[heidi mo · Rating 3 out of 5]

a memoir of the amazingly diverse hippy/drag scene of san francisco.

[Mills College Library]

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[Kurt Reighley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted a soap opera, I got a soap opera. And a lot of glitter.