Flying so high with a Gay in the sky ....

I'm out of my period, out of my genre, out of practically everything ... but I saw this photo today and wanted to know (of course) more ...

So pretty, such a winning smile, and a pretty fair aerialist ...

Her name was Ruth Lucille BUDD (b Sandwich, Illinois 7 March 1895; d Fort Wayne 11 December 1968) ... when it wasn't Ruth Lucille SAUNDERS, for reasons I don't yet fully understand. Her father, Wallace Fay BUDD was a grocer, her mother Eva RUTH (b Mason City, Ill 19 January 1874; d Fort Wayne 28 January 1943) had been an actress. 

Little Ruth had all the qualifications for the theatre and there she went ...

And, on the way, she met a pretty young man who worked in travesty as 'the Creole Fashion Plate'. He was actually George Francis Pedruzzi (b Baltimore 13 June 1897; d 25 August 1947), and he soon took on the knowingly asexual name of Karyl Norman. Now, I don't know if Ruth was dumb, or like ladies I have known, merely had a taste for the féerique male, I don't know if Karyl was not yet wholly aware of his propensities or just thought ...  anyway, they became boy and girlfriend and 'engaged'. La Signora Pedruzzi was, I gather, not pleased. It was she who sewed her son's frocks and ..

Anyway, little Georgie apparently saw that his youthful enthusiasm had (after five, according to some sources, one, to others) had perhaps led him too far  ... and he called the 'engagement' off. Allegedly, in modern retellings, because Ruth and Her Mamma didn't want His Mamma to come on the honeymoon.

(Ah, perhaps the first husband was 'Carpenter'?)

Fast forward. Ruth had a very modest career in vaudeville, and eventually married (1927) a theatre electrician by the name of Ray Hanna, a little older than herself. Hanna made the transition from lighting man to movie house manager ...

George-Karyl had a much better career. Aparently deservedly. He, like the minstrel greats, Leon or Eugene, apparently encompassed the falsetto register in fine fashion. But, unlike in their cases, it was the frocks that really did it.  Anyway, in the 21st century, as a blackish, gay, cross-dressing performer he has won the devotion of Universitarians and Wikiplegia, and is compared to Ray Bourbon ...

I think little Ruthie had a happy escape!

I wonder what the verdict was re the $50,000!