Five studio portraits of comedian and female impersonator Gilbert Saroney (in and out of character). Sydney, 1880.

Five albumen print photographs, in uniform carte de visite format, 105 x 64 mm (mounts); verso with the imprint of ‘Palace Photographic. E. Riisfeldt, Artist Photographer. Hordern’s Chambers, 490 George Street, Sydney’; on the verso of one is a fully contemporary inscription in pencil ‘Saroney’; the prints and mounts are all in excellent condition.

Provenance: from a group of theatre-related photographs originally collected by the Sydney actor, stage manager and playwright Alfred Dampier.

Gilbert Saroney (Sarony / Saroni) was a celebrated female impersonator on the vaudeville stage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, who went on to appear in a number of American films in the early silent era prior to his death in the USA in 1910. His cross-dressing performance in a Thomas Edison film of 1903 can be viewed here.

All of the portraits of Saroney offered here were taken in Sydney in 1880 and are quite possibly unique. Although taken early in his career, two of them show the actor dressed as an “old maid” – which would later in his career evolve into the stage and film character Giddy Gusher:

‘Gilbert Saroni, also known as Gilbert Sarony, was a popular vaudeville impersonator, whose “old maid” character was his best known. “She” was a grotesque and talkative lady whose catchphrases included “I thought I’d die” and “Goodness, girls, was I embarrassed.” Saroni’s 15 Dec 1910 obituary called him “one of the first female impersonators of the old maid type. He was considered one of the funniest men in the show business.” (American Film Institute Catalog, cited by Transgender Media Portal)

The first we read of English-born Saroney in Australian newspapers is in an advertisement in The Age on 22 November 1879 for the opening night of the Victoria Loftus Troupe of British Blondes and Specialty Artistes at Hiscocks and Hayman’s Melbourne Opera House, where he is billed as a member of this touring burlesque troupe. The Loftus troupe had toured across the United States and visited New Zealand before arriving in Melbourne for the start of an east-coast Australian tour.

One of Saroney’s acts is mentioned in a review of a performance given in Ballarat by the Loftus Troupe in The Ballarat Star, Wednesday 14 January 1880:

‘The performance commenced with a new original sketch,- entitled ‘‘ A Prima Donna for a Night,”’ in which piece-Mr Harry Le Clair, Mr G. Saroney, and Mr G. Atkins manifested all their usual comic abilities….‘

Later that year, the Loftus Troupe was performing in Newcastle, New South Wales. The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW), 22 June 1880, mentioned Saroney in a brief review of the Loftus troupe at the Victoria Theatre:

‘It includes Gilbert Saroney’s laughable sketch, entitled, “A woman of few words”….‘

In the same paper, on 14 June, Saroney earned high praise for another of his acts – this time one which did not involve cross-dressing:

‘“The French Dancing Master,” an original act, in which Mr. Gilbert Saroney sustains the principal character in a truly natural and life-like manner. There he was, the veritable French maitre de-danse. The artistic dancing, make-up, and general deportment of thls gentleman, reflects upon him the highest credit, and is one of the chief attractions of the evening….‘

The Loftus troupe arrived in Sydney for a season at the Opera House at the end of June 1880, and it is almost certainly around this time that Saroney visited Emil Riisfeldt’s studio to have these five portraits taken of himself – four in character (including two as an “old maid”, and one possibly as the French dancing master, dressed in an elegant white suit and holding a cane), and one “straight”. From The Sydney Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1880:

‘VICTORIA LOFTUS TROUPE. This troupe has lately filled the Opera House with large audiences, the entertainment being such as to satisfy the most varied tastes, as far as the comic and burlesque element is concerned. There are dances, songs, burlesques, Ethiopian sketches and eccentricities, and they nightly hold the audiences in a continuous laugh.‘

After a brief season in Brisbane with the Loftus troupe, Saroney joined up with Hiscocks and Hayman’s Australian Mammoth Minstrels for a tour of England, on which he acted as manager. He spent most of the remainder of his career living and working in the United States.

Gilbert Saroney (Sarony / Saroni) is a very significant figure in the history of drag performance and crossdressing, being one of the first drag artistes to appear on film. He also participated in what is probably the first gay kiss in cinema history (in the 1904 short film, Meet Me at the Fountain, directed by Sigmund Lubin). Although he performed in Australia for almost twelve months in 1879-1880. Trove locates no portraits of Saroney (Sarony / Saroni) in Australian institutional collections.