Drag Kings in the Spotlight: Blackie Dennis and Friends, 1930s-1950s, by Lisa E. Davis

This exhibit follows the career of Blackie Dennis, a singer and MC of drag shows from the 1930s through the 1960s. Born Micholina Lombino, the daughter of Italian immigrants, she grew up in what some called Italian Harlem in uptown Manhattan (New York) but made her way downtown to Greenwich Village in the 1930s. There she found the people and the nightlife she needed for a career that spanned some thirty years. Under the direction of drag entrepreneur Charles “Babe” Baker, who opened the Howdy Club on West 3rd Street in 1935, Blackie enjoyed success in New York and then in Miami, at the Ha Ha Club and Revue that Babe managed. Blackie’s last glamorous moments were with notorious stripper Zorita, who opened her Show Bar in Miami Beach in 1964 with Blackie’s longtime companion Dorian Dennis (aka Rene Eisenstadt) in the stripper cast. It was an extraordinary life, also enriched by Blackie’s lifelong relationship with heiress Catherine “Rusty” Amm. Published originally on OutHistory in November 2026.