Bobbie Kimber: Gender Bending Vent

This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week.

Bobbie Kimber (Ronald Victor Kimberly, 1918-1993) was a female impersonator and ventriloquist popular in British music hall from the 1930s through the 1960s. He wore his hair long like a woman’s, and never divulged his biological gender one way or the other to the audience. The story of Bobby’s gender identity appears to be extremely complicated. Married, and the father of a daughter, he appears to have begun representing himself as a woman when he began performing in 1937, because there were almost no female vents working at the time, hence he got less competition. Yet, according to fellow performers, he played the woman offtstage as well, and the public didn’t know he was biologically male until 1952.

You will find a very good article about this fascinating person, and a bit of heated controversy in the comments sections on the Gender Variance Who’s Who here. 

As of 2024, there is now also Anthony Slide’s new biography Bobbie Kimber: An Amiable Misfit, available from BearManor Media here.