Leon Claxton: The Bronze Ziegfeld of Chicago

As often happens, I became aware of African American performer and impresario Leon Claxton (1902-67) over the course of putting together my recent post on the Royal American Shows. Claxton ran what was called the “colored” section of that major carnival during the time of segregation, producing popular tented revues over many years, but his entire career from soup to nuts proves just as fascinating and significant.

Claxton’s parents were Memphis vaudeville performers; his father Overton “O.C.” Claxton had played drums in W.C. Handy’s band. Leon joined the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus as a teenager, first as a roustabout watering elephants but later performing as an acrobat and a contortionist in the sideshow. By the ’20s he was performing in vaudeville theatres in Chicago. This led to producing his own revues. His first of note was the Cotton Club Showboat at the 1934 Chicago Worlds Fair. From here he joined with Royal American, where he produced the leg show Hep Cats in 1936. That same year he introduced Harlem in Havana, a revue that featured black American and Cuban entertainers singing, dancing, and cutting up in comedy sketches. The show played a 1,600 seat tent in the summer, and nightclubs and theatres in the winter, and kept going for over three decades. In 1938 Claxton married one of his performers Gwendolyn Bates, who became his co-producer. Later they built the Claxton Manor Hotel in Tampa, Florida, a resort for African American vacationers during the time of segregation.

Claxton’s granddaughter Leslie Cunningham has been keeping his memory alive through her multimedia documentary project Jig Show: Leon Claxton’s Harlem in Havana and a series of books entitled Brown Skin Show Girls. She also gives talks, and it so happens we have timely news to report: she’ll be presenting at the brand new Book-Lovers Burlesque Festival in Portland, Oregon, April 13-16, 2023.

For those who can’t go there, though I highly recommend her website for tons of cool information on Leon Claxton and Harlem in Havana.

For more on vaudeville history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.