Barbette(1899-1973)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Barbette-- born Vander Clyde-- left home as a teenager to become a
circus acrobat. He formed a partnership with a woman trapeze artist,
assuming the role of her twin sister after the sister died. As a solo
trapeze artist and wire-walker, he continued to dress as a woman, and
in the mid-1920's he went to perform in Europe. He achieved
substantial, if brief, acclaim in Paris, and was celebrated in a famous
essay by his friend Jean Cocteau. In this era he also posed for a
series of photographs by Man Ray and appeared in the Cocteau-Luis
Buñuel film "Le Sang dún Poète." In the 1930s he returned to the United
States, where he suffered a fall while walking the high-wire, suffering
injuries that would force him to retire from performing in 1938.