[Mona's Candle Light ca 1950s]

Year Published: 1950

Creator: amateur footage

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: Mona's Candle Light was discovered among reels of film that Geoff Alexander of the Bay Area-based Academic Film Archive of North America bought at a flea market in an unmarked box. There are no credits, so it is impossible to determine who shot it and for what purpose. The film is 1950s footage, likely amateur, of what is believed to be San Francisco's first lesbian bar, Mona's Candle Light (founded by Mona Hunt in the 1930s), an invaluable historical document. The film opens with a panning shot of neon signs against a night sky, likely in the North Beach section of San Francisco. The camera comes to rest on a sign spelling out "Mona's Candle Light" in blue script that fills the frame, then cuts to the interior of Mona's where a woman identified as Jan Jensen sings. Although Mona's was known as a club that featured lesbian performers dressed as men, Jensen, a large women resembling Kate Smith, wears a conventional evening gown, as she does in a still photograph with other performers, all of whom are dressed as men, taken in Mona's several years earlier. The only other identifiable performer is Jimmy Reynard, a "drag king" dressed in a man's suit and tie. Reynard's hair is cut in a short but feminine bob and she wears bright red lipstick, suggesting that unlike most male drag queens she was not trying to impersonate a member of the opposite sex. (edited from www.nywift.org)