But the bureau’s regulations prohibited the employment of anyone who “was or pretended to be a homosexual,” an expansive rule designed to prevent queer-themed entertainment, including the so-called pansy acts that had been all the rage in New York clubs near the end of Prohibition, as well as homosexual entertainers themselves. Like any performer, he had to secure a cabaret card from the New York Police Department’s Cabaret Bureau before he could start work. Young, African American, and estranged from his family, Payne was especially vulnerable as he sought to make a life for himself. The Salle de Champagne, a Greenwich Village cabaret, which stood on Macdougal Street next door to the Provincetown Playhouse and was popular among the sophisticated theater crowd, offered him a steady job that he very much wanted.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series about the gay-rights movement and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.Īaron Payne, a music student and aspiring performer from Trenton, New Jersey, got his big break near the end of 1947, when he was 23.
