Makeup Stains, Faux Severed Limbs and Opera-Length Pearls: Ten Digital Collections Wrap Up Grant

by Megan Needels

In August 2021, the GLBT Historical Society began work on a yearlong grant awarded by the National Archives’ National Historical Publications and Records Commission called “Sing Out: Processing and Digitizing LGBTQ Music and Theater Collections.” This $75,000 grant supported the processing of ten unique music and theater-focused archival collections, including specialized preservation work, the creation of updated catalog records and finding aids, and the digitization of 300 items (roughly 30 per collection). I’m happy to announce that after a year of hard work, we’ve completed the grant and the updated finding aids and digitized content are now accessible online!

Never a Dull Moment

There truly was never a dull moment working with these materials. From sweat and makeup stains on the gowns worn by Finocchio’s performers, to weird but hokey severed-limb special-effects props used in gory Thrillpeddlers productions, these collections are filled with materials that you don’t typically find in most archives. I chuckled my way through the many folders of photographs in the Kinsey Sicks collection, including one of Rachel sitting on a cable car wearing fishnet stockings and a strand of (hopefully imitation) opera-length pearls. One of my favorite discoveries was the set of one-of-a-kind quarter-inch tapes containing Maria Sanchez’s DJ sets, which serve as delicious reminders of the music that once filtered through the rooms of long-gone city bathhouses. 

The ten collections that make up the Sing Out project show the variety of ways that LGBTQ people have leveraged the performing arts as a way to play with and express gender and sexuality, build community, be political, make a living and dazzle audiences. It’s exciting to think of how researchers will utilize and be inspired by these collections for many years to come. And while it may not sound super sexy to the layman, the finding aids we created as part of this project, now available on the Online Archive of California, provide folder-level container lists that make these collections more accessible to researchers and other users.

A Click Away 

Here’s a complete list of the collections covered by this project. All of them can be accessed through the Digital Collections page on our website, or just click the title here: The Finocchio’s Collection, the Sylvester Collection, the Janet MacHarg Papers, the Maria Sanchez Papers, the Kinsey Sicks Collection, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus Records, the Steve Scholl Collection of San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps Materials, the Thrillpeddlers Collection, the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of San Francisco Ephemera, and the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of San Francisco Scrapbook Collection.

Megan Needels (she/her/they/their) is project archivist at the GLBT Historical Society. She has worked in various Bay Area archives, including Canyon Cinema, the Prelinger Archives, San Francisco Cinematheque and Oddball Films. They hold an MLIS in media archival studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.