The Demented Women “The Drag Show”

In the early 1980s a small group of friends came together at the Golden Lantern, a French Quarter gay bar established in 1964, to form a drag group known as the Demented Women.

Mario Dipietrantonio was a leader of the Jefferson Parish Library system, and in the 1980s he performed with the Demented Women as Sil Vous Plais. Scott Andrews, Mario’s husband, notes that they “were amongst the first groups to come together with others to raise money for organizations that were addressing AIDS prevention and care issues in the city such as Project Lazarus, the NO/AIDS Task Force, and Belle Reve.”

The Mario Dipietrantonio Collection at HNOC is small but significant in that it includes seven video recordings of Demented Women shows performed between 1983 and 1988. This video captures a March 1, 1986, show held at St. Mark’s Community Center for the benefit of Project Lazarus, which had been founded the previous year. It features a performance by Dipietrantonio as Sil Vous Plais alongside two others to the tune of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” as well as performances by several other members of the Demented Women.

Explore the Mario Dipietrantonio collection on HNOC’s Collection Highlights: https://ow.ly/I3Ax50W4tgr