Storme

The Lady of the Jewel Box

A film by Michelle Parkerson

1987 | 21 minutes | Color | 16mm/DVD | Order No. 99114

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SYNOPSIS

“It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Storme DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race. During the 1950’s and 60’s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles. The multiracial revue was a favorite act of the Black theater circuit and attracted mixed mainstream audiences from the 1940s through the 1960s, a time marked by the violence of segregation. Parkerson finds Storme in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, now working as a bodyguard at a women’s bar and still singing in her deep silky voice with an “all girl” band. Through archival clips from the past, STORME looks back on the grandeur of the Jewel Box Revue and its celebration of pure entertainment in the face of homophobia and segregation. Storme herself emerges as a remarkable woman, who came up during hard times but always “kept a touch of class.”

PRESS

"Pays homage to this exceptional woman while disclosing the illusions inherent in notions of gender."

Martha Gever

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Berlin Film Festival
  • Maysles Cinema
  • London, NY, SF, LA and Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals
  • Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Michelle Parkerson

Writer/filmmaker Michelle Parkerson’s activist journey launched in the late 1970s and early 80s - as a major contributor to a Black gay and lesbian renaissance of DC artists, musicians, activists, writers and performers, among them, poet Essex Hemphill.

Michelle’s award-winning films include Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock, A Litany For Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (Co-directed with Producer Ada Gay Griffin) and Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box. Her documentaries have screened at numerous festivals, including The Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin International Film Festival, BFI FLARE Festival, Filmfest DC, DOC NYC, DC/DOX, BlackStar Film Festival and AFI Fest.

She has received recognized grants and awards - a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, the Mayor’s Art Award, grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Rainbow History Project’s Community Pioneer Award and a HumanitiesDC DC Docs Grant. Her 2021 documentary, Fierceness Served! The ENIKAlley Coffeehouse, revives the storied history of a DC Black LGBTQ cultural hub in the 1980s. Camille A. Brown: GIANT STEPS, her latest short documentary for PBS American Masters / Firelight Media (Co-directed with Producer Shellée M. Haynesworth), was a Nominee for the 2025 NAACP Image Award - “Outstanding Documentary (Short Form)”. This summer, Michelle received a NBJC Audre Lorde Wisdom Award (National Black Justice Coalition).

Ms. Parkerson has served on faculties of the University of Delaware, Northwestern University, Howard University and Temple University, as well as Advisory Boards of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Mary’s House For Older LBGTQ Adults, Inc. (7/23)

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