8. What was the name of the Canadian WWI vaudeville troupe that featured female impersonators?
The Dumbells!
“The Dumbells’ Concert Party.” The entire company in their closing number of the show. 1917-1919.
Image from Library and Archives Canada, number a005734.
The Dumbells were a group of Canadian soldiers originally formed in the Third Infantry Division, to provide comic relief and increase morale for troops on the front line. The Dumbells took their name from the red dumbbell shape that was on the shoulder insignia of the Third Infantry Division. There were approximately thirty comedy-musical troops entertaining the troops in France during the First World War,¹ but the Dumbells seem to have been particularly beloved.
They were in fact so popular that, after the war, they reformed as a very different kind of troupe and had international success touring. In 1921, they became the first Canadian musical revue act to appear on Broadway.²
Image: The Dumbells stand in front of their marquee on Broadway, 1921. Photo courtesy of Stephen Plunkett, retreived from Jason Wilson, Soldiers of Song: The Dumbells and other Canadian Concert Parties of the First World War, p. 133
One of the members of the Dumbells who we know to be queer was a man named Ross Hamilton. Hamilton was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in 1892. He enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 and worked as an ambulance driver before joining a group of performing soldiers. He was able to sing in a genuinely impressive falsetto, and so designed a female character for the stage named Marjorie. Due to the conditions on the war front, Marjorie’s first costumes were made from “tent canvas, old curtains, pillow feathers and rosary beads.” ³
Image: A black and white photograph of Ross Hamilton as Marjorie. Nova Scotia Archives, MG 1 2785
The Dumbells were enormously successful for a full decade, performing at 98 different Canadian cities and towns in 1920. They played on Broadway for twelve weeks, with many sold out shows.⁴ They made numerous recordings and sold sheet music of their songs. Eventually, they were forced to disband in 1932 due to financial difficulties from the combination of the Depression, the arrival of films with synchronized recorded sound, and poor investment decisions.⁵
Ross Hamilton returned to the front lines in 1939 when the Second World War broke out. He allegedly “dumbfounded” the clerk at the enlistment desk when insisting his occupation at the time was “actress”.⁶ A performance of Hamilton as Marjorie appears in a 1941 training film that can still be viewed online. (Marjorie enters at 7:55). In the film, you can see and hear soldiers cheering enthusiastically for Marjorie, who at that time would still have been remembered as a Canadian celebrity. The film was also shown in theatres across Canada, and was “one of the most popular wartime documentaries produced by the [National Film Board] in collaboration with the army.” In August 1941, Hamilton was quietly discharged for “reasons other than medical”--a euphemism that Veterans Affairs Canada later acknowledged was code for being queer.⁷ Biographies and obituaries for Hamilton say he lived a quiet life in a log cabin near Truro, Nova Scotia, and died at the age of 76 after a 7-week illness.
It’s hard not to project a kind of desperate loneliness to this, but none of the sources say much about the eleven years he lived after being discharged. You can see a video of some of his colleagues reminiscing about the Dumbells and Ross Hamilton on this interview shortly after his death. We can’t know for certain how Ross Hamilton truly identified, but I do think small moments, like where his colleagues here refer to Ross as a “young lady”, or how when enlisting for the Second World War, Ross identified as an actress, not an actor, are really interesting.
In 2024, a Halifax woman, Mieke van Vulpen, whose father was neighbours with Ross Hamilton, launched a campaign to honour Ross Hamilton/Marjorie with a Canada Post stamp. Canada Post has not formally responded to the request, but told the Canadian Press that stamp suggestions are reviewed by a national committee, and that research and design processes for new stamps take about two years.⁸
Photographs of Ross Hamilton and the Dumbells abound. You can search “dumbells” or “Ross Hamilton” (notice there’s only one ‘b’!) at the Library and Archives Canada website or the Toronto Public Library’s site for many a picture. I’ve also reproduced a few of my favourites below.
Content note: The Dumbells and other comedy troupes at the time did make use of blackface. Although none of those photos came up when I searched, you may wander deeper into the internet archives than I did, and I wanted to acknowledge it’s certainly possible that you’ll run into it.
Further Learning:
Sarah Worthman. “2SLGBTQ+ Persecution in the First World War: The Untold History of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.” LGBT Purge Fund. Published March 17, 2023.
Paul Jackson, One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Miliary during World War II. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004.
Jason Wilson, Soldiers of Song: The Dumbells and other Canadian Concert Parties of the First World War. Wilfred Laurier University Press: 2012.
Helmut Kallmann and Edward B. Moogk. “The Dumbells.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Last edited June 30, 2014.
Sources/Endnotes:
1. Helmut Kallmann and Edward B. Moogk. “The Dumbells.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Last edited June 30, 2014. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-dumbells-emc
2. Jason Wilson, Soldiers of Song: The Dumbells and other Canadian Concert Parties of the First World War. Wilfred Laurier University Press: 2012. P.133
3. Veterans Affairs Canada. “Ross Hamilton.” Last modified December 28, 2023. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/people-and-stories/ross-hamilton
4. Wilson, P.136
5. Kallmann and Moogk, “The Dumbells.”
6. Roy Kennedy. “Ross Hamilton of “Dumbell” fame.” Unknown newspaper clipping, 1981. Sourced in Halifax Rainbow Encylopedia, “Ross Hamilton.” Last edited January 18, 2024. https://gay.hfxns.org/RossHamilton
7. Paul Jackson, One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Miliary during World War II. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. P.71
8. CBC News. “Campaign aims to honour war entertainer ‘Marjorie’ with a postage stamp.” January 2024. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.7087284
