P.S. Burn This Letter, Please

A box of letters, held in secret for nearly 60 years, ignites a 5-year exploration into a part of LGBT history that has never been told. The letters, written in the 1950s by a group of New York City drag queens, open a window into a forgotten world where being yourself meant breaking the law and where the penalties for ‘masquerading’ as a woman were swift and severe.

Using original interviews, never-before-seen archival footage and photographs and stylized recreations, P.S. Burn This Letter Please reconstructs this pre-Stonewall era as Lennie, Robbie, George, Michael, Jim, Henry, Claude, Tish and Terry—former drag queens now in their 80s and 90s—reveal how they survived and somehow flourished at a time when drag queens were both revered and reviled, even within the gay community. The government sought to destroy them, then history tried to erase them, now they get to tell their story for the first time.

Part of I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way - a season of rarely screened documentaries from the LGBTQ+ archives which have been chosen by associate programmer Elaine Lillian Joseph.