WELCOME

For most of her life,  Stormé used 24 December 1920 as her birthdate, and with that knowledge, I intended this site to go up on the 100th anniversary of her birth, December 24, 2020. Little did I know when I started that she'd really been born in 1923! But I'm going to (illogically, I know!) still consider this site "100 years of Stormé".

Update: December 24, 2023, is the 100th birthday of Stormé, so now this really is "100 years of Storme!"

In 2023, I received permission to share Stormé's original name, the names of her foster family (the only family she ever knew), and clippings about her life before she left home. The new section is called "Finding Viva Hublitz".

​

I fell hard for Stormé when I saw Michelle Parkerson's documentary film Stormé: Lady of the Jewel Box in the late 80s, but I'm from California and never met her. And I'm sorry to say that I forgot about her over the decades.

In 2018 I was reminded of Stormé when I saw her name being used in an attempt to discredit other people in the LGBTQ+ community in the run up to Pride. I saw an incredible, complex person being reduced to soundbites. I understand that people want heroes, especially marginalised people. But Stormé was a real person, not a mythic figure.

What I knew about her was 30+ years out of date, so I started researching because I wanted to tell others about who she was. Before this site went live, I spent three years researching Stormé. In the process, I had help from wonderful people and I found things that I'd never considered looking for, including part of her life before she became Stormy Dale.

This site is the result of that research. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Stormé (she pronounced it "Storm" in Lady of the Jewel Box when she introduced herself; her nickname "Stormy" goes back to when she performed as Stormy Dale in the 1940s) was a generous, fiercely protective, complex, and loving person who refused to label herself but instead existed — and thrived — in liminal spaces. She was a survivor of violence who dedicated herself to helping other people survive and to protecting and supporting the entire LGBTQ+ community.

Stormé left us a few (a very few!) breadcrumbs and stories about her origins and life. Some of the clues contradicted her stories; sometimes there were multiple versions of stories that contradicted each other.

I firmly believe that the stories that aren't true (whether fully or partially) were attempts to rewrite painful parts of her past into a form that was less painful to her, especially after the break with her family. I also expect that she knew very well that as an entertainer and part of the Showmen community, she'd be asked about her past and had stories ready to tell.

I find that very understandable. We all curate the parts of our life we choose to share! Sometimes the truth can be too personal, too painful or traumatic, or contain links to our past that we can't or don't want to talk or think about. We may also want to protect those we love, even if they've rejected us.

Stormé was a light-skinned mixed-race child in a time when interracial marriage was illegal in many states across the USA; it wouldn't be legal nationwide until she was 42 (Loving vs Virginia, 1967). In her interview with Avery Willard in the 1960s she said that she never knew her birth parents.

Stormé was, in her own words, "a Negro with a white face" who was a target of bullying and violence from both Black and white children growing up as well as homophobic violence.

​

Stormé loved women and was with her partner Diana for 26 years, from 1943 until Diana's death not long after Stonewall. In an interview with Penny Coleman in Coleman's book Village Elders, Stormé called Diana the love of her life. She also noted that she could get a suit tailored to fit her better than a label and never called herself a lesbian.

When I asked Michele Zalopany about Stormé's labels, she agreed, saying Stormé didn't "identify as anything but chose to live her life as a Black man". Stormé also referred to herself as a woman in various interviews. Her long-time friend Lisa Cannistraci has noted in at least one interview that she believes Stormé was non-binary. 

In the 1960s, per Avery Willard's book, whenever she was asked whether people should use "she" or "he", Stormé told people to use whatever pronouns "makes YOU most comfortable". The people who knew and loved her varied in the pronouns they used; the ones I know about were she/her, he/him, and they/them.

Stormé was many different things to many different people: a beloved friend, chosen family, a mother confessor, a mama bear, a gentleman held up as an example of what a gentleman should be, and much, much more.

And always a person who refused to limit themselves to others' conceptions of who she "should" be.

Stormé told at least one person I interviewed that she'd been married and had children, but she never discussed them beyond the fact of their existence. (I am not in contact with them, nor do I know anything more about them.)