Born On This Day... December 29th- No One Really Knew Her Until She Was Dead... Billy Tipton

Attend the tale of Billy Tipton. I first became aware of her when she passed away in Spokane, the city that I grew up in, & the the truth was discovered. She lived as a man from 21years old until she died at age 74. Her 3 adopted sons never suspected a thing. Here is the fun part: Tipton lived with 5 women over 5 decades, all of them attractive, even vava vavoom. She had intercourse with all 5, none stumbled onto the truth that her husband was a woman… well, #4 figured it out eventually. Like 1000s of fans, they were taken in by one of the great performances of all time.

Dorothy Lucille Tipton decided to become Billy Tipton in 1935, ostensibly because it was the only way an aspiring jazz musician could get work in an almost exclusively male business. The ruse wasn’t all that difficult. Billy's face was boyish, and her figure full, but not curvy. She had sizable breasts but no waist. A sheet wrapped around her chest, men's clothing, & a bit of padding in the crotch, & she passed. Billy was actually boyishly handsome; women found him adorable.. A talented pianist, horn player, & tenor, he quickly found a gig with a band.

At the start Billy was strictly a cross-dresser, making no great effort to hide her gender during her off hours. She lived with a woman with the unusual name of Non Earl Harrell, in what was assumed was a lesbian relationship. Initially they were based in Oklahoma City, but by 1940 they had moved to Joplin, Missouri, then an entertainment center. There Billy began to pretend to be a male full-time, a pose he would adopt for the rest of his life.

Billy & Non Earl broke up in 1942. After a relationship of a few years with a singer named June, Billy took up with Betty Cox, a pretty 19 year old with a striking figure. The couple were together for 7 years. Betty claimed that they had a passionate heterosexual relationship, including intercourse. She even thought she'd had a miscarriage. I sometimes think I don’t really know my Husban. But after the first 7 years, I think I knew which sex he was. JustlLike the Husband & I, Billy & Betty made love only in the dark. Doesn’t everybody? Billy never removed his underwear & wore a jockstrap that was fitted with a "prosthesis." He wore massive chest bindings at all times, supposedly for an old injury. He would not let himself be touched below the waist. He never shared a bathroom. Betty may also have been distracted. Acquaintances said she went out with other men while she was with Billy, & while she appears to have been genuinely fond of him, in some ways this may have been a marriage of convenience for both.

The turning point in Billy's life came in 1958. He had his own jazz trio & a growing reputation, & a new hotel in Reno wanted to hire them as the house band. He seemed on the verge of a fairly successful career. But instead, he took a job as a booking agent in Spokane, Washington, & playing with the house band at The Tin Pan Alley. He played mainly swing standards rather than the jazz he preferred. His performances included skits imitating celebrities like Liberace & Elvis Presley. In some of these sketches, he played a little girl, but he never impersonated a woman, & he would make jokes about homosexuality Perhaps he feared fame would lead to the discovery & decided he'd gone as far as he dared.

In Spokane, Billy was living with a call girl, but in the early 1960s he left her for a beautiful but troubled stripper named Kitty Kelly. She claimed she & Billy never had sex, but in other respects they lived a stereotypical suburban life. They adopted 3 boys, but neither could handle the kids during adolescence, and after a bitter quarrel in 1980 Billy moved into a trailer with his sons. From there it was all downhill. The boys split, his income dried up, he refused to see a doctor. He remained in Spokane, living in poverty, until he collapsed & died in 1989. The paramedics who were trying to revive him uncovered the truth. Death must have come as a relief; he had been pretending for 54 years.