​
“A beautiful girl, with a voice that is feminine, and actions that are alluringly girlish, she sets the hearts of her audience aflame as she has done in former productions,” wrote the Michigan Daily in its review of the Michigan Union Opera’s 1923 show Cotton Stockings. That beautiful girl was played by Lionel Ames, who would go on to a successful career in vaudeville as a female impersonator.

Michigan Union Opera

Michigan Union Opera performers, 1914. Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library.
The Michigan Union began as an all-male student organization in 1904 with the goal of creating a space on campus to foster feelings of unity. In 1907, the group purchased the State Street home of professor Thomas Cooley, eventually tearing it down to build the Union in its present location in 1919. The new union included a pool, bowling alley, barbershop, billiards room, and more, but all these amenities required capital. 

The Michigan Union’s first Opera, Michigenda, was staged at the Whitney Theater on Main Street in 1908. Profits from ticket sales went toward funding the group's future home. The Union’s gender segregation meant that all of the parts in their productions were played by men. The tradition of theatrical cross-dressing goes back to at least the Ancient Greeks and was common in the time of Shakespeare. The Opera wasn’t alone in its choice; counterparts at other colleges also featured all-male casts, including the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Haresfoot Club, Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Princeton Triangle Club, and many more. 

“Opera” was a bit of a misnomer. The shows were original musical comedies written and composed by students. The quality of the productions increased with the arrival of experienced Broadway director E. Mortimer Shuter in 1919. Costumes were designed and created by the legendary Lester of Chicago and dancers were instructed by Shuter’s fellow Broadway alum Roy Hoyer (who would later establish his own dance studio in Nickels Arcade). During the 1920s, up to 500 students tried out each year for the chance to be part of the cast, chorus, committees, and orchestra. Throughout the Opera’s history its participants included future notables such as presidential candidate Thomas Dewey and Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon. At the behest of Fielding Yost, it became tradition for football players to fill out the female chorus line.

The Michigan Daily, December 5, 1922
During its heyday in the 1920s the opera’s costs soared in tandem with their growing tour and its revenues. The show hit its peak right as Lionel was a student and its star.

In and Out & Cotton Stockings

Lionel’s participation began his sophomore year when he was cast as a chorus girl. The spotlight came a year later when he took on the leading role of Wilhelmina in 1922’s In and Out. The show revolved around multiple love affairs and a fish out of water story as “simple little Dutch girl” Wilhelmina is Americanized by a group of New Yorkers and eventually marries their leader, Jimmy. 

In and Out completed the Opera’s longest tour to date, with shows in Toledo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, Bay City, Flint, Saginaw, Port Huron, and three performances in Detroit, not to mention Ann Arbor. Lionel received rave reviews, with the Michigan Daily describing him as gaining “the lion’s share of the honors,” as "he displays admirable dramatic ability, and sings love ballads in a voice rich with melody.” Lionel’s Wilhelmina was featured in four of the musical numbers, including the solo song “Gee! It Must Be Wonderful.”

The Mimes, as the Opera was nicknamed, had fun concocting publicity stories to sell their shows. One piece created by the organization, presumably to be distributed by local papers as the tour approached, juxtaposed Lionel's backstage presence with his role in the show:

“‘Blast this hooking-up-the-back stuff, you couldn’t pay me to be a woman as a steady thing!’ Yes folks, its with the assistance of such language as this that Wilhelmina, the delectable, bewitching, pulchritudinous, Wilhelmina, feminine lead in the University of Michigan Union opera, “In and Out,” gets all prettied up to the business of being beautiful.”

1923 University of Michigan Yearbook page featuring In and Out performers

The Michigan Daily, December 1, 1923
The Opera hit its peak with 1923’s Cotton Stockings, and Lionel once again played the lead. Originally titled Cotton Stockings: Never Made a Man Look Twice, the subtitle was dropped after alumni objected and the Senate Committee on Student Affairs expressed their disapproval. Of course, this hubbub only helped the show’s publicity.

A significant part of the performance's appeal came as a display for elaborate and new fashions. Once again, costumes were created by Lester of Chicago and Lionel alone underwent eight complete wardrobe changes throughout the show.

The tour was even grander than the one completed the year before with a total of fifteen shows, the most significant taking place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Broadening the Opera's reach required extensive advertising. Lionel, in his “gayest and finest feminine garb,” posed in a Packard car alongside the show’s male lead for car advertisements that would be used across the country. The show’s slogan declared “Our Handsomest Girls are Men” and photos of the players were printed in advertisements nationally.

The narrative of Cotton Stockings involved a series of romantic entanglements. Lionel played Susan, a poor maid to an artist. She falls in love with a young author, but he is bewitched by the temptress Nedda. To win his attention Susan attends a ball in an elaborate gown and introduces her newly glamorous self as Suzanne. The Michigan Daily’s review notes that in the end the romantic pair were “allowed the privilege of the customary kiss.” 

Promotion for the Michigan Union Opera, circa 1923. Lionel appears on the left, right, lower center, and upper right. Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library.
The tour received rave reviews throughout its run, many of which foregrounded the cross-dressing. “Boys will be boys. Especially college boys. But when they put on gorgeous gowns, bobbed wigs, rouge and lip stick, they will be ‘girls’ and even a tired business man would have difficulty in detecting the indifference [sic],” wrote Philadelphia’s Public Ledger. The Washington Herald proclaimed, “The University of Michigan shipped in its excellent assortment of amateur Julian Eltinges at the President theater last night, and for a full three hours of a campus made opera, manly muscles and bulging backs threatened to burst gauze shoulder straps.” 

The Mimes once again had fun creating buzz around the show. This time they concocted the story that Lionel’s beauty was of such value that “to guard against any injury to his pretty arms and legs, either during rehearsals or while on the road, Ames has insured his limbs for $25,000.” 

Publicity for Cotton Stockings, 1923
Vaudeville 

The Michigan Daily noted the heightened promotion for Lionel, concluding, “this talk of representing the university is mere box-office piffle. The main function of this year's Opera is to present Lionel E. Ames to the vaudeville managers of New York City, and with this in mind he is being pushed to the limit. There is no question that Ames is uniquely talented. He has form, beautiful ankles, graceful arms, a stunning back, and if he can overcome certain cutesy mannerisms he ought to be highly successful in his chosen field.”

Reporting Lionel's Marriage, 1924
Lionel followed through on this prediction, leaving for New York after graduation to take classes in “stage dancing and technique” with Ned Wayburn, the main choreographer for Ziegfeld Follies. The Ann Arbor News reported that Lionel had been offered a number of professional stage roles during his studies, but had declined them in order to complete his schooling. Prior to departing Ann Arbor, 22-year-old Lionel married local 19-year-old Beulah Brown on April 24, 1924. Less than a year later, the two welcomed their first and only child together, Lionel E. Ames Jr., who was born on February 2, 1925.

Press from Lionel’s early career in vaudeville emphasized his archetypal American family and masculinity. Lionel had begun to use the name Lionel “Mike” Ames during his college career, but a new nickname, “Iron Mike” was introduced to further highlight Lionel’s manliness. The promotional narrative underscored stereotypically male traits including his engineering degree (or, in a different telling, his "dreams of becoming a big business man"), participation in varsity athletics, and a job as a truck driver. Noting, “Of course, Mike never really liked dressing up like a girl and dancing on the stage. And every spare minute he devoted to studying electrical engineering.”

In this telling of events, Beulah is described as gaining an interest in “Mike” after seeing him on stage. “When she was introduced to Mike, they looked at each other – and instantly fell in love!” The couple is said to have moved back to his hometown of Bay City, where Lionel provided for them by driving a truck. They were frugal, but when they found out they were going to have a baby it was clear that Lionel's truck driving wasn't going to be enough. Lionel is supposed to have deeply considered his options before proposing going back to the stage despite Beulah’s objection, “But you don’t like the stage, and none of your family have ever been actors!” 

It makes for persuasive publicity but, of course, much of it is fabricated. A 1927 interview with the Battle Creek Moon-Journal seems to present a more truthful tale. It recounts that Lionel did start as an engineering student, but during his Junior year he switched to studying dramatics. While he does seem to have driven a truck professionally, based on his studies in New York and chosen major it's clear that Lionel always intended to be on the stage. There is no mention of any varsity athletics in Lionel’s Senior yearbook. Even the mention of a lack of actors in the family is false. Lionel’s father, Delbert “Dell” Ames listed his occupation on Lionel's Michigan birth record as “actor.”

The promotional piece (see below) goes on to describe Lionel’s relationship with Beulah wherein she is credited with putting hard work and skill into creating costumes for his act (although other articles also mention Lionel’s continued use of the Opera's costumer, Lester of Chicago). In the Battle Creek interview Lionel highlights her impact, “My act would certainly flop without Shorty along to make me up and get me hooked up in the proper places.” Beulah reportedly toured with Lionel while they left their son in Bay City. 

The seemingly more truthful interview and fanciful publicity piece align in their continued assertion of his masculinity. Lionel tells the Journal, “It’s all more or less a joke, you know, this matter of putting on skirts and while I take my impersonations seriously enough while I’m in character, I certainly don’t like people to get the idea that I crochet for a pastime or anything like that. It just occurred to me as another way to earn my living.”

Publicity for Lionel "Iron Mike" Ames' vaudeville career, 1925
Early reviews of Lionel “Mike” Ames in trade publications provide insight into the twenty-five minute act’s content. In 1926 Billboard described Lionel beginning in typical male attire to provide a brief talk about his background as a student and then show a short film in which he caricatures types of female actresses. The reviewer notes, “Tho the gowns in the short picture were beautiful, and the makeup most realistic, they are all surpassed, nevertheless, by the numbers in the offering that followed. It would take a woman reviewer to do justice to the descriptions of various gowns. All a poor masculine writer can say is that they were gorgeous – and then some!”

Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 22, 1926
The favorable review continued by emphasizing that Mike’s talent went beyond just wardrobe, but to “his mannerisms and bearing and makeup in general.” The only detraction was that “his voice is kind of weak, yet, withal, carries the semblance of femininity and the songs are all very well sold.” The review ends by declaring that the show “has all the ingredients of a big-time turn.”

Variety’s review from 1925 is more mixed. “He flashes some dazzling costumes…a capital novelty turn with his college antecedents making a good publicity angle,” but his introductory talk “is supposed to be laugh-getting but is humorous only in intent.” Regardless, they conclude, “Ames has unquestionable talent in his field and will get on in show business.” 

By 1927 “Mike” was presenting a show entitled Fascinating Feminine Fancies. It contained a similar structure to his previous act, but reviews noted an emphasis on comparing femininity and masculinity. Billboard criticized this choice, “the former Lionel Mike Ames is now billed as just “Mike” Ames and punctuates his delightful feminine type delineations with ill-paced patter of the brusque “man among men” type and even assumes a revolting clumsiness just to convince those that might not know it that he is just acting when he sports frills and high heels.” It asserts, “his determination to play that part of the audience that dislike effeminate men is ill-advised.”

Later reviews appear to tire of Mike’s performance. By 1931 Billboard states, “Act too long and often tedious, Ames offering nothing new after the first number. Wears charming gowns and warbles in a strained falsetto voice, but needs more versatility to hold interest.” Two months later, Billboard again faults the attempts at manliness, “Ames’ work is pretty close to perfect and would be that if he desisted from giving vent to that repulsive laugh in order to prove his masculinity.”

The last advertisement that could be found for Lionel “Mike” Ames appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in March of 1934. Soon thereafter Lionel’s personal life went through major changes.

After the Stage

Beulah’s involvement in the show and accompaniment on tours seemed to connote a productive partnership. In 1930 the couple reported living together in Queens, but five years later Beulah filed for divorce. She listed the cause as “non-support.” Ten days after the separation was granted she remarried in Detroit. 

That same year, Lionel was back in Bay City working as a “theatrical producer” according to the city’s directory. When he registered for the draft in 1942, he was employed at the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. The Book-Cadillac hosted live entertainment and it is possible Lionel put his experience in vaudeville to use in his new profession. One review of Lionel’s stage show had even quipped that he had a “natural method of salesmanship.” His career was put on hold when he served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy during WWII. 

Lionel himself appears to have remarried twice. Once to Marie Marcelle Ames around the time of WWII, but they were divorced by 1944 when she remarried. By 1950 he was 47 and now wedded to Kathryn E. Ames, 31. They shared two children, Carole, who was six at the time, and Michael, who was one. The family called West Palm Beach, Florida home. There, Lionel continued in the hotel business as a sales manager and estimated that he worked 90 hours a week in 1950. 

Lionel’s time in the spotlight had ended, and with it his name ceased to appear in print. On May 5, 1986 he passed away in Palm Beach, Florida. His obituary made no mention of his stage career, but detailed his continued work in the hotel business in Southeast Florida. 

The Michigan Union Opera’s popularity ebbed and flowed through the years. The organization eventually became the Michigan Union Shows Ko-Eds, more commonly known as MUSKET, which still exists today.

​

A taste of Broadway in Ann Arbor

Performers tap dancing on drums or flying out over the audience on swings, women in fancy gowns and plumes floating onto the stage to the strains of "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." A Busby Berkeley musical on Broadway? No, it was right here in Ann Arbor at the Lydia Mendelssohn theater: "Juniors on Parade," a Ziegfeld-style production created by Broadway veteran Roy Hoyer to showcase the talents of his dance students and to raise money for worthy causes.

Hoyer came to Ann Arbor in 1930, at age forty-one. With his wrap-around camel hair coat, starched and pleated white duck trousers, open-necked shirts, and even a light touch of makeup, he cut a cosmopolitan figure in the Depression-era town. For almost twenty years, his Hoyer Studio initiated Ann Arbor students into the thrills of performance dancing as well as the more sedate steps and social graces of ballroom dancing.

Born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Hoyer appeared in many hometown productions before a role as Aladdin in a musical called "Chin Chin" led him to a contract with New York's Ziegfeld organization. His fifteen-year Broadway career included leading roles in "Tip-Top," "Stepping Stones," "Criss Cross," "The Royal Family," and "Pleasure Bound." Movie musical star Jeanette MacDonald was discovered while playing opposite Hoyer in "Angela." But Hoyer himself by the end of the 1920's was getting too old to play juvenile leads. When the Depression devastated Broadway--in 1930, fifty fewer plays were produced than in 1929--Hoyer, like many other actor-dancers, was forced to seek his fortune elsewhere.

Hoyer came to Ann Arbor because he already had contacts here. In the 1920s he had choreographed the Michigan Union Opera, a very popular annual all-male show with script and score by students. His Roy Hoyer Studio taught every kind of dancing, even ballet (although the more advanced toe dancers usually transferred to Sylvia Hamer). On the strength of his stage career, he also taught acrobatics, body building, weight reducing classes, musical comedy, and acting.

His sales pitch played up his Broadway background: “There are many so-called dance instructors, but only a few who have even distinguished themselves in the art they profess to teach," he wrote in his program notes for "Juniors on Parade." "Mr. Hoyer's stage work and association with some of the most famous and highest paid artists in America reflects the type of training given in the Roy Hoyer School."

Pictures of Hoyer on the Broadway stage lined his waiting room, and former students remember that he casually dropped names like Fred and Adele, referring to the Astaire siblings. (Fred Astaire did know Hoyer, but evidently not well. When Hoyer dressed up his 1938 "Juniors on Parade" program with quotes from letters he'd received from friends and former students, the best he could come up with from Astaire was, "Nice to have heard from you.")

Hoyer's first Ann Arbor studio was in an abandoned fraternity house at 919 Oakland. He lived upstairs. Pat Bird Allen remembers taking lessons in the sparsely furnished first-floor living room. In 1933 the Hoyer Studio moved to 3 Nickels Arcade, above the then post office. Students would climb the stairs, turn right, and pass through a small reception area into a studio that ran all the way to Maynard. Joan Reilly Burke remembers that there were no chairs in the studio, making it hard for people taking social dancing not to participate. Across the hall was a practice room used for private lessons and smaller classes.

Back then, young people needed to know at least basic ballroom steps if they wanted to have any kind of social life. John McHale, who took lessons from Hoyer as a student at University High, says that for years afterward he could execute a fox trot or a waltz when the occasion demanded. Dick DeLong remembers that Hoyer kept up with the latest dances, for instance teaching the Lambeth Walk, an English import popular in the early years of World War II. (DeLong recalls Hoyer taking the boys aside and suggesting that they keep their left-hand thumbs against their palms when dancing so as not to leave sweaty hand prints on their partners' backs.)

Hoyer's assistants were Bill Collins and Betty Hewett, both excellent dancers. Burke remembers that when the two demonstrated social dancing, their students were "just enchanted." Several ballroom students remember the thrill of dancing with football star Tom Harmon. As a performer in the Union Opera, Harmon came up to the studio for help in learning his dance steps and while there obliged a few of the female ballroom students. "I'll never forget it," says Janet Schoendube.

While ballroom dancing was mostly for teens or preteens, tap and ballet students ranged from children who could barely walk to young adults in their twenties. (Helen Curtis Wolf remembers taking her younger brother Lauren to lessons when he was three or four.) Classes met all year round, but the high point of the year was the annual spring production, "Juniors on Parade."

The show was sponsored by the King's Daughters, a service group that paid the up-front costs and then used the profits for charity—medical causes in the early years and British war relief later. The three evening performances and one matinee were packed, and not just with the parents of the performers. During the drab Depression, people looked forward to Hoyer's extravaganzas all year long. Hoyer "jazzed us up when we needed it," recalls Angela Dobson Welch.

"Juniors on Parade" was a place to see and be seen. In 1933 the Ann Arbor News called it a "social event judging by the list of patrons and patronesses and the list of young actors and actresses whose parents are socially prominent." But the show's appeal wasn't limited to high society. Even in the midst of the Depression many less well-to-do families managed to save the money for lessons or worked out other arrangements in lieu of payment. Allen's mother helped make costumes; senior dance student Mary Meyers Schlecht helped teach ballroom dancing; Rosemary Malejan Pane, the acrobat who soloed in numbers that included cartwheels and splits, was recruited by Hoyer, who offered her free lessons when he learned she couldn't afford to pay.

The first act of the show featured younger children, wearing locally made costumes, while the second act showcased the more advanced students, who wore professional costumes. Every year Hoyer and Collins traveled to Chicago to select the dancers' outfits. For one 1935 number, the girls wore gowns that duplicated those worn by such famous stars as Ruby Keeler, Dolores Del Rio, and Carole Lombard. Live piano music was provided either by Georgia Bliss (on loan from Sylvia Hamer) or Paul Tompkins.

Sixty-some years later, students still remember such Hoyer-created numbers as "Winter Wonderland," a ballet featuring Hoyer and Betty Seitner, who stepped out of a snowball; "Floradora," six guys pushing baby buggies; "Sweethearts of Nations," eight girls in costumes from different countries, including red-haired Doris Schumacher Dixon as an Irish lass and Angela Dobson Welch as a Dutch girl. In "Toy Shop," dancers dressed like dolls; in another number, five girls, including Judy Gushing Newton and Nancy Hannah Cunningham, were done up in matching outfits and hairdos as the Dionne quintuplets.

"Juniors on Parade" ended with a high-kicking Rockettes-style chorus line of senior students. Then the stars returned home to their normal lives. Although some of them became very good dancers, none went on to careers in dance. (Doris Dixon later worked at Radio City Music Hall and was offered a job as a Rockette, but turned it down when she saw how hard it was.)

The last big show was in 1941. When the war started, Hoyer cut back on his studio schedule and went to work at Argus Camera, where they were running two shifts building military equipment. He worked in the lens centering area and is remembered by former Argus employee Jan Gala as "a lot of fun, full of jokes." Another employee, Catherine Starts, remembers that "he was so graceful. He took rags and danced around with them."

After the war Hoyer kept his studio open, but people who knew him remember he did very little teaching in those years. His health was failing, and his former cadre of students and stars had moved on to college and careers.

In 1949 ill health led him to move back to Altoona. He worked as assistant manager at a hotel there, then as a floor manager and cashier at a department store. He was still alive in 1965, when an Altoona newspaper reported that he was back home after a nine-month hospital stay.

Although it has been forty-five years since Hoyer left Ann Arbor, he is not forgotten. Hoyer Studio alumni say they still use their ballroom dancing on occasion, and even the tappers sometimes perform. Angela Welch remembers a party about ten years ago at which the Heath sisters, Harriet and Barbara, back in town for a visit, reprised their Hoyer tap dance number. And years after the studio closed, accompanist Paul Tompkins worked as a pianist at Weber's. Whenever he recognized a Hoyer alumna coming in, he started playing "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody."