Walter Cole, who was better known as Portland’s legendary drag queen Darcelle XV, has died. He was 92.
Cole’s death was first reported Thursday evening on the Facebook page for his nightclub, Darcelle XV Showplace.
For more than 50 years, Cole entertained generations of tourists and bachelorette parties at his Old Town nightclub, where the entertainer told bawdy jokes in elaborate makeup and beaded gowns, while acting as master of ceremonies to a parade of other drag queens and dancers.
As Darcelle, Cole became an unofficial ambassador of goodwill for the city, supporting a variety of charities over the decades, appearing in numerous Rose Festival and Pride parades, and receiving the Spirit of Portland Award from the city’s mayor. In 2016, Cole was recognized by Guinness World Records as the World’s Oldest Drag Queen Performer.
Walter Willard Cole was born Nov. 16, 1930, and grew up in the Linnton neighborhood, a blue-collar area in the shadow of the St. Johns Bridge in Northwest Portland.
In his one-man show “Just Call Me Darcelle,” which was based on his 2010 memoir of the same name, Cole described himself as a shy, quiet boy who was trying to cope with the loss of his mother, while living with an abusive, alcoholic father. His aunt Lil moved in after his mother’s death and served as mother and father. As an only child, he said he felt isolated from other children, who taunted him with the nickname “sissyboy.”
Cole married his high school sweetheart, Jeannette Rosini, in 1951. In the early 1950s, he served a tour of duty with the Army in Italy, then returned to Southeast Portland’s Centennial neighborhood, where he fathered a son, Walter Jr., and a daughter, Maridee. Cole worked for a while at a Fred Meyer store, where he became a store manager. Cole recalled this time as a stab at conventional all-American life – at least on the surface.
In the mid-1950s, Cole used savings to open Caffe Espresso, a small coffee shop near Portland State University downtown. The café boasted the city’s first espresso machine and catered to the beatnik scene. It featured an art gallery and live music and spoken word performances, giving Cole experience running a business and dealing with sometimes temperamental performers.
Around this time, Cole began acting in local theater, and he met and fell in love with Roxy LeRoy Neuhardt, a onetime Las Vegas dancer and nightclub performer whom Cole described as the love of his life. They kept their relationship secret from Cole’s wife and children.
In 1967, Cole bought the run-down Demas Tavern on Northwest Third Avenue in Old Town, not anticipating that it would become a business that would last for more than 50 years.
“I didn’t have a two-day plan,” he said in 2017. “I walked in here and opened up the door and wept. I thought, ‘What have I done?’ But that didn’t last long.”
Cole had run several other businesses by this point, including a jazz club, which gave him insights into the world of bars and nightlife. But the gritty Demas Tavern could get stressful.
“We were Skid Row back then, not the Old Town entertainment capital of the world,” Cole recalled in 2014. “Skid Row meant winos.”
To drum up business, Cole hired a popular lesbian bartender, and that brought in new female customers, along with a new set of problems. In “Just Call Me Darcelle,” he described the tavern as having a very angry clientele prone to throwing glass pitchers full of beer.
To bring tensions under control, Cole started staging light-hearted cabaret shows on a banquet table in the back of the bar. But the women didn’t pay attention until he started wearing a dress. He was 37 the first time he performed in drag. The dress was a flamenco-style number and the wig was high and black.
At Neuhardt’s suggestion, Cole made the drag performances the focus of the business, giving birth to character Darcelle. Neuhardt helped Cole shape his act.
“When I was working in Las Vegas (in 1959), I danced with a French woman on stage named Denise Darcel,” Neuhardt recalled in 1989. “Walter needed a name, and I thought Darcelle was a sexy name. He used the name, it worked, and he hasn’t changed it since.”
Cole also based his Darcelle persona on Gracie Hansen, a larger-than-life nightclub entertainer who oversaw the bawdy revues of Portland’s Hoyt Hotel, which was located nearby.
Cole quickly learned how to be comfortable as Darcelle.
“I learned how to talk with the microphone,” Cole said. “I learned how to put myself together. And look — it’s happened.”
The christening changed things for Cole. Until that point, he had been just another anonymous cast member in the revue. Now Darcelle’s name was on the marquee.
In 1969, Cole’s marriage to Jeannette fell apart. Cole wanted to live with Neuhardt, so he left his family, though there was never a divorce and Cole remained close to his wife and children.
Cole often said that becoming Darcelle saved him.
“If I hadn’t admitted who I was, I’d probably be dead now,” he said in 2010. “I’d be sitting on a couch retiring from Fred Meyer management. Not for me.”
In the 1970s, drug dealers moved into Old Town and Chinatown, and the nightclub came close to closing when revenue dropped off, though it rebounded when a neighborhood police station opened.
Cole’s nightclub, which was renamed to Darcelle XV Showplace in 1974, was seen as taboo early on, and was sometimes picketed in the 1970s and ‘80s before the gay rights movement took off. But Cole insisted his club was for everyone.
“People can be very apprehensive when they first come in,” Cole said in a 1979 Oregonian feature. “But after 15 minutes of the show, they realize it’s all in fun and relax and have a good time.”
An evening at the nightclub featured campy musical production numbers that were choreographed by Neuhardt, and a parade of original gowns sewn by Cole, and accented with rhinestones, faux jewels and plenty of feathers. While many drag queens silently lip-sync to recorded pop music, Cole liked to sing along in his deep, gravelly voice.
One of Darcelle’s signature bits was a performance of the country classic “Rhinestone Cowboy,” performed in a revealing pair of white, rhinestone-covered chaps, minus a pair of jeans. It was guaranteed to bring down the house, along with a shower of dollar bill tips.
Another highlight was Cole’s nightly interaction with the audience. Standing on the edge of the stage, he would interview people celebrating birthdays, and welcome people visiting from out of town. Hecklers didn’t stand a chance against Cole’s razor-sharp wit. At one point, Cole performed as many as three shows a night for five nights a week, though the performance schedule was cut back to four performances a week in later years.
By the late ‘80s, Darcelle XV Showplace was woven into the fabric of the city, and Cole earned recognition for his commitment to numerous charities. In the early days of the nightclub, Cole and Neuhardt became heavily involved with the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court, a service organization by drag queens to raise money for charity. The court, which still operates, sponsored Vietnamese orphans, raised money to feed the homeless, and gathered clothing and furniture of elderly residents in the neighborhood.
When the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit in the 1980s, Cole became a champion of groups like Cascade AIDS Project, Our House of Portland, Esther’s Pantry, and Camp Starlight for children affected by AIDS. In 2003, Cole received the Spirit of Portland Award from Mayor Vera Katz for his charity work related to AIDS. The Darcelle XV AIDS Memorial, a granite sculpture honoring Oregonians who’ve died from AIDS, was unveiled at Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in 2017.
Cole also quietly pitched in to help Portland’s homeless. For more than 30 years, the nightclub hosted Christmas Eve banquets for anyone in need. Some years, that meant turkey and all the fixings for more than 300 people.
“It’s what Christmas is,” Cole said in 2014. “I’d rather do this than wrap a present. Or unwrap a present.”
Long before drag became mainstream entertainment and RuPaul became a household name across the country, Cole played an influential role in the careers of numerous local and national drag performers.
“You’ve got to remember that Milton Berle and the movie ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ and these other people brought it to mainstream attention,” Cole said in 2017. “I don’t think it can go back in the closet again, no matter what. Same-sex marriage, it broke that horrible barrier.”
The walls of Cole’s nightclub are covered with photos of him through the years, along with photos of other drag performers.
“Those people, some of them, are still in show business somewhere,” he recalled.
When he wasn’t performing at his nightclub, Cole lived with Neuhardt in an ornate 18-room Queen-Anne-style home in Northeast Portland’s Eliot neighborhood. The house was filled with antiques along with trinkets from his long performance career, including vintage dresses and jewelry.
In 2019, Cole received a number of accolades. He was bestowed an Honorary Knighthood by the Royal Rosarians in recognition of his decades of contributions to Portland civic life. Later that year, a selection of Darcelle’s outfits from over the decades were displayed at the Oregon Historical Society in the exhibit “The Many Shades of Being Darcelle: 52 Years of Fashion.” The exhibit, which was the first of its kind for the museum, coincided with the premiere of a new musical based on Cole’s life by Triangle Productions, called “Darcelle: That’s No Lady,” a call-back to advertising slogan used for decades to promote the nightclub and Darcelle’s performances.
The musical was created by Don Horn, Triangle’s founder, who visited Cole at his home every Wednesday for more than 2½ years, going through decades of memorabilia and video tapes of performances and public appearances. Between all the photos, newspaper articles and interviews Horn conducted with fellow performers and friends, he was able to adapt Cole’s story to the stage, collaborating with local musicians from jazzman Tom Grant to rocker Storm Large. Having Grant write a song for the show completed a poetic circle: Grant got his first chance to perform professionally in the basement of Caffe Espresso, which Cole operated as a jazz club in the early 1960s.
Horn had so much material about Cole’s life that he was able to write a 700-page biography that he described as “done and editing” in early 2019.
In 2020, both Cole’s Northeast Portland Queen Anne home and his Old Town nightclub were added to the National Register of Historic Places.
There were big differences between Darcelle and the man behind the persona. For instance, Cole once revealed that he was desperately afraid of heights, yet as Darcelle he thought nothing of hopping into news helicopters, riding elephants, or taking a ride on Portland’s aerial tram.
Without the makeup and the wigs, Cole said he could be quite introverted.
“You can’t glitz it up. You can’t parade around. You can’t show your bottom,” he said in 2010. “You can’t do any of these when you’re not Darcelle. I’m actually a quiet little boy.”
Cole’s passing won’t be the end of Darcelle XV Showplace, which is the oldest operating drag club west of the Mississippi. His son, Walter, who goes by the nickname J.R., has worked at the nightclub for more than 30 years, and has long been trained to take over the business.
Cole was preceded in death by Neuhardt, who passed away in October 2017 at the age of 82.
Details on a memorial are pending.
— Grant Butler
503-221-8566; @grantbutler
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