From Miss Rosen’s article for Another Man:
Born during the worst of the Great Depression in 1933, American artist James Bidgood displayed his love for glamour, fantasy and spectacle from a young age. “He begged his mother to buy him a paper doll set,” says Lissa Rivera, curator of James Bidgood: Reveries, now on view at the Museum of Sex in New York. “Despite the restraints on their financial situation, his mother bought one for him. Using his imagination, he turned an old cereal box into a technicolour masterpiece befitting a Busby Berkeley musical for the dolls.”
Now 86, Bidgood has forged a singular path throughout his life as a female impersonator, window dresser, fashion, costume, and graphic designer, photographer, stylist, and filmmaker. This remarkable career began when the young man from Wisconsin moved to New York in 1951 at the tender age of 18.
“The city was so clean, so bright and shiny then, the concrete sidewalks seemed embedded with glitter – they actually shimmered in the summer sun like they were […] studded with tiny diamonds,” Bidgood tells Another Man. “New York was exactly as it appeared to be in MGM musicals. It was fast and it was more exciting than your second orgasm.”