AustLit

Female impersonator, dancer, singer.

Lindsay Kemble achieved nationwide fame after he was arrested in Adelaide in January 1915 dressed as a woman. His celebrity status led to the making of a short comedy film based on his escapades during the two months he posed as a young French woman and turned him into an overnight headline vaudeville act. After enlisting in the Australian Imperial Forces (A.I.F.) in 1916 he served briefly with the 3rd Battalion before joining the 1st Divisional Concert Party (aka Sentimental Blokes). Kemble toured Australia and New Zealand as a female impersonator for much of the 1920s with troupes such as the All Diggers Co, Con Moreni’s Ideals and the Smart Set Diggers, and was a Sydney-based actor in the 1930s.

Kemble is recorded as having lived in Nambour, Queensland in 1939, and reportedly worked as a barman in Mackay, Queensland, after World War II. In 1950 he was employed as a steward at the Atherton Returned Services Club (RSL), Queensland.