Vander Clyde Broadway (December 19, 1899 – August 5, 1973), stage name Barbette, was an American female impersonator, high-wire performer, and trapeze artist born in Texas.

Following a career-ending illness or injury (the sources disagree on the cause), which left him in constant pain, Barbette returned to Texas but continued to work as a consultant for motion pictures as well as training and choreographing aerial acts for a number of circuses.

Both in life and following his death, Barbette served as an inspiration to a number of artists, including Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.

[4] In the United States Census of 1900, Barbette and his mother, Hattie Broadway (née Martin, 1879–1949), were living in Llano, Texas, in the household of his maternal great-grandparents, Florence E. and William Paschall, a farmer.

[13] Barbette performed trapeze and wire stunts in full drag, maintaining the illusion of femininity until the end of his act, when he would pull off his wig and strike exaggerated masculine poses.

[1] He appeared in such venues as the Casino de Paris, the Moulin Rouge, the Empire, the Médrano Circus,[16] the Alhambra Theater[17] and the Folies Bergère.

Cocteau wrote in 1923 to Belgian friend and critic Paul Collaer: Next week in Brussels, you'll see a music-hall act called 'Barbette' that has been keeping me enthralled for a fortnight.

[1]To other friends he wrote "Your great loss for 1923 was Barbette – a terrific act at the Casino de Paris...Ten unforgettable minutes.

"[1] In 1926 Cocteau wrote an influential essay on the nature and artifice of the theatre called "Le Numéro Barbette" that was published in Nouvelle Revue Française.

His female glamour and elegance Cocteau likens to a cloud of dust thrown into the eyes of the audience, blinding it to the masculinity of the movements he needs to perform his acrobatics.

Barbette appears in a scene in a theatre box with several extras, dressed in Chanel gowns, who burst into applause at the sight of a card game that ends in suicide.

[23] Others in Barbette's European circle included Josephine Baker, Anton Dolin, Mistinguett and Sergei Diaghilev.

[13] Barbette is credited with having returned to the United States in 1935 to star on Broadway in the Billy Rose circus musical Jumbo.

[18][24] Extremely rare film footage of Barbette appearing in Jumbo at the Hippodrome in New York City, 1935, exists and was shot as part of a publicity newsreel to advertise the show.

[1][6][17][20] The end of Barbette's performing career is attributed to a number of causes including a fall, pneumonia, polio, or some combination of the three.

[18] Barbette served as a consultant on a number of films, including the circus sequences for Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)[3] and The Big Circus (1959),[29] and was hired to coach Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis on gender illusion for the film Some Like It Hot (1959) [23] Cocteau biographer Francis Steegmuller wrote a profile of Barbette for The New Yorker in 1969 entitled "An Angel, A Flower, A Bird".

[27][30] Barbette spent his last months in Texas, living in Round Rock and Austin with his sister, Mary Cahill, often in severe pain.

[20] The book Barbette, collecting Cocteau's essay, the New Yorker profile by Steegmuller, Man Ray's photographs and other material, was published in 1989.

[34] In 1993, performance artist John Kelly, under commission from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, based his piece Light Shall Lift Them on him.