It was on his mother’s backyard clothesline that Vander Clyde Broadway learned to be a high-wire performer. Raised in Round Rock in the early 1900s, the young teen had become obsessed with circus acts and, after seeing an ad in the newspaper, got a job with an Italian troupe in San Antonio. Dressing in drag was required, and that suited Broadway just fine.

Thus, at age 14, his persona was born. Broadway performed his first solo act in 1919 and made his European debut in 1923. By that time, he had a stage name, Barbette, which he chose both for its French sound and androgynous roots. Dressed in a woman’s ballgown, he would trapeze across the stage. Then, midway through a striptease, he’d rip off his wig, reveal his manly physique, and end the show to the sounds of a gasping audience.

“I wanted an act that would be a thing of beauty,” he said in a 1969 New Yorker article. “Of course, it would have to be a strange beauty.” French poet Jean Cocteau fell in love with him and, making him the topic of numerous essays and letters, further catapulted the performer into Parisian stardom. Then, in 1931, Barbette fell.

Pairing those injuries with a bad bout of pneumonia (and what some believe was polio), Barbette became handicapped and was forced to move back to Texas. He started a new career as a trainer and a choreography consultant for Hollywood. Eventually, he relearned how to walk. In the end, Austin was no Paris. The celebutante, depressed and constantly in pain, was lost to suicide by overdose in 1973. A single word can be found on his tombstone inside Round Rock Cemetery: Barbette.