Dressing Up with Don (and the Girls)

'Dressing Up' with Don (and the Girls)

There was one negligee, it was six feet long, it was the prettiest one....six feet long, and it had a kind of drawstring at the chest so you could expand the chest....of course, this was my father's nightgown.

Every sci-fi fan who grew up during the Baby Boomer era is familiar with DAW Books, an imprint founded by Donald A. Wollheim, who was an author and editor of note in the genre.

Over at PBS, there's an interesting documentary about 'Casa Susanna,' a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York where, in the 1950s and 1960s, crossdressing men would go to enjoy their fetish among others with similar attitudes.

 

Wollheim was not only a frequent visitor to Casa Susanna, he wrote (under the pseudonym 'Darrell G. Raynor') a novel, titled 'A Year Among the Girls,' about life at the camp.

 

The documentary features an interview with Wollheim's daughter Betsy, who has her theories as to why her father was emotionally and psychologically invested in crossdressing. According to Betsy, Wollheim at times could be 'cruel' to his wife and daughter and to his authors, but never to his fellow crossdressers.

 

I can't say I'll look at DAW books quite the same way again.............