Parkerson has received grants from the Independent Television Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the American Film Institute as well as a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. Her work has been shown widely in festivals and on public television including the documentaries 'A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde', 'But Then, She's Betty Carter' and 'Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock'. Michelle Parkerson is an award-winning independent film/video maker based in Washington, DC. Storme herself emerges as a remarkable woman, who came up during hard times but always “kept a touch of class.” Through archival clips from the past, STORME looks back on the grandeur of the Jewel Box Revue and its celebration of pure entertainment in the face of homophobia and segregation. Parkerson finds Storme in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, now working as a bodyguard at a women’s bar and still singing in her deep silky voice with an “all girl” band. The multiracial revue was a favorite act of the Black theater circuit and attracted mixed mainstream audiences from the 1940s through the 1960s, a time marked by the violence of segregation. During the 1950’s and 60’s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles. “It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Storme DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race.

Storme delarverie