Margo Howard-Howard

Born in 1935, Margo Howard-Howard was a New York City drag queen whose memoirs titled I Was a White Slave in Harlem co-authored (shortly before his death on September 3, 1988) with Abbe Michaels and prefaced by Quentin Crisp, describe Howard-Howard's privileged childhood in Singapore under the given name of "Robert Hesse," his rape aboard a British Navy vessel escaping the Japanese at the start of World War II, and lifestyle as a drag queen prostitute in the 1950s and 1960s in Manhattan.

During these years, he supported a drug habit though prostitution, theft, and the exploitation of a wealthy but mentally ill old woman. Howard-Howard also claims to have had encounters with James Dean, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Truman Capote during this time as well. He also claims to have been "kept" by Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, the most prolific heroin dealer in New York City in 1964, not leaving his Harlem apartment located in the Lenox Terrace co-op for four years. Claiming to have eventually escaped Barnes and ultimately recovering from his heroin addiction with the help of a methadone program run by the Handmaids of Mary convent on West 124th Street, he achieved some sort of prominence with a cabaret act and tributes to Mary Stuart (Queen of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1689 until her death in 1694). More claims include his meetings of Judy Garland, Martha Raye, Andy Warhol, Tallulah Bankhead,

Madonna, and Queen Elizabeth II, to name a few.
The New York Times in 1988 after reviewing these memoirs wrote: "His life was a breathless walk on the wild side. Stories were for embellishing, rules for breaking and people either fools or toys - or, less often, mythical figures of the sort that Howard-Howard, the grand drag queen, manifestly considered himself to be. For decades, until his death in September, he breezed through a slick New York scene of transvestites and tricksters."

There is apparently a movie being developed based on Howard-Howard's memoirs.
So far, there is no evidence to support most of Howard-Howard's stories, having taken the truth with him to the grave, and therefore is known primarily through his memoirs. The memoirs contain some photographs, none dating earlier than 1988 nor do they validate by any means whatsoever any of the remarkable episodes he claims from his past. An afterword added to I Was a White Slave in Harlem by his publisher stated that "much, if not most" of the stories in the autobiography were false, specifically Howard-Howard's stories about his childhood.