Stephanie “Tanqueray” Johnson lived a life that felt larger than the stage. Born Aquila Stephanie Springle in 1944 in Albany, New York, she grew up in deep poverty under strict religious rules. As a pregnant teen, she was pushed out of her home and briefly incarcerated before fleeing to Manhattan, determined to survive on her own terms.

In New York, she reinvented herself as Tanqueray, becoming a magnetic burlesque star in the 1960s and ’70s. She designed her own rhinestone-covered costumes and built a devoted following across burlesque clubs, drag scenes, fetish spaces, and mob-run nightclubs. “Back in the seventies, I was the only Black girl making white girl money,” she once said, recalling how deeply she was immersed in the city’s underground.
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