Likewise, at all-male Ivy League universities in the first quarter of the twentieth century, young men decked out in drag commonly performed female roles in college theatricals-albeit strictly for comedic, rather than criminal, purposes. The practice of “drag” or cross-dressing-i.e., performatively adopting the dress and manners of the opposite sex-is familiar in detective fiction published between the First and Second World Wars, where, with devious and often deadly courses in mind, men may mum as women and women as men. From “A Bad, Bad Past” (Lyrics by Clifford Orr)