Mini Bio's:Dorian Corey & Pepper LaBeija

Dorian Corey/real name Frederick Legg

(circa 1937 – 29 August 1993) was an United States Cross-dressing performer and designer featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. Corey grew up in Buffalo,New York.According to an article her real name was Frederick Legg. After studying at the Parsons The New School for Design, Corey toured in the 1960s in the Pearl Box Revue, a cabaret drag act. Corey died of AIDS related complications at NewYork Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. After Corey's death, the mummified body of Robert Worley (aka Robert Wells), was found in Corey's belongings with a gunshot wound to the head. Dorian was a member of the Pearl Box Revue, a group of night club performers managed by Jay Joyce. The group traveled up and down cities and venues on the East Coast. The group consisted of Miss Dorian, Jay Joyce, Clyddie McCoy and Tony LaFrisky.

NY Times Obituary:
The performer who used the stage name Pepper LaBeija as a glamorous queen of the Harlem drag balls immortalized in the 1991 documentary “Paris Is Burning” died on May 14 at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. She, as she preferred to be called, was 53. A woman who answered the telephone at her mother’s home but who would not identify herself said the cause of death was a heart attack.
Miss LaBeija (pronounced la-BAY-zha) appeared proudly in luxuriant female garb that was often golden and shimmering, and referred to herself in feminine terms, her friend Marcel Christian LaBeija said. Marcel’s given name is Herman Williams, but the last name of LaBeija is used by all members of the House of LaBeija, the group of performers Pepper led. When Pepper LaBeija was not onstage, she was William Jackson of the Bronx, who sometimes dressed as a man.
Pepper was the last of the four great queens of the modern Harlem balls; Angie Xtravaganza, Dorian Corey and Avis Pendavis all died in recent years. These four exuded a sort of wild expressionism that might make Las Vegas showgirls seem tame.“This is the end of the golden age,” said Brian Lantelme, a photographer who has covered the balls. The House of LaBeija was one of the first houses, founded in 1970. The female impersonator who first led it thought the name LaBeija seemed glamorous. Pepper took over in 1971 or 1972, Marcel said. Pepper LaBeija was called “mother”; the house’s younger members were the “children.” “A house is a family for those who don’t have a family,” Miss LaBeija said in the movie. Marcel LaBeija and Mr. Lantelme said that Pepper was also survived by a son and daughter, but did not know these survivors’ names.