Copyright The New York Times
Stephanie Johnson, who performed as a burlesque dancer in New York in the 1960s and ’70s under the stage name Tanqueray, and whose vivid stories of that grittier time in the city’s history later turned her into a viral social media star, died on Oct. 11 at her home in Manhattan. She was 81. Her death was confirmed by her son Mitchell Springle, who said she had suffered a series of strokes. The world was introduced to Ms. Johnson in 2019 through the social media account Humans of New York, which features interviews with everyday New Yorkers. Its creator, Brandon Stanton encountered Ms. Johnson on the street in her Chelsea neighborhood and was initially struck by her style — that November day, she was dressed in a red patchwork coat with a fur hat and cuffs. He was soon reeled in by her colorful tales, and by the unfiltered way she told them. Her recollections of “mob guys” who wore custom suits, and of a circuit of adult clubs run by “some guy named Matty the Horse,” sounded straight out of a Martin Scorsese film. Ms. Johnson spoke of a Madame Blanche, who controlled “all the high-dollar prostitutes back then,” and said her best friend, Vicki, was hired for assignations with an unnamed American president when he came to New York. She was charismatic, but she was also representative of a time in New York that tends to be romanticized today. Ms. Johnson, then 75, shared personal stories that hinted at her difficult life and her resilience in the face of it, including the time her mother kicked her out of the house for getting pregnant at 17. Her posts received tens of thousands of comments on Instagram. The actress Jennifer Garner posted a comment asking, “Why is this not a @netflix series?” (Ms. Johnson’s life story has, in fact, been optioned by Universal.) A year later, Mr. Stanton announced that he would post more stories from Ms. Johnson on Instagram to raise money for her medical expenses and ongoing care. In a format known for short attention spans, millions of people read the 33-part, 12,000-word serialized story presented in Ms. Johnson’s distinct voice. A GoFundMe campaign that Mr. Stanton started raised over $2.5 million in a week. In 2022, Ms. Johnson, again in collaboration with Mr. Stanton, published a memoir, “Tanqueray,” in which she recounted in typically frank prose her years as part of the X-rated demimonde, her love of fashion and making clothes, and her difficult interpersonal relationships and lifelong loneliness. In a 2022 profile of Ms. Johnson in The New York Times, Mr. Stanton called her “a random jukebox of stories.” He also theorized that her Tanqueray persona was a defense mechanism: “It’s something she uses to distract from the circumstances of her life.” Last week, after her death, he reflected on the bond between them, which was unlike any other in his thousands of interviews. “I gave her this second chapter in her life,” he said. “And it wasn’t just one way: She was the biggest story I ever told. There’s a large contingent of people for whom Humans of New York means one thing: Tanqueray.” Stephanie Johnson was born Aquila Stephanie Springle on Jan. 23, 1944, and grew up in Albany, N.Y. Her mother, Kallye Latimer, was a special assistant in the governor’s office; her father, Marion Springle, worked in a furniture factory. In her memoir, Ms. Johnson was critical of her parents, especially her mother, whom she described as a cruel, unloving woman obsessed with appearances and yet — to her daughter — enviably stylish. Stephanie dropped out of high school as a pregnant teenager and ran away to New York City to be with the child’s father, only to discover that he was married. According to her memoir, when she returned to Albany to collect her things, her mother caught her in the family home and had her arrested for burglary. After giving up the baby for adoption, Stephanie served a stint in prison. Her plan upon release: “to catch the first bus to New York City and begin a brand-new life.” She worked at a clothing factory and as a fence for stolen fur coats — she wore the hot merchandise out to clubs and offered it for sale — before starting her dancing career at a Manhattan go-go bar called Mambo-Hi. She danced at other spots in the city, including Billy’s Topless, but made her real money on the road. “Every time Fort Dix had their payday, they’d bring me in as a feature and call me ‘Ms. Black Universe’” or something similar, Ms. Johnson said on Instagram. She fell in love with an Italian man named Carmine — “He was swinging for a white boy,” she told The Times — and he later became a heroin addict. Her friends were underworld characters, porn stars and sexual fetishists. She recalled that after David Berkowitz, the serial killer known as Son of Sam, was arrested in 1977, she danced at a private party for a detective who broke the case. Many wondered if her flamboyant stories were true. But Mr. Springle, her son, backed them up. “I 100 percent believe her stories — I was in this world,” he said in an interview, describing Carmine and recalling stars of X-rated films like Vanessa del Rio who would drop by his mother’s Midtown apartment while he was growing up. “I met Debbie from ‘Debbie Does Dallas,’” he said, referring to the 1978 pornographic film. “There were clubs that were mobster run,” Mr. Springle continued, noting that his mother “would take me in there — she made dresses for the strippers, and sometimes I would deliver them.” A love of fashion was a constant throughout Ms. Johnson’s life. During her years as Tanqueray, she made her own costumes, decorating them with rhinestones and beads. In the 1980s, after she quit dancing, she made a living by sewing outfits for drag queens, cross-dressers and men who fetishized dressing as babies. But parts of her life remained a mystery, even to her family. Mr. Springle said he did not know that his mother’s birth name was Aquila until he was well into adulthood, when he had to list her on a health insurance form. She often went by the surnames of the men in her life; the one she used most often came from James Johnson, an incarcerated man she married in 1979.
