The Lady Chablis

Drag performer The Lady Chablis was a wry and memorable figure in the bestselling non-fiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) and in Clint Eastwood's 1997 film adaptation, for which she played herself. Born Benjamin Edward Knox in Quincy, Florida on March 11, 1957, she began performing under the name Brenda Dale Knox in drag pageants in the mid-1970s. She took the name Lady Chablis from his mother, who had intended to give the name to a daughter before the child was lost to miscarriage, and legally adopted the moniker in the 1990s. By that time, she had a fixture at Club One in Savannah, Georgia, and became a risqué staple of its live drag shows. She also met journalist John Berendt, who made Chablis a sort of Greek chorus in his 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which concerned a high-profile murder trial and the personalities that orbited the defendant and the case. The book was a bestseller, and thrust Chablis into the national spotlight. When Clint Eastwood announced that he was adapting Berendt's book into a feature film, Chablis lobbied to play herself and won the part, drawing excellent reviews for her tart delivery and exotic presence. The popularity of the film allowed Chablis to tour the country with her drag act, though Club One remained her home base until 2016, when she was hospitalized for pneumonia. The illness claimed her life on September 8, 2016 and spurred an outpouring of tributes from literary, cabaret and film circles, as well as the many hometown admirers who viewed her as an essential part of Savannah's cultural identity.