{"id":448559,"date":"2026-09-26T15:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T15:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/448559\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T15:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T15:30:15","slug":"former-cbs-austin-anchor-traveled-the-world-to-tell-one-forgotten-texas-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/448559\/","title":{"rendered":"Former CBS Austin anchor traveled the world to tell one forgotten Texas story"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1920s and ’30s, a starlet from Round Rock, Texas, dazzled audiences across Europe. Then a fire destroyed key records, and the pioneering drag and circus performer’s <\/a>story was lost for the next century. However, an upcoming biography by a former Texas TV anchor may change that.<\/p>\n

It took John-Carlos Estrada \u2013\u2013 who viewers watched on CBS Austin This Morning for years before layoffs hit the newsroom in August \u2013\u2013 16 months to complete Searching for Barbette. His first book will uncover the life of Barbette (whose real name was Vander Clyde Broadway)<\/a> as “part detective story and part memoir,” Estrada wrote to MySA while on vacation in Thailand.<\/p>\n

“The reader comes along with me as I try to put this extraordinary person’s life back together nearly 100 years later. You’ll join Barbette and me on our respective journeys, and both are full of surprises,” he said.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 2022 with research at the Williamson Museum in Round Rock, the journey has taken Estrada to the U.K., Spain, New Zealand, France and other places where Barbette traveled or performed. Thailand marks another Barbette breadcrumb, as he bought tailored suits in Bangkok, Estrada said. One of his favorite discoveries was a collection of 100-year-old sketches of Barbette’s lavish costumes at an art gallery in Paris.<\/p>\n

\"Barbette's<\/p>\n

Barbette’s legendary international career which includes several artistic mediums started in San Antonio. (Courtesy of The Williamson Museum permanent collection)<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t conducting Barbette research on every one of those trips, but there’s something remarkable about realizing that this person from Central Texas traveled to these places decades before I did. Walking some of the same streets helped me understand his hunger to see the world and make a name for himself,” Estrada wrote. “This was a performer from Round Rock who became internationally famous long before Instagram, TikTok or any of the machinery we associate with celebrity today. Every time I thought I understood the scale of his career, I found something else. It was overwhelming at times because I felt a responsibility to do Barbette justice. If I was going to tell this story, I wanted to get it right.”<\/p>\n

Former CBS Austin anchor wraps his first book after layoff<\/p>\n

He credits his time at CBS Austin<\/a> with the project’s origins, since it began as an installment in his weekly Turning Back Time series covering Texas history.<\/p>\n

“When I started in broadcast journalism over 17 years ago, I remember hearing the phrase, ‘Journalism is the first draft of history.’ I think I’m ready to move beyond the first draft,” Estrada said. “Writing Searching for Barbette definitely forced me to do that.”<\/p>\n

\"Barbette's<\/p>\n

Barbette’s legendary international career which includes several artistic mediums started in San Antonio. (Courtesy, Williamson County Museum )<\/p>\n

His passion sparked more than just the book. There’s the upcoming Barbette Bash, a fundraising event in its fifth year, featuring drag, music, and more, supporting the Barbette’s Legacy Foundation in collaboration with Round Rock Pride. In 2024, Estrada and RuPaul’s Drag Race Miss Congeniality Cynthia Lee Fontaine made a documentary, Barbette + Fontaine. And in a “surreal” twist, Estrada said London fashion designer Erdem Moral\u0131o\u011flu, who dedicated his spring 2027 collection to Barbette, had it on his mood board.<\/p>\n

Estrada said he hopes readers will “learn about our queer ancestors and the history that came before us.”<\/p>\n

“For too long, stories like Barbette’s have been covered up, forgotten or pushed aside because they weren’t considered worthy of entering the pantheon of pop culture or mainstream history,” he said. “I hope Searching for Barbette inspires people to go looking for other hidden figures. And if the book you want to read about that person doesn’t exist, maybe you’re the one who should create it. Tell the story. Speak their name.”<\/p>\n

The University of Texas Press is eyeing a fall 2027 release date, Estrada said. Now in the editing process, he already has two additional projects underway.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Afternoon Headlines, MySA’s free newsletter bringing you San Antonio’s top stories of the day.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally published at Former CBS Austin anchor traveled the world to tell one forgotten Texas story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1920s and ’30s, a starlet from Round Rock, Texas, dazzled audiences across Europe. Then a fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,154509,4933,154510,6240,27,154511],"class_list":["post-448559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-barbette","tag-cbs-austin","tag-john-carlos-estrada","tag-round-rock","tag-texas","tag-williamson-museum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}