THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY SEPTEMBER 24

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

SEPTEMBER 24

1494 - The Italian Renaissance classical scholar and poet ANGELO POLIZIANO died (b. 1454). Poliziano was one of the revivers of Humanist Latin. He used his didactic poem Manto, written in the 1480s, as an introduction to his lectures on Virgil.  He studied with Marsilio Ficino (who we've featured in Gay Wisdom) and in 1477 became the Prior of San Paolo and proceeded to become one of the most prolific writers of his time. His play Orfeo is about the Greek hero Orpheus, who renounces women after the death of Eurydice.  James Wilhelm translated Poliziano's Greek Epigrams including the one titled "One the Love of Two Boys" in which Poliziano writers of a "double love" that torments him.  Then there's his "Love Song for Chrysokomos" or "Goldenlocks" with its opening lines:

Watch over me from heaven while within my arms I hold my boy,

     And don't envy me, Zeus, because I envy no other.

Be contented, Zeus, be contented with your Ganymede, and leave to me

     My shiny Chrysokomos, who to me is sweeter than honey.

In 2007, the bodies of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola were exhumed from St. Mark's Basilica in Florence. Scientists under the supervision of Giorgio Gruppioni, a professor of anthropology from Bologna, used current testing techniques to study the men's lives and establish the causes of their deaths. It was recently announced that these forensic tests showed that both Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola likely died of arsenic poisoning. The chief suspect is Piero de' Medici, the successor of Lorenzo de' Medici and docent of Florence, but there are others.

1717 – HORACE WALPOLE, British novelist and politician born (d. 1797) A politician, writer, architectural innovator and cousin of Lord Nelson, his Letters are highly readable, and give a vivid picture of the more intellectual part of the aristocracy of his period.

Walpole's sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation. Biographers such as Lewis, Fothergill and Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer have interpreted him as asexual (don't they always?). He never married, engaging in a succession of unconsummated flirtations with unmarriageable women, and counted among his close friends a number of women such as Anne Seymour Damer and Mary Berry named by a number of sources as Lesbian. Many contemporaries described him as effeminate (one political opponent called him "a hermaphrodite horse"). The architectural historian Timothy Mowl, in his biography Horace Walpole: The Great Outsider offers the theory that Walpole was openly homosexual, and infers that he had an affair with Thomas Gray, dropping him during their Grand Tour in favor of Lord Lincoln (later the 2nd Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne). His Gothic castle, Strawberry Hill, was decorated by the tres Gay John Chute, the spiritual father of two centuries of Gay interior designers. Walpole spent most of his life hopelessly in love with his heterosexual friend, Henry Seymour Conway, to whom he addressed beautiful love letters. Ironically, when he died, he left Strawberry Hill to Conway's daughter, Mrs. Damer, without ever having known that she was one of the most celebrated Lesbians of the 18th century.

1981 - PATSY KELLY, American actress died (b. 1910) The Todd-Kelly shorts cemented Patsy Kelly's image: a brash, wisecracking woman who frequently punctured the pomposity of other characters. Later entries in the series showcased Kelly's dancing skills. Thelma Todd died in 1935, and Kelly finished out the series, first with Pert Kelton, then with Lyda Roberti. Patsy Kelly then moved into the more ambitious world of feature films, often playing working-class character roles in comedies and musicals.

Off-screen, Kelly's out-of-the-closet style resulted in loud ejections from cocktail lounges and restaurants. On occasion she would uninhibitedly admit, in public and with typical candor, to being a Lesbian. By 1943 movie producers had distanced themselves from what they considered to be a loose-cannon Kelly, and she could only find work at Producers Releasing Corporation, smallest and cheapest of the movie studios. Her last starring roles were in two PRC comedies, My Son, the Hero and Danger! Women at Work.

On television she appeared on top-rated shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Wild Wild West, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as many unsold pilots. Patsy also made a memorable appearance as "Laura-Louise" in the film thriller Rosemary's Baby (1968), directed by Roman Polanski, alongside veteran actors Sidney Blackmer, Ruth Gordon, and Maurice Evans.

She returned to Broadway in 1971 in the revival of No, No, Nanette with fellow Irish Catholic hoofers Ruby Keeler and Helen Gallagher. Patsy scored a huge success as the wisecracking, tap-dancing maid, and won Broadway's 1971 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actress for her performance in the show. She topped that success the following year when she starred in Irene with Debbie Reynolds, and was again nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She died in 1981 at the age of 71 in Woodland Hills, California, of cancer.

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