THIS WEEKEND IN GAY HISTORY NOVEMBER 29

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from White Crane

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THIS WEEKEND IN GAY HISTORY

NOVEMBER 29

1898 – ROD LA ROQUE silver screen matinee idol, born (d: 1969); It is well-documented that he had a torrid affair with actor Richard Halliburton, which gives gentle irony to two of La Rocque’s films: Let Us Be Gay (1929) and One Romantic Night (1930) to say nothing of The Gay Bandit. He was born Rodrique la Rocque de la Rour in Chicago of French and Irish descent. He began appearing in stock theater at the age of seven and eventually ended up at the Essanay Studios in Chicago where he found steady work until the studios closed. He then moved to New York City and worked on the stage until he was noticed by Samuel Goldwyn who took him to Hollywood. Over the next two decades, he appeared in films and made the transition to sound films with ease. In 1927, he married Hungarian actress Vilma Bank in a lavish and highly (some might say “overly”) publicized wedding. They were married until his death in 1969, and seemed to have a loving compatible relationship.

1915 – BILLY STRAYHORN, American musician and composer born (d. 1967); American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his seminal collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting two decades. The composition most closely associated with Strayhorn is Lush Life. His first jazz exposure was a combo called the "Mad Hatters" who played around Pittsburgh, until he met Duke Ellington in December, 1938, after an Ellington performance in Pittsburgh in late 1938. Here he first told, and then showed, the band leader how he would have arranged one of Duke's own pieces. Ellington was impressed enough to invite other band members to hear Strayhorn. At the end of the visit he arranged for Strayhorn to meet him when the band returned to New York. Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next quarter century as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist and collaborator until his early death from cancer. As Ellington described him, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back if my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine". Some have suggested that Ellington and Strayhorn were, actually lovers.

His relationship with Ellington was always difficult to pin down: Strayhorn was a gifted composer and arranger who seemed to flourish in Duke's shadow. Ellington was somewhat of a father figure and the band, by and large, was affectionately protective of the diminutive, mild-mannered, unselfish Strayhorn, nicknamed by the band "Strays", "Weely", and "Swee' Pea". Ellington may have taken advantage of him, but not in the mercenary way that others had taken advantage of Ellington; instead, he used Strayhorn to complete his thoughts, while giving Strayhorn the freedom to write on his own and enjoy at least some of the credit he deserved. Strayhorn, for his part, may have preferred to stay out of the limelight, since that also allowed him to be out of the closet in an era and a community intolerant of gay artists.

Though Duke Ellington took credit for much of Strayhorn’s work, he did not maliciously drown out his partner. Ellington would make jokes onstage like, “Strayhorn does a lot of the work but I get to take the bows!” In addition to Strayhorn being naturally shy, society made it hard for a black homosexual to get any recognition at all.

Strayhorn composed the band's theme, Take the A Train and a number of other pieces that became part of the band’s repertoire. In some cases Strayhorn received attribution for his work such as, Lotus Blossom, Chelsea Bridge, and Rain Check, while other such as Day Dream and Something to Live For, were listed as collaborations with Ellington or in the case of Satin Doll and Sugar Hill Penthouse were credited to Ellington alone. Strayhorn also arranged many of Ellington's band-within-band recordings and provided harmonic clarity, taste, and polish to Duke's compositions. On the other hand, Ellington gave Strayhorn full credit as his collaborator on later, larger works such as Such Sweet Thunder, A Drum Is a Woman, The Perfume Suite and The Far East Suite, where Strayhorn and Ellington worked closely together.

Openly gay during an extremely homophobic era, Strayhorn participated in many civil rights acts trying to correct this societal flaw before the movement gained momentum. As a committed friend to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he arranged and conducted King Fought the Battle of ‘Bam’ for the Ellington Orchestra in 1963 for the historical revue My People, dedicated to Dr. King. Critics agree that his dedication to the gay movement was a contributing factor to him being so overlooked as an important musician. People concentrated more on the fact that he was Gay and black then his genius as a pianist, composer, and arranger. For this reason, he hid behind Duke Ellington for so long, letting him take credit for much of his work. Billy Strayhorn had a reputation for having an impact on many people he met because he had such a strong character. He had a major influence on the career of Lena Horne.

1948 - JOEL SINGER, Canadian born filmmaker and photographer born in Montreal. Joel arrived at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974 where he enrolled in an MFA program where he met and fell in love with his graduate advisor poet and filmmaker James Broughton. Over the next 24 years they collaborated on many avant garde films and produced several volumes of James’ poetry. Joel’s photo collages appeared on the covers of a half a dozen of Broughton’s books.

They traveled the world, spending a “honeymoon” year in Southeast Asia in 1979 living for months in Sri Lanka where they made their film The Gardener Of Eden and in 1984, major film museums in Frankfurt, Germany and Vienna, Austria mounted week-long retrospectives of their work in cinema, allowing them to travel for a year from Sweden to Egypt.

After James’ death in 1999 in Port Townsend, Washington where they had moved 10 years earlier, Joel moved to New York where he lived with their old friend, writer and anthropologist, Tobias Schneebaum (Keep the River On The Right) for four years until Tobias’ death from Parkinson’s Disease. Joel now makes his home in Bali, Indonesia where he lives with his partner, psychiatrist Nirgrantha.

The soon to be released White Crane book, Mark Thompson’s Dancing in the Moonlight is graced with one of Joel’s photocollages as is the recently released poetry collection, Sweet Son Of Pan by poet Trebor Healey (www.queermojo.com). The beautiful three DVD set of The Films Of James Broughton is available from Facets Multimedia (one of the DVDs is Joel and James’ collaborative film work) www.facets.org. Joel recently began to make films again after a twenty-two year hiatus. Some of these films can be seen on his website www.joelasinger.com along with many of his photographs.

1986 – CARY GRANT, British-born American actor died on this date (b. 1904); With his distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent, Cary Grant was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man: dashingly handsome, virile, charismatic and charming. He was named the second Greatest Star of All Time of American cinema, after Humphrey Bogart, by the American Film Institute. Throughout his time in Hollywood, Grant was rumored to be either homosexual or bisexual. In 1932, he met fellow actor Randolph Scott on the set of Hot Saturday. The two shared a rented beach house, known as "Bachelor Hall", on and off for twelve years. In 1944, Grant and Scott stopped living together but remained close friends throughout their lives. Rumors ran rampant at the time that Grant and Scott were lovers.

In their biographies of Grant, Marc Eliot, Charles Higham and Roy Mosseley all contend that Grant was bisexual. Higham and Moseley claim that Grant and Scott were seen kissing in a public carpark outside a social function both attended in the 1960s. In his book, Hollywood Gays, Boze Hadleigh cites an interview with homosexual director George Cukor, who commented on the alleged homosexual relationship between Scott and Grant: "Oh, Cary won't talk about it. At most, he'll say they did some wonderful pictures together. But Randolph will admit it – to a friend."

Homosexual screenwriter Arthur Laurents indicated that Grant was bisexual. In his memoir, he says, Grant "told me he threw pebbles at my window one night but was luckless – I wasn't home. ... his eyes and his smile implied that ... he would have liked doing what we would have done had I been home. William J. Mann's book Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 recounts how photographer Jerome Zerbe spent "three Gay months" in the movie colony taking many photographs of Grant and Scott, "attesting to their involvement in the Gay scene." Zerbe says that he often stayed with the two actors, "finding them both warm, charming, and happy."

In a 2004 interview, Grant's fifth wife, Barbara, says of the rumored Grant-Scott relationship "It wasn't the case at all. In fact, the house that they had down on the beach was known to have women going in and out like running water." Grant himself always denied the rumors, saying "They say that about everyone." When comedian Chevy Chase joked about Grant being gay in a television interview with Tom Snyder in 1980 ("Oh, what a gal!") Grant sued him for slander; they settled out of court. Grant complained to writer/director Peter Bogdonovich about the Chevy Chase incident, emphatically insisting that while he had many gay friends, including Cukor William Haines, and costume designer Orry-Kelly and had nothing against homosexuals, he was not one himself.

In a 2004 interview for the Turner Classic Movies production, Cary Grant: A Class Apart, Grant's third wife, Betsy Drake, commented, "Why would I believe that Cary was homosexual when we were busy fucking? He lived 43 years before he met me. I don't know what he did. Maybe he was bisexual."

Ya think?

1989 – ALVIN AILEY, American dancer, choreographer died (b. 1931); an African American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin AIley American Dance Theater. Ailey started the American Dance Theater, in 1958 featuring primarily African American dancers. He integrated his dance company in 1963. He also directed; one notable production was Langston Hughes' Jericho-Jim Crow (1964).

The American Dance Theater popularized modern dance throughout the world with his international tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. As a result of these tours, Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations, based on Ailey's experience growing up as an African American in the South, is among the best-known and most frequently seen of modern dance performances. After his death, the American Dance Theater was renamed the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Ailey has been memorialized by the renaming of West 61^st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues in New York City as "Alvin Ailey Way"; the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was located on that block at 211 West 61^st Street from 1989 until 2005, when it moved to a new, bigger facility at the corner of West 55^th Street and Ninth Avenue. Ailey was awarded theKennedy Center Honors in 1988. He died of AIDS, at the age of 58.

NOVEMBER 30

1554 – PHILIP SIDNEY, English courtier, soldier, and writer (d. 1586); the English courtier and poet was one of the leading lights of Queen Elizabeth’s court and a model of Renaissance chivalry. His Apostrophel and Stella is one of the great sonnet sequences in English and was inspired by his love for Penelope Devereaux, even though he later married Frances Walsingham. (Lest one confuse Renaissance “love” and “marriage” with the modern versions, it should be pointed out that Penelope Devereaux was 12-years old when Sidney fell in love with her, and that Frances Walsingham was 14 when she was married to the 29-year-old courtier. Marriages were arranged then and not made in heaven. More a real estate transaction than love matches.) Sidney was in his teens when the Huguenot writer and diplomat Hubert Languet fell in love with him. Languet was 36 years his senior, lived with him for a time, and, when they parted, wrote passionate letters to him weekly. In his youth, Sidney was strongly attached to two young men, Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer, and wrote love verses to them both, a point not lost on Gay John Addington Symonds when he wrote Sidney’s biography. Sidney died in battle at the age of 32.

1874 – WINSTON CHURCHILL, British prime minister and statesman, born (d: 1965); In his wonderfully entertaining and informative biography of W. Somerset Maugham, Ted Morgan tells how Maugham once asked Churchill whether it was true, as the statesman’s mother had claimed, that he had had affairs with other young men in his youth. “Not true!” Churchill replied. “But I once went to bed with a man to see what it was like.” The man turned out to be musical-comedy star, Ivor Norvello. “And what was it like?” asked Maugham. “Musical” Churchill replied.

1900 – OSCAR WILDE, Irish writer, wit and raconteur died (b. 1854); Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after the famously "penetrated" Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

Nevertheless, Wilde lost no time in returning to his previous pleasures. According to Douglas, Ross "dragged [him] back to homosexual practices" during the summer of 1897, which they spent together in Berneval. After his release, he also wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Readying Gaol. Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L’Hôtel, in Paris, where he was notorious and uninhibited about enjoying the pleasures he had been denied in England. Again according to Douglas, "he was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never attempted to conceal it." In a letter to Ross, Wilde laments, "Today I bade good-bye, with tears and one kiss, to the beautiful Greek boy. . . he is the nicest boy you ever introduced to me." Just a month before his death he is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."

His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death, their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure," Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party." Reggie Turner was one of the very few of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at his bedside when he died. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic church for some odd reason. Perhaps he really had lost his mind. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900.

Wilde was buried in the Cimitiere de Bagneaux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. The numerous spots on it are lipstick traces from admirers.

The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a succession of Père Lachaise cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a forty minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalized genitals.

Some Wilde wit:

- I have nothing to declare except my genius.

- The pure and simple Truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

- I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.

- I can resist everything except temptation.

- Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.

- Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

- I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

1978 – CLAY AIKEN, American singer, born; Rolling Stone magazine featured Aiken on the cover of their July 2003 issue. In the cover article Aiken said, "One thing I've found of people in the public eye, either you're a womanizer or you've got to be Gay. Since I'm neither one of those, people are completely concerned about me." In subsequent interviews he has expressed frustration over continued questions about his sexual orientation, telling People magazine in 2006, "It doesn't matter what I say. People are going to believe what they want." Right. Whatever. Musical.

After several years of public speculation, Aiken confirmed that he is gay in a September 2008 interview with People magazine. Quelle surprise. In April 2009, Aiken was honored by the Family Equality Council advocacy group at their annual benefit dinner in New York City. For what we’re not exactly clear.

DECEMBER 1

WORLD AIDS DAY: dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people, with an estimated 38.6 million people living with HIV, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Despite recent, improved access to antiretroviral treatment and care in many regions of the world, the AIDS epidemic claimed an estimated 3.1 million (between 2.8 and 3.6 million) lives in 2005 of which, more than half a million (570,000) were children.

The concept of a World AIDS Day originated at the 1988 World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programs for AIDS Prevention. Since then, it has been taken up by governments, international organizations and charities around the world.

From its inception until 2004, UNAIDS spearheaded the World AIDS Day campaign, choosing annual themes in consultation with other global health organizations. In 2005 this responsibility was turned over to World AIDS Campaign (WAC), who chose Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise as the main theme for World AIDS Day observances through 2010, with more specific sub-taglines chosen annually. This theme is not specific to World AIDS Day, but is used year-round in WAC's efforts to highlight HIV/AIDS awareness within the context of other major global events including the G* Summit. World AIDS Campaign also conducts “in-country” campaigns throughout the world, like the Student Stop AIDS Campaign, an infection-awareness campaign targeting young people throughout the UK.

1886 – REX STOUT, American novelist, born (d: 1975); American writer best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair). The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Boucheron 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century. It’s a mistake to assume there is any direct relationship between the subject matter of a novelist and the novelist himself, especially since imagination is the fundamental resource of the writer.

Before he turned to the detective novel in 1934, Rex Stout wrote an ambiguously Gay Western in which the married hero is attracted to his assistant. The notion, though psychologically plausible, is certainly unique to the Western adventure yard of the period and suggests an equally unusual relationship between two men that was to prove central to Stout’s work over the next four decades. What exactly is the nature of the friendship, if it can be called that, between Nero Wolfe, Stout’s famous detective hero, and his live-in assistant, Archie Goodwin?

Wolfe, of course, is the most eccentric of all detectives, an elephantine genius who is both a woman-hater and almost completely dependent on his assistant who is his junior sleuth, secretary, errand boy, bodyguard, bookkeeper and chauffeur. A third member of this melange housed in a brownstone on New York’s West 35^th Street is Fritz Brenner, the chef who prepares the gourmet meals that Wolfe prefers to women and which keep his weight at a seventh of a ton. William S. Barington’s full-length biography of this fictional character, Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street,doesn’t touch on the fat one’s sex life. But if Batman and Robin are “suspect,” then what could possibly be so mysterious about Nero and Archie?

1913 – MARY MARTIN, American actor and singer (d. 1990); Tony Award winning American star of (mainly stage) musicals. Among the roles she originated were Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was also a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. It has been reported that she was in a longtime relationship with actress Janet Gaynor. At some point, her ex-husband, Ben Hageman, stated that his ex-wife was having an affair with Gaynor. Though Martin denied the story, speculation on the gossip circuit continued. The speculation was overshadowed by the horrified reaction of entertainment industry workers in 1982 when a 36-year-old drunken driver named Robert Cato ran a red light in San Francisco and crashed into a taxi whose passengers were Martin, Ben Washer, described by the Los Angeles Times as her longtime confidant and business associate, Gaynor and her husband, Paul Gregory. Washer was killed instantly. Gaynor's injuries were critical and proven to cause her death two years later.

1945 – BETTE MIDLER, American song stylist and actress, born; During her career, she has won four Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards. In 1970, Midler began singing the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in the city, where she became close to her piano accompanist, Barry Manilow, who produced her first major album, The Divine Miss M in 1973. To quote the Divine Miss M: “Despite the way things turned out [with the AIDS crisis], I'm still proud of those days [singing at gay bathhouses]. I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of 'Bathhouse Betty' with pride.”

1952 - On this date the New York Daily News reported the first successful gender reassignment operation.

1976 - MATTHEW SHEPARD was born on this date (d. 1998).  Shepard was a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998. He was attacked on the night of October 6–7, and died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12 from severe head injuries.  During the trial, witnesses and his killers stated that Shepard was targeted because he was Gay. Shepard's murder brought national and international attention to the issue of hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels.

1987 - On this date the American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist and civil rights activist JAMES BALDWIN died in the South of France (b. 1924).  Most of Baldwin's work dealt with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century in the United States. His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity as well as the way in which they mine complex social and psychological pressures related to being black and homosexual well before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups was improved.

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