Jane Lynch is a current Emmy winner, nominee, and host this year, and she's a double mythbuster: In 2000, she was (1) a forty year-old (2) out lesbian when her career was jumpstarted by a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. She did a cereal commercial directed by Christopher Guest, who then cast her in Best in Show, where she and Jennifer Coolidge more or less steal the movie as blonde on blonde lovers who plan to publish a magazine, American Bitch, to "focus on the issues of the lesbian purebred dog owner." Before that movie, Jane had been stuck in the typical long slog to success: Born and raised in Dolton, schooled in Normal, she left Illinois for graduate school at Cornell, came back to Chicago, starred on stage as Carol Brady, toured to New York and Los Angeles, returned home, became restless and boomeranged back to L.A., where she lived on lots of rejection and a few bit parts in tv shows and movies. After Best in Showshe's played one inspired nutjob after another: The porn star turned folk singer in A Mighty Wind, the randy boss in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Ricky Bobby's mom in Talladega Nights, Cindy in For Your Consideration, and Gayle, the ex-addict running the Sturdy Wings mentoring program in Role Models. Having had her scenes as Amelia Earhart deleted from the final cut of The Aviator, she got to play Julia Child's / Meryl Streep's sister in Julie & Julia. Then came Glee
on 09/09/09 with her instantly immortal Sue Sylvester. Today, she's 51.
Two-time Tony winner Arthur Laurents died this year at ninety-two. Born in the Jewish section of Flatbush, he wrote the book for the musicals West Side Story, Gypsy, Anyone Can Whistle, and Hallelujah, Baby!; the novels and the screenplays for The Way We Were and The Turning Point, the screenplay for Rope (starring his then-lover Farley Granger); the play that became the movie Summertime; and he directed I Can Get It for You Wholesale, La Cage Aux Folles, Anyone Can Whistle, and the Broadway versions of Gypsy in 1974 and the recent triple Tony winning revival starring the Patti Lupone. Laurents was openly gay even during the McCarthy era, when he received less work but avoided being blacklisted. Smart people can discuss the obvious and subtle gay substitutes and outsider figures who run through all of Laurents' work. His two memoirs are Original Story By
and Mainly on Directing. He and his partner Tom Hatcher lived together fifty-one years, mainly in Quogue, Long Island, until Hatcher's death in 2006. It was Hatcher's idea as he was dying to re-invent West Side Story as a bilingual musical to give Laurents something to do as a new widower. The revival earned four Tony nominations, winning best featured actress in a musical.
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