Band of Thebes

Born January 20: Julia Morgan

After earning her engineering degree from Berkeley in 1894, Julia Morgan moved to Paris and, refusing to accept the initial rejections from the École des Beaux-arts, finally gained admittance and became the first woman to receive the school's degree in architecture. In 1904 she became the first female architect licensed by California and designed El Campanil for Mills College, the first freestanding bell tower on a US campus and the first reinforced concrete structure on the west coast. After the 1906 earthquake all architects were in demand, none more so than Morgan because her tower survived unscathed. She created many Bay area landmarks, from institutional buildings to dozens of homes in her signature Arts and Crafts style. Within a decade she accepted her first commission in southern California, the Spanish revival Herald-Examiner building in LA, after which the paper's owner approached her about designing a little something at the top of 250,000 acres he owned near San Simeon. Hearst was tired of camping up there. He thought he wanted a bungalow. Quickly, it became a castle. And a 25 year project, in part because of its scale (58 bedrooms, 60 bathrooms, 41 fireplaces, virtual tour here) and in part because he constantly "tinkered," e.g., demolished and rebuilt the epic outdoor Neptune pool three times before he was satisfied. (The indoor Roman pool is far more lavish.) Defiant about not being a debutante, never married, and widely believed to be a lesbian, Morgan retired in 1951 and died six years later at 85. She left behind 700 completed buildings, including 11 at the Asilomar retreat (above) which I highly recommend if you're ever near Carmel or Monterey.

Perennially rediscovered, she's the subject of many lavish books like Mark Wilson's Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty and Sara Boutelle's Julia Morgan, Architect. Last fall, Landsmarks California held a six-week festival in her honor.

Born January 1: Forster, Hoover, Haines, Béjart, Hormel, Orton, De la Iglesia, Stefano

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) After you've finished the novels (Howards End, A Passage to India, A Room With a View, Maurice), and his openly gay story collection The Life To Come, your mandatory reading is Wendy K. Moffat's NYT notable A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster [Kindle]. Biographer Tripp Evans wrote: "Not only is this a truly groundbreaking study of Forster's life and work -- and an eye-opening read for any student of twentieth-century gay social history -- but it's also beautifully written.  Moffat is one of those rare writers able to combine elegant prose with a style that engages the reader in an intimate conversation (she is, in other words, the very best sort of company).  By illuminating the previously underexamined terrain of Forster's private life, Moffat has restored an important figure, along with his era, to a deeply satisfying wholeness.  It is a remarkable achievement."

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) American FBI director and closet case of unsurpassed twistedness.

William Haines (1900-1973) Hollywood hero, one of the top five grossing movie stars annually from 1928 - 32 for charming films like The Smart Set, The Duke Steps Out, and Just a Gigolo. In 1933 he was busted for picking up a sailor and taking him to a YMCA, prompting his studio to demand a sham marriage to a woman. Haines refused to betray his partner of seven years Jimmie Shields that way, and quit films for a very successful career as an interior designer. Read William Mann's extraordinary biography, Wisecracker.

Maurice Béjart (1927-2007) French-Swiss choreographer who directed maverick ballets and all-male homoerotic dances long before Matthew Bourne. Watch this at least until 2:20.

James Hormel (1933 -) The grandson of SPAM, American philanthropist, ambassador, gay rights activist, and current political hot potato is 80 today. His partner Michael P. Nguyen graduated from Swarthmore in 2008.

Joe Orton (1933-1967) randy British playwright of explicitly gay hits like Entertaining Mr. Sloane and What the Butler Saw, murdered by his unstable lover. Subject of Stephen Frears' fine biopic Prick Up Your Ears starring Gary Oldman and Vanessa Redgrave.

Eloy de la Iglesia (1944-2006) Spanish writer - director of the gay festival favorites like Bulgarian Lovers [right].

Joey Stefano (1968-1994) Porn superstar. After you've satisfied yourself with his film acting, read Wonder Bread & Ecstasy: The Life and Death of Joey Stefano.

Born December 20: Elsie de Wolfe

Baby boomers who think they invented being young at sixty are forgetting about Elsie de Wolfe who at sixty-one in 1926 attended a costume ball in Paris dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer and made her entrance doing handsprings. When she turned seventy, the world's most famous interior designer wrote her autobiography and noted that her daily exercise regimen still included yoga, headstands, and walking on her hands. Her design style was nearly as dramatic, banishing the dark, heavy Victorian look for new openness, airiness, and light. Starting at forty, she received her first major commission for Stanford White's Colony Club, after which she designed the interiors for the premiere families of her day, the Fricks, Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Windsors. Ten years into her success, in her early fifties, she stopped to become a nurse in World War I in France and earned the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. From her late twenties onward she lived with Elisabeth Marbury, one of the first women to work as a theatrical agent, representing among others Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. They spent thirty-three years together as a classic butch-femme couple, mentoring a whole generation of younger lesbians including Mercedes de Acosta who would become Greta Garbo's lover. Then de Wolfe up and married Sir Charles Mendl because she wanted a title. Now Lady Mendl, she expected nothing to change with Marbury, given that her marriage was completely platonic, and the women remained lovers for seven more years, until 1933, when Marbury died.

The next time you discuss outing and public figures and privacy, you might bear in mind that in 1926, the New York Times ran a front page story calling de Wolfe's wedding "a great surprise"  because "she makes her home with Elisabeth Marbury at 13 Sutton Place." Not that everything can be explained by early experiences, but the woman who spent her life making things beautiful grew up listening to her mother tell her she was ugly. When she was seventy, Parisian fashionistas named her the best dressed woman in the world. She is immortalized in song lyrics by Irving Berlin and by Cole Porter:

When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up,

Now turns a handspring, landing up-on her toes

Anything Goes!

Read her landmark book The House in Good Taste or either of two biographies, Elsie De Wolfe: A Life in the High Style or Elsie De Wolfe: A Decorative Life.

Born September 12: Leslie Cheung, Chip Kidd

Leslie Cheung was a pop superstar, a movie idol, and he had a loving boyfriend named Hok-Tak Tong, so his millions of fans were stunned on April 1, 2003 to learn he had jumped off a twenty-fourth floor balcony of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. His suicide dominated the headlines of Asian tabloids for more than a month, searching every aspect of his life for clues. The youngest of ten children of a Kowloon tailor, he was educated in England and returned to Hong Kong to sing. He released more than twenty-five very successful albums and his hit “Monica” was named Song of the Century. Two years after his death, China Central Television named him The Most Favorite Actor In 100 Years of Chinese Cinema for his work with directors John Woo, Kaige Chen, and Wong Kar-Wai, among others. Unlike many closeted actors in America, Cheung enthusiastically played gay characters, notably in two of his most famous films, Farewell, My Concubine and Happy Together. He came out in 1997 and his career thrived. His albums from that year on were extremely popular, as were his concerts, and many of his movies. He tried to kill himself in 2002 and succeeded the next year, when he was forty-six. His suicide note read,

"Depression! Many thanks to all my friends. Many thanks to Professor Felice Lieh-Mak [his psychiatrist]. This year has been so tough. I can't stand it anymore. Many thanks to Mr. Tong. Many thanks to my family. Many thanks to Fei-Fei. In my life I did nothing bad. Why does it have to be like this?"

Last year graphic designer Chip Kidd celebrated 25 years working at Knopf, notable because today he turns 48. In addition to creating many of the era's most iconic book jackets (Jurassic Park, American Psycho, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), he is also an editor-at-large for Pantheon. A lifelong Batman fanatic, he has written many books about cartooning, including Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross, Shazam!: The Golden Age of the World's Mightiest Mortal, Jack Cole and Plastic Man, Batman Animated, Batman Collected, and Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan. He has also written two novels about a gay graphic designer, The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners. But he deserves to be punished for co-authoring with Lisa Birnbach last year's sequel to the Preppy Handbook, True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World. In his spare time, he blogs a lot and fronted the band Artbreak, whose song "Asymmetrical Girl" plays after the jump. So far this year Kidd's given a TED talk about book design garnering half a million views and he's published his first graphic novel, Batman: Death by Design. Unless they've split, he and super poet J.D. "Sandy" McClatchy, 67, are longtime partners, living in Manhattan, Stonington, CT, and Palm Beach.

ASME Magazine Award Finalists

Another off year for nominations [after the jump] from the American Society of Magazine Editors. Surely these were not the very best stories of 2011 nor were these five the finest photo features. Down from last year's nine noms, The New Yorker got six this year, but none in fiction. New York also earned six. One thing ASME did nail: David Grann's fantastic fact piece, "A Murder Foretold," already optioned by Hollywood. Strange that the press release lists only the magazine and title, omitting authors or photographers. I had to google each title to find the fiction writers.

FICTION

The Atlantic for “Scars,” by Sarah Turcotte, Summer 2011
McSweeney’s Quarterly for “Ambition,” by Jonathan Franzen, April
McSweeney’s Quarterly for “The Northeast Kingdom,” by Nathaniel Rich, August
Virginia Quarterly Review for “La Moretta,” by Maggie Shipstead, Fall
Zoetrope: All-Story for “The Hox River Window,” by Karen Russell, Fall

FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

National Geographic for “Taming the Wild,” March
The New York Times Magazine for “Touch of Evil,” December 11
TIME for “Portraits of Resilience,” September 19
Vogue for “Lady Be Good,” March [Amber & son, above by Steven Klein]
W for “Planet Tilda,” August  [below by Tim Walker]

    

How Aids Was Branded: Gran Fury 25 Years Later

Sometime between January 31 and the Black Party, you must attend the NYU retrospective Gran Fury: Read My Lips. In anticipation, The Atlantic posts How AIDS Was Branded: Looking Back at ACT UP Design, a conversation between SVA's Steven Heller and Loring McAlpin speaking on behalf of Gran Fury. 

"So much of Gran Fury's work, which appeared radical then, has been co-opted or adopted by mainstream image-makers. Does this make you proud or not?

"At the very least, it suggests that our imagery became part of a vocabulary, so yes, that's nice to know.

"How would you describe Gran Fury's legacy?

"Perhaps we take our greatest satisfaction in the achievements of the broader movement - the ways in which the drug approval process was accelerated, the inclusion of patient groups in that process, the reduction of pricing for life saving drugs, the broader movement to make health care more affordable and increase access for all Americans. If we had a role in advancing the ways in which political and social dissent harnessed the power of media to communicate a more radical politics, then that also. But perhaps in that sense we were the product of many other broader forces that propelled these things. In many ways, we were just at the right place at the right time to have been allowed to operate as we did."

It's the second time in two months the magazine has covered Gran Fury and ACT UP. In December, the Atlantic posted Before Occupy: How AIDS Activists Seized Control of the FDA in 1988 by Douglas Crimp, excerpted from his book AIDS Demo Graphics.

Literary readers: This month the Atlantic also has a long essay by Caitlin Flanagan about her love of and disappointment in Joan Didion's work that's inciting strong feelings on both sides.

The Most Elegant Epic Fails

   

Which cowards in the marketing department killed ambiguity? God knows they "can't" put a tender, romantic embrace between two men on their gay/bi book covers but must they be so embarrassingly desperate as to run straight into the arms of a woman? Scribner released Colm Tóibín's sublime story collection The Empty Family[Kindle] in paperback last week, and I truly don't know which tale they think this image evokes. The majority of the book takes place in sunny southern Spain. The opening story is about a woman dining next to Henry James and the closing novella details an affair between two Pakistani men. The Irish stories look nothing like this. Pathetically, they're trying to sell the book as Brooklyn 2. The pathos continues with the UK edition of Edmund White's new novel Jack Holmes and His Friend about a lifelong friendship between two people -- a gay man and a straight man -- and the designer could fit only two people on the cover -- the straight man and his squeeze. The US edition coming next week is a happy exception; the cover is asstastic. John Irving began including trans, gay, and lesbian characters in his fiction back in the 1970s and now for the first time he's written a novel, In One Person, whose male protagonist is actively bisexual. Is that a muscular woman or a man in a bra? 

"Gay Men Don't Get Fat" by Simon Doonan

Proving he's never been to an Eagle bar, Simon Doonan today publishes his new book optimistically titled Gay Men Don't Get Fat [Kindle]. It's packaged as a cheeky response to Mireille Guiliano's bestseller: "...he proves that gay men really are French women, from their delight in fashion, to their brilliant choices in accessories and décor, to their awe-inspiring ability to limit calorie intake. A Gucci-wearing Margaret Mead at heart, Doonan offers his own inimitable life experiences and uncanny insights into what makes gay people driven to live every day feeling their best, and proves that they have just as much -- and possibly better -- wisdom, advice, and inspiration beyond the same old diet and exercise tips."

Doonan, the creative ambassador-at-large for Barneys who turns 60 this year, quips some frippery that feels like a poly-blend leisure suit. A decade after metrosexuals and heteroflexibles, who still talks like this? "I can’t believe any red-blooded straight guy can even walk into a macaron shop." And yet he's probably right that the influx of gay led to the quantum improvement of British cuisine.

It sounds as if he might suffer from Fifth Book Syndrome, or maybe it's just my aversion to the self-helpy chord he's strummed in recent works like Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You! His best book is his most personal, Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints [Kindle], a funny, angry, touching memoir about growing up gay in unfabulous Reading. As the endlessly quotable David Rakoff said on its publication, "If you were ever younger than you are now, you must read this book."

Design Duo Kirk & Nate Mueller on Twin Sets and Twincest

In the line of gay couples who work together, look alike, and dress identically, there are the artists Gilbert & George, the fashion forward Viktor & Rolf, the detectives Thomson and Thompson, the porn stars The Peters Twins, and the app-happy digital designers Nate and Kirk Mueller. Except they're actual twin brothers. Now that it's off limits to ask politicians about their past statements, reporters resort to asking real people absolutely anything, including if these twee twinks are tupping each other. Ever the imps, they answer this frequent question by simultaneously saying, "Not really," and "I don't know." Genius! Apparently their work is just as clever. They got their masters from RISD eighteen months ago, moved to a brownstone in Prospect Heights, and have designed sites, apps, or e-books for The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and Bon Appetit. They did one project for Martha Stewart and it won Tablet App of the Year from the Society of Publication Designers and Time called it cover of the year. Their art has been shown in Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia, and New York. They're 27. (Photo by Glenn Glasser, with The New Yorker's creative director Wyatt Mitchell.)

Born December 20: Elsie de Wolfe

Baby boomers who think they invented being young at sixty are forgetting about Elsie de Wolfe who at sixty-one in 1926 attended a costume ball in Paris dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer and made her entrance doing handsprings. When she turned seventy, the world's most famous interior designer wrote her autobiography and noted that her daily exercise regimen still included yoga, headstands, and walking on her hands. Her design style was nearly as dramatic, banishing the dark, heavy Victorian look for new openness, airiness, and light. Starting at forty, she received her first major commission for Stanford White's Colony Club, after which she designed the interiors for the premiere families of her day, the Fricks, Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Windsors. Ten years into her success, in her early fifties, she stopped to become a nurse in World War I in France and earned the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. From her late twenties onward she lived with Elisabeth Marbury, one of the first women to work as a theatrical agent, representing among others Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. They spent thirty-three years together as a classic butch-femme couple, mentoring a whole generation of younger lesbians including Mercedes de Acosta who would become Greta Garbo's lover. Then de Wolfe up and married Sir Charles Mendl because she wanted a title. Now Lady Mendl, she expected nothing to change with Marbury, given that her marriage was completely platonic, and the women remained lovers for seven more years, until 1933, when Marbury died.

The next time you discuss outing and public figures and privacy, you might bear in mind that in 1926, the New York Times ran a front page story calling de Wolfe's wedding "a great surprise"  because "she makes her home with Elisabeth Marbury at 13 Sutton Place." Not that everything can be explained by early experiences, but the woman who spent her life making things beautiful grew up listening to her mother tell her she was ugly. When she was seventy, Parisian fashionistas named her the best dressed woman in the world. She is immortalized in song lyrics by Irving Berlin and by Cole Porter:

When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up,

Now turns a handspring, landing up-on her toes

Anything Goes!

Read her landmark book The House in Good Taste or either of two biographies, the 366 page Elsie De Wolfe: A Life in the High Style or the 143 page Elsie De Wolfe: A Decorative Life from Clarkson Potter.

Matthew Gallaway Takes on Death, Nightfall, and Fielding

 

Ever since The Gay Recluse's enchanting evisceration of Daniel Kehlmann's uber-bestselling historical novel Measuring the World, I've been enthralled with Matthew Gallaway's examinations of queer characters in literature. (With all that energy and enthusiasm and erudition, he should have his own tv show.) Yesterday he posted an essay on The Millions exploring a trio of novels in which a heretofore straight middle-aged man suddenly becomes infatuated with a young male: This month's The Art of Fielding [[Kindle]] by Chad Harbach, last year's By Nightfall [[Kindle]] by Michael Cunningham, and their great, great forefather Death in Venice [[Kindle]]. 

Matthew is too elegant to say it so bluntly, but apparently Harbach's gay nocturnes hit many false notes. He finds (with added emphasis):

"When Owen sits in the dugout, for example, his contours are “slender-limbed, right knee flipped girlishly over left” and when after Owen’s jaw is shattered, he still looks “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful… possessed of an Asian delicacy.” When the relationship becomes sexual, Owen kisses Affenlight “on the tip of the penis in a womanly way.” After they go to a hotel to (vaguely) “make love,” Affenlight “lay on his side…[in a] a quintessentially feminine posture…[as] with his free hand he caressed Owen’s belly, which itself felt almost feminine, not muscled but soft…”

If encoding man on man sex in female terms wasn't enough of a game-ender, Matthew later explains, "There’s an undercurrent of cognitive dissonance in the many scenes in which Affenlight appears," and "Harbach also adorns Owen with an array of pointless clichés that long ago felt more tired than funny in television sit-coms."

His close readings of Mann and Cunningham are just as essential, and more appreciative. I don't quote them because you are far more familiar with those works, and because you must read the entire essay yourself.

[Please enjoy: By Nightfall jacket designer Henry Sene Yee writes on his blog of this rejected version: "Although it connected with the storyline, we didn't want to suggest that this was a gay novel."]

Born January 2: William Haines

Dear Michael Zam or Dustin Lance Black,

Of all the birthday notices I write each year, the three best suited for a biopic -- rescuing an underknown personality with a bold, visually engaging life -- are adventurer Richard Halliburton, interior designer and acrobat-aristocrat Elsie de Wolfe, and today's actor cum decorator, William Haines. In Haines' case, William J. Mann has already done all the biographical legwork for you, in his splendid Wisecracker. You could be dealt worse conceits to convey the difficulties of a double-life than big screen black and white movie magic in Hollywood from 1925 to 1933. Now get to work. Please.

Your friend, Band of Thebes.

In 1925, MGM's leading male actor was the charming William Haines and he remained a top-five grossing star from 1928 to 1932. Handsome and funny, his typical character was a clever, athletic young narcissist whose giant ego was deflated before he finally won the day. As for that self-adoring trait, Haines fell in love with his double, Jimmy Shields, whom the studio had hired as his stand-in, and starting in 1926 they lived together openly for nearly fifty years, causing their friend Joan Crawford to declare them "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."

Perhaps, but their happiness came at a high price. In 1933, seven years into their relationship and still at the height of his fame, Haines cruised a sailor in Pershing Square and they went back to the YMCA to have sex, only to be busted by the police. Louis B. Mayer, the genius tyrant running MGM, insisted Haines enter into a fake marriage, and when he refused, choosing to stay with Shields, Mayer canceled his contract, virtually ending his career. As plucky as his characters, Haines and Shields opened an interior design studio which was an immediate success. Two years later, a neighbor claimed they propositioned his son and as a result members of the Ku Klux Klan broke into their house, hauled them outside, and savagely attacked them. Once again, rather than shunning the gay couple, their famous friends and colleagues rallied to support them: Haines' co-star Marion Davies begged her lover William Randolph Hearst to get the neighbor arrested and many others, including Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Charles Boyer, and even George Burns, implored them to tell the police about the attack, but given their past experience they did not.

Their design studio flourished for decades. They created interiors and furniture for a top tier of international clientele beyond the Hollywood luminaries, George Cukor, Jack Warner, the Annenbergs, the Regans, and Gloria Swanson, who urged Haines to accept a part in her own comeback movie, Sunset Boulevard, which he declined. Although Haines died on Boxing Day 1973 and Shields killed himself with an overdose of pills soon after, in their shared bed, wearing Haines pajamas, their design studio was recently revived. Look at their lovely work here.

Born December 19-20: Elsie de Wolfe, Jean Genet

Baby boomers who think they invented being young at sixty are forgetting about Elsie de Wolfe who at sixty-one in 1926 attended a costume ball in Paris dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer and made her entrance doing handsprings. When she turned seventy, the world's most famous interior designer wrote her autobiography and noted that her daily exercise regimen still included yoga, headstands, and walking on her hands. Her design style was nearly as dramatic, banishing the dark, heavy Victorian look for new openness, airiness, and light. Starting at forty, she received her first major commission for Stanford White's Colony Club, after which she designed the interiors for the premiere families of her day, the Fricks, Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Windsors. Ten years into her success, in her early fifties, she stopped to become a nurse in World War I in France and earned the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. From her late twenties onward she lived with Elisabeth Marbury, one of the first women to work as a theatrical agent, representing among others Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. They spent thirty-three years together as a classic butch-femme couple, mentoring a whole generation of younger lesbians including Mercedes de Acosta who would become Greta Garbo's lover. Then de Wolfe up and married Sir Charles Mendl because she wanted a title. Now Lady Mendl, she expected nothing to change with Marbury, given that her marriage was completely platonic, and the women remained lovers for seven more years, until 1933, when Marbury died.

The next time you discuss outing and public figures and privacy, you might bear in mind that in 1926, the New York Times ran a front page story calling de Wolfe's wedding "a great surprise"  because "she makes her home with Elisabeth Marbury at 13 Sutton Place." Not that everything can be explained by early experiences, but the woman who spent her life making things beautiful grew up listening to her mother tell her she was ugly. When she was seventy, Parisian fashionistas named her the best dressed woman in the world. She is immortalized in song lyrics by Irving Berlin and by Cole Porter:

When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up,

Now turns a handspring, landing up-on her toes

Anything Goes!

Read her landmark book The House in Good Taste or either of two biographies, the 366 page Elsie De Wolfe: A Life in the High Style or the 143 page Elsie De Wolfe: A Decorative Life from Clarkson Potter.

 

Flashback to 1949: South Pacific opened on Broadway, James Gould Cozzens won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, All the King's Men won the Oscar for Best Picture, and in France, Jean Genet received his tenth criminal conviction, which meant he would be sent to prison for life. In the preceding five years he had published his five groundbreaking novels, as well as three plays and dozens of poems, all of which were greatly esteemed by his European contemporaries despite his focus on petty thieves and his inclusion of gay sex. As news of his dire situation spread, rather than ostracizing Genet, the leading intellectuals rallied to his defense, and with a public push from Cocteau, Sartre, and Picasso, among others, Genet was pardoned by the French president. It is safe to say Harry Truman would not have done the same because at that point Genet's fiction was still banned in the United States. Genet never returned to prison after that, nor did he ever publish another novel, although he continued to write plays, poems, and a memoir, Un Captif Amoureux, published in 1986, the year after he died of throat cancer. For the full story, treat yourself to Edmund White's definitive Genet: A Biography.

D

                         

The previous DNC Democratic Party logo (created early 90s) and the brand new one unveiled yesterday. Sorry about the stereotyping but couldn't they have hired a gay designer?

Born July 8: Spaulding, Fitzgerald, Evans, Johnson

Online journalist Pam Spaulding of the essential, influential lgbt political blog Pam's House Blend today turns forty-seven (click for a photo tour of four decades of happy smiles and evolving hairstyles). A Fordham alum who lives in Durham, with family backgrounds in both New York City and North Carolina, Pam considers herself to have "dual citizenship" as a Southerner and a Yankee. She started the Blend in 2004 "as a personal response to the anti-gay state of the political landscape." It won Best LGBT Blog at the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards and made Pam one of OUT's 100 last year. Make sure she's part of your daily reading.

Filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald worried his debut feature The Hanging Garden would be too arty and too gay for anyone to pay attention to: Sweet William, now slim and confident at twenty-five, returns home for the first time in a decade to attend a wedding, where he talks to the hanging corpse of his fat fifteen year-old self who was caught having sex with the bi guy his sister is now marrying. The universally lauded movie was nominated for eleven Genie Awards and won three, among many other Canadian and international prizes. His second movie was Beefcake, the popular docu-drama homage to Bob Mizer of the early gay muscle mags from the Athletic Model Guild. Fitzgerald's fourth and fifth features, The Event and 3 Needles, cover different aspects of aids and hiv. 3 Needles stars Olympia Dukakis, Chloe Sevigny, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Stockard Channing, and Shawn Ashmore, and earned its director a DGA nom. Earlier this year, Fitzgerald debuted his first play, Cloudburst, to rousing acclaim. Raised in New Jersey, Fitzgerald attended Cooper Union and spent a semester in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he has lived ever since.

British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (far left) did not begin his famous excavations at Knossos until 1900 when he was forty-nine. In 1878 someone had discovered a small portion of the ruins but it was only after Crete became an independent state free of Turkey that Evans was able to purchase the site and organize a dig on a necessarily massive scale. The "palace" is a series of 1,000 interlocking rooms. Luckily, Evans lived another forty-one years, plenty of time to unveil the structures he decided were source of the mythic King Minos and his fabled Minotaur; hence Evans' coining the term Minoan civilization from the 27th to 15th centuries BC. One aspect of real life there was bull dancing, a tradition in which youths cavorted with angry steers to great honor and, usually within three months, certain death. Mary Renault brings the practice alive in her novel The King Must Die about Theseus's Cretan adventures. (Below, my picture of bull dancing from Knossos this May and actor Henry Cavill as Theseus in Tarsem Singh's ancient Greek hotfest The Immortals coming November 2011.) Evans was Keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum from 1894-1908 and many, many of the treasures he found at Knossos ended up in its collection. He is degayed in most accounts of his life but not in Cathy Gere's intriguing Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.

   

Soon after graduating from Harvard in 1930, Philip Johnson became the first director of MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design though he himself was not yet an architect. In the ensuing years he was a committed fascist, an ardent admirer of Hitler, and he even toured conquered Poland at the Nazis' invitation. How he as a gay man reconciled the Reich's murder of gay men probably shouldn't be any more pressing than how he as a human reconciled the Reich's slaughter of humans, but somehow it sharpens the point. In 1948, when Johnson built his master degree thesis, Glass House, was immediately hailed as a masterpiece and remains one of the most important designs of the century. His two best known other works are the Seagrams Building (with Mies van der Rohe) and the AT&T Building with its controversial Chippendale top, completed when he was seventy-eight. His many other projects include the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, the Amon Carter Museum,

Soon after graduating from Harvard in 1930, Philip Johnson became the first director of MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design though he himself was not yet an architect. In the ensuing years he was a committed fascist, an ardent admirer of Hitler, and he even toured conquered Poland at the Nazis' invitation. How he as a gay man reconciled the Reich's murder of gay men probably shouldn't be any more pressing than how he as a human reconciled the Reich's slaughter of humans, but somehow it sharpens the point. In 1948, when Johnson built his master degree thesis, Glass House, was immediately hailed as a masterpiece and remains one of the most important designs of the century. His two best known other works are the Seagrams Building (with Mies van der Rohe) and the AT&T Building with its controversial Chippendale top, completed when he was seventy-eight. His many other projects include the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, the Amon Carter Museum,

Hide the Queer: Eight Poster Designs for La Cage aux Folles

Short NYT article and good audio slideshow depicting the final eight posters for the Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles. You can already guess what's lost in the winning version. As the producer says of one reject, “I don't think it's our show. It feels quite aggressive, and 'La Cage' isn't aggressive." Starring Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge, previews begin April 6.

Gay Style / Substance Split at the White House

Glenn Ligon, 49, is the youngest of the artists whose work has been selected to hang in the private quarters of the White House. His paintings usually incorporate text, sometimes from James Bladwin or Jean Genêt. Ligon is African-American and gay.

Simon Doonan was brought to the White House early in the administration to “go over the general concept of how the holiday theme constructed by Mrs. Obama and our staff would be interpreted creatively." Doonan, the design god of Barneys, is British-American and gay.

Jason Wu designed Michelle Obama's clothes for, among other events, the Inaugural balls, her Vogue cover shoot, and her meeting with Queen Elizabeth II. He's Taiwanese-American and gay.

Johnny Wright is Michelle Obama's hair stylist. He's been doing women's hair since he was twelve. When he was a freshman he convinced the most popular girl in high school to let him do her hair, after which he had 150 clients. He's African-American and if he's not gay, then gaydar is a total myth.

The White House gets an A+ on using gay talent to make their world more pretty.

The administration still hasn't said killing gay people is wrong.

(Even Rick Warren finally condemned Uganda's proposed bill, though Rachel Maddow wasn't having it, titling her segment "Uganda be kidding me!" and showing how Warren helped to create the hostility in the first place.)

Last week, ABC News reported that global aids groups scored the Obama administration at D+.

Gen X Douglas Coupland & David Weir's Vancouver Home: Ode to Hirst

Take a look at the NYT slideshow of Douglas Coupland & David Weir's second home, an open mid-Century house that sits directly behind their primarily dwelling. Their use of color is a little bit wondrous, as in the wall of dice, one of many homages to Damien Hirst's pill paintings.

Coupland's first novel was, of course, Generation X. His twelfth, coming in November, is titled Generation A. He has also published five nonfiction books, as well as plays and screenplays.

Born January 2: William Haines

In 1925, MGM's leading male actor was the charming William Haines and he remained a top-five grossing star from 1928 to 1932. Handsome and funny, his typical character was a clever, athletic young narcissist whose giant ego was deflated before he finally won the day. As for that self-adoring trait, Haines fell in love with his double, Jimmy Shields, whom the studio had hired as his stand-in, and starting in 1926 they lived together openly for nearly fifty years, causing their friend Joan Crawford to declare them "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."

Perhaps, but their happiness came at a high price. In 1933, seven years into their relationship and still at the height of his fame, Haines cruised a sailor in Pershing Square and they went back to the YMCA to have sex, only to be busted by the police. Louis B. Mayer, the genius tyrant running MGM, insisted Haines enter into a fake marriage, and when he refused, choosing to stay with Shields, Mayer canceled his contract, virtually ending his career. As plucky as his characters, Haines and Shields opened an interior design studio which was an immediate success. Two years later, a neighbor claimed they propositioned his son and as a result members of the Ku Klux Klan broke into their house, hauled them outside, and savagely attacked them. Once again, rather than shunning the gay couple, their famous friends and colleagues rallied to support them: Haines' co-star Marion Davies begged her lover William Randolph Hearst to get the neighbor arrested and many others, including Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Charles Boyer, and even George Burns, implored them to tell the police about the attack, but given their past experience they did not.

Their design studio flourished for decades. They created interiors and furniture for a top tier of international clientele beyond the Hollywood luminaries, George Cukor, Jack Warner, the Annenbergs, the Regans, and Gloria Swanson, who urged Haines to accept a part in her own comeback movie, Sunset Boulevard, which he declined. Although Haines died on Boxing Day 1973 and Shields killed himself with an overdose of pills soon after, in their shared bed, wearing Haines pajamas, their design studio was recently revived. Look at their lovely work here. And say a prayer of thanks to William J. Mann for rescuing Haines from obscurity with his excellent biography, Wisecracker.

Born December 22: Frank Israel

Six years after winning the Rome Prize for architecture in 1973, Frank Israel went Hollywood and designed sets for the first Star Trek movie and Roger Vadim's Night Games. From there he jumped to designing offices for production companies, and soon catapulted himself to the forefront of architects creating dramatic private residences in southern California. Among his most notable houses were those for Robert Altman, Howard Goldberg, and Joel Grey. In the mid-1990's, when Israel was in his late forties (young in architect years), he was honored with a show of his work at Los Angeles's Museum of Contemporary Art. At the same time he was battling aids. He died at fifty, survived by his partner Thomas Haase. Click here to see a gallery of his work or here to see him on Charlie Rose.