On Thursday, April 15, 1993, longtime activist John Preston delivered the Jon Pearson Perry Lecture at Harvard, which he titled My Life As a Pornographer. He was 47 and it had been ten years since the release of his classic gay SM novel Mr. Benson [Kindle], which he published under his real name. (In a great reversal, he used a pseudonym for his straight adventure books.) Preston said, "Pornography has made me be honest, about myself and some of the most intimate details of my life and my fantasies. ... Once I had exposed my own sexual fantasies, my most intimate desires, I feared little else about self-exposure as a writer." Among his other popular one-handers were In Search Of A Master, Entertainment for a Master, The Love of a Master, and I Once Had a Master. He edited many important anthologies including Flesh and the Word
, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront Aids and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong. His most famous non-erotica novel is Franny, the Queen of Provincetown
, which has been adapted for the stage. He died of aids at 48. Dozens of authors pay tribute to him in Looking for Mr. Preston.
Smitten in his teens, Jean Alfred Villain-Marais tried to enroll in the Paris Conservatory and was rejected, but he did get to do a little acting in high school: One day he dressed as a girl and flirted with his male teacher, a performance that riotously delighted his classmates and got him expelled. Cast out, he became a newspaper boy and held several odd jobs until he turned twenty, when Marcel D'Herbier gave him bit parts in several of his films. At twenty-four he auditioned for Jean Cocteau and they fell in love, becoming romantic partners for the next twelve years and friends for life. Internationally, Marais is best known for his seven collaborations with Cocteau, especially Beauty and the Beast
and Orpheus
, whereas in his native France he is remembered as an Errol Flynn-style idol who did his own stunts in epics du swashbucke epics like the Fantomas trilogy. He adopted a son, Serge, and after his film career slowed, continued acting on stage into his eighties. Marais wrote several volumes of his memoirs, which are still in print in France. His legendary good looks have never been forgotten: see The Smiths' cover art for This Charming Man.
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