Band of Thebes

More on the "Skip Ender's Game" Boycott from Geeks Out

Tricky but not impossible to solve the moral calculus of if/when an artist's personal behavior should influence your opinion of the work. For twenty years reader friends of every orientation have urged me to try the multiple-award-winning modern sci-fi classic Ender's Game [Kindle] -- most recently praised by the gay twink mountaineer Cason Crane and the filthy-mouthed, unicorn-riding homophobe-slayer/NFL kicker Chris Kluwe -- but I will never read a book by Orson Scott Card. Here's why, in his own words:

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books... to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society." (1990)

" 'gay marriage' ...marks the end of democracy in America...Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage." (2008)

people become gay "through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse." (2004)

gay marriage "will be the bludgeon [liberals] use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools." (2012)

As a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, Card insists you tolerate his religious views, while he uses his celebrity to tell lies about you and mislead others into denying you your rights. No wonder the gay fanboys at Geeks Out have called for a boycott of the movie version starring Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, Abigail Breslin, Hailee Steinfeld, and, as Ender, the boy from Hugo. It's coming November 1 and Card is a co-producer.

Jaded sophisticates may think it's quaint for a handful of queer nerds to battle the Goliath of a major studio's big holiday release. Yet the group has already had a success in exposing Card's toxic views across widespread media coverage. (Geeks Out have greeted the inevitable pro-Card, antigay backlash with good humor, compiling the 20 vilest comments under the heading "Trolls gonna troll. Skip on, Skippers!") To a tiny degree, the studio got the message: They disinvited Card from appearing on their panel at Comic Con.

Earlier this year, Card wrote an installment of the Adventures of Superman comic, and the project's illustrator Chris Sprouse quit after fans protested Card's involvement. DC Comics has put that episode on hold, perhaps indefinitely.

Readers who feel Card is being punished for an unpopular belief or a mere difference of opinion need to go back and study the above quotes one and two again. What does "cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society" mean to you?

Readers who think the world is full of double standards are right. I still love and recommend the magnificent novel Growth of the Soil even though decades later Knut Hamsun became an unrepentent Hitler supporter. Bad people can make great art. But we don't have to pay them royalties while they kick us in the face. Nor should we sit in silence while they spew lies about us.

If you're inclined, sign the Skip Ender's Game pledge.

Pan Sexual Biography

Born to Greek immigrants in Memphis, Hermes Panagiotopoulos copied dance moves from the black people who worked for his parents and at 14 was already performing at speakeasies in New York. Chopping his surname down to a single syllable, Hermes Pan landed in Hollywood and, at 23, assisted on the dance sequences for Flying Down to Rio. Thus began a lifelong friendship with his lookalike Fred Astaire for whom he sometimes doubled. Among the 80+ other projects he choreographed are Top Hat, Kiss Me Kate, Pal Joey, Porgy & Bess, The Blue Angel, The Pink Panther, Cleopatra, and My Fair Lady. Alas, the freedom and ease of his dancing was wholly missing in his repressed personal life. A devout Roman Catholic, he hated to disappoint his beloved mother, and internalized her disapproval. Invited to an all-male party by Cardinal Spellman, Hermes was shocked by the gay revelry and pushed himself deeper in the closet. Eventually, decades later, he did let himself have a longterm relationship with a dancer named Gino Malerba but they never lived together. Much credit is due to John Franceschina and Oxford University Press for finally incorporating Hermes' gay life in the recent biography Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire [Kindle] -- indeed, even gay Hollywood expert William J. Mann wrongly identified the super secretive Hermes as hetero in Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969. Some critics found the narrative "plodding" or "boring" or "interesting" yet Hermes' star quality shines through. Dance Magazine said, "Pan’s great skill, asserts Franceschina, lay in his dance-transmogrifications of mundane life situations. His vitality, work ethic, and ability to please both chorus girls and studio bosses cemented his career. Handsome and slender, a bizarre doppelganger for Astaire, Pan, a gay man, became an A-list party-goer, the frequent escort of Rita Hayworth." 

Sony Boss Amy Pascal Nails Hollywood's Dead-Gay Movies, Slurs

The headlines across the web are that Sony chief Amy Pascal called on Hollywood to eliminate anti-gay slurs and stereotypes, but the deeper aspect of her speech last night as she accepted an award from the LA Gay Center at a fundraiser for homeless lgbtq youth was her recognition that film lags years behind television and that most of the very few high-profile gay movies end with a dead queer:

"The Celluloid Closet was made almost 20 years ago and certainly attitudes have changed, but maybe not quite so much as you or I would want or hope. Television has been much more progressive and credit has to be given to producers like Max Mutchnick and David Kohan and Ryan Murphy for really changing things.

"Now movies need to catch up. There are magnificent movies being made about gay subjects with gay characters, like Brokeback Mountain and Milk. Anyone would have been proud to have made those movies. I know I would be. But when you think about some of these films, even our favorite ones, there is a theme that runs through them.

"Brokeback Mountain, Milk, Boys Don’t Cry, Philadelphia, The Hours, Gods and Monsters, The Talented Mr. Ripley, A Single Man, My Own Private Idaho, Cloud Atlas – in all these movies, the main character is murdered or martyred or commits suicide or just dies unhappily. And there are far more pernicious and dangerous images that confront gay kids and their parents: the lesbian murderer, the psychotic transvestite, the queen who is humiliated and sometimes tossed off a ship or a ledge. It’s a big joke. It still happens.

"How many times have you heard a character imply to another that the worst thing about going to prison isn’t being locked up for the rest of your life, it’s the homosexuality? And old stereotypes still exist. The most benign stereotypes would have a gay kid believe that they will end up being the asexual, witty best friend of the pretty girl, or a drag queen, or a swishy hairdresser. The list goes on.

"Of course, there are great images, too, like the family in The Kids Are All Right. The way the boy in Perks of Being a Wallflower and the middle-aged man in Hotel Marigold and the 75-year-old man in Beginners come out to a better, richer, more fulfilled life. It’s treated as a celebration.

"And real credit has to be given to the filmmakers of ParaNorman, Chris Butler and Sam Fell, who had the first gay character in an animated movie, and he was the football hunk and it was totally incidental to the plot.

"Now it’s time for all of us to take that step. Not every gay character needs to be defined by his or her sexuality. Can’t being gay just be one stitch in the fabric of someone’s life? Can’t we depict men and women who just so happen to be gay – perhaps a lawyer or soldier or business executive or scientist or engineer…

"We need to create an atmosphere that encourages people to speak up, so we get this right.

"How about next time, when any of us are reading a script and it says words like fag, or faggot – homo – dyke – take a pencil and just cross it out. Just don’t do it."

The deluge of hostile comments at the industry's go-to site Deadline Hollywood are overwhelmingly anti-liberal, anti-PC, anti-equality, and anti-what Amy said. If you're inclined, add your voice of reason.

Two Too Gay: Liberace, Larry Kramer Movies Won't Get Theatrical Release

Despite top stars (Michael Douglas, Matt Damon above / Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo) and big directors (Steven Soderbergh / Ryan Murphy), two long-gestating queer films, Behind the Candelabra and Larry Kramer's aids drama The Normal Heart, have failed to find studio backing and won't be released as features. The reason is they're "too gay."

Kramer's play debuted in 1985 and for years Barbra Streisand was going to make the movie version. In 2011 The Normal Heart was announced as a feature directed by out wiz Ryan Murphy, costarring Alec Baldwin and Jim Parsons, and co-produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B, but the funding fizzled.

Soderbergh, who is straight and retiring this year so less shy about burning his bridges, unloaded on Hollywood's homophobia in his efforts to finance the Liberace biopic: "Nobody would make it. We went to everybody in town. They all said it was too gay. And this is after ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ by the way, which is not as funny as this movie. I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us." He added, "Studios were going, 'We don't know how to sell it.' They were scared."

For some thoughts on Soderbergh's indignation, see the following post.

Both movies have been picked up by HBO, where they will get a lot of attention, a lot of award nominations, and limited viewership. Behind the Candelabra airs this spring, The Normal Heart in 2014.

Three Questions for Steven Soderbergh

Over the weekend, Steven Soderbergh went public with the backstory on why Hollywood rejected his Liberace biopic starring Michael Douglas as the super flamboyant singer and Matt Damon as his much younger lover Scott Thorson. The Oscar-winning director complained, "They said it was too gay. Everybody...I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us."

A contrarian question: Is Steven Soderbergh part of the problem?

1.) Prolific Soderbergh has released 23 features in 25 years, including sprawling, huge-cast ensembles like Out of Sight, Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Ocean's 11, 12, 13, and Contagion, yet how many queer relationships has he included in his films? Is the answer none? Six months ago he couldn't even bring himself to acknowledge gay men exist in his male stripper bonanza Magic Mike.

2.) Scott Thorson told CNN he was 16 when he met Liberace, 17 when they began living together, and 23 when he filed his $113 million palimony suit. Soderbergh has cast frequent collaborator Matt Damon to play someone Justin Bieber's age. What beyond the ick factor propelled Soderbergh to rewrite history by casting a 42 year-old as a teenager? Fifty years ago Kubrick had the guts to cast 14 year-old Sue Lyon as Lolita.

3.) Soderbergh says, "We needed $5 million. No one would do it." He, Douglas, and Damon couldn't each pony up $1.67 million?

HBO will air the movie this spring. Thorson's co-writer Alex Thorleifson deserves credit for that perfect title, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace.

Born January 3: Dorothy Arzner

In 1929, when Paramount wanted to make their first talking picture, The Wild Party starring Clara Bow, who did they trust to direct it? The prolific Dorothy Arzner, who in the preceding two years had completed four features. Usually seen wearing men's shirts, suits, and neckties, Arzner was open about being a lesbian. In 1930 she made no secret of the choreographer Marion Morgan moving in with her, a relationship that would last more than four decades. Although Arzner's movies were always studio fare, her Pre-Code pictures show a strong feminist streak, examining careers, independence, class, extra-marital sex, pregnancy, and prostitution. She helped launch the careers of or gave breakthrough roles to Katharine Hepburn (playing an Amelia Earhart-style pilot in Christopher Strong), Rosalind Russell (Craig's Wife) and Lucille Ball (Dance, Girl, Dance). After an illness in 1943, Arzner never again directed a feature and no one knows exactly why. She made Army training movies and taught film at UCLA, and she shot some Pepsi commercials, probably at the express request of her longtime friend and rumored lover, Joan Crawford (shown together above on the set of The Bride Wore Red.) In 1936 Arzner became the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America, which finally honored her work in 1975, four years before her death. Women in Film gives a directing award named for her. Judith Mayne's 1995 book Directed by Dorothy Arzner examines her life and work through a feminist, lesbian perspective.

Hollywood Unseen: Golden Age Photos by John Kobal

Just out is a new book of old photos by John Kobal called Hollywood Unseen. A woman at New York magazine writes it "showcases a peculiar subset of his archive: the stills, portraits, and 'candid' photos that studios used for promotion. Charmingly odd (and often hilariously homoerotic) reminders of a bygone era — when studio loyalty inspired stars to gamely pose in highly artificial scenarios — they seem perfectly aligned with Kobal’s own winking take on cinema: 'Film is the only thing of any creative worth that this century has produced,' he once said. 'If not, it is still providing the most fun.'"

I'm not sure what's "hilarious" about the shot of bisexual Errol Flynn above, or boyfriends Cary Grant and Randolph Scott at the home they shared even after Cary married. Kobal was gay and died of aids in 1991.

Getty has posted 54 photos from the book including Ginger, Rita, Bette, Joan, Liz, Bogart, Bacall, Lombard, Gable, Brando, Boris, Peter, Ingrid, Grace, and Monty.

   

   

Born August 7: William J. Mann

Dividing his time between Palm Springs and Provincetown, and between fiction and nonfiction, William J. Mann has published ten books since 1997. The first of his five biographies was the terrific Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star, which single-handedly lauched a Haines revival. Seek out Haines' movies, from 1922 to 1934, which are witty, effervescent delights. Mann reclaimed more queer movie lore in Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 and Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. Although his landmark biography Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn [Kindle] was a NYT Notable Book in 2006, it didn't quite get the widespread attention it deserved because the mainstream didn't want to hear their icon was primarily a lesbian and her endlessly hyped romance with Spencer Tracy was cover for their separate same-sex adventures. His less overtly gay How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood [Kindle] from 2009 will be followed this October by Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand [Kindle].

Mann's five novels are: The Men from the Boys, The Biograph Girl, Where The Boys Are, All American Boy, and Object of Desire [Kindle]

Born February 21-22

Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet. Read Nancy Milford's Savage Beauty.

W.H. Auden, poet and critic. Read R.P.T. Davenport-Hines' Auden or John Fuller's W. H. Auden.

Barbara Jordan, three-term Congresswoman from Texas, never acknowledged her nearly 30-year relationship with Nancy Earl. Read Jordan's own Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder.

Christopher Bram, 60, novelist, essayist, author of Eminent Outlaws.

Isaac Julien, 52, filmmaker (Looking for Langston) and artist (Turner Prize finalist).

Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. Read Tim Jeal's Baden-Powell.

Felice Picano, 68, novelist and memoirist.

David Geffen, 69, mogul. Newly single after ending multi-year relationship with Jeremy Lingvall, 28. Read Tom King's The Operator.

Scotty Bowers' Full Service

"I was proud of my dick and I was happy to share it," writes 88 year-old former marine Scotty Bowers of his long, long success fixing trysts with and for men and women of glamor's golden age. The super-sized list of people he bedded includes Cary Grant and Randolph Scott (together, many times), George Cukor, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, Anthony Perkins, Roddy McDowall, Brian Epstein, Spencer Tracy (excerpt), Vincent Price, Walter Pidgeon, Edith Piaf, Vivien Leigh, and the Duke of Windsor.

On the Windsors, "Bowers' line is that Wallis and Edward were both essentially gay and that the reason for Edward abdicating the throne was that their marriage gave him the freedom he needed to satisfy his urges in private. During a visit to Hollywood, Bowers says he arranged all manner of pretty dark-haired girls for the duchess and boys for the duke, as well as offering his own body for the duke to do with what he liked."

Although the married, "straight"/bi/"little bit of everything" Bowers says he had been tricking constantly since he was 11 or 12, his memoir Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars [Kindle] more often details his talents for arranging encounters for others: Errol Flynn, Somerset Maugham, Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Bob Hope, Desi Arnaz, Howard Hughes, even J. Edgar Hoover. He insists he was not a pimp and never made money on his matchmaking. Over 49 years he says he procured "more than 150 women" for Katharine Hepburn.

The mainstream has always denied gay history for lack of "proof." Make of this first person account what you will. Gore Vidal says, "Scotty doesn't lie."

Born January 18: Cary Grant

Cary Grant and Randolph Scott met on the set of Hot Saturday and soon began living together in a house nicknamed Bachelor Hall, which they would share for twelve years, 1932-1944. Their affair has always been spun, desperately, as two stars who lived together merely because both were "tightwads." During that time, Grant was married to Virginia Cherrill from February 1934 to March 1935 and to Barbara Hutton from 1942 to 1945. Two questions: What sort of man keeps his house with his bud even after he gets married, and what sort of tightwad prefers spending the money to maintain two households rather than one? George Cukor confirmed that Randolph Scott talked about their affair to friends, and a slew of recent biographers have also verified their relationship. Grant himself told an interviewer that his first two wives, overlapping with Scott, "accused him of being homosexual," though, of course, he always denied it and was as quick to sue for libel. (He sued Chevy Chase for saying, "What a gal!") Several other men have said they had affairs with Grant, including his chauffeur in 1957 and fashion arbiter Richard Blackwell, who wrote in his autobiography of having sex with both Grant and Scott. Nevertheless, mainstream media continues to portray Grant as the apex of hetero elegance. His fifth and final wife was 47 years his junior. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England he died at 82 in Davenport, Iowa in 1986 rehearsing his one-man show.

Born January 3: Dorothy Arzner

In 1929, when Paramount wanted to make their first talking picture, The Wild Party starring Clara Bow, who did they trust to direct it? The prolific Dorothy Arzner, who in the preceding two years had completed four features. Usually seen wearing men's shirts, suits, and neckties, Arzner was open about being a lesbian. In 1930 she made no secret of the choreographer Marion Morgan moving in with her, a relationship that would last more than four decades. Although Arzner's movies were always studio fare, her Pre-Code pictures show a strong feminist streak, examining careers, independence, class, extra-marital sex, pregnancy, and prostitution. She helped launch the careers of or gave breakthrough roles to Katharine Hepburn (playing an Amelia Earhart-style pilot in Christopher Strong), Rosalind Russell (Craig's Wife) and Lucille Ball (Dance, Girl, Dance). After an illness in 1943, Arzner never again directed a feature and no one knows exactly why. She made Army training movies and taught film at UCLA, and she shot some Pepsi commercials, probably at the express request of her longtime friend and rumored lover, Joan Crawford (shown together above on the set of The Bride Wore Red.) In 1936 Arzner became the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America, which finally honored her work in 1975, four years before her death. Women in Film gives a directing award named for her. Judith Mayne's 1995 book Directed by Dorothy Arzner examines her life and work through a feminist, lesbian perspective.

Born December 16: Kanako Otsuji, Noël Coward

Born in Kobe in 1974, Kanako Otsuji was a junior karate champion in Asia, opting to attend university in Korea to study tae kwon do. Although she failed to make the Japanese olympic team in 2000, three years later she became one of only seven women -- and the youngest person ever -- elected to the 110-member Osaka Assembly. She came out the day before Tokyo Pride in 2005 by publishing her memoir. That same year she succeeded in changing the law that previously allowed only married couples to rent public housing in Osaka; now lgbt couples can too. In April 2007 she did not stand for re-election and two months later she married her partner Maki Kamura in an outdoor, public ceremony, although Japan does not recognize same-sex marriage. (Adorable wedding photos here and here.) In 2009, filmmaker Naomi Hiltz premiered her documentary about Otsuji at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival. Today she's thirty-six.

 

At fourteen in 1913 Noël Coward began an affair with Philip Streatfeild, a thirty-four year old society painter whom he met only because his mother was Streatfeild's charwoman. Two years later, Streatfeild was dying of tuberculosis and urged Mrs. Astley Cooper to nurture the "delicate" Coward, which she did. He began appearing in plays, was discharged from WWI service for ill health, and had his first writing success at twenty-five with The Vortex, scandalously popular in London and New York for its wit and veiled hints of drugs and gay life. While the times changed, Coward did not; he kept that veil cemented in place for the next five decades.

Although many of his sophisticated camp comedies play peekaboo with the closet, especially the bi threesome in Design for Living (1932) and less popular later works like Song at Twilight (1966), the urbanely glamorous Coward never actually came out. A friend of King George, Coward traveled widely to perform for WWII troops and secretly worked as a spy, hiding behind his high life persona. The press attacked him for his excesses during wartime. The king suggested a knighthood, but Churchill disliked his "flamboyance" and blocked it. After the war, Coward fell in love with the actor Graham Payn and they stayed together nearly thirty years. In the 1956 they became tax exiles, landing first in Bermuda then in Jamaica where they were neighbors to the constantly bickering Mr. & Mrs. Ian Fleming. Coward enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and finally was knighted in 1970. He died in Jamaica in 1973, still with Payn. You can read his biography or go right to his diaries, letters, plays, or the brand-new The Noël Coward Reader.

Diane Keaton's Then Again

   

Diane Keaton dedicates her new book Then Again [[Kindle]] to her "city of women" and to two gay men: Her editor/novelist David Ebershoff and her agent/memoirist Bill Clegg. Against the odds, she succeeds in the pastiche of mixing her mother's diary entries with her own recollections and in her collage-style of assembling them in not-quite chronological order. Or, succeeds on her terms. They may not be your terms, if you're looking for prolonged passages about most of her movies, her documentaries, her photography, her famous house flipping, her art collection, her love life, or her experience of being an intelligent women in a sexist industry that prizes mediocrity. Those topics are touched upon rather than dwelt upon because the primary focus here is family, particularly her mother. And yes, Annie Hall is based on her immediate family, the Halls. (Keaton is her mother's maiden name.) Although she deftly skewers Marlon Brando (who passes her once and says only, "Nice tits,") the book might well carry a disclaimer reading "No Bridges Were Burnt In the Making of This Memoir." After forty years in a ruthless business, she has no bad thoughts about anyone living. Despite its lacking the level of candor and honesty about Hollywood that I wanted, I was gripped enough to read it in one night.

Born July 11: Tab Hunter, Vito Russo

Rock Hudson, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Farley Granger, Tab Hunter: Was any heartthrob movie star straight in the straitlaced 1950s? Hunter and Perkins dated each other for several years while the press reported phony stories that Hunter was involved with Debbie Reynolds or Natalie Wood. Born Arthur Kelm, he eventually made more than 50 movies after being rechristened "Tab Hunter" by his agent Henry Willson, a gay man who also handled Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue, Robert Wagner, and loads of others; read Willson's biography. Hunter's triumphs were Damn Yankees, Lafayette Escadrille, and That Kind of Woman. He recorded a pop song, Young Love, which was the #1 hit in the U.S. for a month in 1957, and made many subsequent albums. He had a short-lived television show and a famous flop on Broadway, co-starring with Tallulah Bankhead in Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, which closed after five performances. Smaller movies followed. In the 1980s he had a comeback, starring twice with Divine, first in Polyester, then in Lust in the Dust, which he co-produced with Allan Glaser. Hunter did not come out until September 2003, when at 72, he sold a book proposal for a memoir that would discuss his life candidly. Tab Hunter Confidential appeared in 2005 and revealed he and his producer Allan Glaser have been romantic partners for twenty-eight years. They live in Montecito. Here's a recent photo of Hunter, Glaser, and John Waters.

Russo For ten years, from 1972 to 1982, Vito Russo toured the country giving what would later be a PowerPoint presentation about the portrayal of lesbians and gay men in the media. His devastating book on the subject, The Celluloid Closet, published in 1981 and revised in 1987, was years ahead of its time and remains essential reading today. The book was made into a documentary in 1996, six years after his death from aids. Russo’s sharp critique of the industry led him to co-found the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). It is hard to imagine the principled visionary connected to today’s GLAAD, which endorsed such overblown caricature-fests as Boat Trip and praised I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry despite the movie’s continual use of “stereotypes and slurs” according to Damon Romine, GLAAD’s director of entertainment media. Finally, Russo has been given the biography he deserves in Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo.

Born July 7: George Cukor

Why is George Cukor only, famously a "woman's director" when no one has gotten more Best Actor Oscar performances out of his male players than he did? As for his way with leading ladies, consider Katharine Hepburn, who might be said to owe her career to Cukor. The gay director gave the queer duck Hepburn her first movie role in A Bill of Divorcement, then cast her as Jo in Little Women, then as Sylvia Scarlett. Their last collaboration was 47 years after their first, when he directed her in The Corn Is Green for television. Cukor brilliantly paired her with Cary Grant in Holiday and The Philadelphia Story, and perfected the Hepburn - Tracy subgenre with Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike. According to William J. Mann's biography Kate, she was also indebted to Cukor for the way he perpetuated the fabled Hepburn - Tracy offscreen romance, which Mann says was fabricated to mask the never-married star's lesbian affairs. Cukor was much more open in his own gay pursuits, hosting weekly Sunday afternoon pool parties where Hollywood's brightest mingled with aspiring actors and rough trade. Depending which version you choose, Cukor's being fired from Gone with the Wind after two years of prep and three weeks of filming was either because Clark Gable refused to be directed by a "fairy" or because Gable was terrified Cukor knew about his own past gay relationships. Nevertheless, even after Victor Flemming took over, Cukor continued to coach Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland on their roles. Among his other great achievements are Dinner at Eight, David Copperfield, Camille, Romeo and Juliet, The Women, Gaslight, Born Yesterday, A Star Is Born, It Should Happen to You, Travels with my Aunt and My Fair Lady, for which he finally won an Oscar. He died at 83, two years after directing Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset in Rich and Famous.

Universal Drops MLK Biopic After Family Objects to Adultery

An instructive and depressing post from Deadline Hollywood about the friends and family of Martin Luther King Jr. stopping two prestige, high-profile MLK biopics. Openly gay Lee Daniels used his clout from Precious to get his Selma in with the Weinsteins. The spectacular Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93, Bourne 2 & 3) is making Memphis for Scott Rudin. Both screenplays include King's adultery. The family objected, and Andrew Young let Hollywood know their concerns, implying the parts they don't like are "fabrications."** Soon after those discussions, Universal said it dropped the Greengrass film because of "scheduling." The article reports, "The studio denied outside pressure played any role in deep-sixing the pic." King is a public figure and the studios don't need permission to tell his life story. The reporter gives the impression the family will blackball any project that includes King's infidelity. On a different point, I'd love to know how much either script credits Bayard Rustin and whether he is visibly gay. Andrew Young says he wants what Attenborough did for Gandhi.

**Although white FBI agents wiretapping King did fabricate evidence to discredit him, his serial infidelities are documented in biographies and in memoirs by black friends such as Ralph Abernathy and Kentucky State Senator Georgia Davis Powers, who discusses her own affair with King.

Paglia on Elizabeth Taylor's Sex Appeal and Rapport with Gay Men

Salon telephoned femme provocateur Camille Paglia for thoughts on Elizabeth Taylor, her ideal "Babylonian pagan woman -- the goddess Ishtar, the anti-Mary," with whom she has been obsessed since she was 11 or 12. From her many books of essays, you've already heard Paglia praise Taylor's "volcanic," "animalistic," "maternal" sexuality and complain about Hollywood's, and feminism's, efforts to "destroy" it in women ever since. Here, she also notes Taylor as gay buddy:

"It's interesting what a profound rapport she always had with gay men, beginning with Montgomery Clift. She was a great friend and counselor to him early on, when he was struggling with his homosexuality. Then when he had that terrible car crash that deformed his face, I've read that she ran down the road to his aid and saved his life by pulling his tongue out of his throat. It was a bloody scene -- he was choking to death. She always had a gift for intimate communication with both gay and straight men."

I suspect the Salon editor, mindful of the site's demographics, wanted to keep the topic on today's women -- particularly Meryl Streep ("she's always doing drag") and Gwyneth Paltrow's android skinniness -- rather than digging deeper into Taylor's queer connections. Unfortunately, they never discuss James Dean or Rock Hudson or George Cukor or Tennessee Williams or Michael Jackson, or Taylor's historic, heroic, hellfire determination to do something about aids when Hollywood and Washington desperately, despicably ignored the pandemic. Nor does Paglia mention lesbians' relationship to Taylor but she does comment on The Kids Are All Right:

"Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right is a truly wonderful film, but Julianne Moore and Annette Bening -- who is fabulous in it and should have won the Oscar for her portrayal of a prototypical contemporary American career woman -- were painfully scrawny to look at on the screen. This is the standard starvation look that is now projected by Hollywood women stars -- a skeletal, Pilates-honed, anorexic silhouette, which has nothing to do with females as most of the world understands them."

A "luscious, opulent, ripe" thank you to Sandy Leonard for sending the article.

Born January 23: Sergei Eisenstein

It figures that the Russian supergenius whose innovations in The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Oktober (1927) still dictate how movies are shot and edited today would have no trouble creating private visual diversions for himself in an age before internet porn: He drew sketches of gay sex. Re-entering the U.S. from Mexico in 1932, his drawings were discovered by American customs officials who were not "artistic" and not amused. Eisenstein was a Bolshevik after all, and had been run out of Hollywood on his first visit after a campaign against him by fascist Major Pease (and because Paramount hated his treatment of Dreiser's An American Tragedy). The customs debacle capped off a fifteen-month fiasco that was supposed to have been a four-month shoot to restore his reputation. Post-Paramount, Charlie Chaplin had introduced him to Upton Sinclair whose wife Mary Kimbrough financed the Mexican picture, which Eisenstein began filming without a script or even a concept. Complicating matters further, Mexico had no diplomatic relations with the USSR and therefore claimed rights to the film as it was being made, including the right to censor. Ordered home by Soviet authorities angry that he had overstayed his visa, Eisenstein realized that thus removed and having hugely antagonized the Sinclairs, he would never be allowed to edit his Mexican footage. He suffered a nervous breakdown. Worse was on its way. His next film, Bezhin Meadow, was plagued again by his ill-conceived grandiose schemes (this time to shoot simultaneously adult and children's versions) and by his dictatorial style. Soviet officials hated his movie. Eisenstein endured the horror of having his film destroyed, which was mild compared to the fate of the government's executive producer for film, Boris Shumyatsky, who should have been supervising more closely and was executed by firing squad. Eisenstein did triumph again with a biopic of Alexander Nevsky, famous for its beautiful, majestic build up to battle. He followed it with another success, Ivan the Terrible Part I, only to see his Ivan the Terrible Part II confiscated and Part III destroyed. Although he had two wives, historians say neither marriage was consummated. He wrote in his diaries about his endless infatuations with men. He died of a brain hemorrhage at fifty.

Gay Celebrity Update: Entertainers & Complainers

Like Tab Hunter who came out to promote his memoir, gay former mini-series star Richard Chamberlain came out at 69 to promote his memoir. Now 76, Chamberlain recently said he "wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out" because "there’s still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture. For an actor to be working is a kind of miracle… so it’s just silly for a working actor to say, ‘Oh, I don’t care if anybody knows I’m gay’ — especially if you’re a leading man… Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don’t pretend that we’re suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.”

This week, figure skater Johnny Weir finally came out at 26 to promote his new memoir, Welcome to My World. On the Today Show he said, "I'm a person -- I've never lived in a closet. I've never claimed to be anything -- I've never claimed to be straight or gay. I claim to be Johnny Weir. And I think that's something that's very important for anybody in this world, is to own who you are, regardless of what you're born into. I was born a white male. A white gay male, and I don't celebrate being white or male. So, why should I celebrate being gay. That's my opinion on the whole thing."

Last year, country singer Chely Wright came out to promote her memoir Like Me. In a very thoughtful new interview with Autostraddle, she says, "It didn’t help my career. My record sales went directly in half. If it appears from the outside in that it’s helped my career, it could be because I haven’t talked about the negative. You won’t hear me bitching and moaning on my Facebook about the hate mail I’ve gotten. My life has been threatened. I get nasty letters every day, “I’m through with you Chely Wright, you’re going to hell.” There’s a big difference between press and advocacy and…. sometimes people forget that people who sing or make movies, this isn’t just a hobby for us. This is how I pay my bills. In coming out I had a feeling that it would diminish my wage earning, and that feeling was correct. And, I am fine with that." Chely also says when she came out last May, a lot of celebrity friends supported her privately but when the media asked about her coming out they said, "No comment." Only Mary Chapin Carpenter supported her in public.

Promoting his new awards bait movie Rabbit Hole which has zero queer content, John Cameron Mitchell chatted with the Advocate. New York mag summarizes:

"Gay film' means 'stupid kind of lamebrained date film with pecs,'" complains the Hedwig and the Angry Inch director, who also finds fault with modern gay men's single-minded devotion to pop icons like Lady Gaga: "I get a little homophobic lately when I meet young people who just assume that this is what you're supposed to be because you're gay. It makes me feel like I'm in some sort of frat society where you've got to do this, you've got to listen to that, you've got to wear these clothes."