Band of Thebes

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 November 17: Rock and Ru

Winnetka's Roy Scherer Jr was renamed and remade by a Hollywood gay impresario and total mess whom you can read about in dastardly detail in The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson. Although in his first movie, Fighter Squadron, the 6'5" hunk needed 38 takes to nail his only spoken line, with coaching he became an affable, natural superstar. He reached a new high with Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession in 1954 and the next year barely dodged certain doom: The tabloid Confidential threatened to report his secret gay affairs. Instead, Willson gave them dirt on two of his other, less lucrative clients, Rory Calhoun (prison stint) and Tab Hunter (arrested at a gay party five years earlier), and shoehorned Hudson into a sham marriage with his secretary. In 1956, Hudson and fellow closet case James Dean both earned Oscar nominations for Giant opposite Elizabeth Taylor, who would 29 years later be galvanized by Hudson's death to force an unwilling nation confront AIDS. As much as his public acknowledgement finally "gave a face" to the disease that had already killed thousands, it also fueled a panicked distrust of all gay men because he had hidden his status from his sex partners like Marc Christian and his kissing co-stars like Linda Evans. Succumbing just before he turned 60, he would have been 85 today. He lives on in celluloid glory and in the pages of his friend Armistead Maupin's Further Tales of the City as the virile icon Blank Blank.

She's 50 today, mmkay? Like any other future drag star born in 1960, RuPaul Andre Charles spent his childhood in San Diego lipsynching Supremes songs, being called names, avoiding sports, and winning the two most important prizes in junior high: Best Dancer and Best Afro. High school didn't go as well (he was expelled for not attending), until he moved to Atlanta with his brother and sister-in-law at sixteen. He began to blossom, thanks largely to drama class, though his attendance in every other subject was still a problem. Eventually he dropped out, got his GED, started community college, and quit. When he was twenty-two he appeared on the American Music Show with two girls as RuPaul and the U-Hauls. When he was thirty-two, the nation was coming down from twelve years of Reagan-Bush, grunge was peaking, and RuPaul put on her best blond wig, her brightest jewels, her fiercest heels, and taught the whole world to sing, "Sashay, chante!" "Work it, girl!" and "You better work!"

Oddly, that hit, Supermodel, only reached #45 on the pop charts, but it remained in heavy rotation on MTV forever and became a cultural moment. Whereas most drag representations before her were catty and bitchy, RuPaul's message was love everybody; everybody, love! Subsequent singles milked the same bouncy vibe but failed to catch on with the masses, though Back to my Roots is an essential history of black hairstyles in three danceable minutes. Adding to her list of drag queen firsts, RuPaul became the face of MAC cosmetics and sang a duet with Elton John. She co-hosted KTU's popular morning show for two years and hosted her own tv show on VH1. Season three of her popular RuPaul's Drag Race begins on Logo in January 2011 with more contestants (13) and more episodes (16) than ever before.

Born July 12-13: Michelle Rodriguez, Dale Peck

In the decade from her first feature when she was cast at an open call of 350 women vying for the lead in the micro-budget boxing movie Girlfight (2000) to her star turn as the butch, subversive pilot willing to die to save the blue people in the top grossing film of all time, Avatar, Michelle Rodriguez has always been adrenaline personified. She's perfected that role on screen in two of the Fast and Furious flicks, S.W.A.T., Resident Evil, the tv show Lost, and the surfer grrrl gem Blue Crush. Rodriquez has also cemented that persona off-screen with an arrest for assault, numerous speeding violations, DUI, opting for jail time rather than community service, violation of her probation, lying "clerical errors" about when she did / didn't do her forced community service, and a second stint in the slammer (18 days of a 180 day sentence, released because of overcrowding). Her lawyers blame her erratic behavior on the price of fame compounded by pressure to hide her sexuality a reaction to allergy medicine. Half Mexican, half Puerto Rican, and happy to play with her bad girl image in a Hollywood still obsessed with blond, squeak clean facades, Rodriguez is not quite so rad as to actually come out. Yet in the contest of cracking open the closet door by centimeters, she is whole inches ahead of Queen Latifah, Jodie Foster, et al. While she frequently says, "I am not a lesbian," she also tells the media she has been with both sexes. Her partners and film colleagues have been even more helpful, and more specific, as when Kristanna Loken went public about their relationship and out lesbian Guinevere Turner confirmed it. Rodriguez is next to be seen in Robert Rodriguez's historical drama Machete, coming September 3, and Juan Delancer's costume drama Tropico de Sangre in which she plays Minerva Mirabel plotting with her two sisters against Trujillo.

Never mind the little literary feuds, the caustic criticism collected in his book Hatchet Jobs, the hybrid memoir with fictional elements, even the children’s book series about a house that drifts out to sea. The two essential things you need to know about the brilliant, gay, New York novelist Dale Peck are his first novel Martin and John and his third, Now It's Time to Say Goodbye. The most exacting, often most eviscerating book critic in America, Michiko Kakutani of the NYT, wrote:

    "On its simplest level, Martin and John Dale Peck's astonishing first novel, recounts the story of a young man's flight from his abusive, homophobic father and his later efforts to come to terms with his lover's death from AIDS. But if this fiercely written novel offers an indelible portrait of gay life during the plague years, it also opens out to become a universal story about love and loss and the redemptive powers of fiction. It is a story about the cycles of pain and grief that spiral through people's lives, and the efforts an artist makes to reorder and transcend that hurt."

and

"Dale Peck's harrowing new novel, Now It's Time to Say Goodbye, is that rare thing: an utterly gripping thriller—crammed full of suspense, Gothic horror and often startling violence—and a highly sophisticated piece of literary legerdemain. This dark, ferocious book reads like Twin Peaks and Pulp Fiction combined with Days of Heaven and To Kill a Mockingbird, with some bits of Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor thrown in for good measure. It also stands as a thoroughly original and persuasive work of art, this immensely talented young writer's most ambitious novel yet.

"Mr. Peck has more than fulfilled the promise of his first two novels: he has taken on the same big themes Toni Morrison tried with less success to address in Paradise -- another novel depicting the racial and sexual tensions in a small, hermetic town -- and delivered a novel commensurate with his ambitions. He has given us a big, galvanic novel, a novel that stands as the capstone, thus far, of his impressive career."

Last year Peck published Sprout, a much loved YA novel about a hyper-articulate gay teen with green hair, that won a Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Stonewall Book Award. Early next month is the release of Shift, the first of his GAT3 of ORPH3US trilogy co-authored the Heroes creator Tim Kring. The 3 novels "run from the 1960s to the near future. The protagonist is a man named Chandler Forrest whose participation in LSD experiments administered by the C.I.A. has given him superpowers," according the the New York Observer. The initial volume has much to do with the JFK assassination. Expect much publicity. Peck's long sleeping website finally woke up.

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. Click for 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.

WGA Panel on Black LGBT Characters in Hollywood

"Heterosexism is like racism," said Jasmine Love, a writer on The District, who dislikes the term homophobia. She was one of nine panelists at Tuesday's WGA forum Flipping the Script: Beyond Homophobia in Black Hollywood. Love's assessment of institutionalized bias affecting jobs and advancement may be familiar news but a recap of the panel has provoked much angry comment on Deadline Hollywood. The majority complain about the "whining" on the "idiotic issue" because "the fact is no one would go see a black gay comedy -- except Sean Penn." Many commenters, while professing respect for everyone, argue that because lgbt people comprise such a small percentage of the population we shouldn't expect visibility. I repeat them as a reminder of what agents of change are up against. Happily, the panel attracted a capacity crowd. WGA described it as examining "issues involving African-American gay and lesbian characters on the big and small screens. Discussion of both the positive and negative portrayals of such characters; the recurring homophobia (within black society as well as among black filmmakers and producers) that has limited or informed such portrayals; stereotyping controversies and contradictions; and the positive gains that have been made — and need to continue to be made."

Born March 10: John Rechy

Although Scottish-Mexican-American John Rechy doesn't want to be ghettoized as a gay writer, his most important work pioneered a new type of literature honestly depicting men who have sex with men. In 1963 his first novel, City of Night, followed the aimless encounters of a nameless hustler turning tricks in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, crosscut with memories of his childhood in El Paso. By making his protagonist anonymous and introducing a succession of minor characters seen only briefly, Rechy re-emphasized the sensation of hustling for the reader. (He knew his trade: He continued to work as a prostitute on Santa Monica Blvd even after the book became a surprise hit, even after he became a professor at UCLA, even after he turned forty.) Decades later in 2003, a NYT critic called City of Night a "bona fide cult classic," "deservedly considered a milestone of transgressive fiction." That was not the consensus when it first appeared. And after thirteen books, his literary awards are limited to an NEA grant and lifetime achievement recognitions from PEN West, Publishing Triangle, and the ONE Foundation.

Rechy's second novel, Numbers, trod the same path as City of Night but from another direction: a slightly older Johnny Rio returns to L.A. for a ten day binge not as an escape but to recapture his previous glory; some readers see Johnny Rio as using sex not merely to confirm his desirability but also as a means to find a greater connection and begin to forge a gay identity. For 1967, that was a big step. Among Rechy's ten other novels are Rushes, Bodies and Souls, The Coming of Night, Marilyn's Daughter (about a girl who believes herself to the love child of Marilyn Monroe and Bobby Kennedy), and his much-praised The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. His three works of nonfcition are The Sexual Outlaw, Beneath the Skin: Collected Essays, and last year's memoir, About My Life and the Kept Woman, which the best read man in the East Village says is very good. Seventy-six today, Rechy lives in West Hollywood with Michael, his partner of twenty-nine years.

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 off and on 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 would talk 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. Grant's fifth and final wife was 47 years his junior. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England he died at 82 in Davenport, Iowa (rehearsing his one-man show) in 1986.

Born January 1: Forster, Hoover, Haines, Béjart, Hormel, Orton, Vasquez, Stefano, Arquette, Burrows

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist revered for Howards End, A Room With a View, A Passage to India, and Maurice, but don't forget his excellent, posthumous collection of stories, The Life to Come, filled with gay men less anguished than those in the superb novels.

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 J. 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 -) Grandson of SPAM, American philanthropist, ambassador, and gay rights activist. Hormel turns 77 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 favorite Bulgarian Lovers among other movies.

Junior Vasquez (1946 -) Legendary DJ and diva.

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.

Alexis Arquette (1969 -) American actress, musician, singer, and trans, perhaps best known for his roles in Last Exit to Brooklyn and The Wedding Singer.

Saffron Burrows (1972 -) English actress, former model and former girlfriend of director Mike Figgis, Burrows has for many years been romantically linked with splendid Fiona Shaw. The pair played lovers in a stage adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's The PowerBook yet have never confirmed or denied their relationship. Burrows starred in 2008's surprisingly fun The Bank Job and the NBC sitcom My Own Worst Enemy.

Kerry Eleveld, Michael Musto Review the Year

The brightest writers at two fading publications, Kerry Eleveld of The Advocate and Michael Musto at The Village Voice pen columns on the year in politics and entertainment, respectively. Eleveld says

"In assessing the year in LGBT rights, what is most striking to me is the Obama administration’s unwillingness to engage on almost anything related to relationship recognition. Time and again, the administration has had opportunities to lean into the subject, to nudge the nation a little closer to equality for same-sex couples, and it has repeatedly leaned back, seemingly hoping the subject would disappear into the ether."

and

"But by and large, the administration has shown a reticence bordering on negligence for using the power of the executive to honor the commitments of LGBT couples with real, full and equal treatment."

Musto recaps 2009 in pop culture which, as usual, intersected with gay issues hurriedly, messily, and at high costs, satisfying no one. From Adam Lambert to Perez Hilton and Carrie Prejean, Musto skims the surfaces and steers clear of any deep analysis. But you might enjoy Chad Griffith's photos of the 54 year-old gossip columnist dressed as Lady Gaga, Susan Boyle, Michael Jackson, and the former Miss California.

Born January 18: Cary Grant

Cary Grant and Randolph Scott met on the set of a movie called, in something of an understatement, Hot Saturday, and almost immediately they began living together in a house nicknamed Bachelor Hall, which they would share off and on 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 would talk 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 as Tom Cruise 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. Grant's fifth and final wife was 47 years his junior. He died at 82 in 1986.

Born January 14: Cecil Beaton

Avoiding sports as a child, Cecil Beaton learned photography from his nanny on her Kodak 3A, and avoiding academics at Cambridge, which he left without a degree in 1925, he took his first published photo, printed in Vogue, of one of England's leading Shakespearean scholars dressed in drag: To be exact, George "Dadie" Rylands, a Cambridge Fellow for 72 years, was costumed as Webster's the Duchess of Malfi. From there Beaton had to go work for his father's timber company, which he suffered for eight miserable days. After that he returned to his rightful place in the world in design, creating book jackets and studying photography until Vogue hired him fulltime in 1927. Although his style is flowery and theatrical, many of his most enduring images are serious people captured at critical times: a tense Churchill in 1940, Queen Elizabeth II's coronation portrait, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's wedding portrait. During the war, he volunteered and was posted to the Ministry of Information, capturing images of the Blitz, its young injured on the cover of Life, and RAF pilots in their cockpit.

Broadly talented, Beaton designed the lighting, sets, and costumes for many Broadway musicals, winning four Tony Awards, and for several Hollywood extravaganzas, winning the Oscar for best costumes twice, for Gigi and most famously for his high camp creations in My Fair Lady. Although he never consummated his longtime, unrequited love for Peter Watson, a gay art collector whose interests lay elsewhere, Beaton did enjoy possibly the greatest consolation prize of the twentieth century, an affair with Gary Cooper. For his entire life, he kept his childhood diary in which he first realized he was a "terrible, terrible homosexualist" and that shame never fully disappeared, driving him to a few misguided affairs with women later in his life, including one with Greta Garbo, who dumped him and went back to women. When he was seventy he suffered a major stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and though he adapted to drawing and photographing with his left hand, he never recovered his earlier ease. He died six years later, in 1980.

Born January 3: Dorothy Arzner

In 1929, when Paramount wanted to make their first talking picture, The Wild Party, which director did they trust to do it? The prolific Dorothy Arzner, who had completed four features for them in the preceding two years. Usually seen wearing men's shirts, suits, and neckties, Arzner was open about being a lesbian. The following year she made no secret of the choreographer Marion Morgan moving in with her, a relationship that would last more than four decades. Although her 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. The Directors Guild of America, which she was the first woman to join in 1936, finally honored her work in 1975, four years before her death. Women in Film gives a directing award named for her, but still today so few women are making features that they've had to open the field to television as well, and even so have only given the award sporadically, seven times since 1993, most recently in 2007.

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.

Golden Globes Really Don't Like Milk

You live in a world where Tropic Thunder earned twice as many Golden Globe nominations as Milk. Also, where the movie about the priest maybe molesting the boy received four times as many nods as the biopic of the courageous gay rights leader. Just saying. In total, Milk earned one nomination, for Sean Penn. He will be competing against Brad Pitt, above.

Most nominated were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, and The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry, the silver fox who made Billy Elliot and The Hours. He used to be gay and says he is "still gay" despite marrying his wife and having a baby with her. 

Strong Women Weekend: Renée Fleming as Thaïs

Strong Women Weekend ended on a high note last night as the Met premiered a new production of Thaïs. With its typical story arc of monk meets harlot, harlot scoffs then converts, monk reconsiders and wants to get carnal, harlot says no and dies, the opera has long been considered (merely) a star vehicle for its soprano. Renée Fleming soared, as did the other star of the evening, her costumes (and hers only) specially designed by Christian Lacroix. Which is not to overlook the awesome Thomas Hampson who earned a thundering ovation.

Speaking of strong women, during the first intermission I passed Sigourney Weaver and silently urged her to revive Sgt. Ripley. During the second intermission I left to get a Vitamin Water at the same time Anna Wintour and companion were heading for Bar Boulud. If I were more self-promoting [New Year's resolution?], I would mention she eyed me three times, apparently not in horror. When I returned, I saw Christine Baranski. At the end, walking home, I passed a car that suggested Caroline Kennedy was there.

I know: Every weekend is Strong Women Weekend.

Strong Women Weekend: Annie Leibovitz

Last night at a private gallery in Chelsea, Annie Leibovitz gave a slideshow based on her new book, Annie Leibovitz at Work, and said, "Much as I love the set-up, I prefer to take moments on their own."

As for those iconic set-ups, Leibovitz usually offers three or four portrait concepts to her subjects but she also encourages them to suggest ideas. Cindy Sherman said, "I'd like to hide if I can," which sparked Leibovitz's group photo of ten women who look like Sherman. (One was an unknown actress, who surprised Leibovitz years later by saying, You've already shot me. Claire Danes.) 

Originally Leibovitz didn't like her photo of a shirtless, cigar smoking Arnold on a white horse because it's "primarily about form" and she's "reluctant to have form dictate meaning" but then she realized, with Arnold, "form is meaning." She's been photographing him for more than thirty years, since his Pumping Iron days when he told her he felt he was destined for something more, because he was "always dreaming about dictators."

Of her naked Mark Morris photo in the style of Rousseau's Dream, she said, "I look at this picture now and think, 'Visually, I could fix this.'" At the last minute he decided he didn't want to show his penis. The weather was a particularly hot and he didn't think he was looking his best. Unrelated, at the last minute for what would become John Lennon's last photo shoot, Yoko Ono decided she didn't want to be naked after all, so only Lennon is bare. (Isn't it a much better picture for that?)

In the book, Leibovitz discusses her long delayed conversion to digital photography and the new possibilities of what can be tinkered with, altered, or faked. For her photo of Helen Mirren and Judi Dench together in the front seat of a car, the women were never together.

Of her tremendous output, Leibovitz said, "I feel like there are five pictures a year I like."

She will speak at the Union Square B&N on Thursday night, December 11. Highly recommended.

More on Oscar's Tragic Gays from Tom O'Neil in LA Times

Friends in Cambridge and Los Angeles forwarded me Tom O'Neil's article about the Academy Awards exclusively honoring gay roles whose characters suffer "ghastly deaths." He knows his Hollywood and lists twenty-eight nominations for playing gay (twenty-six of them for straight actors). Making a caveat for Capote, O'Neil points out that the winners invariably suffer horrible deaths.

Yesterday, O'Neil's article was reprinted in the Baltimore Sun. Here's hoping even more newspapers pick up this story.

Born December 4: Samuel Butler, Cornell Woolrich, A. Scott Berg

Born to a family of Anglican clergymen, Samuel Butler attended Cambridge, worked with the poor in London, then cut loose for New Zealand. There, he became a sheep rancher, and in the manner of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, fell into an intense relationship with Charles Paine Pauli. They were so close that when Butler returned to England in 1864, Pauli went with him, and for the next thirty years, as Butler wrote his books, most notably Erehwon and The Way of All Flesh, he supported Pauli financially. Through three decades of playing poor, Pauli was in fact ferreting away a fortune, because he was simultaneously accepting money from several men. His duplicity was revealed only after his death. In 1899, Butler wrote Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered, arguing that the poems are about a sexual relationship between an older writer and the beautiful young man who betrayed him.

Cornell Woolrich's life story offers so many cautionary tales that his biography is called First You Dream, Then You Die. A hard-nosed crime writer ranking with Chandler and Hammett, his prolific stories and novels became the movies Rear Window, Phantom Lady, The Bride Wore Black, and Mississippi Mermaid, as well as more than twenty other films. That and his book sales explain why he had nearly one million dollars in the bank when he died at sixty-four in 1968, but why did he live for thirty-five years, with or near his mother, in a seedy residential hotel in Harlem? Although Woolrich was already in his fifties when she died, rather than exploring his freedom, he moved in with his aunt in a worse hotel. He had torrid gay affairs, which he described in his diary, discovered by his wife of three months. She learned, among other things, that he wore a sailor's uniform to go looking for late night adventures. Their marriage, never consummated, was annulled. In his final years, he moved into a luxury hotel, alone, yet he continued to treat himself badly. After wearing shoes that were too tight and seeing his foot become infected, he ignored it until finally doctors had to amputate his leg. A chronic smoker and alcoholic, he died weighing eighty-nine pounds.

A. Scott Berg grew up in Los Angeles, his brother is uber agent Jeff Berg longtime CEO of ICM, and his partner is Kevin McCormick, executive producer of Saturday Night Fever and Dying Young, so, sure, why wouldn't he be the screenwriter of the groundbreaking 1980s gay drama Making Love? Well, because he's literary nerd A. Scott Berg, named for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who geekily attended Princeton because Fitzgerald had gone there, and wrote his senior thesis about Fitzgerald's editor Maxwell Perkins, which he turned into a full length biography that won a National Book Award. His third book, Lindbergh, won a Pulitzer. His fourth, a memoir of his long friendship with Katharine Hepburn, held until her death and published eleven days later, was more problematic. Called exploitive by everyone from Robert Gottlieb in the New York Times to official Hepburn friend Liz Smith in her gossip column, Kate Remembered is a soft-focus glance that perpetuates the myths Hepburn wanted to endure; he degays her. (For a deeper look, including her relationships with women, read William J. Mann's excellent Kate.) Berg's next biography, which he hopes to complete in 2009, is about Woodrow Wilson.

Hollywood's Long Love of Murdered Gays Continues with Milk

On the review compilation site Metacritic, Milk earned a perfect 100 score from The Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone, TV Guide, Slate, and Time. It also has the most Oscar buzz. None of this would be happening if Milk had a happy ending.  Hollywood has a long history of making movies and honoring films that can be summarized as gay = dead.

Somehow the few big budget movies that do show lgbt people, and those that are considered important each year, tend to fall in the category of Plea for Sympathy. "Gays shouldn't be killed" is a fairly low hurdle to clear, yet it's about as far as Hollywood is willing to go, and each time they do, they're cheered by robust self congratulations.

In the spirit of Vito Russo, look at which stories get told and rewarded, and which don't:

The Children's Hour (1961) lesbian suicide, five Oscar nominations

Silkwood (1983) (probably) bi woman murdered (for other reasons), five Oscar nominations, incl. bi and lesbian roles

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) gay man murdered, won Best Documentary Oscar 

Philadelphia (1994) gay man dies of aids, five Oscar nominations, two wins incl. gay role

As Good As It Gets (1997) gay man bashed, seven Oscar nominations, incl. gay role, two wins

Boys Don't Cry (1999) trans FTM murdered, two Oscar nominations, won Best Actress for FTM role

The Hours (2002) lesbian suicide but also open well adjusted lesbians, nine Oscar nominations incl. Best Actress win for suicide role

Monster (2003) killer lesbian executed, Best Actress Oscar 

Brokeback Mountain (2005) gay man murdered, eight Oscar nominations, incl. two gay roles, three wins

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) gay man attempts suicide, four Oscar nominations, two wins

Milk (2008) gay suicide and gay man murdered, Oscar nominations to come

For whatever reason, the rare big studio movies in which the gay characters don't die are ignored by the Oscars, as are the many great indie queer movies that never reach the distribution they deserve. Other than The Hours, the best may be Gods and Monsters from 1998, which was nominated for three Oscars and won best adapted screenplay, and Far From Heaven (2002), which earned four nominations. Maurice, Velvet Goldmine, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert were each nominated only for costumes; The Birdcage only for art direction; My Best Friend's Wedding only for music.

Transamerica was a great exception in 2005, nominated for two Oscars including the MTF role, but it's an open question whether it would have been so honored if the M had been played by an M rather than an F. That same year, Capote was nominated for five Oscars, but typically it was completely degayed. Truman's lover Jack Dunphy was reduced to something less than a roommate -- a concerned friend -- since they were never shown at home together. 

Where are the major Hollywood movies showing healthy, unharmed contemporary same sex couples, and where are their Oscars? Why has The Front Runner languished in development for decades? Patricia Nell Warren says it's because it's set at the Olympics, but now the crowds can easily be CGI. For that matter, where is the biopic of Walt Whitman including his boyfriend Peter Doyle? Whitman's importance to American literature is approximately one thousand times greater than Harvey Milk's place in American politics.

Is it that filmmakers and screenwriters feel it's more important to show injustice against gay people, or are these the only stories studios will greenlight? Executives are certainly more comfortable with the storyline that goes "come out, die" and so is the religious right. The Family Research Council protested Kinsey but they, and Focus on the Family, and Concerned Women of America, all announced they wouldn't picket Brokeback Mountain.

For any Hollywood defenders who want to suggest that "drama is conflict," save your keystrokes. Conflict does not mean annihilation. In mainstream storytelling, an unhappy ending is considered more sophisticated because it is uncommon. Each year hundreds of very common movies conclude with a male and female couple united happily. Those that don't are exalted for subverting convention and playing against the audience's expectations. Obviously, gay stories do not unfold against a wealth of happy endings and viewers have been trained to expect misery.

As for Milk with a happy ending, that movie would be called Noble. Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature against all odds from a conservative Irish Catholic district, basically Dan White's people. And she did it three years before Harvey, though Milk ignores her accomplishment and touts him as the first openly gay man elected rather than first gay person. The plot of a scrappy woman triumphing over entrenched unfairness is a Hollywood favorite (Norma Rae, Erin Brokovich) but you won't see this one get made.

And if you haven't yet seen Milk, please pay attention to the scene when Harvey sees the ad designed to fight Prop 6. Not only could you substitute the ads against Prop 8, it's exactly the same as the print ads for Milk. He's outraged, and with good reason.

Milk Ads Degayed

Focus Features ran their big announcement ad in yesterday's papers, the final Sunday before their best shot at an Oscar opens on Wednesday, and it hides any hint of the movie's gay content. Setting aside the problem of an ad campaign that forces the gay activist who insisted on gay visibility back into the closet after thirty years of progress, is it even good marketing? In all seriousness, if you didn't know Harvey Milk, what would you think this movie was about? Wisconsin dairy farmers? The milk lobby? Really bad haircuts? Compare this to the poster for Rob Espstein's documentary, which clearly shows a politician and the tagline says he's gay.

In a country where some people can't say on what date the events the of 9/11 occurred, let's not pretend "everyone knows" the history of a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. For that matter, let's also not pretend to be too surprised. As soon as Brokeback Mountain proved its crossover appeal, Focus yanked the iconic Heath-n-Jake white hat-black hat ads and replaced them with photos of the men and their wives. Hollywood always aims for the widest common denominator, erasing any sign of otherness. The one sheet for Dreamgirls showed three women in silhouette, with their backs to the camera and swathed in red stage light, so viewers wouldn't see they were black.