Band of Thebes

Born June 13: Siegfried Fischbacher

A classic meet cute: Two German teens escape postwar strife by working on a cruise ship. One is a waiter who, when his bosses aren’t looking, performs magic tricks for the passengers, which proves so popular he’s given his own show. The other is an enraptured bellboy who becomes his onstage assistant and, to spice up the disappearing animal act, smuggles a cheetah on board. So began the legendary team, Siegfried & Roy. They fell in love, toured Europe, played Princess Grace’s Red Cross benefit in Monaco, then the Lido in Paris, and by 1970 it was Vegas, baby. They began to use more exotic animals in their illusionist show and, in 1989, when Steve Wynn opened the Mirage, they were so popular he guaranteed them a minimum of $57.5 million for the next five years. In 2000, they were the ninth highest-paid celebrities in the United States, just behind Steven Spielberg. Audiences adored their exotic white tigers and their camp theatrics, which featured hooded musclemen, capes, ultra tight leggings, and Roy's ludicrously oversized codpieces described as “certainly more frightening” than the tigers. Their last performance was October 3, 2003, when it was widely reported that a tiger “bit” Roy. Siegfried disputes this, saying if the tiger intended to harm Roy he would have snapped his neck and vigorously shaken him. Instead, Montecore, a seven year-old tiger who had been in the show for six years, wanted to help. Roy fell, possibly attempting to intercept a woman in the front row who may have been reaching out to touch Montecore, and the tiger was trying to rescue him, carrying him in his mouth as a mother tiger would her cubs. Roy suffered severe blood loss and critical injuries that kept him in rehabilitation for years. In April 2010, they gave a final benefit performance, with Montecore, lasting ten minutes. Siegfried and Roy continue to share a west Las Vegas eight-acre estate called the Jungle Palace, though they maintain separate living quarters.

Siegfried is 75 today. It is the younger Roy, 69 until October, who was hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit from three male caretakers who have videotape of the incidents.

Born June 13: Siegfried Fischbacher

How’s this for meeting cute? Two German teenagers escape postwar strife by working on a cruise ship. One is a waiter who, when his bosses aren’t looking, performs magic tricks for the passengers, which proves so popular he’s given his own show. The other is an enraptured bellboy who becomes his onstage assistant and, to spice up the disappearing animal act, smuggles a cheetah on board. So began Siegfried & Roy. They fell in love, toured Europe, played Princess Grace’s Red Cross benefit in Monaco, then the Lido in Paris, and by 1970 it was Vegas, baby. They began to use more exotic animals in their illusionist show and, in 1989, when Steve Wynn opened the Mirage, they were so popular he guaranteed them a minimum of $57.5 million for the next five years. In 2000, they were the ninth highest-paid celebrities in the United States, just behind Steven Spielberg. Audiences adored their exotic white tigers and their camp theatrics, which featured hooded musclemen, capes, ultra tight leggings, and Roy's ludicrously oversized codpieces described as “certainly more frightening” than the tigers. Their last performance was October 3, 2003, when it was widely reported that a tiger “bit” Roy. Siegfried disputes this, saying if the tiger intended to harm Roy he would have snapped his neck and vigorously shaken him. Instead, Montecore, a seven year-old tiger who had been in the show for six years, wanted to help. Roy fell, possibly attempting to intercept a woman in the front row who may have been reaching out to touch Montecore, and the tiger was trying to rescue him, carrying him in his mouth as a mother tiger would her cubs. Roy suffered severe blood loss and critical injuries that kept him in rehabilitation for years. In April 2010, they gave a final benefit performance, with Montecore, lasting ten minutes. Siegfried and Roy continue to share a west Las Vegas eight-acre estate called the Jungle Palace, though they maintain separate living quarters.

Siegfried is 74 today. It is the younger one, Roy, 68 until October, who last year was hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit from three male caretakers who have videotape of the incidents.

Behind the Candelabra Scores Biggest HBO Movie Audience in 9 Years

Steven Soderbergh's over the top Behind the Candelabra delivered ratings more dazzling than Liberace's capes: it was HBO's biggest original movie audience in nine years. With two screenings Sunday night it had 3.5 million viewers. For comparison, the much hyped HBO movie Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren and directed by David Mamet, attracted only 1 million viewers on its first night back in March. For further comparison, the super-hyped, multiple award-winner Game Change about the 2008 election had 2.1 million viewers on its first night last year.

Three lessons for Hollywood:

1. Gay movies are good business.
2. The gay audience is huge.
3. Gay stories appeal to straight viewers.

Behind the Candelabra opens in cinemas in Britain on June 7. Expect major love at the Golden Globes in January and at the Emmys on September 22, hosted once again by Neil Patrick Harris. NPH is hosting the Tonys for the fourth time on June 9. 

Behind the Candelabra Reissued Today in Paperback, Ebook & Audio

Riding the hype of the HBO movie on May 26, Tantor today releases a new paperback of Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace with a brand new afterword by the now-straight Scott Thorson. They've also issued an ebook and an audio read by Peter Berkrot.

Director Soderbergh told New York:  “I wanted to make something really intimate. I liked the Sunset Boulevard aspect of Lee and Scott—older, younger; powerful, not powerful. With some show business thrown into it. During his career, Liberace was the most successful act to play Vegas—he made up to $400,000 a week during the seventies—but he was very private. The film is about a part of his life that he didn’t share with anyone; it is an act of imagination, but I wanted it to be sincere. I didn’t want it to be unkind, because everyone loved Liberace. He was the nicest man.”

Not quite. A famous gay author posted on FB how mean Lee was, but now I can't find the link.

Born May 16: Liberace

Denial wears many faces, and six gaudy rings. Liberace’s titanic flamboyance and volcanic success as a popular pianist — his tv show outranked I Love Lucy, he sold more than two million albums in 1953 alone, the Guinness Book of World Records listed him as the world's highest paid musician and pianist, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — was punctuated by his repeated protestations, in court, that he was not a homosexual and had never engaged in a homosexual act. In 1957, he sued a British tabloid for libel for implying he was gay and won $22,000. In 1982, when his live-in boyfriend/chauffeur Scott Thorson sued him for $113 million in palimony, Liberace continued to claim he had never had sex with a man. Thorson got around $95,000. Even as Liberace was dying of aids in 1987, he stridently denied he had aids (instead blaming his drastic weight loss on a watermelon diet) and he still maintained he had never had gay sex. In his final months, somehow still believing that his fans were ignorant of his homosexuality, he worried to his manager that if they knew, “that’s all they’ll remember about me.” Steven Soderbergh's upcoming Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, has been downgraded from a feature to an HBO movie next year. Filming begins this summer with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson.

Born June 12-14: Tuke, Fischbacher, Barnes

Born in York in 1858, Henry Scott Tuke grew up in Falmouth where he discovered the pleasures of nude swimming that become the core subject of his en plein air paintings until his death at 70 in 1929. Moving to London when he was sixteen to attend art school, he graduated six years later, then toured Italy and Paris. His friends and acquaintances of the time included Symonds, Wilde, and Sargent (whose many, secret paintings of male nudes were numerous enough to fill this book). But by 1886 he was back near Falmouth, spending £40 to buy a two-masted sailboat which he converted to a floating studio and living quarters. Initially his young models came down from London to pose but before long he and the local youth had become friends for life, though many of them died in WWI. An avid traveler, in the 1890s Tuke returned to Italy, adding Corfu and Albania to his list and a new, vibrant light to his palette. Later he ventured to the Caribbean and Central America, again brightening his colors. Critics emphasize the innocence of his art, stressing that if anything the depictions are sensual not sexual, and making obvious comparisons to Eakins. Among Tuke's big collectors is Elton John. His work is collected in several books such as Catching the Light.

How’s this for meeting cute? Two teenage Germans escape postwar strife by working on a cruise ship. One is a waiter who, when his bosses aren’t looking, performs magic tricks for the passengers, which proves so popular he’s given his own show. The other is an enraptured bellboy who becomes his onstage assistant and, to spice up the disappearing animal act, smuggles a cheetah on board. So began Siegfried & Roy. They fell in love, toured Europe, played Princess Grace’s Red Cross benefit in Monaco, then the Lido in Paris, and by 1970 it was Vegas, baby. They began to use more exotic animals in their illusionist show and, in 1989, when Steve Wynn opened the Mirage, they were so popular he guaranteed them a minimum of $57.5 million a year. In 2000, they were the ninth highest-paid celebrities in the United States, just behind Steven Spielberg. Audiences adored their exotic white tigers and their camp theatrics, which featured hooded musclemen, capes, ultra tight leggings, and Roy's ludicrously oversized codpieces described as “certainly more frightening” than the tigers. Their last performance was October 3, 2003, when it was widely reported that a tiger “bit” Roy. Siegfried disputes this, saying if the tiger intended to harm Roy he would have snapped his neck and vigorously shaken him. Instead, Montecore, a seven year-old tiger who had been in the show for six years, wanted to help. Roy fell, possibly attempting to intercept a woman in the front row who may have been reaching out to touch Montecore, and the tiger was trying to rescue him, carrying him in his mouth as a mother tiger would her cubs. Roy suffered severe blood loss and critical injuries that kept him in rehabilitation for years. In April 2010, they gave a final benefit performance, with Montecore, lasting ten minutes. Siegfried and Roy continue to share a west Las Vegas eight-acre estate called the Jungle Palace, though they maintain separate living quarters. They are big boosters of the College of Magic (not Hogwarts) in perfectly named Cape Town, South Africa.

If Djuna Barnes lived in the age of the dysfunctional, harrowing memoir, she would have outsold Mary Karr, Augusten Burroughs and James Frey combined. Her father believed in polygamy and moved his mistress into their house in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York when Barnes was five. He had eight children but no interest in supporting them; his mother had to write letters begging money from friends. Barnes was never sent to school and was raped at sixteen by a neighbor, with her father’s consent. For years Barnes shared a bed with her grandmother, whose sexually explicit letters much later suggest they were intimate. When Barnes was seventeen her father and grandmother forced her to marry his mistress’s brother, Percy Faulkner, who was fifty-two. After two months, Barnes fled and later, confronted with financial ruin, the family split up. Barnes, her mother, and three of her brothers moved to Manhattan, where Barnes was thrilled to study at the Pratt Institute, but within six months she was forced to leave to help support her family. She was a fulltime reporter and freelanced hundreds of articles to bring in more money. When she was twenty-three she moved to her own apartment in Greenwich Village, where she befriended bohemians, joined the Provincetown Players, and had many affairs with men and women. She became engaged to Ernst Hanfstaengl who reacted to the increasingly anti-German sentiment in America by breaking up with Barnes in favor of a German wife. (He later moved to Germany and became a close associate of Hitler.)

Barnes rebounded by falling deeply in love with fellow journalist and Provincetown Player Mary Pyne, who caught tuberculosis and died in 1919. Two years later McCall’s sent her to Paris, where she also interviewed James Joyce for Vanity Fair. By winter of the following year, she was

If Djuna Barnes lived in the age of the dysfunctional, harrowing memoir, she would have outsold Mary Karr, Augusten Burroughs and James Frey combined. Her father believed in polygamy and moved his mistress into their house in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York when Barnes was five. He had eight children but no interest in supporting them; his mother had to write letters begging money from friends. Barnes was never sent to school and was raped at sixteen by a neighbor, with her father’s consent. For years Barnes shared a bed with her grandmother, whose sexually explicit letters much later suggest they were intimate. When Barnes was seventeen her father and grandmother forced her to marry his mistress’s brother, Percy Faulkner, who was fifty-two. After two months, Barnes fled and later, confronted with financial ruin, the family split up. Barnes, her mother, and three of her brothers moved to Manhattan, where Barnes was thrilled to study at the Pratt Institute, but within six months she was forced to leave to help support her family. She was a fulltime reporter and freelanced hundreds of articles to bring in more money. When she was twenty-three she moved to her own apartment in Greenwich Village, where she befriended bohemians, joined the Provincetown Players, and had many affairs with men and women. She became engaged to Ernst Hanfstaengl who reacted to the increasingly anti-German sentiment in America by breaking up with Barnes in favor of a German wife. (He later moved to Germany and became a close associate of Hitler.)

Barnes rebounded by falling deeply in love with fellow journalist and Provincetown Player Mary Pyne, who caught tuberculosis and died in 1919. Two years later McCall’s sent her to Paris, where she also interviewed James Joyce for Vanity Fair. By winter of the following year, she was

More Antigay Hypocrisy: Vatican's Male Prostitutes, Calif Bigot's Gay Club Night DWI, Osmond Teen Suicide

Following a year-long corruption investigation with extensive wiretapping, five men have been arrested in Rome and two of them dismissed from the Vatican "amid allegations that they were involved in what prosecutors believe was an organized network of gay prostitution," says the NYT.

The Guardian reports, "Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him."

"The transcripts imply that over a period of around five months in 2008, Ehiem procured for Balducci at least 10 contacts with, among others, "two black Cuban lads", a former male model from Naples, and a rugby player from Rome."

Eheim is from Nigeria. Balducci [above left] is sixty-two.

The NYT elaborates,

"Mr. Ehiem described the physiques of various men to Mr. Balducci. “I have a situation from Naples,” Mr. Ehiem says in one conversation, according to La Repubblica. “I have a situation from Cuba,” he says in another, continuing with “a German who just arrived from Germany,” “two black guys,” “the soccer player” and “the dancer for the RAI” state broadcaster."

Eheim said of Balducci, "He asked me if I could procure other men for him. He told me he was married and that I had to do it in great secrecy."

Meanwhile in America, yet another Republican politician with a unanimously anti-gay voting record has been outed by being arrested, this time for DWI after leaving gay club Faces with a male companion. Fox News explains of Bakersfield's Roy Ashburn [above right], "A California state senator who reportedly has voted against every gay rights measure since he took office eight years ago was charged with driving under the influence on Wednesday, reportedly after leaving a gay nightclub in Sacramento."

A reminder of the cost of religious and political intolerance: one week ago today Marie Osmond's [gay?] 18 year-old son Michael Blosil killed himself by jumping from his eighth floor apartment. According to the newspaper that broke the John Edwards story, "I think Michael was distraught because he was conflicted over his sexuality and didn't believe he could ever come out as a gay man to his religious Mormon family," said a family insider.

The always quotable Roseanne Barr makes an important point about the spin:

"Marie Osmond's poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that "depression" is a lie!
Yet the Osmonds still talk lovingly about their church, saying nothing about its extremely anti-gay Crusade. Marie also has a gay daughter! Hey, I want her and all the gay kids in the world to know that they are just fine being gay and that they deserve love and respect instead of insults and rebuke! I have gay people in my family and my circle of friends and I am kicking bigot ass and taking names!"

Interesting how people work through grief in different ways. Marie Osmond is burying her son in Utah on Monday. She and Donny will resume their Flamingo Las Vegas nightclub act on Tuesday. For $255 you can sit at the front of the stage and have your photo taken with Donny and Marie after the show on March 9.

UPDATES: 1) Roy Ashburn has come out. 2) Roseanne posted a retraction about Michael Blosil, saying according to "friends and family," he "wasn't gay." Then she deleted that post. Obviously, Blosil could have been straight. Or bi. Or lying. Anyone who was ever an antigay Republican state senator young knows that your family and friends aren't always the best authorities on your sex life. Now Roseanne has posted another followup that avoids Michael Blosil's sexuality but reiterates her apology to Marie Osmond.

Born June 17: Barry Manilow

When you think of early Bette Midler, singing for the gay men at the Continental Baths, do you think of Barry Manilow? He was her piano accompanist, helped produce her first two albums, and directed the music on her Divine Miss M Tour. At the time, he was a successful advertising jingle writer and musical director of the CBS show Callback. On tour, during Midler's intermission Manilow performed three songs from his first album, but it wasn't until Clive Davis saw him open for Dionne Warwick that his luck really changed. Davis and a reluctant Manilow fought about including Mandy on his second album; Davis won; hit after superhit followed: It's a Miracle, I Write the Songs, Tryin To Get the Feeling Again, Looks Like We Made It, Can't Smile Without You, Even Now, and of course Copacabana, which was so popular it inspired a made for TV movie starring Barry ("His name was Tony...") Twenty-odd years later Manilow still enjoys a large and devoted following. He headlines a Vegas act and in 2004 Oprah announced he is one of her most requested guests. On the other hand, when Australian police wanted to clear out a heavy gang area of kids ignoring the curfew, they blasted Manilow's songs. (Barry was funny about it in a wry statement.) Two years ago, his album Greatest Songs of the Fifties debuted on the Billboard chart at number one. Last year his album of Seventies hits reached number four. Brooklyn's own has still got it, ok? If you don't understand his impact on contemporary culture, his preeminence as whipping boy / guilty pleasure, watch these snippets from Family Guy, Friends, and Colbert with Jon Stewart. Manilow has lived with his manager Garry Kief for more than twenty years in homes they share in Bel Air and Palm Springs.

Born June 13: Siegfried Fischbacher

The half of the white tigers Vegas couple who wasn't injured. They will finally return to the stage on February 9, 2009.
 

Born May 16: Adrienne Rich, Liberace

Here.

Las Vegas, Buenos Aires Finally Wooing Gay Travelers

According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the "key statistic" that finally caused Las Vegas to pursue gay tourists was that gay men spend 30% more than straight men when traveling. Also, lesbians and gay men comprise $55 billion of the annual travel market. Many hotels offer lavish commitment ceremony packages, have created all-gay ads for selected media, and have given their staff additional training to ensure a pleasant check-in, frequently cited as the most stressful moment for same-sex couples traveling together.

"Vegas has come to realize and respect the power of the gay and lesbian dollar," says John D'Alessandro, the former executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association. "They want folks who can afford the expensive shows and restaurants. I think they looked at these demographics and realized 'It's a dream market and we have to fight for it.' "

Meanwhile, yesterday was opening day in Buenos Aires for The Axel, Latin America's first five-star gay hotel. It is the sister establishment to Barcelona's five-star Axel Hotel, which opened in 2003.

"Like any other business, we have economic objectives," general manager Nacho Rodriguez said. But "we're also about fighting to help the normalization and acceptance of gays in society."

He said the hotel was designed to be open and airy.

"Many gay hotels and places are closed off and can't be seen from the street," Rodriguez said. "We wanted our hotel to be open and visible. Why should we try and hide ourselves?"

The company reports that about 30% of their guests in Barcelona are heterosexual and they expect the same ratio in Argentina. They may mean heteroflexible.

Born June 13: Siegfried Fischbacher

How’s this for meeting cute? Two teenage Germans escape postwar strife by working on a cruise ship. One is a waiter who, when his bosses aren’t looking, performs magic tricks for the passengers, which proves so popular he’s given his own show. The other is an enraptured bellboy who becomes his onstage assistant and, to spice up the disappearing animal act, smuggles a cheetah on board. So began Siegfried & Roy. They fell in love, toured Europe, played Princess Grace’s Red Cross benefit in Monaco, then the Lido in Paris, and by 1970 it was Vegas, baby. They began to use more exotic animals in their illusionist show and, in 1989, when Steve Wynn opened the Mirage, they were so popular he guaranteed them a minimum of $57.5 million a year. In 2000, they were the ninth highest-paid celebrities in the United States, just behind Steven Spielberg. Audiences adored their exotic white tigers and their camp theatrics, which featured hooded musclemen, capes, ultra tight leggings, and Roy's ludicrously oversized codpieces described as “certainly more frightening” than the tigers. Their last performance was October 3, 2003, when it was widely reported that a tiger “bit” Roy. Siegfried disputes this, saying if the tiger intended to harm Roy he would have snapped his neck and vigorously shaken him. Instead, Montecore, a seven year-old tiger who had been in the show for six years, wanted to help. Roy fell, possibly attempting to intercept a woman in the front row who may have been reaching out to touch Montecore, and the tiger was trying to rescue him, carrying him in his mouth as a mother tiger would her cubs. Roy suffered severe blood loss and critical injuries that have kept him in rehabilitation for years. Siegfried and Roy continue to share a west Las Vegas eight-acre estate called the Jungle Palace, though they maintain separate living quarters.