Born On This Day- October 31st... Straight, But Not Narrow Baritone, Brian Stokes Mitchell

The Baritone voice in song is my favorite sound on earth or in the heavens. Check out Broadway leading man Brian Stokes Mitchell's stunning baritone on his self titled album from 2006. Perfection. He produced & did the arrangments!

Mitchell is that rare commodity, a really masculine musical theatre leading man in the mode of Richard Kiley, John Raitt, or Alfred Drake. He is a 5 time Tony Nomineee & winner for Kiss Me Kate. I loved him as Frasier Crane's nemesis & neighbor on Frasier. Other credits: George Gershwin's Oh, Kay!, Jelly's Last Jam, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, Ragtime, King Hedley II & Man of La Mancha . This season he appeared in th new musical Woman On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown, for which he one a Drama Desk award. Mitchell also appeared in the City Center Encores! productions of Jule Styne's Do Re Mi, Bob Merrill's Carnival!, & Kismet ,& the title role in th Kennedy Center revival of Sweeney Todd, part of Stephen Sondheim's 70th birthday celebration.

I am sorry to bring it down to this level, as always, but OMG!, isn't he just too yummy?

Born On This Day- October 31st... Master Voice-Over Actor- David Ogden Stiers

Fellow Oregonian -David Ogden Stiers is the 2 time Emmy nominee for his work on M*A*S*H, who came out of the closet last spring at the age of 67 . He has had a long career on stage, in television & on film, frequently working in the films of Woody Allen. But his greatest success has been in the world of voice-over work. Among Ogden Stiers many voice credits: Cogsworth in Beauty & the Beast, both Ratcliffe & Wiggins in Pocahontas, & the Archdeacon in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also voiced a character in the English version of Spirited Away, distributed by Disney. Ironically, Ogden Stiers said it was his later, very successful career as a voice actor that caused his reluctance to come out any earlier:

David Ogden Stiers:“I enjoy working & even though many have this idealistic belief that the entertainment industry & studios like Walt Disney are gay friendly.For the most part they are, but that doesn’t mean for them that business does not come first. It’s a matter of economics…A lot of my income has been derived from voicing  Disney & family programming. What they might allow in a more known actor, they prefer not having to deal with in minor players.”

Ironically, it was the flamboyant nature of some of those roles that he says contributed to his staying closeted. “Cogsworth, the character I did on Beauty and the Beast, could be a bit flamboyant on screen, because basically he is a cartoon,” he said. “But they didn’t want Cogsworth to become Disney’s gay character, because it got around a gay man was playing him.” Regarding this signature role in the classic Disney film (which Odgen Stiers also narrates), the actor reportedly ad-libbed the last part of Cogsworth’s famous advice to the Beast on what to give Belle: “Well, there's the usual things: flowers... chocolates... promises you don't intend to keep...”

In Memory Of Ruth Gordon... From Harold & Maude

Maude, played by Ruth Gordon, is in her late 70s & befriends a wealthy, suicidal young man, Bud Cort (They meet as onlookers at a funeral). Here they walk among flowers at a nursery:


MAUDE: They grow & bloom, & fade, & die, & some change into something else. Ah, life! I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They are so tall and simple. & you, Harold, what flower would you like to be?


HAROLD: I don’t know. Just one of those. (He gestures toward a field of daisies)


M: Why do you say that?


H: Because they are all the same.


M: Oh, but they are not. Look. (They bend down together.) See, some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, some even have some petals missing, all kinds of observable differences, & we haven’t even touched the bio-chemical. You see, Harold, they’re like the Japanese. At first you think they all look alike, but after you get to know them you see there is not a repeat in the bunch. Each person is different, never existed before & never to exist again. Just like this daisy (she picks it) - an individual.


H: Well, we may be individuals all right but, we have to grow up together.


M: Yes, that’s very true. Still, I believe much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who know they are this (she holds the daisy), yet let themselves be treated (she looks out at the field) as that.

Born On This Day- October 30th... Post Apocalyptic Muse, Ruth Gordon

She has been such a major part of my life for so long, it is hard for me to remember a time when she was not busy being my muse. A quote from Ruth Gordon- “Never Face The Facts” has been my motto for much of my life, & will be my next tattoo. Her point was, if she had owned up to the fact that she was 5’1’’, not really pretty & that her drama teachers said she had no talent… well, she would never have become Ruth Gordon.

I treasure & have read & re-read her 3 volumes of memoirs- Myself Among Others, My Side: The Autobiography Of Ruth Gordon, & Ruth Gordon- An Open Book. I know it started for me with with Inside Daisy Clover, a film that had a very real impact on me at an early age. My adoration for her was cemented with her Oscar winning performance in Rosemary’s Baby. & then Harold & Maude became the most important movie of my youth. I had a friend who was in Harold & Maude as an actor & another friend who was the set decorator on the film. I had heard all these stories about it during the filming, but I was unprepared for how much I would fall in love with this little movie that went on to be a cult favorite.

My life motto, from Ruth Gordon, was posted on a wall of our cottage in Seattle by The Husband.

The daughter of a former ship captain, Ruth Gordon knew what she wanted to do with her life after witnessing a performance by stage actress Hazel Dawn in Boston. Over the initial objections of her father, Gordon decided upon a stage career, studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her debut in Peter Pan with Maude Adams: "Ruth Gordon was ever so gay as Nibs," wrote influential critic Alexander Woollcott, who became a valued & powerful friend to Gordon, & did what he could to encourage her & promote her career. With such stage hits as Seventeen, Serena Blandish, & Ethan Frome, Gordon was one of Broadway's biggest stars of the 1920s & 30s; privately, however, her life was put into shambles by the premature death of her first husband- actor Gregory Kelly.

She was the toast of the West End in London during her successful run in The Country Wife. She created the role of Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (1956), a role written for her, & the basis of the musical- Hello, Dolly!. She remarried in 1942 to the brilliant playwright Garson Kanin, 16 years younger than her. It was a union that lasted more than 4 decades.

Combining stage work with appearances in such films as Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) , Gordon began to collaborate with Kanin on writing projects, with such delightful results as the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn comedies Adam's Rib (1949) & Pat and Mike (1952), as well as the Judy Holliday vehicle- The Marrying Kind (1952). Gordon returned to the cameras for Inside Daisy Clover in 1966, before taking on role of an elderly neighbor in Rosemary's Baby (1968).

When receiving an Oscar for her performance, the 72 year old Gordon brought down the house by saying, "You have no idea how encouraging a thing like this can be." Gordon was unforgettable in 2 films from my high school years: Where's Poppa? (1970), in which she played the obscenely senile mother of George Segal, & of course, Harold & Maude (1972), as the free spirited soul mate of a death obsessed young man, played Bud Cort, who remained her lifelong friend in real life. The story of her early life was made into a film- The Actress, directed by George Cukor, with a screenplay by Ruth Gordon. She was portrayed by Jean Simmons & Spencer Tracy played her father. She was born 117 years ago today. She remains very special to me.

Head Was Born On This Day In 1887

Edith Head believed modesty was unbecoming & that you should have anything you wanted in life, but you had to be dressed for it. Edith head knew about dressing. The legendary designer saw all the Hollywood greats stripped down to their underwear or less. As the stars gazed upon themselves in the studio wardrobe mirrors, Head was the woman standing behind them, making them look impossibly glamorous while carefully avoiding glamour herself.

 

Hollywood's most famous & influential costume designer, as well as its most prolific, Head had a career that lasted 6 decades. She designed clothes for 1,131 films , an average of 35 a year, she dressed virtually every star who shimmered on screen in the golden age of movie making. Head was the last costume designer to be under contract to a major studio, Paramount. She was a woman who succeeded in a world, which in her day, was dominated by men.

Head wrote a pair of books: The Dress Doctor & How to Dress for Success, & played herself, giving a fashion show commentary in the 1955 film- Lucy Gallant, with Charlton Heston & Jane Wyman.

She could be a bit playful with the truth, taking credit for designs she had not created: Audrey Hepburn's little black dress in Sabrina & the Newman/Redford wardrobe for The Sting, for which she won an Oscar. Always discreet about the size & shape of the stars' bodies, she knew about all the skeletons in their closets, but she was never one to gossip.

Head knew about the intimate secrets of Mae West's vast bosom, Gloria Swanson's wide waist & tiny feet (size 2 1/2), & swan necked Audrey Hepburn's broad shoulders. She often boasted that she was a magician: “I accentuated the positive & camouflaged the rest".

Head would make the stars, with all their flaws, look a million dollars, & she influenced the way millions of women dressed too, as a designer for Vogue patterns at a time when home dressmaking was all the rage, although Head could not sew herself.

Her costume designs for films went global. The sarong she fashioned for Dorothy Lamour in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, Head had her stitched into it, made the actress a star & was copied by every swimwear manufacturer in the US. It is still copied today.

For Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951), Head accentuated the teenage star's bosom & tiny waist with a strapless, bouffant-skirted white ballgown, scattered with violets. It became the prom dress for American teenagers when it was copied by all the leading department stores. According to Head, Taylor had the most beautiful shoulders in Hollywood, so she created dresses for her to show them off.

Bette Davis: "Edith Head’s life was all about glamour, 60 years of it, in the most glamorous place in the world- Hollywood," Head designed the brown silk, sable trimmed cocktail dress Davis wore as Margo Channing in All About Eve, warning everyone as she swept down the staircase for the big party scene to fasten their seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy night. Davis tried on the finished gown the bodice & neckline were way too big. Head was horrified, but Davis pulled it off her shoulders & shook one shoulder sexily: “Doesn't it look better like this anyway?" Head won one of her 8 Oscars for that film. Davis later bought the dress for herself, because she loved it so much. Head: "There were 8 important men in my life, & they were all named Oscar."

Head was working as a language teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls in 1932 when she bluffed her way into Paramount's wardrobe department. She already had a B.A. from Berkeley & a master's from Stanford, but then went to study art at the Otis Art Institute & the Chouinard School. She was hired by the studio as a sketch artist, although the fashion drawings.

By 1938, she was head designer, working on every prestigious production the studio made, and left only in 1967, when she joined up with Universal. Head spent the remainder of her career here, thanks to her friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, including Tippi Hendren's smart green suit made of textured tweed that would snag easily during an avian attack.

Head's career was not without controversy. After winning her Oscar for The Sting, she was sued by the illustrator who really designed Redford & Newman's clothes. The truth about her design of Audrey Hepburn's little black dress emerged only after her death, when the Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy quietly admitted that he'd come up with the frock that was copied everywhere & worn by a generation of women; Head had designed all the other costumes in the film.

Head also adored Grace Kelly & was upset when the actress slighted her by not inviting her to design the wedding dress when she got married to Prince Rainier of Monaco. She did create Princess Grace's grey going-away suit, though.

Head: "I regret never having dressed Marilyn Monroe, never designing uniforms for the Chicago Cubs, & being alone. It is much easier being remembered than trying to remember." It was an open secret in Hollywood that Edith Head was a lesbian.

In the Pixar film- The Incredibles, the personality & mannerisms of the film's fictional superhero costume designer- Edna Mode’s sense of style, round glasses, & assertive no-nonsense character are very are a direct homage to Head's legendary accomplishments & personality.

I am so in Junior High School, & I, of course, think it was fun to write the word- HEAD 24 times.

From Edith Head's HOW TO DRESS FOR SUCCESS:

How to attreact & keep a man:

1. Decide want kind of man you want.

2. Find out what kind of girls he likes.

3. Know what kind of fashions pleases him.

4. Don’t masquerade in clothes you hate just to attract a man. Be sure you are really, deep down inside, this kind of girl. If not, find another man!

5. Learn all you can about him: his hobbies, his interests, his likes, his dislikes.

6. Be interested in his interests.

7. Choose your wardrobe to please him & suit his way of life.

8. After you get him, stay the way you were & don’t relax into a post-marriage slump of careless marriage.

9. Look reasonably enticing in the morning & better at nightFrom her book- Dress for Success, Edith Head’s Success Formula For Dressing To Get A Man & Keep Him:

Born On This Day- October 28th... Francis Bacon

"I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence." Francis Bacon

Thinking about him this morning, trying to wrap my head around doing this post, I had remembered that The Husband was not a fan of his paintings. I texted him to receive a quote as a jumping off spot for the post: “Francis Bacon… what are your thoughts?” The vegetarian Husband’s text in return: “I haven’t had Bacon in decades.”  Me either.

Francis Bacon: "We are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it's surprising that I wasn't there instead of the animal." To Bacon, the world was a slaughterhouse on the verge of annihilation at any moment.

Bacon was an enigma. He was fiercely atheistic, believing life was delusive & meaningless. Yet he stated: "You can be optimistic & totally without hope." Bacon was acerbic & boorish but gentle & generous to friends & relatives. A gay man into S&M. but right-wing politically.

Bacon possessed a despairing & sarcastic sense of humor, with a disdain for convention. He once booed a member of the British royal family who had decided to sing before a crowd at an event. Publicly dissing Princess Margaret may have seemed cruel & shocking, but it also demonstrated his honesty & sense of criticism. When a member of the royal family asked him what he did for a living, Bacon stated: "I'm an old queen.”

Bacon's honesty & enigmatic personality is on display in his paintings. He is considered by many art historians & critics to be the greatest post-WW2 painter. He has inspired awe with his paintings of twisted body parts & distorted animalistic human faces, intensely concerned with the torn & lonely human condition.

Bacon's paintings portray profound aloneness, pain & inner turmoil. He saw violence, hatred & human degradation as essential elements of life.

Bacon expected his paintings to assault the viewer's nervous system. Bacon: "I wish to unlock the valves of feeling & therefore return the onlooker to life more violently." Toward the end of his life, he was delighted to hear that a woman viewing one of his paintings in Paris had closed her eyes & crossed herself.

Bacon's art was profoundly impacted by his homosexuality. At some point in his adolescence, Bacon had sexual encounters with the Irish grooms at his family home, possibly the same grooms who carried out horse whippings ordered by his father. The hurt & humiliation of the whippings, combined with the sexual attraction for the grooms are revealed in some of the violent sexual imagery in his paintings. Bacon felt that the expressions of human sexuality were limitless: Bacon: "You need never have any other subject, really, it's a very haunting subject."

Bacon was banished from the family home when he turned 16. Having surmised that cleverness & chance were his driving forces, Bacon went to London to see what waited for him. He took a series of odd jobs & entered the gay underworld where earned extra money being picked up by wealthy gay men.

 In London Bacon would read Nietzsche, & tossed off what ever was left of any religious belief & came to the conclusion that life was futile unless he could somehow do something extraordinary with it.

After some time, his father made an attempt to straighten him out, entrusting him to the care of a family relative traveling to Berlin. Things did not go the way his father planned. Bacon & the relative became lovers.

In Berlin, Bacon immersed himself in the decadent & disturbing world of gay cabarets, transvestite clubs & sex parties that offered a menu any experiences he could desire. As a pretty young man, he had no trouble getting picked up & making money.

In Berlin, Bacon also discovered the functional art of the Bauhaus movement which influenced the design of the furniture he began to build a few years later.

Bacon escaped the gay circles in Paris when he turned 17 years old. In Paris he attended exhibitions of the work of Picasso, his first big influence. Other influences at this time included artists Soutine, de Chirico, Arp, & Dali, the art magazine Cahiers d'Art, & Luis Buñuel's film Un Chien Andalou. Bacon was also influenced by the exhibit- Documents which contained photographs of a screaming mouth & pictures of bloodied animal carcasses & Positioning in Radiography, a reference book which had photographs showing the position of the body for X-rays to be taken & the X-rays themselves.

4 years later, unable to make a living in Paris, Bacon returned to London, with him images of violence, carcasses & screams that would impact his art for the rest of his life. In London, he took up with Roy de Maistre, a father figure & lover. De Maistre had wealth, which enabled Bacon to spend time designing & manufacturing furniture. De Maistre was also a painter, & the couple held a joint art exhibit in their garage.

 Bacon met the inspiration for some of his greatest paintings when a young man burgled his home in 1963. Bacon’s relationship with George Dyer was stormy, sad & shocking. They were a couple for 8 years. 2 days before the opening of the Francis Bacon Retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971, Dyer was found dead from a drink & drugs overdose in the bathroom of a hotel in Paris. Bacon painted portraits of Dyer obsessively, both during his life & after Dyer’s death.

George Dyer on film & in paint

 In 1974, Bacon met John Edwards, not the douchy politician from North Carolina, but a young man from the East End, with whom Bacon formed his most enduring friendship. While on vacation in Madrid in 1992, Bacon was admitted to a private clinic. His chronic asthma, which had plagued him all his life, had developed into a respiratory disease& he could not talk or breathe very well. He died of cardiac arrest in April 1992. He bequeathed his entire estate, valued at £11 million, to John Edwards, not adultery prone senator who thought he might be president, the British one. Edwards donated the contents of Francis Bacon's chaotic studio to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Bacon's studio was carefully reconstructed in the gallery.

I am not huge fan of Bacon’s work. I can barely bring my self to study his paintings, I find it too difficult to spend a lot of time with, but I understand the skill & the talent. I believe that his paintings represent places that I can skirt around & not linger.

If you want to know more watch openly gay Derek Jacobi as Bacon & my ocassional lover Daniel Craig as George Dyer in the film Love Is the Devil (1998).

Edwards with Bacon

Self Portrait

Born On This Day- October 27th... NYC Wit Fran Lebowitz

She is one of my idols. If you don't know her. you really should & you can start with the documentry- Public Speaking directed by Martin Scosese. Fran Lobowitz turns 61 years old today. Martin Scorsese’s 90-minute talkfest in which essayist & humorist Fran Lebowitz explains almost everything 2010 was quite the year for documentries about funny women, along with Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work. 

The Scorsese flick is a sophisticated affair in which a series of interviews with Lebowitz at the Waverly Inn are seamlessly intercut. The film is the world view of a very witty & very cynical New Yorker who likes few of the changes she’s seen in her adopted home since she arrived 40 years ago.

The writer Lebowitz became famously paralyzed, she calls it “writer’s blockade” but she has few peers as a public pontificater. This gift has allowed the writer to be able to afford to stay in NYC & to hang out with famous friends.

I am mad jealous of the idea of having a Manhattan career out of a pair slim volumes of essays & then chatting away for the next 4 decades.

But conversation at Lebowitz’s level was once a much respected occupation, as Scorsese reminds us in brief clips that show us folks like James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, & William F. Buckley on talk shows back in the 1960s.

Lebowitz mentions at one point that she was thrilled & inspired as a young person by one of Baldwin’s many appearances on the David Susskind talk show, pointing up how today’s talk show in comparison,with guests that are pre-interviewed & plug thier product for 5 minutes.

“Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass”

I always loved & looked forward to Fran Lebowitz's pieces in Interview Magazine, hired by Andy Warhol himself. I will still re-read her books- Social Studies & Metropolitan Life, both published more than 30 years ago. Cranky, sardonic, witty, & dry; her essays make me think & make me laugh. She was named one most stylish women in Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed List, & is known to sport tailored suits by the Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard. Lebowitz has a reoccuring role on Law & Order as a judge. She had the best Proust Questionaire, on the back page of Vanity Fair, ever. I think her quips are on a par with Dorothy Parker:


"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable."

"Andy Warhol made fame more famous."

"As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you."

"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying."

"If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail."

"If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words."

"In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra."

"Polite conversation is rarely either."

"Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw."

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."

Born On This Day- October 26th... Anthony Rapp

Blond, wiry, intense, likable Anthony Rapp has worked in several genres as a child, teen & adult. Rapp has also established a steady career as a character actor in films. I know him from his role as Mark Cohen, the uptight aspiring filmmaker in the film version of Rent, having missed it on stage. Her created the role & played in Rent Off-Broadway & on Broadway. Rent is the late Jonathan Larson's musical phenomenon that ran for years without my ever catching a production.

In films, the young actor made his debut as a lad with a crush on an older woman in Adventures in Babysitting, as an obnoxious, bespectacled anti-Semite in the 1950s-set  drama School Ties & as a high school outsider who gets lucky in Dazed & Confused .

Born in Chicago, Rapp began appearing in musicals at 6 years old & made his professional debut at 9 in a road tour production of Evita. As a child he toured in The King & I with Yul Brynner & at age 10 was on Broadway The Little Prince & the Aviator. Rapp originated the role of Ben, the son of affluent, gullible parents in the Broadway production of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation & in the film version.

Rapp has been openly & vocally gay, he prefers the term "queer" since 1992, proclaiming that the revelation has not hurt his career in the least. Back on stage, he was Charlie Brown in the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, & he played the title role in The Commonwealth Shakespeare's production of Henry V in Boston in the summer of 2002.

He is a totally talented cutie. I think it is swell that he sang REM's Losing My Religion for his audition for the original production of Rent. I was pleasantly surprised with the film version of Rent, & his work was the highlight. Rapp has a memoir about his days in Rent, as well as his mother's struggle with cancer, & his experiences growing up, entitled Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, & the Musical Rent. He lives in NYC with his partner- actor Rodney To. He turns a very boyish 41 years old today.

Have any readers seen him perform live?

Born On This Day- October 26th... Julian Keith Strickland

Keith Strickland: "I don’t know. I toyed with the notion of doing other stuff with other musicians. But I had a moment of clarity: Why not just do this for the B-52’s? Then I kept thinking I had to write in a particular mindset for the B-52’s, which was a mistake. Once I got around that, Funplex flowed more freely. But I still just kept missing deadline after deadline. I guess I’m just not that ambitious."

Keith Strickland is "the cute one" with that "tacky little party band from Athens Georgia"

Originally, Strickland was the band's drummer, but following the 1985 death of Ricky Wilson, the band's guitarist and another founding member, he moved from the drums to guitar. Strickland has also played keyboards on many of the quirky, cutting, dance-a-riffic B-52's recordings, & has sung backup vocals on a handful of songs. Like both other male members of the B-52's - lead singer Fred Schneider & the late Ricky Wilson, Strickland is openly gay. Keith lives with his partner in Woodstock NY, Athens GA, & Key West.

Domani Dave, if you happen upon Mr. Strickland today, give him a big birthday kiss from me.

October Song... No Moon At All

No moon at all

What a night

Even lightning bugs have dimmed their light

Stars have disappeared from sight

& there's no moon at all

Don't make a sound

It's so dark

Even Fido is afraid to bark

What a perfect chance to park

& there's no moon at all

If you need atmosphere

For inspiration dear

One touch will make it clear

Tonight is right & bright moonlight might interfere

No moon at all

Up above

This is nothing like they told us of

Just to think we fell in love

When there's no moon at all

Redd Evans/David Mann

1947

I actually performed this song in the 1990s when I sang with a jazz trio. It was done as part of a "moon medley" including Old Devil Moon & Moonlight Becomes You. I am told that the trio of songs was matchless & moonirific.

Got Milk?

October Song... Moon Over Bourbon Street

There's a moon over Bourbon Street tonight

I see faces as they pass beneath the pale lamplight

I've no choice but to follow that call

The bright lights, the people, & the moon and all

I pray everyday to be strong

For I know what I do must be wrong

Oh you'll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet

While there's a moon over Bourbon Street

It was many years ago that I became what I am

I was trapped in this life like an innocent lamb

Now I can only show my face at noon

& you'll only see me walking by the light of the moon

The brim of my hat hides the eye of a beast

I've the face of a sinner but the hands of a priest

Oh you'll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet

While there's a moon over Bourbon Street

She walks everyday through the streets
 of New Orleans

She's innocent & young from a family of means

I have stood many times outside her window at night

To struggle with my instinct in the pale moon light

How could I be this way when I pray to God above

I must love what I destroy & destroy the thing I love

Oh you'll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet

While there's a moon over Bourbon Street

Sting

1985

Born On This Day- October 24th... B D Wong

B.D. Wong won all 5 major Theatre Awards for his role in M. Butterfly in 1988, but he was passed over by director David Cronenberg for the film version in 1993. I have admired his work on Oz & Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He appeared in Father of the Bride & Father of the Bride Part II, as Howard Weinstein, a flamboyant assistant to Martin Short's equally flamboyant character, Franck.

Wong had been in a long-term relationship with talent agent Richie Jackson  In 2000, Wong had twin sons: Boaz Dov, who died 90 minutes after birth, & Jackson Foo Wong. They were born through a surrogate, using Wong's sperm & an egg donated by Jackson's sister. In 2003, Wong wrote a memoir about his experiences with surrogacy titled Following Foo: the Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man. Wong and Jackson ended their relationship in 2004.

Ryan Reynolds

Today marks the birthday of actor Ryan Reynolds. He is not gay, but he is Canadian. I suffered through a dreadful film- The Proposal because Mr. Reynolds gets naked. That is just how shallow I am. I would pay to watch Ryan Reynolds read the phone book, if there were still phone books, & if he were shirtless. Has he made a good film? Let me know. He is 35 years old today.

Today Is The Birthday Of Writer Augusten Burroughs

I can be a profoundly awed fan of someone without a nagging drive to meet & greet the object of my adoration. Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors & Dry are 2 of my favorite reads of the past decade & I have continued to assay everything that he has put out. He is a very funny & twisted man.

I met him after he did a reading & Question & Answer session at Powell’s in downtown Portland. He actually addressed me with a question at the end of the session & as always, I balked & was uncharacteristically reticent. We had a short chat about Portland’s love of books & how very cool Powell’s is.

A few years later, I saw him walking with a well known Portland queer writer, who has not always been very nice to me, but who has the loveliest husband. As I passed them, I turned I stated: “Augusten… I treasure your work. I have all your books, in hardback, 2 of them autographed, I LOVE YOU!”  Turning to the Portland puffy, poofy personality, I tossed off: “& you… not so much.”

Augusten Burroughs is hideously kinky. This is both his attraction & his detraction. I laughed like crazy as I read Running with Scissors & Dry. The first, an account of his nightmarish childhood:drunk father, crazy mother, adopted by his mother's therapist, introduced us to this quirky voice, which will tell us anything. The other is a frank but campy book about the writer's alcoholism & addiction to crack.

I also enjoyed- Magical Thinking, a collection of brief personal essays, in which he amplifies the material, adding glittery edges to one of the edgiest writers of the new century. Burroughs is a fresh & honest voice in a heavily medicated century. He's not angry or wounded, which helps. His essays for have explored his 2 sexual encounters with priests, at age 14 & 26, in which the men of the cloth are no match for his experience & ambivalence. In my favorite essay- Beating Raoul, he hilariously deconstructs a date with a hot & impossibly handsomeType-A gay perfectionist who turns out to suffer from acute under-endowment. If you have not read him, you simply really must.

He was born Christopher Robison 46 years ago today.


"I never watch CNN. I hate news & information & anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live."

Happy Birthday, Jesse Tyler Ferguson

With True Blood over until next summer, & Mad Men not returning until summer 2012, I need to thank the TV gods for ABC’s Modern Family. This show is still fresh & very, very funny in its 3nd season. Modern Family won Emmys for writing, directing & Best Comedy Series, & Eric Overstreet last year &Ty Burrell this year, each has an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his mantle.

Eric Stonestreet is the flashy & affectionate Cameron, & his longtime partner is the tightly wound lawyer- Mitchell, perfectly played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Together, they make up the most high profile gay couple on prime time.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson graduated from high school in 1994 & attended The American Musical & Dramatic Academy in NYC. He worked mainly in off-Broadway & Broadway shows, including the Tony Award-winning The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, where he originated the role of Leaf Coneybear. Ferguson was also in George C. Wolfe's revival of On the Town & has performed in Off-Broadway productions of The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Newyorkers,The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Little Fish & the revivial of Hair, directed by Tony Award winner Kathleen Marshall. In the summer of 2007, Ferguson was in the Public Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night's Dream & at the same venue this summer, he was opposite Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice.

Ferguson has spoken out about his terrifying experience as the victim of childhood bullying, insisting he "lived every day in fear." The openly gay actor was tormented by classmates over his sexuality & the teasing was so bad, he was eventually forced to switch to a new school. But Ferguson must be proud of how far he has come - his hit TV show was honored at the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network's Respect Awards for positive images of diversity & promoting tolerance.

Ferguson "I think bullying comes from fear & insecurity. I was friends with the more eccentric, granola type kids who got teased, too. But you know what? We're the movers & shakers of the world now. I lived every day in fear. I left school in the 8th grade & I went to a different school. It was hard. It was a horrible, horrible experience. I'm sure a lot of it was rooted in homophobia. I mean, I was an 'artistic' kid, which was AKA gay. I think a lot of people sensed that I was gay & were terrified of that."

With boyfriend Justin Mikita in Hawaii

I think he is very talented, & I have a bit of a thing for ginger, so Jesse… have your people call my people. We will do lunch. He turns 36 today.

The Gay Birthday Roll Call For October 22nd... 3 Talented Men Of Show Biz

Openly gay Bill Condon would be on the birthday roll call just for writing & directing one of my top 10 movies of all time- Gods & Monsters. To me this is a nearly perfect film, without a wasted scene or line of dialogue & amazing Oscar worthy performances from Sir Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser & Lynn Redgrave. Gods & Monsters is the story of the last days of James Whale, the gay director of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man & Showboat. Condon was nominated for Best Director & won the award for Best Screenplay Adaptation (from Christopher Bram’s book). On top of this accomplishment, he wrote the brilliant screenplay for the film of Chicago, a stage musical that seemed to me, to be impossible to bring to the screen (another Oscar nom), he wrote & directed the under-rated Kinsey, & wrote & directed the over-hyped, but very engaging film version of Dreamgirls. Bill Condoned direct the last installment of the The Twilight Saga franchise- Breaking Dawn… & I think he is cute.

When Marc Shaiman kissed his fellow Tony winner & partner Scott on the televised award show, it made quite a stir. He’s won a Tony (for Hairspray), a Grammy, & an Emmy, He has had 5 Oscar nominations, including one for Blame Canada. He has been with Scott Whitman, his creative partner & life partner for 31 years, since they met when he was 20 in 1979 (the same year that I matched up with the Husband). His film credits include Broadcast News, Beaches, When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers, The Addams Family, Sister Act, Sleepless in Seattle, A Few Good Men, The American President, The First Wives Club, George of the Jungle, In & Out, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Team America: World Police & HBO's From the Earth to the Moon. He frequently works on films by Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner, & Trey Parker He has also appeared in many of these films. Shaiman started his career as a theatre/cabaret musical director. He then became vocal arranger for Bette Midler, eventually becoming her musical director & co-producer of many of her recordings, including The Wind Beneath My Wings & From a Distance. He helped create the material for her performance on the penultimate Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This season he had the musical-The Addams Family on Broadway. He auditioned for & but lost the role of himself on Bette’s short lived TV sitcom,… & I think he is cute.

Derek Jacobi was invited by Lawrence Olivier to become 1 of the 8 founding members of The National Theatre, soon after graduating from Cambridge. An extremely successful film & theatre actor, he is probably best known for his performance in the ground breaking BBC TV series I, Claudius (1976) & his Shakespearean roles around the world, including what many feel was the best Hamlet of the 20th century.He also appeared as Alan Turing in the stage & film versions of Breaking The Code. His other appearances have been diverse & ranged from major classical roles to an appearance in Frasier as the world’s worst Shakespearian actor & one of my favorite films- Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. Jacobi is married to Richard Clifford, his partner of 32 years (again, all these 32 year anniversaries!)...& think he is cute.

On This Day In Gay History

On this day, October 22nd, 1883,The Metropolitan Opera House, on Broadway betwen 39th & 40th Strees, opens in NYC with Gounad's Faust starring the brilliant Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson. Faust was performed in Italian, as were all of the operas staged during the first season, including those written in French & German. The A Gays in Manhattan are there to see & be seen. Several fainted. The term- Opera Queen is adopted in this very night, as was- You Go, Girl!

On this day, 45 years ago, The Supremes become the first all female group to have a #1 album- Supremes A' Go Go. Young gay boys are forever changed.

Born On This Day- October 22nd... Lord Alfred Douglas

There have been plays, films, reenactments, & books have come about the Oscar Wilde trial, or rather 3 trials of Wilde & his utter destruction, but I had been considering what happened to the other players who swelled the scene in his drama after I did a post on his birthday earlier in the month.

The main character would need to be Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s lover & betrayer. A great deal happened to Douglas & after the spotlight, he made very little of his life. When he was young, Douglas was considered the handsomest young man in England, & his photographs seem to agree. He had a golden classical quality. He came from an important family, prestigious in England for hundreds of years. Yet his father was vindictive, unhinged & rather stupid. Alfred Douglas was petulant, narcissistic, vindictive, & a superb poet.

Wilde referred to Douglas by his childhood name- Bosie. When he was young, Douglas was a strong but undercover activist for the homosexual rights. He ended his life as a fervent & grotesque homophobe. The life of Lord Alfred Douglas is a lesson in self-loathing & hatred. Even today, after all the progress & smart thinking, the most repugnant Republican, religious, righteous homophobes are very often gay.

After Wilde's death, Bosie converted to Catholicism, renounced homosexuality publicly. He married, had a son (who ended up in mental hospital) & continued his hunt for homosexuals that could be tried & jailed.

Douglas is one of the greatest sonnet writers after Shakespeare, although the form was archaic during his lifetime. The new poets on the scene, T.S. Eliot &Yeats were introducing 20th century poetic freedoms. His most noted poem, written during the time that he was Wilde’s boy toy, was a proclamation that homoerotic love was heroic.

'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me.
& cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame
But I am love & I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy & girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

The Wilde & Douglas entanglement occurred when Wilde was 40 & Douglas was 25. The pair had been spotted around London in cafes & theatres holding hands & kissing. Young Douglas would spend money on even younger boys & gambling & expected Wilde to contribute to his tastes. They often argued & broke up, but would also always ended up back together. Douglas's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, was a totally unstable man & a boxing aficionado. The standard boxing rules of the present day are credited to him.

The Marquis was pushed over the edge by reports that his son was being buggered by Wilde. Since libel laws were strict, he could only accuse Wilde of being a sodomite "or pretending to be one." He left a note to Wilde on a tray at his club, making this accusation, spelling sodomite, "somdomite”. Wilde retaliated, suing the man for libel against the advice of his circle, who anticipated that Queensberry's defense would be to prove what he said. The Marquis did just that, providing 4 rent boys to testify against Wilde.

The case was quickly dropped. Then the courts charged Wilde as a sodomite. The very famous Wilde was given a chance to leave the country, but he chose to stay, feeling invulnerable & to look good to Douglas, who left for France when the Wilde trial began & was never implicated. Wilde was sentenced to 2 years hard labor, & left prison a broken man. During the trial, he spoke of the love of one man for another as the highest form of love, not saying that his experiences were sexual. But, the rent boys gave their testimony. During the trial Douglas described Wilde as "the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350". Douglas added that he intensely regretted having met Wilde & having helped him with Wilde’s translation of Salome which he described: "a most pernicious & abominable piece of work".

Wilde died a few years after leaving jail. His brother & his wife had passed away before him. Wilde's time was spent miserably, attempting to get funds from friends & fans. While in jail he had written De Profundis, an attack on Douglas & on homosexuality, which he described not as a high form of love but as an insidious disease.

Douglas became a devout Catholic & ferociously turned against everything he had championed. He hated homosexuals, birth control, Jews, & in particular Robert Ross, Wilde's first & most devoted lover, whose ashes were finally interred next to Wilde's.

Douglas made a hobby of initiating lawsuits for libel, using the courts to reinforce his conventionality & make distance from those he considered sinners. In a case brought by Winston Churchill in 1923, Douglas was found guilty of libeling Churchill & was sentenced to 6 months in prison. In his final years, Douglas was poor & alone. From his writing at the end of his life, he did seem to allow himself to make peace with the memory of Wilde. He said in his book- Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up: “Sometimes a sin is also a crime (for example, a murder or theft) but this is not the case with homosexuality, any more than with adultery.” He died in 1945, at 74 years old.

Try 1997's Wilde with openly gay Stephen Fry as Wilde & Yummy Jude Law as Douglas.

Ghosts Of The Past

As you may have noted, I have been considering ghosts of late. October, with its decay, longer nights, & indirect light seems to invite visitors from the other side & the month ends on the day that the dead walk the earth. I have had more than one encounter with an apparition & I will share the best tales later in the month.

Quite the segue in to musical theatre... when I reflect on ghosts, I am brought to my second favorite musical- Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. Like my favorite musical- Gypsy, Follies has the milieu of theatre & show biz & they both share the conceit of a score with pastiche musical numbers in the style of the era, done as performances for an unseen audience & more emotional "book" songs that move the story forward. They share the tongue tripping, thrilling lyrics of Stephen Sondheim &  each has a score of intense lusciousness. Gypsy & Follies are both propelled by "If I had only..." “what if”, “I should have” & “why not me?”

Follies' themes are the rawness of youth & a life in review when you over 50: dangerous, desperate, decisive despair as an undercurrent to an everyday life, swirled together in the sweet & sour of nostalgia & certain cynicism, add to this a dash the real reek of regret. It's perfect for this season  it has got ghosts, skeletons bursting out of closets & a haunted theatre.

James Goldman's book focuses on a reunion of former showgirls & performers who were featured in various editions of a musical revue not unlike the Ziegfeld Follies, which flourished on Broadway between WW1 & WW2. A party takes place in a dilapidated theatre awaiting the wrecking ball. The theatre is populated with specters of showgirls from the past, oblivious the party.

Follies uses the stories of 2 unhappily married couples: rich & preividged Phyllis & Ben & the middle-class Sally & Buddy as they return to the theater where their unhappy romances began.

Each married the wrong person, or think they did. What's worse, all 4 have never recovered from their youthful dreams of love & romance. The title's double meaning is clear.

Phyillis in Act One of Follies: “Ben & I don't do things anymore, we say things. When we are young, there is no limit to the roles we hope to play. Star, mother, hostess. I wanted to do it all but I learned to choose. & suddenly our selections are chiseled in marble."

Also at the reunion are the younger selves of the characters, ghosts from an era when everything seemed possible. Follies is about the past & present having a pile-up, hopes & dreams colliding with reality. So much for aging gracefully. All 4 principals end the show in a nervous collapse of bitterness & disappointment, but with a slap of self recoginition.

At the end of Follies, Phyllis says to Ben: “Come on, let's go home," But the ghosts stick around just a little longer.

The original Broadway cast album is always been mentioned as problematic, chopping much of the luscious score to little samples & medleys or leaving out numbers entirely, but since it was my first experience with the show, it remains a favorite. I was in a production of Side By Side By Sondheim in the mid-1980s & I was fortunate enough to sing Too Many Mornings from Follies.

Follies is being presented on Broadway this season, in a well reviewed production of The Kennedy Center’s lavish & landmark new staging starring Bernadette Peters as Sally. My heart breaks that I won’t have a chance to see it. A double cast album will be released in November. It will be the first time in a long time that I purchase a CD instead of a download.

Ben:

Too many mornings

Waking & pretending I reach for you,

Thousands of mornings

Dreaming of my girl.

All that time wasted,

Merely passing through,

Time I could have spent

So content

Wasting time with you.

Too many mornings

Wishing that the room might be filled with you.

Morning to morning,

Turning into days.

All the days that I thought would never end,

All the nights with another day to spend.

All those times I'd look up to see

Sally standing at the door

Sally moving to the bed,

Sally resting in my arms

With her head against my head.

SALLY:

If you don't kiss me, Ben, I think I'm going to die.

How I planned

What I'd wear tonight &

When should I get here,

How should I find you,

Where I'd stand,

What I'd say in case you didn't remember.

How I'd remind you...

You remembered.

& my fears were wrong!

Was it ever real?

Did I ever love you this much?

Did we ever feel

So happy then?

BEN:

It was always real

SALLY:

I should have worn green.

& I've always loved you this much.

I wore green the last time.

We can always feel

The time I...

this happy...

was happy...

BOTH:

Too many mornings

Wasted in pretending I reach for you.

How many mornings

Are there still to come?

How much time can we hope that there will be?

Not much time, but it's time enough for me.

If there's time to look up & see

Sally standing at the door,

Sally moving to the bed,

Sally resting in your/my arms,

With your head against my head.

Stephen Sondheim
1970