| NOTE: Some postings may have been deleted at the discretion of Ben
Boxer. Erotic pictures posted on the regular version of the list are automatically
deleted from the digest and are archived separately. Viewing them requires
a password available only to members. Profiles posted to the list are
also moved into a separate viewing area, but do not require a password.
Click here to browse through
them.
Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-The Flamboyant
---------------------------------------------------------------------- We live a month of May in Nouakchott, that we deserve it! The temperature is extraordinary and in the afternoons is necessary to get a corduroy shirt or a Saharan. The flamboyant has flourished and there they were sowed, is appearing its passion overflowed by the red of its flowers, like a candle similar to a vault of rubies, with tiny emeralds in an intense green. And to be able to express you the state of spirit that produces me this wonderful sensation, I transcribe you a beautiful story that I have just received. "Two men, both very sick ones, occupied the same room of a hospital. One of them was allowed to sit down in their bed every afternoon, during one hour, to help the fluids of their lungs dreaning. His bed gave to the only room's window. The other partner should be face up all time. Both talked during hours. They spoke of their families, their homes, their works, their stay in the military service and from where they had been on vacation. And every afternoon, when the man of the bed next to the window could sit down, the time passed describing to his neighbour every things that he could see after the glasses and his friend began to want that those hours in that its world got wider arrived to charge the life with all the activities and colours of the external world. The window gave to a park with a beautiful lake. Ducks and swans played in the water, while the children made it with their comets. The youths in love went for a walk of the hand, among flowers of all the colours of the rainbow. Big trees adorned the landscape, and one could see in the distance a beautiful view of the city. The man before the window described all this with exquisite detail and the partner closed the eyes and imagined the idyllic scene. A hot afternoon, he described a parade that it was happening. Although the other one could not hear to the band, but he could see it, with the eyes of their mind, exactly like it was described with magic words. Days and weeks passed. One morning, the nurse entered in the room, being the body without life, in the man's who looked by the window, which had died placidly while sleeping. She filled with weighing and calls to the assistants of the hospital, to be taken the body. As soon as it considered it appropriate, the other patient requested to be transferred to the bed beside the window. The nurse changed him charmed and, after making sure that he was comfortable, she left the room. Slowly, and with difficulty, the sick person rose on the elbow, to throw his first look to the external world; he would finally have the happiness of seeing it the same one. He made an effort to be rotated slowly and to look from the bed... and he met a white wall. And he asked to the nurse what could have motivated their dead partner to describe things so wonderful through the window. She responded him that the man was blind and perhaps he would not have been able to see neither the wall, and it indicated him": Maybe, alone he wanted to encourage you"!.
Epilogue: The shared pain is half of the pain, but the happiness, when
it is synchronised, it is double. I've never heard anything about the Japanese conductors nor Metropoulis, but I'm sure Michael Tilson Thomas is gay. Also, there was Thomas Schippers, who was Bernstein's protigi. There was an unconfirmed story many years ago that one of the two (Bernstein, I think) discovered Robert Goulet and kept him as a boytoy, and the other (Schippers) stole him away. I'm not exactly sure which was which. Goulet is not gay, I don't believe, but I think he was interested in furthering his career. Nobody seems to know much about Maurice Ravel's sexuality. There's no record of him having an affair with anyone, male or female. In addition, there is a young, contemporary American composer by the name of Lowell Lieberman, who is openly gay. Also in the classical field, I don't believe anyone has mentioned the pianist Van Cliburn, who won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (I forget which year). Also, Vladimir Horowitz was most certainly gay (he used to attend George Cukor's gay bashes on a fairly regular basis -- I've seen pictures), as was Wanda Landowska, the famous harpsichordist. In regard to composers, I've heard stories about Norman Dello Joio (who wrote the music for the "Victory at Sea" series), but I don't know for sure. And of course there was Lorenz Hart, the lyricist-half of Rodgers and Hart. Someone has already mentioned Cole Porter. Here's another small list for your consideration: Dan Dailey, Kevin Spacey, Arthur Gelien (Tab Hunter), Michelangelo Signorile (AIDS activist), Jodie Foster, David Geffen, Barry Diller, Gerry Studds (Congressman), Charles Laughton, George Nader (remember him?), Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power (bi), Michael Jackson, George Maharis, George Michael, Christian Laettner (oh, yes he is!), Vincent Price, Clifton Webb, Mart Crowley (author of "Boys in the Band"), William Inge (I studied playwriting with him), Nicholas Ray, Sal Mineo, John van Druten (wrote "I Am a Camera"), Somerset Maugham, Ian McKellen, Clive Barker (writer/director), Jack Larson ("Jimmie Olsen" on the old Superman TV series), Richard Chamberlain, Laurence Olivier, Danny Kaye, Jason Gould (son of Elliott Gould & Barbra Streisand), Chastity Bono (daughter of Sonny & Cher), Calvin Klein, Whittaker Chambers, Joseph McCarthy, Merv Griffin, Anthony Perkins, Laurence Harvey, Jim Nabors, Roddy McDowall, Nathan Lane, Michael Feinstein, Harvey Fierstein, Randolph Scott, Claude Rains, Farley Granger, Dirk Bogarde, Rupert Everett, Jann Wenner (publisher of "Rolling Stone Magazine"), Graham Chapman, Brad Davis, Gregory Harrison, Dom DeLuise, Dan Butler, John Mahoney, Dick Sargent, Billy DeWolfe. Further reference: "Celluloid Closet," by Vito Russo (ISBN 0-06-096132-5); "Open Secret," by David Ehrenstein (ISBN 0-688-17585-6).
Ethan in LA We have talked on the list about some of the people on our growing list of notables. Some are in other digests, but one is chockablock with them. In Digest 178 (March 2001), you can find mention of several in the postings under "First Gay Mayor in Paris": Bertrand Delaroe (the Mayor), King Louis XIII of France and his Cardinal Richelieu, Louis' second son Philippe (brother of Louis XIV the "Sun King" (who was str8), the Duke of Buckingham and his lover King James I of England, film genius Jean Cocteau and his lover, actor Jean Marais and an earlier lover, poet Raymond Radiguet (with a Cocteau sketch of him), Sergei Diaghilev and his lover, the great dancer Nijinsky (another Cocteau sketch). In the same series of items is mentioned the Parisian avant-garde nightclub "Le Boeuf sur le Toit" where I once saw a perfomance by the beautiful transgendered (male-to-female) singer known as "Capucine" who later became an international movie star of the same name. Capucine starred with gay British star Dirk Bogarde in "Song Without End," the romantic story of Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt. Bogarde starred in several films with a gay theme, among them "Victim," and for gay Italian producer/director Luchino Visconti in "The Damned" which was a film dealing with the Night of the Long Knives, the Nazi massacre of the multitude of gay German officers and enlisted men in the ranks of the S.A. (Storm Troops, "Sturmabteilung") who served under Chief-of-Staff Ernst Roehm, a gay chub who had been close to Hitler for many years and was rumored to have been the Nazi leader's lover at one time. Another of Visconti's gay films starred Bogarde, "Death in Venice." Hmmm. I see that I have added some more to our notables list in the above posting: Jean Marais, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, Duke of Buckingham. King James I and VI, Ramond Radiguet, Luchino Visconti, Dirk Bogarde, Capucine, Ernst Rvhm, and rumored-to-be-gay Adolf Hitler (usually spoken of as asexual, but rumors persist that he slept with Rvhm when they were young. One of the many theories surrounding the mysterious death of Hitler's pretty teenage niece Geli Raubal at 18 in 1931, who kept house for him a year before he ascended to power as Chancellor, was that Geli had caught her uncle in bed with a young man and Hitler himself shot her and called it suicide. Others say that his henchmen did it. Hitler and his entire family were Roman Catholics, so Geli was buried in "sanctified" ground, indicating that the Church did not consider it a suicide. The family priest told someone seven years later that it was not a suicide and further implied that there were factors that could never be told, so who knows?
May I contribute this name of Andrew Tobias, author of "The Best Little Boy in the World" and its sequel as well as a host of personal finance books including the early computer program "Manage Your Money." He has his own financial advice web page and is active in gay politics. And he is soooo cute. And of course a "personality" that should be a charter member of this group, Mr. Waylon Smithers --- even if Mr. Burns isn't.
NYCPaul Let's not forget the composer of some of the Gay community's fave musicals, Jerry Herman, (Mame, Hello Dolly), Karaoke singer's fave, Johnnie Mathis and actors Raymond Burr and Karl Malden. This list will soon fill volumes!
Bob Encarta offers this bio on Roehm: Roehm, Ernst (1887-1934), German Nazi leader who commanded the Sturmabteilung (SA, or storm troopers) the military arm of the Nazi party. He was born in Ingolstadt, Bavaria and was an early associate of Adolf Hitler. Roehm was a major in the German army and Hitler used him to recruit soldiers to the Nazi party. In 1923 Hitler tried to use the SA to break up the May Day parade in Bavaria and prevent the trade unions from marching. When the regular army defeated the SA, Roehm was forced to resign his position in the German army. Roehm resigned from the SA the same year because Hitler refused to make the SA independent of the Nazi party, and Roehm spent several years in Bolivia. At Hitler's request he returned home in 1931 and was again put in charge of the SA.
End of Encarta bio. (Even the encyclopaedia do not agree on many things, so there is room for argument on almost every point about a man's life and death, his motivations, etc. The editor-in-chief of a newspaper for which I once worked---a newspaper studied in journalism classes as a world-class standard for content and style---insisted that most "conclusions" were drawn from a series of "assumptions" and could, therefore, be tested as conclusive only by history, and not even always then for "history" too often reflected the bias of the historian(s). It sounds reasonable that Roehm could have quarreled with Hitler in 1925 over separating the S.A. (aka the Brownshirts) from the Nazi Party. Knowing the Nazi attitude toward gays as evidenced by the later infamous Paragraph 175 (the Nazi law that criminalized homosexuality), it would be foolish to assume that there was not a lot of flak on account of the "gay" S.A. It is self-evident that Roehm---to whom Hitler owed much as it is indisputable that as an Army officer in 1919 Roehm was extremely helpful in launching Hitler's career---would have been sufficiently pissed to desert Hitler at that time. Although in the previous posting I said that Roehm joined the army in Bavaria, another reference tells me that he became an officer in the BOLIVIAN army between 1925 and 1930 when Hitler recalled him. There were many Germans who went to Bolivia during the 20th century, and it also became a haven for German Jews before and after World War II. In San Francisco, I knew several German Jewish familes who later emigated to the USA from Bolivia.
------------------------------ Ivor Novello was born 15 January 1893 in Cardiff, Wales; died 6 March 1951 in London. British actor, playwright, composer, and songwriter. His original name was David Ivor Davies. With a fine soprano voice he won a scholarship to Magdalen Choir School, Oxford, where he was a chorister. While at school he began to write songs under the name Ivor Novello and some were published and became popular. He came to be known as the "Welsh Prodigy." In London, he lived in a flat at 11 Aldwych, above the Strand Theatre, from 1913 until his death in 1951. In 1914 he wrote the song "Keep the Home Fires Burning" which became the most popular song among British soldiers. Winston Churchil declared it to be the best song written in WW I. It made him famous and started him on the road to riches. This led to him being asked to write the music for several West End productions.
In 1924 he wrote his first play, starred in it, and then again in the film that followed. In 1935 he wrote and starred in the musical play "Glamorous Night" for Drury Lane. This was the first of a series of musical plays which filled the Drury Lane theatre for a number of years. People loved his music, and and some of his plays became staples of the amateur circuit in the worldwide British colonial scene. I was involved in a production of "The Dancing Years" with a group of English friends in Trinidad in 1957. I was the only one who had to learn the music and lines and then to rehearse the stage business. All the English people knew the score, the lines, and the stage business by heart, having grown up with Ivor Novello's works in England. The flat in Aldwych attracted many people from the theatre and literature including J. R. Ackerley, Nokl Coward, Jack Buchanan, Gertrude Lawrence, Edward Marsh, Somerset Maugham, Paul Robeson, and Siegfried Sassoon. Novello bought a house in Jamaica where he and Bobby Andrews went on holidays together. Nokl Coward had a house nearby. Andrews was with Novello when he collapsed in his flat in the early hours of the morning on 6 March 1951 and died of a coronary thrombosis. Thousands lined the streets to the funeral at Golders Green Crematorium, and the service was broadcast live. In summary, Welshman Ivor Novello was a major figure in the British theatre. He began life as a composer, and wrote many songs for revues and operettas. The great American filmmaker D. W. Griffith spotted him in a London restaurant and went gaga over him and vowed to star him in some of his films, thus making Novello a leading star in silent films. He was known as "the handsomest man in England" and was often seen in the company of Gladys Cooper, a pal, who was known as "the most beautiful woman in England." They must have had a few giggles over the stares from the hoi polloi who, of course, thought they were lovers. He then turned to the theatre and won more acclaim as a stage actor. A fourth career opened when he started writing musical plays that consolidated his already considerable West End reputation. It finally sunk into the public, however, that Novello was as gay as the proverbial kite and had a long-time lover, but also played the field outside his "open" relationship. A journalist named Carl Miller wrote an article in 1999 called "Darling of Drury Lane":
"Fifty years ago, the reigning King
and Queen of the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane were both Ivor Novello. As composer,
actor, playwright and star, he dominated the
West End from the Twenties to the start of
the Fifties - at one point three Novello plays
ran simultaneously. He created a confection
of spectacle and sentiment which revived
the fortunes of the theatres reeling from
competition by the talkies. Yet love turned
to fury if the beloved stepped out of line.
Hatred erupted at the first night of Nokl
Coward's moderately louche (of
questionable taste or morality) 'Sirocco,' in
which Novello played lead. Derision greeted
a silent seduction scene, with sucking noises
from the gallery whenever Novello kissed
leading lady Francis Doble. Cat-calls
punctuated the dialogue, culminating when
Novello's character dramatically declared 'I
go to my mother,' and one of the gallery
loudly suggested what he could do to her
when he got there. After his death, one
Sunday paper slyly blamed that evening for
the fact that Ivor never married: 'If there
was any hope that Novello would win
through [his] mother complex to normal
manhood, that nightmare experience must
have killed it'. As the innuendo suggests,
Novello's world was a gay one in both
senses. As well as delighting thousands of
women on stage, he gave pleasure to a
number of gentlemen off it. As well as
artistic collaboration such as his long-term
partner actor Bobbie Andrews and lyricist
Christopher Hassall, Novello welcomed
literary figures Siegfried Sassoon and JR
Ackerley into his backstage accommodation.
Somerset Maugham claimed that Winston
Churchill had slept with Novello to find out
'what it would be like with a man.' Legend
records Winnie's verdict on the effects of
the experiment as 'musical.'"
Dear Ben.
Gilberto. End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #255
|
