Born On This Day- May 29th... Rupert James Hector Everett

We were already big fans of his good looks & his talent. The Husband waited on Rupert Everett, in town for the Seattle International Film Festival showing of Another Country, at the then famous gay dining spot- The Ritz Café on Capitol Hill is Seattle. The Husband came home with the sordid tale of Everett’s bad behavior, culminating in his passing out, face first into a plate of food. I somehow loved the actor even more.

At 15 years old, Rupert Everett ran away from boarding school & went to London to become an actor. He starred opposite Kenneth Brannagh in the play Another Country when he was 23. He did the film version, based on the life of the  gay spy Guy Burgess, with Colin Firth when he was 25. He came out when he was 29 & the offers dried up. He gave interesting & deft performances in Pret-a-Porter & The Madness of King George, but when he starred opposite Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, the industry was abuzz with the idea of the “gay best friend” as an asset for a story line. It was unique to have a gay character who is happily partnered, not a victim, not dying, or not a sissy. He carried the film with the charm of Cary Grant.

That charm followed with roles as gay Christopher Marlowe in Shakespeare in Love, An Ideal Husband, Inspector Gadget, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Next Best Thing, The Importance of Being Earnest, & the overlooked- Stage Beauty. He is the voice of Prince Charming in the money making Shrek franchise, disproving his own theory that out actors can’t get work.

Everett has written 2 novels & a memoir, in which he included the fact that for a time he was a rent boy. I very much enjoyed reading Rupert's memoir- Red Carpets & Other Banana Skins.  He names names, something I admire in a memoir. He is honest, hugely funny & deeply wise about human nature, particularly his own. His beautiful face, his lovely manners, all his attractive qualities seemed worth the cash to me.

Rupert Everett has been urging gay stars not to come out & to keep their sexuality a secret as it could end their film career. He came out as gay 25 years ago & admitted that since then, he has been given only supporting roles.

Everett is now suggesting that aspiring actors stay in the closet as it could harm their career: “It's not that advisable to be honest. It's not very easy, &, honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out... The fact is that you could not be, & still cannot be, a 25 year old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work & you're going to hit a brick wall at some point. You're going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure, they'll cut you right off. I'm sick of saying: ‘Yes, it's probably my own fault.’ Because I've always tried to make it work & when it stops working somewhere, I try to make it work somewhere else. But the fact of the matter is, & I don't care who disagrees, it doesn't work if you're gay.”

Everett added that he does believe he is happier than those other major stars who are keeping their sexuality a secret: “I think, all in all, I'm probably much happier than they are. I may not be as rich or successful, but at least I'm vaguely free to be myself.”

John Schlesinger was a great director, responsible for Midnight Cowboy & Sunday, Bloody Sunday, ground breaking gay themed films. But, I think The Next Best Thing is one of the worst movies I have ever had to sit through. Drek, not Shrek. I stayed with it for Mr. Everett.

Everett turns 52 years old today & is looking his age. I would still do him. but then like Everett, I can be very shallow.

Born On This Day- May 29th... English Writer T.H. White

During the 4 decades that I was an actor, I had a tendency to immerse myself in research, of which only the tiniest touch would be timely & valuable. 

in 1969. I was cast as Merlin in the musical- Camelot at my high school. In school & university, I was often cast as older characters because I had the talent to pull it off, & well, I have always looked older than my years. Being cast as the wizard guide of King Arthur sent me on a journey through the books of T.H White’s Arthurian world: The Once & Future King, The Sword & The Stone, The Queen Of Air & Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, Candle In The Wind, & The Book Of Merlin. By the time I played Arthur's bastard son- Mordred, a rare age appropriate role, I was fairly well versed in the legends surrounding, Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere & the Knights Of The Round Table.

T.H. White wrote many books for adults & children, but he is most famous for writing writing The Once & Future King, & a series of novels based on Sir Thomas Malory's 15th Century romantic- Le Mortte D'Arthur reinterpreting the legend of King Arthur. The Broadway musical Camelot & the Disney film The Sword in the Stone are both based on The Once and Future King. Much of our historical knowledge of Arthur is owed to White's work.

White was a closeted homosexual & sorrowful, solitary, & sorry man who turning first to psychotherapy & then alcohol to deal with his perceived problem. He eventually retired to one of the Channel Islands, Julie Andrews & her husband, set designer-Tony Walton were 2 of the few who visited him. Julie Andrews: "I believe Tim to have been an unfulfilled homosexual, & he suffered a lot because of it."

White died at 57 years old, in 1964, from heart failure on a ship in Greece.

J K Rowling has acknowledged the influence of White's work on her Harry Potter novels.

 

Cheever

It is one of my favorite American short stories, dripping with martinis & angst. Written during the era of Mad Men, John Cheever’s The Swimmer begins on a summer day in an upper class neighborhood of suburban NYC. Middle aged Ned appears in the backyard of of his friends & neighbors, who he has not seen in quite some time. Before the neighbors can welcome him, Ned jumps into their swimming pool with much vim & vitality. Ned learns that with the addition of a recent swimming pool in another neighbor's backyard, he can literally swim from swimming pool to swimming pool, to his home which is miles away. He names the route Lucinda's River, after his wife. He makes this journey despite some obstacles along the way. At each swimming pool, Ned stops & chats with his neighbors. Each stop reveals more of Ned's life so far until he reaches his final destination. The story is both realistic & surreal.

Cheever, born on this day in 1912, has been dubbed the "Checkhov of the suburbs". When traveling in the late 1970s, I carried around a paperback volume of The Stories Of John Cheever, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1979.

My Aunt Sharon gave a subscription to The New Yorker for Christmas when I was 11 years old, & improbably, I actually read it cover to cover each week. I still do. Cheever was a frequent contributor to The New Yorker & is considered the very definition of The New Yorker writer.

Cheever's world is marked by the spiritual & emotional emptiness of life. He made note of the manners & morals of the middle-class with an ironic sense of humor that helped balance his bleak view. He died in 1982.  After his death, his discovered letters & journals revealed that he was bisexual. Cheever had long marriage & produced 3 children, but he also had affairs with many men.

His attitude towards his own bisexuality is shown in his writing. His early works are marked by ambivalence & stereotypes, but his later stories give into to recognition & redemption.

There is an especially well done & unlikely 1968 film adaptation of The Swimmer starring Burt Lancaster looking yummy in period swim trunks. The film was directed by Frank Perry, with small roles filled by Kim Hunter, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Janice Rule, Marge Champion & Joan Rivers, with a score by Marvin Hamlisch. Check it out. Make note of a very young Joan Rivers in the trailer. She has to be proud of this credit, I know I would.

Born On This Day- May 26th... Author Alan Hollinghurst

He was born the same year as me- 1954, in England. Alan Hollinghurst grew up with a keen interest in music, literature & architecture. His first ambition was to be a poet, but instead he has written 4 novels: The Swimming Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell, & the Booker Prize winning- The Line Of Beauty (He is the first openly gay person to win the Booker), all highly acclaimed books about life in the 1980s, homosexuality, AIDS & Margaret Thatcher.

I have read The Line Of Beauty, a story of love, class, sex & money in Thatcher’s 1980s London. There is a first class BBC 3 part movie version of The Line Of Beauty that is well worth watching. I really enjoyed The Swimming Pool Library, his1984 debut. It is an elegant, enthralling, erotic novel of gay life before AIDS, about a young aristocrat who lives off his inherited estate & leads a life of promiscuity.

On being labeled a “gay writer” Hollinghurst states: “Well the day after the Booker, that was of course the thing that tabloid headlines picked on- ‘Gay novel wins Booker’. One of them even said, ‘Gay sex wins Booker,’ which I thought, if only it was that easy. But that obviously is a point of interest about this book & about the other books that I've written. It now rather surprises me because I'm so used to the fact that that's where I'm writing from as it were. I think from the start I always wanted to write from a presupposition of the gay position of the narrator. & to take that for granted as most novels... it's taken for granted that they're from the heterosexual position, but having done that to go on to talk about all sorts of other things. So I only chafe at the ‘gay writer’ tag if it's thought to describe everything that's interesting about my books. Because actually the lives of gay people aren't just about being gay, they're about all their other human interests.”

"From the start I've tried to write books which began from a presumption of the gayness of the narrative position. To write about gay life from a gay perspective unapologetically & as naturally as most novels are written from a heterosexual position. When I started writing, that seemed a rather urgent & interesting thing to do. It hadn't really been done."

Hollinghurst turns 57 today. He lives in London with all his awards.

Born On This Day- March 10th... Author & Sexual Outlaw John Rechy

In the crazy 1980s, even after I had achieved a degree of success with a great role in a long running play, & collecting residuals for a national commercial, an international commercial & a national voice-over, I still would not give up my “day job” working in a restaurant. When John Rechy published his first novel, City of Night, in 1963, he was still earning his living as a prostitute on the streets of Los Angeles. I suppose he didn't expect a book that dealt with underground gay life in America to make much money, & it was foolish to give up the day job (or in Rechy's case, the night job), just because you got published. I understand.

Nervously purchased at a used book store in 1968, City Of Night was my first gay book as a reader, & I hid my very worn paperback for years. In 2009 I read his very funny & crazy memoir- About My Life & The Kept Woman. He tells how he was a succesful best-selling writer, & a professor at UCLA. But by night, he was back on the streets, selling sex to men. "I wanted demarcation between the different areas of my life, & I fooled myself that I could keep them separate. I wanted to be treated one way as 'the writer', another way as 'the hustler', & if they crossed over I got very confused." Christopher Isherwood invited Rechy home to talk about writing, & then pounced, & so did Liberace & George Cukor. He remained confused.

Rechy kept writing in the 1970s,1980s & 1990s, detailing the ups & mostly downs of his compulsive sex life in Numbers, Rushes, & The Sexual Outlaw. I read them all. Rechy survived his time on the streets, survived drug problems in the 1970s, survived the epidemic that killed many of his friends in the 1980s & 1990s, & wrote 15 books. Gore Vidal: "Rechy isone of the few original American writers of the last century".

Rechy & his partner of 32 years are living happily ever after in the Hollywood Hills. Rechy:"I never believed that this could happen to me. Back in the 1970s, when I was having a bad time with drugs & cruising, my friends all thought I'd end up committing suicide, & I thought they were right. But things changed, & that's all due to Michael."

Rechy didn't mend his ways overnight: "The last time I hustled was when I was 55 years old. It was more of a symbolic act than anything, just to prove to myself that I could still do it. I actually gave the guy his money back, much to his astonishment. I didn't put that story in the book. There's a limit to how far you can stretch people's belief."

Born On This Day- February 22nd... Writer Christopher Bram

Christopher Bram was born on this day in 1952. He grew up in Virginia. After graduating from the College of William & Mary in 1974 , & then moved to NYC, where he met his lifelong partner, documentary filmmaker Draper Shreeve.

Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein, a fictional account of the last days of film director James Whale, was made into one of my Top 10 films of all time- Gods & Monsters starring Ian McKellen & Brendan Fraser. Openly gay- Bill Condon adapted the screenplay & directed. Condon won an Oscar for his adaptation.

In 2010, his book of essays- Mapping the Territory was one of my favorites of the year. Most of the essays deal with gay issues: gay books that changed his life, how his novel Father of Frankenstein became the movie Gods & Monsters, & whether or not Henry James was gay. One essay is provocatively titled, “Can Straight Men Still Write?”

The pieces are wise, warm, witty, & well-written. Bram is a terrifically clear writer, which is why I like him so much. The book is a fascinating snapshot of issues large & small that have affected our gay lives over the past 4 decades. His ramblings about his own life were my favorites, of course & but I was drawn into his takes on Henry James, adolescent problems of sexuality, the effect of AIDS on literature, & gossip novels. They are all rich in anecdotes, amusements, & attitude.

Much of the Mapping The Territory is memoir: Slow Learners, the longest piece, charts Bram's high school, college, & grad school days & how they shaped his preference for friends & lovers. It is a tender tale, with priceless, playful parts as the author is figuring out life as a young man. Bram also offers a rich essay on the books that influenced his own writing, & he shares his views of life in Greenwich Village, revisits Larry Kramer's notorious novel Faggots, & takes on Oscar Wilde with clever, concrete criticism.


Woven throughout this endlessly entertaining book is Bram's elegant use of language, & he still seems like someone I would like to have a cocktail with!

The Balad Of A Sad Life

"Carson's major theme; the huge importance and nearly insoluble problems of human love."  Tennessee Williams.


Today marks the 94th birthday of Carson McCullers. She was able to camouflaged her love for other women in her fiction, but gay & themes are present in her work. The loneliness that her characters face is even more potent due to her own sexual confusion & alienation. She was married twice to the same gay man & she was frequently falling in love repeatedly with both women & men.

McCullers wrestled with bisexuality throughout her personal & literary life. Her deepest attachments were to her husband Reeves McCullers, & openly gay composer- David Diamond, who was in love with her husband. Her love interests required that McCullers deal with complicated & ultimately destructive triangles. She created fictional worlds peopled with characters engaged in 3way relationships. In her novels, Mick in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Frankie from The Member of the Wedding, Miss Amelia in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe & Weldon Penderton from Reflections in a Golden Eye also reflect the author's sexual conundrums & inability to fit into the social structures of the South.

In 1935, McCullers met a handsome soldier & aspiring writer- Reeves McCullers. There was no question for either of them that they were meant to be together, & a tumultuous love affair began. Reeves really knew how to win a girl’s heart, he brought McCullers beer & cigarettes instead of flowers. They married in 1937. The happy couple spent every moment together drinking heavily, they would each go through a bottle of cognac every day. Reeves had army duties, but was home much of the time, yet wrote nothing. Sick or not, she wrote all the time.

Reeves’s family was shocked that he "allowed" her to wear men’s slacks, loose fitting shirts, blazers & loafers. But Reeves loved her that way.

At 23, her first book was published to great acclaim- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. That first novel is only slightly more legendary than her tumultuous life. She was an artist who lived hard, died young, & left an amazing legacy.She was propelled instantly to celebrity status & notoriety for the story about racism in the South.

A year later, her next novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye was published. But, the pair was drinking & arguing so much that Carson filed for divorce. She was often ill, losing some of her vision to stabbing head pains. She was partially paralyzed for the rest of her life. She had pneumonia, pleurisy, & strep throat. At times she could barely type, but kept writing anyways.

McCullers landed a major fellowship grant & began work The Member of the Wedding, but in 1944 Carson had a nervous breakdown, lung problems, & a major case of the flu. Though she had divorced Reeves, they were never really apart. They married again in 1945. He wanted to take care of her.

The story then repeats itself: Carson suffers illness & strokes that leave her crippled & paralyzed. She writes, but Reeves never starts writing. They entertain in their home. They drink. Reeves quits drinking, then starts again. They both have homosexual liaisons.

After she finally left Reeves, McCullers moved to New York to live with the very gay George Davis, the editor of Harper's Bazaar. In Brooklyn, she became a member of the art commune February House. Among the residents were W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Gypsy Rose Lee, & Paul & Jane Bowles. After World War II, McCullers lived mostly in Paris. Her close friends during these years included Truman Capote & Tennessee Williams. She died in Nyack, New York, on September 29, 1967, after a brain hemorrhage. She was 50 years old. McCullers dictated her unfinished autobiography- Illumination & Night Glare, during her final months.

After her death, a collection of essays, poems & stories was released, appropriately titled, The Mortgaged Heart.

I Will Take Dowdy British Authors Of The 20th Century, Born On January 25th for $1000, Alex

"At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, & talk well but not too wisely."

Although W. Somerset Maugham rarely spoke publicly about his sexuality, he has been embraced as one of the most renowned gay authors of all time. Maugham: "I was a 1/4 normal & 3/4 queer, but I tried to persuade myself it was the other way round. That was my greatest mistake."


Maintaining the habit of writing for several hours each morning, Maugham produced 30 plays, 24 novels, & more than 100 magazine articles. With his cynical wit & straightforward style, he was more popular among masses than the literary set, & he always felt like an outsider to the establishment. Although Maugham's highly acclaimed works – including Of Human Bondage (1915), The Constant Wife (1927), & The Razor's Edge (1944) made him the most famous & wealthiest author of his day, he never received the honor of knighthood.


There are over 50 film & TV adaptations of Maugham's work, even into the new century with The Painted Veil (2006), Being Julia (2004), Up at the Villa (2000). Try 1934's Of Human Bondage with Bette Davis & Rain (1932) with Joan Crawford.

____________________________

The moment I put down Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, I picked up Mrs. Dalloway to follow the connection, It was the 1st time in decades that I had read any Virginia Woolf, but in my early 20s, I went on a serious Bloomsbury Group jag, reading everything by & about this remarkable group.

The Bloomsbury Group has gone down in history for the many contributions its members made to literature & art. The group's intellectual core was Virginia Stephen, who became Virginia Woolf when she married in 1912. Today she is recognized as one of the great modernist novelists. She & her husband, Leonard, founded Hogarth Press, a publishing house that brought some of the most significant literature of the era into print including T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland.

The group was also interesting because they demonstrated a sexual freedom that was very ahead of their time. Beginning in 1925, Virginia Woolf had a passionate affair with the dashing Vita Sackville-West. In the first flush of romance, Woolf wrote what has become a classic of gay fiction, the experimental fantasy Orlando (1927), which argued that love & passion ignore gender, & that gender itself is fluid.

Others in the Bloomsbury group gravitated to new ways of looking at love. Although Vanessa Stephen married Clive Bell, the great love of her life was Duncan Grant, who was gay & had been sexually involved with her brother Adrian. During World War I, they lived together at a country estate with David "Bunny" Garnett, who was a lover of both.

3 way relationships with a gay twist were common within the Bloomsbury circle. Strachey was gay, but in the early days of Bloomsbury, he proposed marriage to Virginia. In the 1920s, he lived in platonically with painter Dora Carrington. When they both fell in love with the same man, Carrington married the object of their mutual desire, & the 3 set up housekeeping together. The cross dressing Carrington had affairs with women, confiding to a friend that she had "more ecstasy" with female lovers than with men - "& with no shame."

Virginia Woolf was the center, the gravity & the soul of the group, which unraveled after she drowned herself in the spring of 1941.

"I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it."

More Dead Gay People... Born On This Day- December 6th... Osbert Sitwell

I am a decidedly anti-classist, with a lifelong concern for the rights of the poor, downtrodden & the marginalized: racial minorities, women, & LGBT people .I possess an overwhelming alarm at the Republicans’ championing of the very rich at the expense of the middle class & the unemployed. I despised the Reagans, except for Ron Jr., who I once showered with at the gym, & that Reagan is very, very gifted. Why then am I attracted to reading about & seeing movies about the British Upper-Class during the Victorian, Edwardian & 20th century?


The 3 Sitwell siblings: Edith, born in 1887, Osbert, 5 years younger, & Sacheverell, 5 years younger than Osbert, were among the first examples of our new century’s phenomenon, the person who is famous for being famous.

Osbert on the right with his siblings

England between the wars was an epoch of a literary golden age. Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Powell, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Nancy Mitford, all knew one another, corresponded, commented on one another’s work, characters, & sex lives. Osbert Sitwell was a minor player in this circle, but he was one of the most colorful figures: pompous, bitchy, exhibitionistic, & possessing a scathing wit.

Osbert, elder sister Edith & younger brother Sacheverell were wealthy, witty, well connected. British of a certain class, they were a deeply eccentric tight knit trio with artistic force to be reckoned. In the 21st century, only Edith’s work has kept the Sitwell a name of literary significance. But during their era Osbert was considered one of the best stylists in the English language, & brother Sacheverell was esteemed as a writer on architecture & gardens.


Like many men of his class who come late into their sexuality, Osbert settled on a younger & prettier man as his partner.

The person Osbert chose as his companion was David Horner, a tall, beautiful young man of younger than himself, a member of the ancient Horner family. Horner had no money of his own, but had recently been left a fortune by an older admirer. He saved the cash & lived off Osbert until the end of their time together, 40 later. Osbert must have thought he was getting a good gig for money & did not begrudge supporting the partner he loved. Sitwell: “Horner is a big gay butterfly, fluttering around & drawing honey from all the flowers.”

Horner was a compulsive troublemaker who purposely did a great deal of damage to Osbert’s relations with his siblings & his friends. The relationship seems to be made up of equal parts affection & financial interest, although though Horner had money of his own. They were together for decades until a last, bitter estrangement that was greeted with joy by sister Edith, who gave Horner the moniker “poor little David Copperfield” & spent years plotting against him.


Osbert died in 1969. His career had been a triumph of willpower over the limitations of his talent. As a writer, he was never added up to much, but I think there might be a movie in the story of his circle, with Stephen Fry as Osgood & Julian Sands as Horner.