Gay Influence

The American painter, poet, and essayist known as Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was born Edmund Hartley in Lewiston, Maine. After studying at the Cleveland School of Art, he won a scholarship to further his education in New York City, where he became one of the first American artists to paint in the modernist style of Picasso, Paul Klee and Kandinsky. He launched his public career as an artist under the name Marsden Hartley (Marsden was his step-mother's maiden name). Through modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz (noted photographer and husband of Georgia O’Keeffe), Hartley was given his first one-person show at Stieglitz’s noted 291 gallery, and Hartley gained immediate entrée into New York's avant-garde world.

Hartley went to Paris in 1912 and was welcomed into the influential artistic sphere of Gertrude Stein. While in Paris he was introduced to the abstract art of Franz Marc and Vassily Kandinsky. A year later Hartley settled in Berlin, where he fell in love with a German lieutenant, Karl von Freyburg. Tragically, his lover was killed in battle on October 7, 1914. Grief stricken, Hartley created some of his finest paintings to memorialize their relationship.

Portrait of a German Officer (1915):

He returned to New York in 1915, and by the fall of 1916 Hartley was sharing a house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with Charles Demuth, another modernist artist. Demuth was one of the earliest American artists to reveal a gay identity through explicit yet positive depictions of homosexual desire. Demuth was also well acquainted with the gay scene of New York, where Hartley became friends with lesbian writer Djuna Barnes.

Hartley returned to Europe in 1921 and pursued his literary bent. He soon published Twenty-Five Poems, a book issued by Robert McAlmon's Contact Publishing Company in Paris. The Great Depression forced Hartley to return to the United States, but a Guggenheim fellowship allowed him to spend 1932 in Mexico, where he became a close friend of Hart Crane, who was also in Mexico on a Guggenheim fellowship. On his return voyage to the U.S., Crane was severely beaten after making sexual advances to a male crew member. Crane subsequently jumped overboard off the coast of Florida, and when Hartley learned of his suicide, he painted Eight Bells Folly (1933, below), a surrealist tribute to Crane.

During the middle years of the Depression Hartley supported himself in New York by participating in the Public Works of Art Project. He struck up a friendship with the Francis Mason family in Nova Scotia, and he was to live with them in a Canadian fishing community for several intervals during the rest of his life. Hartley returned to Maine in 1937, after declaring that he wanted to become "the painter of Maine" and depict American life at a local level. This aligned Hartley with the Regionalism movement, a group of artists who attempted to represent a distinctly American art.

Madawaska, Acadian Light-Heavy, Third Arrangement, 1940

He continued to paint in Maine, primarily scenes around Lovell and the Corea coast, until his death in Ellsworth in 1943.

Hartley's work belongs to an American current of expressionism in which he was a pivotal figure. During his lifetime, however, his shifts of style and the relative immaturity of the American art world prevented his receiving full recognition. This neglect augmented a loneliness that his shyness about his homosexuality induced. However, a full-scale 1980 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York cemented his reputation.

The portrait below captures artist Marsden Hartley mourning the death of another man whom Hartley admired. A shadowy man haunting the background of this 1942 photographic portrait taken by photographer George Platt Lynes alludes to the loves of Hartley’s life that were lost and unspoken.

Sources:

Wayne Dynes: Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (1990)

Wikipedia

In a TMZ video interview released on August 15, 2013, WWE wrestler Darren Young (b. 1983) publicly discussed his homosexuality. Thus Young became the first WWE star wrestler ever to come out while still signed to a major promotion. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) wrestlers Pat Patterson, Chris Kanyon & Orlando Jordan had come out as gay or bisexual after leaving the company or retiring. Darren Young (real name Fredrick Douglas Rosser III) has been in a relationship with his partner Nick Villa for more than two years. The couple resides in Miami.

Nick Villa (left) with “Fred” Rosser, aka Darren Young:

Photo by Jeffery Salter

Later that day WWE released a statement in support of Rosser for being open about his sexuality, and various fellow wrestlers tweeted their support for him. Young also discussed having to overcome his childhood stuttering issues. To the wrestler’s astonishment and relief, he was greeted with open arms by not only the organization's management and fans, but also by his colleagues in the ring.

"They all embraced me, and that was just shocking to me. I truly love them," said Rosser. "It was such a relief. I'm not hiding anymore, and I'm living the dream."

Fred and his partner Nick later appeared as talk show guests on Ellen:

Born in Indianapolis as Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck, Clifton Webb (1889-1966) was an unlikely movie star. He began his career as a professional ballroom dancer at age nineteen, and by 1924 he was appearing on Broadway, eventually working his way into a few roles in silent films. During the 1930s Webb was under contract to MGM, but was little used. He continued to work mostly as a stage actor, notably in operettas, musical reviews and Noel Coward’s comedies Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter.

It was not until he was fifty-five years old that he had a chance at movie stardom. Webb found himself cast by Otto Preminger as columnist Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944), over the objections of Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox. The film was a huge success, and Webb received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. A scant two years later he received his second Oscar nomination for his role in The Razor’s Edge (1946).

According to Scotty Bowers (Full Service, 2012), Webb was “obsessively proper, correct and well-mannered...polite to the point of being irritating.” Webb lived with his overbearing mother Mabelle his entire life. “Even though she knew he was gay, she would never discuss the fact with anyone. He took his mother everywhere: to movie sets, dinner parties, and even on vacation. They were inseparable.” Bowers writes that “Cliff was so outlandishly camp that he advertised his sexuality to all and sundry merely by walking into a room.” When asked if he were gay by director Jean Negulesco in 1952, Webb drew himself to full height and replied, “Devout, my boy, devout.”

Webb played the cantankerous and snide babysitter Lynn Belvedere in the huge hit comedy film Sitting Pretty (1948), for which he received yet another Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actor. He appeared in two sequels as Mr. Belvedere, a role that was not far off from his personal life.

According to Jerry Frebowitz, “Clifton’s public social life...was legendary, as the star and his omnipresent mother Mabelle threw lavish Hollywood parties. He was inseparable from Mabelle, who called her son “Little Webb” his entire life. He lived with his mother until she died at age ninety-one in 1960. When she passed, Webb withdrew into relative seclusion, causing his good friend, noted playwright Noel Coward, to remark, as only he could, ‘It must be difficult to be orphaned at seventy.’ ” Clifton was not able to recover from his mother’s death, and when he died six years later, he was buried next to her in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. Their graves remain a popular tourist destination in star-obsessed Hollywood.

Clifton Webb (in tub) with Dana Andrews in Laura (1944):

Webb appeared in twenty films after his success in Laura. His only film role after his mother’s death was Satan Never Sleeps (1962), in which he played Father Bovard, a self-sacrificing priest. Webb continued to mourn the loss of his mother until his own death from a heart attack in 1966.

Sources:

Jerry Frebowitz at moviefanfare.com

Scotty Bowers – Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood (2012)

French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was the first French monarch in a thousand years to bear the title of emperor. So much has been written about his influence on history that I will not attempt a summary. However, I will bring up Napoleon’s being compared to Adolf Hitler by historians Pieter Geyl and Claude Ribbe and the response by David G. Chandler, a historian of Napoleonic warfare: "Nothing could be more degrading to the former [Napoleon] and more flattering to the latter [Hitler].”

An 1805 portrait of Napoleon by Andrea Appiani:

In Frank Richardson’s Napoleon: Bisexual Emperor (1973), the author, a British medical doctor,
points out that Napoleon always surrounded himself with inordinately handsome young men, most of whom were given extraordinary military promotions.

Evangeline Bruce, whose biography is titled Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage (1995), refers to a note written by the emperor during his exile on St. Helena, an island a thousand miles off the shore of Africa. Bruce relates that Napoleon confided that whenever he met a handsome man, his admiration was felt “first in the loins and then another place I will leave unnamed.” Bruce’s volume also explores the gradual reversal of roles in the marriage between Napoleon and Josephine.

Keith Stern (Queers in History, 2009) mentions that Napoleon was particularly inclined toward same-sex love with his fellow soldiers, and that many of his aides were notoriously effeminate. General Duroc, who served as Grand Marshal of the palace, was widely rumored to be the emperor’s lover. As well, Gaspard Gourgard, one of Napoleon’s aides/lovers, jealously guarded access to his master.

The work of these researchers gives new meaning to the phrase, “Not tonight, Josephine.”

Note: For those of us who live in the U.S., we should recall Napoleon’s fire sale known as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, in which President Thomas Jefferson accepted Napoleon’s offer to sell over 800,000 acres of land for 60 million Francs (11.2 million dollars). This equated to less than three cents an acre – quite a sweet deal for the United States.

When the artist known as Rex began working in New York City in the mid 1960s, his erotic pointillist style drawings gained immediate notoriety. At the time, photographic erotica was still illegal, but drawings and stories were protected by U.S. Supreme Court Free Speech rulings. His art was showcased in various gay magazines, such as Drummer, Straight to Hell, Honcho and The Advocate, and for a brief time his work illustrated S&M and leather-themed paperback erotic novels.

In addition to his hardcore illustrations, Rex produced poster art for gay venues in NYC and San Francisco. A famous series of iconic posters, calendars and T-shirt designs were commissioned by the legendary New York sex club, The Mineshaft. However, it was his depraved, hardcore fetish drawings in a series of self-published portfolios circulated underground that cemented his reputation as a leading artist of homoerotica. Rex was to illustration what Mapplethorpe was to photography.

A numbered limited edition hard cover portfolio of his drawings was published in Paris in 1986, and Rex Verboten, a retrospective hardcover volume on his work, was distributed by the German publishing house Bruno Gmünder.

As a creator of sexually perverse and psychologically disturbing imagery, his subject matter fell victim to the political correctness and self-censorship that intimidated gay media during the Reagan era. For this reason, Rex relocated to Europe, where he continues to live and work.

Among his contemporaries, Rex’s work stands out for its challenging content. His art continues to be confrontational and controversial as he dares to produce images of marginal and perverse sexual urges that many of his viewers may not ever want to admit to but nevertheless find savagely erotic.

Because this blog does not contain adult content, it was difficult to find examples to illustrate this post. Enter "Rexwerk" into a search engine, however, and mind-blowing examples of his art will sear into your mind. Amazing, singular stuff.

French lawyer, playwright, poet, courtier of Cardinal Richelieu and audacious, irreligious cleric, Boisrobert (1592-1662) was a founding member of the French Academy (Académie française). While Richelieu is given credit for establishing the French Academy, it was in fact Boisrobert who suggested to Richelieu the plan of that august institution whose forty governing members are referred to as “the immortals”. Boisrobert was one of its earliest and most active members.

He was also never far from scandal, and his blatant homosexual proclivities resulted in his being banished from courts and high society time and again, but never for long. His wit, humor and gifts as a raconteur made him a favorite of both Cardinal Richelieu and Pope Urban VIII.

Although not high born, he became quite wealthy and gained access to the court of King Louis XIII, easily insinuating himself into the circles of noble women, whom he flattered and entertained. His sexual dalliances with the handsome male pages and servants of those in high places earned him the moniker “the Mayor of Sodom.” A contemporary remarked that, “He could have given the Greeks lessons in how to make love.” As a token of his favor, Richelieu conferred the title of canon at Rouen on Boisrobert, but this title of respectability did nothing to change his lifestyle, which was marked by the practice of feminine pursuits of gossip, sartorial excesses, entertainment, literature and art. His innate charm enabled him to play the role of courtier with skill and audacity.

Sources:

Wikipedia

Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Dynes, 1990)

Charles (Swedish: Karl XII) was a dashing, handsome* 15-year-old when he became king of Sweden in 1697. During the next 20 years he brought Sweden to its pinnacle of prestige and power through his brilliant military campaigning and victories.

The Great Northern War, as it was called, dominated his life, and he was called “Alexander of the North” by his admirers. He devastated the armies of Denmark, Russia and Poland. In the Battle of Holowczyn, for instance, despite being outnumbered over three to one against the Russian army, Charles pulled out a victory. Other than his military acumen, he was known for two things, his abstinence from alcohol – and a similar abstinence from women.

Charles was also brave to the point of folly. He led his men into battle believing that his example would spur on his men to follow his example. Unfortunately, he was killed on the battlefield at Fredriksheld by a bullet to the head, directly above his right ear. He was 36 years old at the time. Without his leadership, Sweden’s involvement with the Great Northern War ultimately ended in defeat three years after his death.

While his admirers explained away his lack of interest in women by saying he was “married to the military,” Charles had a robust sexual taste for military men. Two of his lovers were military leaders from his army – General Behnsköld and General Stenbock (Count Magnus Gustafsson Stenbock). He also had a serious affair with Prince Maximillian of Württemberg, a younger admirer who had volunteered to serve in his army at the age of 14. Charles called him his “Little Prince” after Maximilian was wounded at age 19 trying to protect Charles from bullets. As well, Charles was involved in a relationship with the much older Swedish field marshal Count Axel Wachtmeister, who had been a close friend of his father.

Voltaire so admired Charles that he wrote a biography in 1731, thirteen years after Charles was killed on the battlefield in 1718, and Samuel Johnson praised Charles in his poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749).

*Speaking of dashing and handsome Swedish men, 34-year-old bachelor Prince Carl Philip was involved in a crash last week when a bus rear-ended his Porsche. He has a taste for fast cars and knows how to fill out a royal uniform. He is shown here with his sister Madeleine while attending the recent wedding of their sister Princess Victoria.

Nineteen-year-old British diver Tom Daley (born May 21, 1994) won the bronze medal for Great Britain in the individual competition at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games held in London. Shortly thereafter he took a role in a British television diving reality TV show, Splash! He made his debut in the show's premiere as a mentor to the celebrity competitors taking part. The show was a ratings success, with an average audience of 5.6 million viewers, and has been renewed for 2014.

On December 2, 2013, Daley released a YouTube video announcing that he has been in a personal relationship with another man since spring of this year. He said, "I still fancy girls, but at the moment I've never been happier.” The video reveals that, while his mother and close friends have been supportive after he revealed his bisexuality, some members of his extended family reacted with “mixed” results.

The man he is dating is Oscar-winning gay rights activist Dustin Lance Black (see sidebar), who is twenty years older than Daley. The two celebrities met at the Kids' Choice Awards in Los Angeles last March and hit it off straight away. Since then Tom has been joining Dustin on trips abroad to Paris, Barcelona and Miami. Dustin’s work as a high-profile gay activist gave Tom the courage to come out by posting his YouTube video yesterday. Apparently the couple think nothing of their age difference and don't care what anyone else might think of it.

Daley has won medals in international diving competitions since 2007. He was just twelve years old when he won a silver medal in synchronized diving at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival, and awards have piled up ever since. However, his participation in competitive diving during most of 2013 has been restricted because of elbow and triceps injuries. Currently Mr. Daley is training for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games that will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Kerwin Mathews (1926-2007) was an American film and television actor best known for action, adventure and fantasy films of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mathews said that "a kind high school teacher put me in a play, and that changed my life." According to a classmate, he was a "handsome rascal".

After serving in the Army Air Corps during WWII, he entered into a seven year studio contract with Columbia Pictures. Although Mathews said his favorite role was that of Johann Strauss, Jr. in the Disney two-part telefilm biopic The Waltz King (1963), he is perhaps best known for his leading roles in children’s fantasy films such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962). He was convincing, and sometimes brilliant, in playing opposite animated figures. Mathews also acted in a number of horror and science fiction films.

In 1961, he met Tom Nicoll, a British display manager at Harvey Nichols, a luxury department store chain, and Mathews and Nicoll became partners for the next 46 years. When Mathews retired from acting in 1978, they moved to San Francisco, where they ran a clothing and antiques shop. At the age of 81 Mathews died in his sleep in San Francisco and was survived by his partner Nicoll. The City of Janesville, Wisconsin, where Mathews attended high school, subsequently renamed a street adjacent to the school "Kerwin Mathews Court". The renovated building now houses the Janesville Performing Arts Center.

Mathews opposite Nadia Sanders in OSS117:

The name Erté was the French pronunciation of the initials R.T., which stood for Romain de Tirtoff (1892-1990), a Russian-born Art Deco graphic artist and designer of jewelry, costumes, interiors, and sets for opera, film and the stage. Not to mention textiles, handbags, watches and perfume bottles.As his career played out, Erté and Art Deco became virtually synonymous. His 240+ covers for Harper's Bazar* magazine (1915-1937), which often depicted women draped in furs and jewelry, are today collectors’ items.

*Spelling later changed to Bazaar.

The son of a wealthy Russian Admiral in the Imperial Fleet, Tirtoff took the pseudonym Erté while working as a fashion designer/illustrator in Paris, so as not to disgrace his aristocratic Russian family, which expected Romain to follow in his father’s footsteps as a military officer. His artistic talent was discovered early, and his mother had a dress made after one of Erté's designs he had sketched at the age of five. At age 22 he appeared at a Parisian ball in 1914 clad in a self-designed silver lamé costume, complete with pearl wings and ebony-plumed cape.

In 1925, MGM studios (Culver City, CA) brought Erté and his partner, Russian Prince Nicolas Ouroussoff, from Paris to Hollywood, picking up the considerable expenses for both. When their ocean liner arrived in New York, they disembarked with fifteen steamer trunks and three assistants. Erté’s black, white and gray Monte Carlo atelier was reproduced in Culver City. He was treated like a star, installed in a hilltop house in Hollywood, given a chauffeured limousine, two bi-lingual secretaries and was interviewed by the press 200 times.

MGM head Louis B. Mayer, who was known to be intolerant of homosexuals, even invited the couple to his house for dinner. Erté reported that his relationship with Mayer was always pleasant, and Mayer expressed regret when Erté asked to be let out of his contract after designing costumes for just six films. Erté lived with Ouroussoff for nearly twenty years, until the Prince's premature death in 1933. By the 1920s homosexuals in film studio wardrobe, makeup and set departments enjoyed an extraordinary freedom and tolerance, an environment found virtually nowhere else in American industry. It wasn’t just tolerated, but being gay actually carried with it some cachet.

Graphic Art: Symphony in Black

In his 1975 autobiography, Things I Remember, Erté catalogued his homosexual encounters, starting at the age of 13. Readers learned that after the death of Prince Ouroussoff, he had a serious relationship with a champion Danish swimmer and decorator named Axel. Erté’s openness regarding his sexuality was in marked contrast to others in his field at that time.

Erté designing sets and costumes for the Folies-Bergère, the Ziegfeld Follies and the Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Performers who wore his costumes included Josephine Baker, Anna Pavlova, Mata-Hari and Sarah Bernhardt.

Erté worked up until just a few weeks before his death from kidney problems in 1990, at age 97. Very wealthy by the end of his life, he was building a house in Majorca at the time of his death. During his long career he produced Art Deco designs for furniture, lamps, sculptures, seriographs, lithographs and even playing cards.

Rooms from Chateau de la Sorcere, decorated by Erté:

Sources:

Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood– William J. Mann

Wikipedia

Out & Gay in the Jazz World

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) attended high school in Pittsburgh, while studying classical music on the side. His trio played daily on a local radio station, and he wrote a musical for his high school. He also wrote “Lush Life,” a jazz classic, while still a teenager.

At 23 his life changed completely when he met Duke Ellington, who was performing in Pittsburgh in 1938. Ellington was so impressed that he took him into his household, where he lived as part of the family. Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next 29 years as an arranger, composer, pianist and collaborator until his early death from esophageal cancer. As Ellington described him, “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.”

Strayhorn was openly gay, but his association with Ellington helped protect him from discrimination. Until his death, Strayhorn continued a relationship with his partner, Bill Grove, who was Caucasian; however, they kept separate apartments.

Strayhorn influenced the career of Lena Horne, who recorded many of his songs. Strayhorn’s compositions are known for the bittersweet sentiment and classically infused harmonies that set him apart from Ellington.

Strayhorn to the rescue:

In a dispute over royalties in late 1940, ASCAP forbid its members from broadcasting any of their compositions over the radio. But Ellington, one of ASCAP’S most celebrated composers, needed radio broadcasts to promote record sales, which paid his orchestra’s salaries. Strayhorn rallied to save the day. During a hurried cross-country train ride to join Ellington in Los Angeles, Strayhorn (not an ASCAP member), got almost no sleep for six straight days, writing song after song after song. Strayhorn’s prolific, engaging new works kept the Ellington Orchestra afloat for months. When it was time for a new radio theme (Ellington’s own “Sepia Panorama” was still forbidden on the airwaves), Ellington chose Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train,” premiering it in early 1941. The rest is jazz history.

Queen Latifah (who lives in the Hollywood Hills with her partner Jeanette Jenkins) sings “Lush Life,” written when Strayhorn was a young, unseasoned song writer. Most performers say it’s difficult to sing and sounds like no other song in the standard repertoire.

Long-time partners Allen Klein (age 73, left) and Bliss Hebert (age 82) were married on October 15, 2013. Opera scenery/costume designer Klein and opera stage director Hebert have worked together since 1962. They have collaborated on more than 100 productions since they met while working at the Washington Opera in DC, where Hebert was General Manager from 1960-1964.

Allen Klein created productions for the Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, La Fenice in Venice, the Scottish Opera, the Edinburgh Festival and the Glyndebourne Festival. Bliss Hebert, who earned a master’s degree in piano performance from Syracuse University, worked with Igor Stravinsky on three of his operas, including five productions of “The Rake’s Progress.” According to Rosalie Radomsky of the New York Times, Klein and Hebert encountered Stravinsky and his wife Vera, along with conductor Robert Craft, in front of Carnegie Hall after a screening of Disney’s film “Fantasia,” which included an excerpt from Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”

“They greeted Bliss with great happiness and many kisses,” Allen Klein said, adding that, “Stravinsky was tiny and glowing with electricity.” Bliss then introduced Allen to Stravinsky. While Bliss was speaking with Robert Craft, Allen remained alone with Stravinsky. At one point, Stravinsky took Allen by the arm and asked, “Tell me, my dear, do you love our Bliss very much?”

“I recall being rather shocked by such a question,” Allen said. “Remember, this was 1964. I stuttered out, ‘Yes, I do,’ to which the composer responded, ‘Well then, my dear, you must take very good care of our Bliss.’ ”

Allen added, “ I’ve tried to do that ever since.”

Source:

Rosalie R. Radomsky, The New York Times

Earlier this month it was announced that British actor Ben Whishaw (b. 1980), best-known for playing Q in the recent James Bond film Skyfall, has been chosen to replace Sacha Baron Cohen in the role of Freddie Mercury in Mercury, a film about the rock group Queen. The movie, slated for a 2014 release, will focus on Queen's formative years and the period leading up to the celebrated performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert. Cohen, who had been cast in the role back in 2010, left the much-delayed project over creative differences with surviving members of the band.

Stage, film and television star Whishaw, meanwhile, is currently appearing on stage in London’s West End in a revival of the award-winning play Mojo. Generally regarded as one of the most naturally gifted actors of his generation, when he was cast as the youngest-ever Hamlet at the Old Vic in 2004, one critic said: “This is the kind of evening of which legends are made.” This past spring Whishaw again appeared in a project with Judy Dench, this time in the world premiere of Peter and Alice, a play by John Logan.

In an interview in Out magazine, Ben said that he prefers not to talk about his personal life, because he deplores the scrutiny of celebrity. “I have no understanding why we turn actors into celebrities.” He added, "For me, it’s important to keep a level of anonymity. As an actor, your job is to persuade people that you’re someone else. So if you’re constantly telling people about yourself, I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot.”

However, in August of this year his representative confirmed that Ben Whishaw had entered into a civil partnership with his lover, Australian composer Mark Bradshaw, in Sydney, Australia, in 2012. The couple met on the set of Bright Star (2009), a film in which Whishaw portrayed poet John Keats. Bradshaw composed the score for that film, and Ben and Mark have been together ever since.

Until recently, Russian musicologists have long denied that composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a gay man. He had a string of relationships with men, back from his student days up until his death. Tchaikovsky had a distinct taste for younger men, and his lovers included poets, musicians, servants and other members of the lower classes. Several sources report that when traveling abroad he sometimes used male prostitutes for sexual gratification.

Tchaikovsky was tormented by his suppressed homosexuality and the constant fear of exposure. Although he married one of his students, his attempt at straight family life was disastrous. Even though they remained married, he and his wife had no children and did not live together. Within two weeks of his wedding Tchaikovsky tried to kill himself, hoping to catch pneumonia by plunging himself into the Moscow River. At the urging of his doctor, he fled to St. Petersburg and never saw his wife again, although he continued to support her. She had several children by other men, giving each infant to an orphanage; she spent her final twenty-one years in a home for the certifiably insane.

All of Tchaikovsky’s successes were musical. He enjoyed world-wide fame, and the czar bestowed honors upon him and even granted him a life-long pension. The most significant of these awards was when Czar Alexander III conferred upon him the Order of St. Vladimir, which conveyed hereditary nobility. Tchaikovsky went on to achieve the greatest degree of popularity ever accorded a Russian composer. In 1891 he even conducted the inaugural concert at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

Modest, his brother, was also gay. In an exchange of letters between the brothers, Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality is confirmed and openly acknowledged. Tchaikovsky had a nephew nicknamed “Bob” – Vladimir Lvovich Davïdov (1871-1906) – to whom he dedicated the Symphonie Pathétique (1893). The photo at left shows Tchaikovsky seated next to his nephew.

Bob, who was thirty-one years his junior, became Tchaikovsky’s lover from the late 1880s. Tchaikovsky was usually homesick during his musical tours abroad, hating the loneliness of large cities; he always longed to get back home to be with his beloved nephew, whom he called “my idol.” Tchaikovsky made Bob his heir, and his letter to Bob from a hotel room in London in May 1893 shows the nature of their relationship: “I am writing to you with a voluptuous pleasure. The thought that this paper is soon going to be in your hands fills me with joy and brings tears to my eyes.” In another letter Tchaikovsky wrote to his nephew, “If only I could give way to my secret desire, I would leave everything and go home to you.”

In late 1893 Count Stenbok-Fermor wrote a letter addressed to Tsar Alexander III complaining of the attentions the composer was paying the Duke's young nephew. Exposure would have meant public disgrace, loss of civil rights and exile to Siberia for Tchaikovsky and for his fellow former students of the School of Jurisprudence. According to some reports, the letter was intercepted, and a court of honor of the “old boys” of the school required Tchaikovsky to kill himself; Tchaikovsky promised to comply with their demand. A day or two later his “illness” was reported (Tchaikovsky poisoned himself in an act of suicide), and official accounts reported a death from cholera (Tchaikovsky’s relatives later confirmed the account of suicide, also relating that Tsar Alexander III was shown the incriminating letter from Stenbok-Fermor after Tchaikovsky’s death). When he died, at fifty-three, sixty thousand people applied for tickets to his funeral, which was paid for by the Tsar; for only the third time in Russian history, a Tsar ordered a state funeral for a commoner.

There are many theories about the actual cause of Tchaikovsky's death – both natural (cholera) and by suicide (poisoning). Conflicting reports arose within days of his death. Suicide would have been a crushing blemish on the reputations of both Tchaikovsky and his countrymen. Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky was adored in his native Russia, and he was perhaps the best cultural ambassador Russia had ever had.

Thirteen years after Tchaikovsky’s demise, his nephew “Bob” tragically took his own life, as well.

A native of Montreal, Canada, Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Yah-NEEK Neh-ZAY Say-GUN) was named Music Director of The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2012. He is also Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 2000 Mr. Nézet-Séguin has also been Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), and he has conducted all the major ensembles in his native Canada.

Nézet-Séguin is also a notable opera conductor; he has a long-term relationship with the Metropolitan Opera, where he has been talked about as a credible successor to James Levine as music director, so stay tuned...

He is also the first openly gay conductor of one of the “big five” orchestras in the United States.
Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s partner of sixteen years, Pierre Tourville (shown in sunglasses behind Yannick), is the assistant principal violist of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), and they appear everywhere together. When the conductor was fêted by the city of Philadelphia a couple of years ago, Pierre Tourville was also introduced at every stop – amazing, considering that Philadelphia is not exactly known to be a progressive city.

In a New York Times profile by Daniel Wakin earlier this year, it was reported that “Nézet-Séguin is what the orchestra world is desperate for: a young, charismatic maestro who can win the respect, even affection, of grizzled orchestra veterans, the enthusiasm of audiences and the praise of critics, which has for him been pretty exalted.”

The 37-year-old conductor’s youth is reflected in his flaunting of certain traditions – he frequently leads from the podium in a business suit and tie (Carnegie Hall), and he’s partial to tight V-neck sweaters and skinny jeans. While on vacation in Tahiti he acquired a turtle tattoo on his right shoulder, and his compact five-foot-five frame bursts with energy.

Again from Mr. Wakin’s NYT profile: “He seemed stunned by the ovation” (conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall). “Applause from his inner circle greeted him in the crowded dressing room. Attendants broke open bottles of sparkling wine. Mr. Nézet-Séguin embraced his companion, Mr. Tourville, looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Oui?’

‘Oui,’ Mr. Tourville answered. With an air of coronation, orchestra and Carnegie Hall executives toasted Mr. Nézet-Séguin. “

The conductor’s honors include a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award, Canada’s highly coveted National Arts Centre Award and the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the highest distinction for the arts in Quebec, awarded by the Quebec government. In 2011, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Quebec in Montreal and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2012.

Last King of Italy

The only son of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, King Umberto II (1904-1983) is found on many lists of the shortest-reigning monarchs in history. He was regent of Italy from May 9 to June 12, 1945. Thus known as the “May King”, he was Italy’s last king before the monarchy was abolished and the nation became a Republic. After a dubious 1945 plebiscite, Umberto of Savoy was forced into exile in Cascais, Portugal, to avoid a civil war. His family ties to Musolini did not favor his fate.

Umberto had earlier entered into an arranged marriage to a Belgian Princess, carrying out a tradition common to European royalty, but he largely lived apart from his wife except for public appearances. It is confirmed that he spent his wedding night and entire honeymoon apart from his wife, instead enjoying the company of male “friends” to whom Umberto gave diamond-studded fleur-de-lis shaped mementos and jewels in the shape of the letter “U” (the fleur-de-lis was the symbol of the Savoy dynasty). Those young men flaunted the gifts in public. When Umberto later called on his wife, he was always in the company of someone else and had himself formally announced. Their first child was not born until after four years of marriage, and rumors persisted that they were born by artificial insemination or were fathered by men other than Umberto. Umberto and his wife kept separate apartments, separate beds and had separate circles of friends. Hmm...

He also engaged in relations with many homosexuals of both high and low born pedigree. Many of them were military officers, such as Enrico Montanari, who recounted that in the city of Turin during 1927, as a lieutenant he was persistently courted by Prince Umberto. Montanari wrote that Umberto gave him a silver cigarette lighter inscribed with "Dimmi di sì!" (Say yes to me!). Further, a biography of film-director Luchino Visconti revealed explicit details about the director’s sexual relationship with the Prince. Others have come forward with evidence that Umberto’s lovers included French actor Jean Marais and boxer Primo Carnera.

Various actresses have been forthcoming with details of how Umberto (1944 photo at right) surrounded himself with glamorous women to give the impression that he was a gallant playboy, but all of them said their relationships with Umberto were platonic, and that these “romances” were merely staged to deflect rumors of his homosexual activity.

When Umberto became ill in his late seventies, he was not allowed to return to Italy to die. His death occurred in 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland, but he remains buried on French soil in the Savoy family tomb in Haute-Combe. No representative of the Italian government attended his funeral.

Source:
Giovanni Dall’Orto in “Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History” (Vol. I, 2001), edited by Aldrich and Wotherspoon.

Automotive industry heir Walter P. Chrysler Jr. (1909-1988) was the son of a man who had amassed a great fortune in founding the Chrysler Corporation. Walter Jr., knowing that he would inherit vast sums of money, could thus indulge his passion for collecting art, an obsession that resulted in transforming a minor provincial museum in Norfolk, Va., into one of the nation’s best, the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Walter Jr., who was a theatrical producer*, hung out in locations that had strong ties to the homosexual community. Although throughout his life he was a gay man trying to appear to live a life as a straight man, he had a home in Key West and displayed his growing art collection in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in a 19th-century church building he bought from the Methodists. The museum was nicknamed by locals as “The First Church of Chrysler” or “St. Walter’s”. The structure today serves as the Provincetown library.

*Among many others, he produced New Faces of 1952, which launched the careers of Eartha Kitt, Paul Lynde and Carol Lawrence. Chrysler also produced the film "The Joe Louis Story."

In 1956, Chrysler retired from business to devote his full-time attention to the arts. Soon thereafter an article appeared in Confidential magazine that exposed his homosexual activity, and there had been persistent reports that he had been discharged from the Navy because “he was found to be homosexual.” It was extraordinary for a healthy man to be discharged from the military during wartime.* Again, according to Earle, “That Chrysler led something of a double life was widely acknowledged. The fact that he was gay was noted by many of those who knew him professionally and personally. As Chrysler biographer Vincent Cursio mentioned, ‘...in 1938 there was enormous social pressure on gay men to marry and give the appearance of living a normal life.’ ” Walter Jr. married twice, but there were no children.

*Peggy Earle, “Legacy, Walter Chrysler Jr. and the Untold Story of Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum of Art.”

While a 14-year-old boy attending prep school, Walter Jr. purchased his first painting, a watercolor nude, with $350 in birthday money from his father. A dorm master considered the piece lewd and destroyed it – a Renoir! Undeterred, he continued to collect art, but there were scandals along the way. Many of the artworks he purchased and displayed were called out as fakes. For that reason, Newport, RI, refused to accept the gift of his collection, which had outgrown its home in Provincetown. In spite of such notoriety, Walter Jr. had impressive credentials – he had been a key figure in the creation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. However, much of his personal collection had to be stored in warehouses and lent out to museums across the country.

Walter Jr.’s second wife was from Norfolk, and he had himself been a Navy man, so he ultimately found success in 1971 when he presented Norfolk, Va., with his impressive collection of 10,000 art objects, to be housed in the Norfolk Academy of Arts and Sciences, which had been built in 1932. The academy was immediately renamed the Chrysler Museum of Art (currently closed for expansion and renovations; slated for a grand reopening on May 10, 2014). As New York Times art critic John Russell said, "It would be difficult to spend time in the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, and not come away convinced that the most underrated American art collector of the past 50 years and more was the late Walter P. Chrysler, Jr." Chrysler's collection is especially strong in art glass and incorporates a large body of Tiffany lamps. Louis Comfort Tiffany had been his neighbor when Walter Jr. was growing up on Long Island.

www.chrysler.org

Walter P. Chrysler Jr. enjoying a light-hearted moment with artist Andy Warhol:

A master of the short story, H. H. Munro (1870-1916), known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. At their best, they were the highest of high camp. He was born in Burma, when it was still part of the British Empire, but at age two, upon the death of his mother, was sent by his father to England to be raised by his spinster aunts and grandmother.

Munro was homosexual, but at that time in the United Kingdom, sexual activity between men was a crime. Especially after the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde (1895), that side of Munro's life had to be kept secret. His pen name, however, was a strong hint: Saki was a term for a cupbearer, a beautiful boy, an object of male desire. Munro kept a houseboy (hint) throughout most of his life, and many of his stories included coded references to homosexuality. In a series of stories, the suspiciously close characters, dandies Reginald and Clovis, engage in dialogue and activity that allow the more astute reader to read between the lines.

According to biographer A.J. Langguth, regarding Saki’s same-sex activity: “(His) average in his best months was an encounter every second day; when he was busy or traveling, every third day.” Maybe that’s why his stories were so short.

Most of Saki’s short stories were first published in newspapers, then collected and later published in anthologies. He also worked as a journalist and served as an enlisted man in WW I. He was killed by a German sniper’s bullet in the Battle of the Somme on November 13, 1916, at age 45, and after his death, his sister destroyed most of his papers. It was widely reported that his last words were, “Put out that bloody cigarette.”

A sampling of Saki’s epigrams:

“To have reached thirty is to have failed in life.”

“Being too tasteless or too poor, which may very well be the same thing, is no excuse for wearing a cravat that does not match your frock coat.”

“I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”

“I always say beauty is only sin deep.”

“Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.”

Sources:

Queers in History (2009), Keith Stern

Wikipedia

Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (1990), ed. Wayne Dynes

Annie Proulx, the author of the short story “Brokeback Mountain,” wrote the libretto for the opera of the same title that has been set to music by Pulitzer Prize winning American serialist composer Charles Wuorinen (photo at right). Wuorinen is a New York City based gay classical composer who is married to his manager, Howard Stokar.

The opera version of "Brokeback Mountain," completed in 2012, was originally commissioned by the New York City Opera and Gerard Mortier, but the project was postponed when General Manager Mortier resigned. When he became head of the Teatro Real (Madrid, Spain), Mortier decided to take up the work again and present it there.

Canadian bass/baritone Daniel Okulitch has the role of Ennis del Mar, and American tenor Tom Randle is cast as Jack Twist. The opera premieres at the Teatro Real (Madrid) on January 28 and runs through February 11.

Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain" was originally published in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997, and was made into an Academy Award winning film in 2005 with Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack and Heath Ledger as Ennis in the lead roles. The story, set in Wyoming, reveals a complex romantic/sexual relationship between two cowboys, in which homophobia stands in the way of their being able to be partners. Ennis is a confused ranch hand who finds himself in a homosexual situation he did not foresee, nor can understand. He is reluctant to show affection towards Jack, and when Jack brings up suggestions about their living together, Ennis declines in a harsh way. Both men marry, but their heterosexual relationships falter. The men meet for infrequent fishing trips, which rekindle their frustrating sexual desires. Both the story and the film have become gay classics.

Baritone Daniel Okulitch, in The Fly (2008):

Tattooed tenor Tom Randle in Wozzeck:

To your blogger's way of thinking, choosing serialist composer Charles Wuorinen to write the score for this opera is appropriate, because the short story's style was powerfully emotional without being overly romanticized. I think that a 19th-century tonal musical setting would not do this story justice.

Wuorinen's catalog of more than 260 compositions emphasizes chamber music and solo instrumental and vocal works, but his most recent commissions tend toward large scale symphonic, operatic and choral compositions.

At age 16 Wuorinen was awarded the New York Philharmonic's Young Composer’s Award, and early in his career he was active as a singer, pianist and organist. In 1962 Wuorinen and fellow composer-performer Harvey Sollberger formed The Group for Contemporary Music, an ensemble that raised the standard of new music performance in New York City. He has taught at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music. The premiere of his opera "Brokeback Mountain" will likely garner world-wide attention.

Frederick II (in German: Friedrich II), the Hohenzollern King of Prussia, went on to become known as Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Große). His governess and mother spoke French around him, and they reminded Frederick that French was the language of culture, while German was used by inferior people. They included his father in that category. So Frederick spoke French as his mother tongue and spoke German with difficulty all his life, in spite of the fact that he eventually ruled over a German-speaking realm.

Interested primarily in music and philosophy during his youth, Frederick unsuccessfully attempted to flee from his authoritarian father. He and his gay lover, Hans Hermann von Katte (portrait at right), were caught and imprisoned, and Frederick was then forced to watch his lover's decapitation. This was his father’s way of teaching him a lesson about his “unmanly, lascivious, female pursuits highly unsuitable for a man.” Frederick’s father whipped and caned him to humiliate him in front of servants and officers in an attempt to break his will. Frederick held out, refusing his father’s desire that he give up his right to succession in favor of his younger brother. As is turned out, the father was no match for his exceptionally intelligent and able son.

Later forced to enter into a marriage arranged by his father, Frederick mostly ignored his wife (they had no children), preferring the company of his sister on the rare occasions when female company was desired. Frederick had told his sister that he found his fiancé “repugnant; we have neither friendship nor compatibility, and she dances like a goose.” He gave his wife her own palace, refusing her entry to his other residences, and visited her only a few days a year at Christmas.

The conversation of the inner court circle around him was peppered with homoerotic banter. Voltaire, whom Frederick had invited to come live with him at Sans-Souci, a rococo summer palace he built in Potsdam, was accused of anonymously publishing “The Private Life of the King of Prussia”, exposing Frederick's homosexuality and parade of male lovers. After Voltaire had left Prussia, Frederick neither admitted nor denied the contents of the book. Regardless, Frederick was a gay man surrounded by an all-male society at Sans-Souci in which he judged people on their intelligence and skills, not royal or noble privilege. He wrote poetry, played a mean flute (see painting below), entertained by throwing lavish balls, and staged plays, avoiding the hunting, drinking, gambling and womanizing as practiced by his father. Frederick wrote and performed music and had his own personal orchestra. When his father died, Frederick was 28, and Prussia found itself with a gay king.

Frederick concentrated on becoming the best monarch possible. He soon managed to transform Prussia from a European backwater to an economically strong and politically reformed state. Although he loathed his father’s militarism, he went on to conquer neighboring lands to unify his scattered holdings, each time improving the economy, infrastructure, government, education, agriculture and industry of his acquisitions. He abolished torture and corporal punishment. The icing on the cake was his long-held policy of religious tolerance of both Catholics and Protestants, thus becoming one of the great reformers of Europe. He encouraged Jews along the border with Poland to perform trade, affording them all protections and support given to other Prussian citizens in an effort to integrate them into his realm.

Frederick frequently led his military forces personally and had six horses shot from under him during battle. Frederick is often admired as one of the greatest military tactical geniuses of all time, especially for his usage of the oblique order of battle. Even more important were his operational successes, especially preventing the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and being at the right place at the right time to keep enemy armies out of Prussian core territory.

An example of the place that Frederick holds in history as a ruler was evidenced in Napoleon Bonaparte*, who regarded the Prussian king as a great military strategist. After Napoleon's victory of the Fourth Coalition in 1807, he visited Frederick's tomb in Potsdam and remarked to his officers, "Gentlemen, if this man were still alive, I would not be here." Frederick and Napoleon are perhaps the most admiringly quoted military leaders in history. Frederick is praised particularly for the quick and skillful movement of his troops.

*Napoleon Bonaparte also had a sexual taste for men, especially his own soldiers. See entry in sidebar.

Upon his death in 1786 (peacefully at age 74 in an armchair in his library at Sans-Souci) Frederick had wished to be buried next to his beloved 11 greyhounds on the vineyard terrace on the side of the palace’s court of honor. It took more than 200 years to grant his request, since his brother had him buried next to their father. Hitler had his coffin moved to an underground bunker, then to a salt mine to protect it from destruction. US Army soldiers subsequently discovered it and relocated it twice. After German reunification in 1989, Frederick’s casket, covered by a Prussian flag, lay in state at Sans-Souci on August 17, 1991, the 205th anniversary of his death. After nightfall, Frederick’s body was at last laid to rest according to his request in his 1757 will: “without pomp and at night” (“ohne Prunk, ohne Pomp und bei Nacht”).

Marsden Hartley

Darren Young

Clifton Webb

Napoleon Bonaparte

Rex

François Le Metel de Boisrobert

Charles XII, King of Sweden

Tom Daley

Kerwin Mathews

Erté

Billy Strayhorn

Allen Klein & Bliss Hebert

Ben Whishaw

Tchaikovsky: Tragic Gay Composer

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Umberto II of Savoy

Walter P. Chrysler Jr.

H. H. Munro – “Saki”

Charles Wuorinen

Frederick the Great (1712-1786)