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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1887 -

On this date the American intellectual, critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table, ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT was born (d. 1943). Moss Hart's brilliant farce "The Man Who Came to Dinner" is about the caustic "Sheridan Whiteside" who, after injuring himself slipping on ice, must stay in a Midwestern family's house. The character was based on Woollcott. Woollcott didn't seem to mind. In fact he later toured in the role around the country. Woollcott's review of the Marx Brothers' Broadway debut, I'll Say She Is, helped highlight the renaissance of the group's career and started a life-long friendship with Harpo Marx. Harpo's two adopted sons, William Woollcott Marx and Alexander Marx, are named after Woollcott.

Woollcott was one of the most-quoted men of his generation. Among Woollcott's classics is his description of the Los Angeles area as "Seven suburbs in search of a city" — a quip often incorrectly attributed to his friend Dorothy Parker. Describing The New Yorker editor Harold Ross, he said: "He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln."

His judgments were frequently eccentric. Dorothy Parker once said: "I remember hearing Woollcott say reading Proust is like lying in someone else's dirty bath water. And then he'd go into ecstasy about something called, Valiant Is the Word for Carrie."

Woollcott, who claimed the "Brandy Alexander" was a concoction named after him, was known for his savage wit. He once said about another contemporary wit and piano player: "There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix." He also was known to greet friends with, "Hello, Repulsive." Famously, he published the shortest theatrical review in history by submitting to his editor simply: "Ouch." The letters between Woollcott and his good friend and pen-pal Noel Coward are worth the price of admission of the recently published Letters of Noel Coward. They're all sharp wit and staggeringly good fun. In preparing today's Gay Wisdom, I came across his lovely line about democracy below.

1921 -

The American author PATRICIA HIGHSMITH was born on this date (d. 1995). Born Mary Patricia Plangman just outside Fort Worth, Texas, Highsmith is known mainly for her psychological thrillers which have led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Strangers on a Train has been adapted to the screen three times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.

In addition to her acclaimed series about murderer Tom Ripley, she wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humor. She famously preferred the company of animals to that of people, and once said, "My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people."

Highsmith never married but had a number of affairs with both men and women. In 1949 she became close to the novelist Marc Brandel. Between 1959 and 1961, she had a relationship with Marijane Meaker, who wrote under the pseudonyms of Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich, but later wrote young adult fiction with the name M.E. Kerr. Meaker wrote of their affair in her memoir Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s.

Her recurring character Tom Ripley — an amoral, sexually ambiguous con artist and erstwhile murderer — was featured in a total of five novels, known to fans as “the Ripliad,” written between 1955 and 1991. He was first introduced in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955). After a January 1956 TV adaptation on Studio One, it was filmed by René Clément as Plein Soleil (1960, aka Purple Noon and Blazing Sun) with Alain Delon, whom Highsmith praised as the ideal Ripley.

The novel was adapted under its original title as a 1999 film by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett. A later Ripley novel, Ripley's Game, was filmed by Wim Wenders as The American Friend (1977). Under its original title, it was filmed again in 2002, directed by Liliana Cavani with John Malkovich in the title role. (The editors thought it a botched effort).

Most recently the movie Carol, based on Highsmith’s only explicit lesbian themed novel, The Price of Salt, is a 2015 British-American romantic drama film directed by Todd Haynes, from a screenplay by Phyllis Nagy, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

Highsmith left all of her considerable fortune to the artists' colony, Yaddo. She completely disinherited any family she had, adding a boost to the arts in this country.

1943 -

The rock and blues legend JANIS JOPLIN was born on this date in Port Arthur, Texas (1970). Joplin's death in October 1970 at the age of twenty-seven (which seems to be the magic number for rock stars) stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just sixteen days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix. Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice."

Music columnist Jon Pareles of the NY Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable." Author Megan Terry claimed that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. In San Francisco, Joplin was a regular at The Black Cat, a Lesbian bar in the Broadway strip club district.

In 1973, a book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman was excerpted in many newspapers.

At the same time, Going Down With Janis by Peggy Caserta attracted a lot of attention with its opening line, which referred to her performing a sex act with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. Joplin's band-mate Sam Andrew would later describe Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend."

According to an early 1990s statement by a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer she described (including the make and model of his car) in detail to her readers.

According to Ellis Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles Lesbian bar Caserta had been frequenting since Joplin was alive. Amburn quoted Caserta's friend Kim Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered.

1946 -

Today is the birthday of singer, songwriter, and actress ("9 to 5") Country Diva and gay icon DOLLY PARTON. Jolene, Love is Like a Butterfly, and I Will Always Love You (the original is an understated gem compared to the over-the-top Whitney Houston cover) are a few of her compositions and hits over the years.

Once, in an interview a reporter thought he had just the question for Ms. Parton. "You're famous for your ample bosom. Are the real?" Dolly didn't miss a beat as she turned to him and responded, "Well sir, I'm just a country girl at heart. And if God hadn't given them to me I'd sure enough go out and buy me a pair." Neatly side-stepping his impertinence and non-answering the question.

He had no more questions.

Noteworthy

1959 -

Now that we have had Attorney General Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions and then William Barr playing around in the halls of justice we wish to recall that on this date investigators summoned a University of Florida Geography professor Sigmund Diettrich to the Manor Motel in Gainesville, Florida. Soon after, he was fired from his job and lost the life he loved as a beloved teacher and dean. He attempted suicide the same day he was let go from U.F.

Many people are familiar with the McCarthy hearings but do not realize that Florida had its own committee designed to weed out communism and homosexual activity. State Senator Charley Johns started the investigations to "protect Florida's children." Officially called Florida Legislative Investigation Committee it was widely more famous as THE JOHNS COMMITTEE after the presiding State Senator Charley E. Johns.

From 1956 to 1965, The Johns Committee threatened civil liberties in the Sunshine State. Led by Senator Johns, the committee operated in a McCarthyite manner, seeking to discover communist connections among integrationist organizations and purge academic liberals and so-called "subversives" from educational institutions.

When the committee had failed to demonstrate communist involvement within the NAACP or the academic community, a desperate Charley Johns sought to extend his committee's life by searching for a weaker enemy and "committee agents soon monitored lavatory stalls and private bedrooms rather than city buses." The University of Florida was the first academic target chosen in the search for homosexuals in 1958. At least 15 UF professors and more than 50 students left after being interrogated by investigators. Even though the committee's tactics violated state law, UF administrators did not attempt to halt the investigations and went so far as to allow university police officers to serve as investigators and tape interrogations with professors and students.

Hundreds of professors and students across the state were also terminated or expelled because of their sexuality. The Johns Committee pursued people in academic institutions, courthouse bathrooms and bus stations. The committee's investigators went so far as tapping phones in motels, interrogating children as young as 10, and breaking up a teenage girl's slumber party looking for evidence of moral misconduct. In 1993 more than 30,000 pages of secret documents became public including a University of Florida administrator's statement that there was no way to prevent Gay men from lingering in university bathrooms "unless you pour sulfuric acid on the floor to make people go fast."

Today's Gay Wisdom

2018 -

"I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it." - Alexander Woollcott