Rose Louise Hovick, better known as GYPSY ROSE LEE was born on this day in Seattle, Washington, although her mother, gay icon, Mama Rose, (soon to be played by none other than that other gay icon, Barbra Streisand  — OMG! —in a remake of the immortal show biz film story Gypsy) later shaved three years off both of her daughters' ages. She was initially known by her middle name, Louise. Mama Rose was a teen-aged bride fresh from a convent school when she married John Olaf Hovick, who was a newspaper advertising salesman and a reporter at The Seattle Times. Louise's sister, Ellen Evangeline Hovick (later better known as actress June Havoc), was born in 1913.

Eventually, it became apparent that Louise could make money in burlesque, which earned her legendary status as a classy and witty strip tease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself; encouraged by the audience response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance. Her innovations were an almost casual strip style, compared to the herky-jerky styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasized the "tease" in "striptease") and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her strip style, and—changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee—she became one of the biggest stars of Minsky’s Burlesque, where she performed for four years and was frequently arrested in raids on the Minsky brothers' shows.

While she worked at Minsky's, Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters, from comedian Rags Ragland to Eddy Bruns. In Hollywood, she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937, at the insistence of the film studio. Gypsy was at one time in love with Michael Todd and in 1942, in an attempt to make him jealous, she married William Alexander Kirkland. They divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth on December 11, 1944 to a son fathered by Otto Preminger she named Erik Lee who has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego and Erik Preminger. Gypsy Lee was married for a third time in 1948, but eventually divorced.

Both Gypsy Rose and Mama Rose were avidly bisexual, with Mama Rose tending more to being Lesbian. Gypsy and sister June Havoc continued to get demands for money from their mother, who had opened a boardinghouse for Lesbians in a 10-room apartment on West End Avenue in New York City (the property rented for her by Gypsy), as well as a farm in Highland Mills, NY. Rose shot and killed one of her guests (Rose's female lover who had made a pass at Gypsy, according to an account provided by Gypsy's son, Erik). The incident was explained away as a suicide and Rose was not prosecuted. Mother Rose died in 1954.

In the early 1940s Gypsy Rose Lee was one of the occupants of the famous “February House” in Brooklyn, NY. The February House was a Victorian brownstone, which, for a period of a mere 18 months, June 1940 to December 1941, was home to some of the most celebrated English and American artists of the mid-20^th century. It was given its name by Anaïs Nin, who noted that several of the residents had their birthdays during that month.

The conjunction of these extraordinary talents might well form the premise of a Tom Stoppard play. The very gay nucleus consisted of W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Paul and Jane Bowles. Salvador Dali, Lincoln Kirstein, Leonard Bernstein and George Balanchine were among the later gayer satellites. And it was here, for a time, that Gypsy Rose Lee and Carson McCullers became lovers.

It is generally agreed that it was Gypsy Rose Lee who gave the house both its heart and its celebrity. Intent on intellectual respectability, Lee planned to write a mystery, The G-String Murders, under the tutelage of this eccentric household. And it was here that McCullers mapped out her two masterpieces, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Café, and Auden and Britten collaborated on the latter's first opera, Paul Bunyan. It was also here that, inspired by Auden, Jane Bowles began Two Sophisticated Ladies, and, inspired by Jane, Paul Bowles discovered that his true vocation was fiction rather than music.

1941 – On this date the English comedian, actor, writer, physician and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe GRAHAM CHAPMAN was born (d. 1989) He was also the lead actor in their two narrative films, playing King Arthur in Month Python and the Holy Grail and the title character in Monty Python's Life of Brian. Chapman kept his sexuality secret until the mid 1970s when he famously came out on a chat show hosted by British jazz musician George Melly, thus becoming one of the first celebrities to do so. Several days later, he came out to a group of friends at a party held at his home in Belsize Park where he officially introduced them to his partner, David Sherlock, whom he had met in Ibiza in 1966, and subsequently raised their son, John Tomiczek, together. After Chapman made his sexuality public, a member of the television audience wrote to the Pythons to complain that she had heard a member of the team was Gay, and included in the letter a Biblical passage calling for all homosexuals to be stoned to death.

With fellow Pythons already aware of his sexual orientation, Eric Idle replied, "We've found out who he was and we've taken him out and stoned him." Chapman was a vocal spokesman for Gay rights, and in 1972 he lent his support to the fledgling newspaper Gay News, which publicly acknowledged his financial and editorial support by listing him as one of its `special friends'. Among Chapman's closest friends were Keith Moon of The Who, singer Harry Nillson, and Beatle Ringo Starr. Asteroid 9617 Grahamchapman, named in Chapman's honor, is the first in a series of six asteroids carrying the names of members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

A memorial service was held for Chapman in December 1989 in the Great Hall at St. Bartholomew's. John Cleese delivered the eulogy; after his initial remarks, he said of his former colleague "…good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries!", and then pointed out that Chapman would have been disappointed if Cleese passed on the opportunity to scandalize the audience. He explained that Chapman would have been offended had Cleese, the first person to say "shit" on British television, not used Chapman's own funeral as an opportunity to also become the first person at a British memorial service to use the word "fuck". Afterward, Cleese joined Gilliam, Jones, and Palin along with Chapman's other friends as Idle led them in a rendition of "Always look on the Bright Side of Life" from the film Monty Python's Life of Brian.

On December 31, 1999 Chapman's ashes were rumored to have been "blasted into the skies in a rocket.", though in actual fact, Sherlock scattered Chapman's ashes on Snowdon, North Wales.

Today is the birthday of the British artist and one half of the artistic duo "Gilbert and George" GEORGE PASSMORE. Born in Plymouth in the United Kingdom, to a single mother in a poor household, he studied art at the Dartington Hall College of Art and the Oxford School of Art. He met Gilbert Proesch in 1967 while studying sculpture at St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. The two claim they came together because George was the only person who could understand Gilbert's rather poorly spoken English (Proesch was born in Italy). In a 2002 interview with the Daily Telegraph they said of their meeting: "it was love at first sight." They got married in 2008.

For many years, Gilbert & George have been residents of Fournier Street, Spitalfields, East London. Their entire body of work has been created in, and focused on, London's East End, which they see as a microcosm. According to George, "Nothing happens in the world that doesn't happen in the East End." The pair are perhaps best known for their large-scale photo works, known as The Pictures. The early work in this style is in black and white, later with hand-painted red and yellow touches. They proceeded to use a range of bolder colors, sometimes backlit, and overlaid with black grids. The artists themselves frequently feature in these works, along with flowers, youths, friends, and Christian symbolism.

In 1981 Gilbert & George won the Regione Lazio Award (Torino), in 1986 the Turner Prize, in 1989 the Special International Award (Los Angeles), in 2007 they won the South Bank Award, as well as the Lorenzo il Magnifico Award (Florence).  In 2005 they represented the UK at the Venice Biennale. Their 2007 retrospective at Tate Modern was the largest of any artist held at the gallery.  In December 2008 Gilbert & George were awarded an Honorary Doctorate by London Metropolitan University.

DAVID BOWIE, English musician, was born on this day (d: 2016); Active in five decades of rock music and frequently reinventing his music and image, Bowie was widely regarded as an influential innovator, particularly for his work through the 1970s. In recent years, the former enfant terrible of punk acquitted himself as a competent actor and taken cues from a wide range of fine art, philosophy and literature. He was a film and stage actor, music video director and visual artist.

Back in the day, however, it was a different story altogether. He was fond of staging a mock blow job of his guitarist Mick Ronson before delighted audiences of shrieking fourteen-year olds. And then, of course, there were his songs about Lesbians in the army and the one about Queen Bitch, a young dude who “dresses like a queen, but…can kick like a mule” not to mention the one about the stud who “came on so loaded, man, well-hung and snow-white tan.”

In 1976, the same year Jimmy Carter admitted to Playboy that he had lusted in his heart after women, thereby forever losing the support of the pinch-faced, thin-lipped, blue-rinse set of American patriots, Bowie confided to his Playboy confessor that he was bisexual, as was his then wife, Angela. “Angela and I knew each other,” he said, “because we were fucking the same bloke,” (record executive Calvin Mark Lee). Though his current bios seem to be scrubbed clean of any reference to his sexual adventurism, it never seemed to hurt his career one bit.

Bowie died two days after his 69th birthday and the release of the album Blackstar, from liver cancer in his New York City apartment. He had been diagnosed eighteen months earlier but had not made the news of his illness public. The Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove, who had worked with the singer on his Off-Broadway musical Lazarus, explained that Bowie was unable to attend rehearsals due to the progression of the disease. He noted that Bowie had kept working during the illness. 

PAUL VERLAINE, French poet died (b. 1844); Did he or didn’t he? We know that Verlaine wrote eighteen volumes of verse in alternating moods of sensuality and mysticism, that he wandered all over Europe with that strange and perverse young poet, Arthur Rimbaud; we know that he was imprisoned for two years after shooting his lover.

But did he in fact write a poem that is almost certain never to be taught in French 101 – the so-called “Sonnet to an Asshole”? The chances are that he did. Even in English translation, the poem reflects the musical quality that was Verlaine’s hallmark” “Dark and wrinkled like a deep pink,/It breathes, humbly nestled among the moss/Still wet with love…”

Verlaine’s Sonnet To An Asshole

 This is the only poem known to have been composed jointly by Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. The Parnassien poet Albert Mérat had published a book of sonnets entitled L'Idole, in which each poem extolled a part of his mistress' body– with one omission, which the two young iconoclasts proceeded to rectify. This sonnet appeared in the Album Zutique, a book of scabrous parodies by the Parisian literary circle who called themselves Les Zutistes.

 Dark and wrinkled like a violet carnation,

It sighs, humbly nestling in the moss still moist from love

That follows the descent of sweet white cheeks

Down to their edge.

 Filaments like tears of milk

Have wept beneath the cruel south wind

That drives them back across the little clots of russet clay,

And disappeared there where the slope has called them.

 My Dream has often kissed its opening;

My Soul, that envies mortal intercourse

Has chosen this to be its wild and musky nest of sobs.

 It is the swooning olive and the sweet cajoling flute

The tube through which celestial creamy pralines tumble down

Female Promised Land rimmed round with dew!

On this date the British composer SIR MICHAEL TIPPETT died (b. 1905). Born in London as Michael Kemp Tippett, he studied music at the Royal College. Unlike his contemporaries William Walton and Benjamin Britten, Tippett was a late developer as a composer and was severely critical of his early compositions. Tippett was regarded by many as an outsider in British music, a view that may have been related to his conscientious objector status during World War II and his sexuality. His pacifist beliefs led to a prison sentence during the war: in 1943, at the height of the war, he was summoned to appear before a British government tribunal to justify his conscientious objector status. Instead of receiving an absolute exemption, he was ordered to do full-time farm work. However, Tippett refused to comply with this ruling and was subsequently imprisoned for three months at HMP Wormwood Scrubs.

For many years his music was considered ungratefully written for voices and instruments, and therefore difficult to perform. An intense intellectual, he maintained a much wider knowledge and interest in the literature and philosophy of other countries (Africa, Europe) than was common among British musicians. His (sometimes quirky) libretti for his operas and other works reflect his passionate interest in the dilemmas of human society and the enduring strength of the human spirit.

Tippett was never a prolific composer, and his works, completed slowly, comprised five string quartets, four concerti, four symphonies, five operas and a number of vocal and choral works. His music is typically seen as falling into four distinct periods. The first period (1935–1947) includes the first three quartets, the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, the oratorio A Child of Our Time (written to his own libretto at the encouragement of T. S. Eliot and first performed by Morley College Choir) and the First Symphony.

This period is characterized by strenuous contrapuntal energy and deeply lyrical slow movements. The second period, from then until the late 1950s, includes the opera The Midsummer Marriage, the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, the Piano Concerto, and the Second Symphony; this period features rich textures and effervescent melody.

The third period, the 1960s and '70s, is in stark contrast, and is characterized by abrupt statements and simplicity of texture, as in the opera King Priam, the Concerto for Orchestra and the Second Piano Sonata. The fourth period is a rich mixture of all these styles, using many devices, such as quotation (from Ludwig van Beethoven and Modest Mussorgsky, among others). The main works of this period were the Third Symphony, the operas The Ice Break and New Year, and the large-scale choral work The Mask of Time.

Tippett was knighted in 1966, and awarded the Order of Merit in 1983.

He remained very active composing and conducting. His opera, New Year, received its premiere in 1989. Then came Byzantium, a piece for soprano and orchestra premiered in 1991. His autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues also appeared in 1991. A string quartet followed in 1992. In 1995 his ninetieth birthday was celebrated with special events in Britain, Canada and the US, including the premiere of his final work, The Rose Lake. In that year a collection of his essays, Tippett on Music, also appeared. In 1996, Tippett moved from Wiltshire to London. In 1997, in Stockholm for a retrospective of his concert music, he developed pneumonia. He was brought home to England, where he died early in 1998.