On this date the French writer, playwright, poet and traveler ASTOLPHE-LOUIS-LÉONOR, MARQUIS DE CUSTINE was born (d. 1858). Born in the castle of Niderviller in Lorraine as Astolphe Louis Léonor de Custine, he was a French aristocrat and writer best known for his travel writing, in particular his account of his visit to Russia in 1839 Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia. This work documents not only Custine's travels through the Russian empire, but also the social fabric, economy, and way of life during the reign of Nicholas I.

Custine was raised by his strong-willed mother and saw a lot of the writer Chateaubriand, who was his mother's lover.  Custine was given an excellent education and seemed to be headed towards a life in society. He spent time in the diplomatic service, attending the Congress of Vienna, and even accepted a military commission.

In the early 1820s, Custine went along with a marriage arranged by his mother. The Marquis, later to admit his homosexuality and to live openly with a male lover, was genuinely fond of his wife and had a son with her, but she died after only a few years of marriage. Still, during the marriage he met and established a romantic relationship with an Englishman, Edward Saint-Barbe, who remained his life companion.

EDWARD EVERETT HORTON, American actor was born on this date (d. 1970); There’s no way to think of the comedies of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s without recollecting this lanky, bushy-browed Nervous Nellie. Of all the sissified comedians of the past, he was unquestionably the best, certainly the most eccentric and humanly complicated. Watch him in comic support of Astaire and Rogers in Top Hat (1935), where his attempts at getting out of the clutches of Alice Brady provide small gems of Gay sexual innuendo and perfect timing.

The actor is best known for his work as a character actor in supporting roles. Some of his noteworthy films include The Front Page, Trouble in Paradise, the aforementioned Top Hat (one of several Astaire-Rogers movies Horton was in, Holiday, Lost Horizon, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Arsenic and Old Lace and A Pocketful of Miracles.

In private life he lived with his mother on a large estate named “Belly Acres.” One can almost hear him arguing, in that firm but nervous way of his, “Now mother. I like that name, and I don’t care that you find it undignified. Belly Acres it is and Belly Acres is stays.”

Beginning in 1959 he narrated the "Fractured Fairy Tales" segment of the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon show. In 1965 he played the medicine man, Roaring Chicken, in the sitcom F Troop. He parodied this role, portraying "Chief Screaming Chicken" on Batman as a pawn to Vincent Price's "Egghead" in the villain's attempt to take control of Gotham City. His last role, as a moribund tobacco company president in a wheelchair, was in the motion picture Cold Turkey, released after his death.

On this date the soldier and iconic war poet WILFRED OWEN was born (died 1918).  Regarded by many as the leading poet of the First World War, his shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His preface intended for a book of poems to be published in 1919 contains numerous well-known phrases, especially 'War, and the pity of War', and 'the Poetry is in the pity'. He is perhaps just as well-known for having been killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town's church bells declared peace.

Robert Graves and Sacheverell Sitwell (who also personally knew him) have stated Owen was homosexual, and homo-eroticism is a central element in much of Owen's poetry. Through Sassoon, Owen was introduced to a sophisticated homosexual literary circle which included Oscar Wilde's friend Robbie Ross, writer and poet Osbert Sitwell, and C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, the translator of Proust. This contact broadened Owen's outlook, and increased his confidence in incorporating homoerotic elements into his work.

The account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brother, Harold Owen, removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother. Owen also requested that his mother burn a sack of his personal papers in the event of his death, which she faithfully did.

EDWARD ALBEE, American playwright, born; Hailed as the most compelling playwright since Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, Albee enjoyed something like instant success as a dramatist. His most powerful work, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (the title of which he says he saw on the walls of a “New York bathroom”) was the most talked-about play of the 1962-63 season. The evening long argument between a married couple is a strong denunciation of modern marital relationships, amusingly bitchy on the surface but murderously vicious underneath.

More than twenty years later, Albee’s homophobic critics still insist that George and Martha are actually a male couple in drag. What “normal” couple, they insist, would behave so viciously? These critics have apparently not read the divorce statistics lately.

In 1963 Albee was denied a Pulitzer Prize for his electrifying play (in one of the rare -- if not the only -- occasion in which the trustees of the Pulitzer Foundation ignored the vote of the judges). Wonder why, Albee has received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama:—for A Delicate Balance, (1967), Seascape (1975) and Three Tall Women (1994.

Among Albee’s other works for theater are: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Judy Garland: The Concert Years. The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, Tiny Alice, Malcolm, Breakfast At Tiffany’s (adapted from Capote), The Lorca Play, The Play About the Baby, and The Goat of Who Is Sylvia?

LAURITZ MELCHIOR, Danish-born American opera singer died (b. 1890); The famous Danish Heldentenor was virtually a household name in the 1930’s and 40’s, first because of his Tristan played to Kirsten Flagstad’s Isolde at the Met, and later for his appearances in some of MGM’s very worst musical in which he was to opera exactly what José Iturbe was to classical piano playing. One wonders what clean-thinking Louis B. Mayer would have thought had he known that the former opera star, now solving the adolescent love problems of Jane Powell, had once been the lover of novelist Hugh Walpole. Walpole, in fact, had been Melchior’s patron (in return for services rendered) and reputedly became hysterical when the singer left him, claiming that he liked women better, after all. Melchior’s new persuasion, however, didn’t prevent him from regularly sharing the shore leaves of an American sailor with his spiritual brother, poet Hart Crane. Melchior died just two days short of his 83^rd birthday on March 20.

Polish artist TAMARA DE LEMPICKA died (b. 1898). Born Maria Górska in Warsaw, in partitioned Poland, she was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman artist to be a glamour star." Madonna is a huge fan and collector of her work. She has lent out her paintings to events and museums and has featured Lempicka's artwork in her music videos for "Open Your Heart" (1987), "Express Yourself" (1989), "Vogue" (1990) and "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" (1998). She also used her paintings on the sets of her 1987 Who's That Girl and 1990 Blond Ambition world tours. Other famous collectors include actor Jack Nicholson and singer-actress Barbra Streisand.

LIEUTENANT DAN CHOI and CAPTAIN JAMES PIETRANGELO II, two outed military officers, handcuffed themselves to the White House gates in an act of public protest against the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which forbids Gay service members from serving openly in the U.S. military.  Specifically they were protesting the Obama administration's intransigent foot-dragging on the issue after having campaigned on removing the policy that had been signed into law by Bill Clinton.