RAPHAEL, Italian Renaissance painter and architect born (d. 1520); Almost every Renaissance painter has been thought to be homosexual by one writer or another over the years, and Raphael, “the divine painter” is no exception.

The clues, however, may be purely coincidental in Raphael’s case. (1) As a young man he was exceedingly beautiful. (2) As an adult he lived together with his two favorite students, Giulio Romano, reputed to be bisexual, and Gianfrancesco Penni. (3) When he died at 37, he left the larger part of his estate to the two young men. (4) As the New York Times would have put it, “he never married.” Reach your own conclusions.

WILLIAM RUFUS DE VANE KING, U.S. Senator, born (d: 1853); A U.S. Representative from North Carolina, a Senator from Alabama, and the 13th Vice President of the United States. Excluding John Tyler and Andrew Johnson — both of whom ascended to the Presidency — he was the shortest-serving person to occupy that office (45 days).

He was also the “best friend” of America’s only bachelor president, James Buchanan. And he paid a political price for the closeness of that friendship. Andrew Jackson, called him “Miss Nancy,” and others referred to him as “her” and “Aunt Fancy” while Aaron V. Brown spoke of the two as "Buchanan and his wife." When an attempt was made to check the gossip by shipping King off as Ambassador to France, jokes circulated about the presidential “divorce.” Buchanan wrote in 1844, after King left for France:

 "I am now 'solitary and alone,' having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."

King was elected Vice President in 1852 and because of his poor health, traveled to Cuba. By a special act of Congress he was permitted to take the oath of office in Matanzas. Cuba on March 24 1853. His health did not improve and he returned to Alabama where he died at his plantation.

VIRGINIA HALL GOILLOT DSC, Croiz de Guerre, MBE (d: 1982), code named Marie and Diane, was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Sprecial Operations Executive (SOE) and later with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The purpose of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers. SOE and OSS agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. After World War II Hall worked for the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She was pioneering agent for the SOE, arriving in France in August 1941, the first female agent to take up residence in France. She created the Heckler network in Lyon. Over the next 15 months, she "became an expert at support operations -- organizing resistance movements; supplying agents with money, weapons, and supplies; helping downed airmen to escape; offering safe houses and medical assistance to wounded agents and pilots." She fled France in November 1942 to avoid capture by the Germans.

She returned to France as a wireless operator for the OSS in March 1944 and a member of the Saint network. Working in territory still occupied by the German army and mostly without the assistance of other OSS agents, she supplied arms, training, and direction to French resistance groups, called maquis, especially in Haute-Loire where the maquis cleared the department of German soldiers prior to the arrival of the American army in September 1944.

The Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies." Hall had an artificial foot she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "the limping lady."

I have and offer no certain proof that she was a lesbian, but her biographer, Sonia Purnell, in the recent book A Woman of No Importance notes that Hall was the headstrong daughter of a Baltimore banker and his socialite wife. When the family’s finances began to fail, Barbara Hall wanted her daughter to make an advantageous marriage, elevating both the family’s monetary and social positions. Virginia was having none of it. Purnell also referred to her as "a tomboy." Given her dashing wartime bravery, it's not hard to imagine that she had Sapphic tendencies, despite her purported liaisons with men. She did marry.  And pretty much any time the term "headstrong" is used in reference to a young woman, you really have to go there.

She studied in Paris, where she fell in love with France — and a young man whom her family deemed unsuitable and forbid her to marry. She began working with the U.S. State Department and was posted to Turkey. During a hunting expedition, she stumbled and suffered a gunshot wound in her left foot. Her leg had to be amputated just below the knee. At the age of 27, she acquired the prosthesis — she named it “Cuthbert” — that she would have for the rest of her life.

For years in Lyon, she avoided capture by the Nazis while setting up vast networks, rescuing officers, supplying valuable intelligence to England, and setting the stage for guerrilla warfare that was to hugely benefit the Allies toward the end of the war.

When “the limping lady of Lyon” finally became so notorious that the Gestapo was close on her trail, Hall escaped and hiked over the Pyrenees into Spain — a grueling and horrifically painful journey, given her prosthesis. Later, in the mountainous region of the Haute-Loire in France, she established a group of guerrilla fighters and supplied vital intelligence in advance of the Allies’ D-Day invasion.

Hall spoke five languages, went by many code names, and could switch her appearance multiple times in an afternoon. She cultivated contacts, planned a daring and successful prison escape for her fellow agents, and later on during the war – with the Nazis hot on her heels – recruited and led guerrilla groups whose sabotage missions of blowing up bridges and cutting off communications helped the Allied effort after D-Day.

More than a few of her fellow SOE officers refused to acknowledge the competence and leadership of a female spy. Such discrimination — and Hall’s desire to avoid commendation — certainly contributed to how little-known she is today, Purnell writes. She was one of the actual British operative who was granted "a license to kill." And she did.

Many of the Allied victories of World War II might have been greatly delayed or never have been achieved. Purnell describes Hall’s life as a “Homeric tale of adventure, action, and seemingly unfathomable courage.”

Hollywood boy-toy ANDERSON LAWLER died on this date. As early as November 1929, Photoplay explained to its readers  "How bachelors manage their homes". Described as a "playboy", WILLIAM HAINES appeared in a photograph captioned "at home, fastidious housekeeper and host, art connoisseur. The commode is Venetian, the portrait a Sir Peter Lely." Well of course it is!

Tea with RAMON NOVARRO was served by his "man" (Novarro's "valet" and éminence grise Frank Hansen) and consisted of "tiny finger sandwiches, cut in hearts and shamrocks, and luscious little petit fours" and that GARY COOPER lived with his mother (such a good boy). She noted a banling ham in the kitchen, a gift from Anderson Lawlor's mother in Virginia. Modern research suggest overwhelmingly that Cooper was involved in a long-term relationship with Andy Lawlor aka ANDERSON LAWLER.

Lawler was born Sidney Lawler on May 5, 1902 in Russellville, Alabama. Prior to 1927, Lawler would move to New York City, and change his professional name to Anderson. In 1927 he would have a featured role in the Broadway production Her First Affaire, which premiered in August 1927. 

In 1929 he would move to Los Angeles, where he would begin his career in the film industry. His first role would be in 1929's River of Romance. Just arrived in Hollywood, he met Cooper. Lawler acted in thirty-nine films over the next ten years, his last film credit being in 1939. Seventeen of those roles however were uncredited bit parts, and in addition one role was deleted before the film was published. Lawler frequently stayed at the Cooper house at 7511 Franklin Avenue while Cooper's parents were away. When Cooper eventually took his own apartment on Argyle Avenue, Anderson casually moved in...

While in Hollywood, he appeared in almost thirty films during this time, mostly in supporting roles, before moving behind the scenes in 1939. Aside from his professional career, he was also popular with many Hollywood luminaries, such as  William Haines, George Cukor, Gary Cooper and Katharine Hepburn (anyone notice a theme there?) 

Lawler was a enthusiastically Gay (and if Gary Cooper was your boyfriend wouldn't you be, too?) although he was frequently linked with women, though this was usually a Hollywood smoke screen. In 1935 he accompanied Kay Francis on a trip to Europe, ostensibly sent by the studios to keep her out of trouble. Walter Winchell helpfully started a rumor that the two were engaged. Let's just say....probably not. Repeat after me: Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper.

Lawler produced the 1946 film, Somewhere in the Night, which was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and starred John Hodiak, Nancy Guild and Lloyd Nolan. Lee Strasberg adapted the screenplay, and was an assistant director on the project. Shortly after this, both Lawler and Strasberg were transferred to the New York office of Twentieth Century-Fox. Lawler and Strasberg had a close friendship, Lawler becoming the godfather of Strasberg's daughter, Susan. 

In New York, Lawler worked in Fox's talent department, but he also began a second career as a producer of legitimate theater. At least one of those plays, Oh Men, Oh Women, would be turned into a film in 1957. On April 6, 1959, Lawler died suddenly from a heart attack

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is organized by Joseph Smith Jr. and others at Fayette, New York, proving that people will buy just about any cockamamie story if it's mystical and magical enough and has either magic beans or golden tablets or patriarchal hierarchy. Or all three. And just an observations, LDS imagery tends to the Disney end of the artistic scale.

OSCAR WILDE is arrested (in Cadogan Hotel, London) after losing a libel case against the John Sholto Douglas 9th Marquess of Queensberry. 

Wilde: “The love that dares not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dares not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."

Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." Thus he begins Salt Satyagraha.

And speaking of Tonys...the late great playwright TERRENCE MCNALLY wed Tom Kirdahy in Washington D.C. ceremony. During a small ceremony under a tree blooming with white flowers, Kirdahy read from a scene in McNally's play "Corpus Christi," in which a Gay, Christ-like figure named Joshua marries two apostles:

"It is good when two men love as James and Bartholomew do and we recognize their union," Kirdahy read. "Love each other in sickness and in health."

Kirdahy, a lawyer and Broadway producer, choked up as he recalled seeing the play before meeting the playwright. Actress Tyne Daly, who was then starring in McNally's "Master Class" at the Kennedy Center festival, served as a witness at the sunlit wedding and read Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Actors John Glover and Malcolm Gets, both starring in "The Lisbon Traviata," also looked on. 

The Rev. George Walker of the People's Congregational United Church of Christ presented them as husbands and signed their marriage certificate.

In 2015, in celebration of the Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality, the couple renewed their vows at a ceremony officiated by Kirdahy's former college roommate, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.

McNally's most recent play, Mothers and Sons opened on Broadway in March, 2014. Kirdahy was the lead producer of the runaway hit It's Only A Play on Broadway and the five-time Tony Nominated Broadway premiere of The Visit; he most recently presented The Inheritance.