1961-03-29

The Twenty-third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington D.C. to vote in Presidential elections. They are still not represented in Congress though they pay Federal income tax.

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1898 -

ROD LA ROQUE early silver screen matinee idol, born (d: 1969); It is well-documented that he had a torrid affair with actor Richard Halliburton, which gives gentle irony to two of La Rocque’s films: Let Us Be Gay (1929) and One Romantic Night (1930) to say nothing of The Gay Bandit. He was born Rodrique la Rocque de la Rour in Chicago of French and Irish descent. He began appearing in stock theater at the age of seven and eventually ended up at the Essanay Studios in Chicago where he found steady work until the studios closed. He then moved to New York City and worked on the stage until he was noticed by Samuel Goldwyn who took him to Hollywood. Over the next two decades, he appeared in films and made the transition to sound films with ease.

In 1927, he married Hungarian actress Vilma Banky in a lavish and highly (some might say “overly”) publicized wedding. They were married until his death in 1969, and seemed to have a loving compatible relationship.

1915 -

BILLY STRAYHORN, American musician and composer born (d. 1967); American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his seminal collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting two decades. The composition most closely associated with Strayhorn is Lush Life.

His first jazz exposure was a combo called the "Mad Hatters" who played around Pittsburgh, until he met Duke Ellington in December, 1938, after an Ellington performance in Pittsburgh in late 1938. Here he first told, and then showed, the band leader how he would have arranged one of Duke's own pieces. Ellington was impressed enough to invite other band members to hear Strayhorn. At the end of the visit he arranged for Strayhorn to meet him when the band returned to New York. Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next quarter century as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist and collaborator until his early death from cancer. As Ellington described him, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back if my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine". Some have suggested that Ellington and Strayhorn were, actually lovers.

His relationship with Ellington was always difficult to pin down: Strayhorn was a gifted composer and arranger who seemed to flourish in Duke's shadow. Ellington was somewhat of a father figure and the band, by and large, was affectionately protective of the diminutive, mild-mannered, unselfish Strayhorn, nicknamed by the band "Strays", "Weely", and "Swee' Pea". Ellington may have taken advantage of him, but not in the mercenary way that others had taken advantage of Ellington; instead, he used Strayhorn to complete his thoughts, while giving Strayhorn the freedom to write on his own and enjoy at least some of the credit he deserved. Strayhorn, for his part, may have preferred to stay out of the limelight, since that also allowed him to be out of the closet in an era and a community intolerant of Gay artists.

Though Duke Ellington took credit for much of Strayhorn’s work, he did not maliciously drown out his partner. Ellington would make jokes onstage like, “Strayhorn does a lot of the work but I get to take the bows!” In addition to Strayhorn being naturally shy, society made it hard for a black homosexual to get any recognition at all.

Strayhorn composed the band's theme, Take the A Train and a number of other pieces that became part of the band’s repertoire. In some cases Strayhorn received attribution for his work such as, Lotus Blossom, Chelsea Bridge, and Rain Check, while other such as Day Dream and Something to Live For, were listed as collaborations with Ellington or in the case of Satin Doll and Sugar Hill Penthouse were credited to Ellington alone. Strayhorn also arranged many of Ellington's band-within-band recordings and provided harmonic clarity, taste, and polish to Duke's compositions. On the other hand, Ellington gave Strayhorn full credit as his collaborator on later, larger works such as Such Sweet Thunder, A Drum Is a Woman, The Perfume Suite and The Far East Suite, where Strayhorn and Ellington worked closely together.

Openly Gay during an extremely homophobic era, Strayhorn participated in many civil rights acts trying to correct this societal flaw before the movement gained momentum. As a committed friend to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he arranged and conducted King Fought the Battle of ‘Bam’ for the Ellington Orchestra in 1963 for the historical revue My People, dedicated to Dr. King. Critics agree that his dedication to the gay movement was a contributing factor to him being so overlooked as an important musician. People concentrated more on the fact that he was Gay and black then his genius as a pianist, composer, and arranger. For this reason, he hid behind Duke Ellington for so long, letting him take credit for much of his work. Billy Strayhorn had a reputation for having an impact on many people he met because he had such a strong character. He had a major influence on the career of Lena Horne.

1948 -

JOEL SINGER, Canadian filmmaker and photographer born on this date in Montreal. Joel arrived at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974 where he enrolled in an MFA program where he met and fell in love with his graduate advisor poet and filmmaker James Broughton. Over the next 24 years they collaborated on many avant-garde films and produced several volumes of James’ poetry. Joel’s photo collages appeared on the covers of a half a dozen of Broughton’s books.

They traveled the world, spending a “honeymoon” year in Southeast Asia in 1979 living for months in Sri Lanka where they made their film The Gardener Of Eden and in 1984, major film museums in Frankfurt, Germany and Vienna, Austria mounted week-long retrospectives of their work in cinema, allowing them to travel for a year from Sweden to Egypt.

After James’ death in 1999 in Port Townsend, Washington where they had moved 10 years earlier, Joel moved to New York where he lived with their old friend, writer and anthropologist, Tobias Schneebaum ("Keep the River On The Right") for four years until Tobias’ death from Parkinson’s Disease. Joel now makes his home in Bali, Indonesia where he lives with his partner, psychiatrist Nirgrantha.

The White Crane book, Mark Thompson and Bo Young’s Dancing in the Moonlight is graced with one of Joel’s photo-collages as is the recently released poetry collection, Sweet Son Of Pan by poet Trebor Healey (www.queermojo.com). The beautiful three DVD set of The Films Of James Broughton is available from Facets Multimedia (one of the DVDs is Joel and James’ collaborative film work) www.facets.org. Joel recently began to make films again after a twenty-two year hiatus. Some of these films can be seen on his website www.joelasinger.com along with many of his photographs.

Died

1986 -

CARY GRANT, British-born American actor died on this date (b. 1904); With his distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent, Cary Grant was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man: dashingly handsome, virile, charismatic and charming. He was named the second Greatest Star of All Time of American cinema, after Humphrey Bogart, by the American Film Institute. Throughout his time in Hollywood, Grant was rumored to be either homosexual or bisexual.

In 1932, he met fellow actor Randolph Scott on the set of Hot Saturday. The two shared a rented beach house, known as "Bachelor Hall", on and off for twelve years. In 1944, Grant and Scott stopped living together but remained close friends throughout their lives. Rumors ran rampant at the time that Grant and Scott were lovers.

In their biographies of Grant Marc Elliot, Charles Higham and Roy Moseley all contend that Grant was bisexual. Higham and Moseley claim that Grant and Scott were seen kissing in a public carpark outside a social function both attended in the 1960s. In his book, Hollywood Gays, Boze Hadleigh cites an interview with homosexual director George Cukor, who commented on the alleged homosexual relationship between Scott and Grant: "Oh, Cary won't talk about it. At most, he'll say they did some wonderful pictures together. But Randolph will admit it – to a friend."

Homosexual screenwriter Arthur Laurents indicated that Grant was bisexual. In his memoir, he says, Grant "told me he threw pebbles at my window one night but was luckless – I wasn't home. ... his eyes and his smile implied that ... he would have liked doing what we would have done had I been home. William J. Mann's book Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 recounts how photographer Jerome Zerbe spent "three Gay months" in the movie colony taking many photographs of Grant and Scott, "attesting to their involvement in the Gay scene." Zerbe says that he often stayed with the two actors, "finding them both warm, charming, and happy."

In a 2004 interview, Grant's fifth wife, Barbara, says of the rumored Grant-Scott relationship "It wasn't the case at all. In fact, the house that they had down on the beach was known to have women going in and out like running water." Grant himself always denied the rumors, saying "They say that about everyone." When comedian Chevy Chase joked about Grant being Gay in a television interview with Tom Snyder in 1980 ("Oh, what a gal!") Grant sued him for slander; they settled out of court. Grant complained to writer/director Peter Bogdonovich about the Chevy Chase incident, emphatically insisting that while he had many Gay friends, including Cukor, William Haines, and costume designer Orry-Kelly and had nothing against homosexuals, he was not one himself.

In a 2004 interview for the Turner Classic Movies production, Cary Grant: A Class Apart, Grant's third wife, Betsy Drake, commented, "Why would I believe that Cary was homosexual when we were busy fucking? He lived 43 years before he met me. I don't know what he did. Maybe he was bisexual."

Ya think?

1989 -

ALVIN AILEY, American dancer, choreographer died (b. 1931); an African American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey started the American Dance Theater, in 1958 featuring primarily African American dancers. He integrated his dance company in 1963. He also directed; one notable production was Langston Hughes' Jericho-Jim Crow (1964).

The American Dance Theater popularized modern dance throughout the world with his international tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. As a result of these tours, Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations, based on Ailey's experience growing up as an African American in the South, is among the best-known and most frequently seen of modern dance performances. After his death, the American Dance Theater was renamed the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Ailey has been memorialized by the renaming of West 61^st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues in New York City as "Alvin Ailey Way"; the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was located on that block at 211 West 61^st Street from 1989 until 2005, when it moved to a new, bigger facility at the corner of West 55^th Street and Ninth Avenue. Ailey was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988. He died of AIDS, at the age of 58.

White Crane Institute

1961-03-29

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