Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJanuary 15th, 2015
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Arosa Gay Ski Week, Arosa, Switzerland; Aspen Gay Ski Week, Aspen, CO; Bärenpaadiie, Hamburg, Germany; Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, Washington, DC.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Michael’s Thing (New York, NY), August 30, 1976, page 18.
The International, which was also known variously as International Stud or just the Stud, was known more or less for just one thing. As the local newspaper GAY put it in 1971: “The (International) Stud, Greenwich & Perry Sts. The best make out bar in the Village.”
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Torch Song Trilogy Debuts: 1982. The play is actually a collection of three plays by actor/playwright Harvey Fierstein (see Jun 6), with each play taking up an act in the final production: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First!. The thread that ties the three plays together is the central character, Arnold Beckoff, a torch song-singing Jewish drag queen, with each act focusing on a different phase in Beckoff’s life.
The first staging of International Stud took place in February 2, 1978, and deals with Arnold’s troubled relationship with Ed. International Stud is named for a real life gay bar in the 1960s and 1970s, the backroom of which plays a central role in the play. Act Two, Fugue in a Nursery, sees Arnold settling down with Alan and planing to adopt a child. It debuted on February 1, 1979. By the time Torch Song Trilogy opened three years later, Widows and Children First! and an opening soliloquy were added to complete the trilogy, with Act 3 finding Arnold, now tragically post-Alan, raising a gay teen and dealing with the teen’s his mother-from-hell from Florida.
The four hour long Torch Song Trilogy opened at the Actor’s Playhouse with a star studded cast: Fierstein, Joel Crothers, a young Matthew Broderick as the teen son David, and Estelle Getty as the evil mother. After its run at the Actors’ Playhouse, Torch Song Trilogy moved to the Little Theater Broadway in June, where it ran for 1,222 performances and won two Tonys. It was made into a movie in 1988, starring Fierstein, Anne Bancroft, Matthew Broderick (now grown up and playing Alan), and Brian Kerwin.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Loïe Fuller: 1862-1928. Born Marie Louise Fuller outside of Chicago, she began her theatrical career as a child actress and dancer/choreographer in burlesque, vaudeville and traveling circuses. Those early years as a dancer are when she developed her improvisational dance techniques, and where she learned to combine choreography with silk costumes and multi-colored lights and made her a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting.
She became famous enough in America, but she didn’t feel appreciated as an actress. She moved to Paris, where she found a warm embrace in the City of Lights. A regular at the Folies Bergère, her works Serpentine Dance and Fire Dance became signature pieces of the Art Nouveau movement. She also went on to hold several patents related to stage lighting, including chemical compounds used in color gels, luminescent lighting, and fabrics. Her work profoundly influenced other French scientists and artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, François-Raoul Larche, Henri-Pierre Roche, Auguste Rodin and Marie Curie. Fuller introduced Isadora Duncan to Parisian audiences and advancing the acceptance of modern dance as a serious art form. She devleoped a close friendship with Queen Marie of Romania, and maintained a twenty-year live-in relationship with Gabrielle Block, a Jewish-French banking heiress known for dressing only in men’s suits. Fuller remained in Paris, returning only occasionally to America. She died in Paris of Pneumonia on the first day of 1928 at the age of 65.
In 1899, the Lumière brothers filmed and hand-colored, frame by frame, a performance by an unknown dancer of Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance:
More early filmed versions of Serpentine Dance are available here.
► Ivor Novello: 1893-1951. The Welsh screen idol did it all: actor on stage and silent screen, playwright and composer. When the Great War broke out, he wrote the music for the song “Keep the Home Fires Burning” to lyrics written by American Lena Guilbert-Ford. That hit was Novello’s debut in the the entertainment business. In 1916, he was drafted into the Royal Naval Air Service and trained as a pilot, but after crashing twice, he was transferred to central London to work as a clerk. That allowed him to work as a composer for theater during his off hours. That’s when he met actor Bobbie Andrews, who would become Novello’s life partner. He also met Noel Coward (see Dec 16), who envied “the magic atmosphere in which (Novello) moved and breathed with such nonchalance”
After the war, Novellow continued to find success in composing for musical comedy. He also began making a career of acting, first on the stage and then in film. He appeared in D.W. Griffith’s The White Rose (1923) and in two early Alfred Hitchcock silent thriller The Lodger (1926) and Downhill (1927). A lucrative contract from a British film company allowed him to buy a country house west of London which he renamed Redroofs, and entertained with little regard for convention. Those parties led to the rise of “the Ivor/Noel naughty set,” named for Novello, Noel Coward, and, shall we say, those sorts of people. During the late 1920s Novello was perhaps the most popular star in British films. In 1930, he took his plays Symphony in Two Flats and The Truth Game to Broadway, where he was offered a contract with MGM. But beyond writing the dialogue for Tarzan the Ape Man (including the famous line, “Me Tarzan, you Jane”), his Hollywood career failed to pan out.
Hollywood’s loss was London’s gain. On his return, he added playwriting to his repertoire of talents, which, along with his compositions, made him a powerhouse of British theater. A string of hits followed through the 1930s and 40s. He died suddenly in 1951, while still at the top of his game, from a coronary thrombosis and with Andrews at his side. Coward wrote in his diary, “Another landmark swept away. Poor, poor Bobbie… he will be utterly devastated.” Thousands of fans lined the streets to give their final goodbyes and his funeral was broadcast live on BBC. Four years later, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) established the Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting and composing. The Ivors, as the awards are called, remain the only award that is judged by the writing community, and not by publishers and recording companies.
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CPT_Doom
January 15th, 2015
One correction: the mother in the last act of Torch Song is, I’m pretty sure, Arnold’s mother, not his adopted son’s.
Ben in Oakland
January 15th, 2015
You’re right, Doom.
And there is a great line from the play. Unfortunately I can’t remember it well.
“All I ask for from the people in my life is love, kindness, and respect. and if you can’t give that to me, you have no business being in my life.”
mudduck
January 15th, 2015
Ivor Novello is a character in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, portrayed by Jeremy Northam. He’s a guest of the upper class, singing for his supper and studying their ways.
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