Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 7

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From Midnight Rider, July 4, 1980, page 24.

Mary’s of Houston, Texas held a “Get Out of Jail Free” party on Monday, July 7 as an act of defiance against the Houston Police Department, which had raided the bar on June 24. Sue Cummings wrote about the raid the week earlier:

I wrapped up the Wilde ‘n Stein radio show Thursday night with, “I’m off to San Antonio for the State Democratic Convention,” but. .. going home via Westheimer took me past Mary’s. There I saw the police loading bar patrons into a van. The first thing I did was the 100-yard dash to a public phone and 25¢ later KPFT and Ray Hill had the news.

I returned to find Jim Farmer, owner and Grand Marshal of the Gay Pride Week Parade with his hands against the side of the van. There were uniformed officers of the vice squad and also plainclothes policemen trying to pass for gay. Guns tucked in the small of their back, badges at their waist, they had dressed in out-of-date hippie gear. The billy clubs were out as they confiscated leather vests, caps, belts, and wristlets studded with metal and hung with chain.

It was not the Stonewall. All these men with their “deadly weapons” did not resist. They went quietly; some joked to keep the morale up. Two groups of onlookers gathered — one near Montrose Boulevard and the other at Waugh Drive. I asked a young man standing to my left “how many are in the van?” but he didn’t know. He told me they would not let him enter the bar. One by one a policeman placed men in the backseat of a blue cruiser parked on Waugh until there were five. Shortly after that myself, Sharon Taylor, and David, the young man I had spoken with were also arrested.

When Sharon, Officer Krol, and I arrived at the station the men were lined up against a long white wall. We were placed in an office across the hall from Andy Mills, manager and leader of the Montrose Singers, Family, Tavern Guild, etc. A vice officer pokes his head into the office and says, “You mean they have dykes down there too?” Sharon is refused permission to use the bathroom.

From where we sit in the booking room we can see the men being processed. They are brought in from the tank — a dark, crowded cell used for holding — searched, and photographed. Some are ridiculed. Then they are told the amount of their bail. Now I am being frisked. “No purse?” Now I am being booked. “Were you arrested at that place on Westheimer? Don’t you know that’s a queer bar?” Sharon and I are handcuffed for the trip upstairs. But first we pass a sign that says: HPOA EATS CRAP.

6th Floor-Women’s Unit. We are turned over to a policewoman and allowed to use the telephone. It is 4 AM. Then on to cell 7 where a nylon stocking hangs from a steel bar above my head. It is sunrise and we wait for court to begin. Sixty-one people wait for someone to pay their bail. Next year, Sharon suggests, we should put a Gay Pride billboard down by the police station.

Mary’s opened in 1970, and remained in business until 2009.

[Source: Susan Cummings. “The Night They Raided Mary’s.” Midnight Runner (June 24, 1980): 14.]

Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover, on vacation.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
► 40 YEARS AGO: Hoover’s Homosexuality Denied …Again: 1975. J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ 48-year chief, was dogged by rumors of his homosexuality and a suspected longtime affair with his assistant Clyde Tolson, but those rumors were put down as quickly as they arose. When Hoover died in 1972 he left his estate to Tolson, who moved into Hoover’s house. When Tolson died in April of 1975, speculation arose again over what everyone acknowledged as an extraordinarily close relationship with Hoover. In July, the subject came up again on CBS’s “Face the Nation”, according to this UPI article:

Rumors that the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual “absolutely could not be true,” according to a former top FBI official.

William A. Sullivan, who retired Saturday as assistant FBI director, made the statement in response to a reporter’s question on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Hoover never married and maintained a lifetime friendship with his top assistant, Clyde Tolson, who died earlier this year.

CBS reporter Fred Graham told Sullivan it was “common knowledge that there were allegations that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.”

“I wonder, “Graham asked, “can you tell me if that was investigated by any security agency, and can you tell me whether or not the FBI knows whether or not that’s true — was true?”

Sullivan replied: “I think that that is a — that question there is so ridiculous, about the homosexuality of J. Edgar Hoover, that I will just not give any credit to it, because I think it — it just absolutely cannot be true. I don’t believe.”

Graham: “But are you telling me that it was never checked out?”

Sullivan: “Certainly not. It was not checked out. It was so ridiculous that you could not check out something like that.”

George Cukor, on The Philadelphia Story set with Katharine Hepburn.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► George Cukor: 1899-1983. A glance through his filmography shows that Hollywood would not have been Hollywood without George Cukor’s directing many of its landmark films with RKO and MGM.  In 1931, he made his solo directorial debut with Paramount with Tarnished Lady starring Tallulah Bankhead, and went on to work on twenty-six films over the next ten years including, notably, A Bill of Divorcement (1932, debuting Katharine Hepburn), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), Camille (1936), The Women (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Gaslight (1944), Adam’s Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star is Born (1954), and My Fair Lady(1964). Cukor had been hired by his mentor, David O. Selznick, to direct Gone With The Wind even before the book was published. But Cukor was fired three weeks into filming after expressing dissatisfaction with the script. (A replacement director was also dissatisfied with it and quit, prompting a complete re-write of the film.)

Cukor had a reputation as a “woman’s director” for his ability to coax great performances from his actresses. He hated the title, perhaps seeing it as a dig at his open secret: just about everyone in Hollywood knew he was gay. He luxurious home was host to weekly Sunday afternoon pool parties attended by closeted celebrities and their guests. Hollywood was — and still is — a very small company town, and word had a way of getting around. Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz said, “In a way, George Cukor was the first great female director of Hollywood.” But the quality of Cukor’s work belied those who dismissed him because he wasn’t a typical macho director. Twenty-one actors and actresses working under Cukor received Oscar nominations; three actors and two actresses came up winners. Cukor himself earned five Best Direction nominations, finally winning an Oscar for My Fair Lady.

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