Last October, evangelicalism was rocked by the launch of ChurchClarity.org, an organization that reports churches’ LGBTQ+ policies and rates congregations based on their level of clarity.
[On Dec. 29, 2017], they announced their most significant accomplishment to date: a detailed analysis of America’s 100 largest churches. Using Outreach Magazine’s popular annual list, CC’s staff uncovered three explosive insights about America’s mega-churches.
[The first was that n]one of America’s 100 largest churches are LGBTQ-affirming.
While progressive Christians often claim that same-sex issues have largely been settled, America’s mega-churches have apparently not received the memo. None of them have policies affirming same-sex people and relationships. This staggering statistic will doubtlessly provide firepower to conservative Christians who claim that LGBTQ+ affirmation is a slippery slope to liberalism and a congregation killer.
Many acclaimed LGBT people died in 2017 from the world of politics, the entertainment industry and beyond. They include: Marriage equality icon Edith (Edie) Windsor died at 88 in Manhattan on Sept. 12. In her landmark case the Supreme Court for the first time granted federal recognition to same-sex married couples. The Windsor decision struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited same-sex couples from receiving the 1,138 federal benefits available to heterosexual married couples. “I had the privilege to speak with Edie a few days ago, and to tell her one more time what a difference she made to the country we love,” former President Barack Obama said.
Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, a lifelong aficionado of Old Hollywood and its movies, died at 84 on March 6 in his Manhattan home. During his 25 years at TCM, he told viewers intriguing stories about stars from Bette Davis to Audrey Hepburn. “I love those people,” Osborne told “CBS Sunday Morning.” “These were people that once ruled the world.”
Robert Osborne (Photo courtesy TCM)
Gilbert Baker, creator of the rainbow flag, known as the “gay Betsy Ross,” died at 65 at his New York City home on March 31. The first rainbow flags were unveiled during the San Francisco 1978 gay pride parade. “We … watched and saw the flags, and their faces lit up,” gay rights activist Clive Jones told the New York Times. “It needed no explanation. People knew immediately that it was our flag.”
Queer actor Nelsan Ellis, who played Lafayette Reynolds, a gay cook, on the HBO vampire series “True Blood” died at 39 on July 8 of heart failure due to alcohol withdrawal. Ellis waged a long battle with alcohol and drug addiction.
Actor Jim Nabors, known for playing Gomer Pyle on the CBS TV shows “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Gomer Pyle: U.S.M.C.,” died at 87 on Nov. 30 at his home in Honolulu. Stan Cadwallader, his husband, said he had been in ill health for more than a year. Nabors said that he “never made a big secret” about being queer, but he didn’t officially come out until he married Cadwallader in 2013.
Jim Nabors (Photo courtesy CBS Television Distribution)
A crowd of one million were treated to spectacular New Year celebrations in Sydney Harbour as they gathered to watch the city’s famous fireworks. And as the New Year was rung in with rockets shooting of the landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge, the display did not disappoint.
The sky above the harbour was illumined with colour as crowds of revellers marked the start of 2018.
A rainbow waterfall firework was shot off the bridge, celebrating recently passed legislation legalising gay marriage in Australia.
Orry-Kelly was the professional name of Orry George Kelly, who was born today, December 31, in 1897. He was an Australian-American Hollywood costume designer. Until being overtaken by Catherine Martin in 2014, he was Australia's most prolific Oscar winner, having won three Academy Awards for Best Costume Design.
Here is something I suspect even the most fervid film buff probably doesn’t know: Bette Davis had big, low-hanging breasts, and she refused to wear an underwire bra because she thought they caused cancer. So Orry-Kelly, one of the most celebrated costume designers in the golden age of Hollywood, solved the Davis dilemma by using foulards, pockets, buttons, and other visual tricks to disguise her floppers.
Orry-Kelly, born Orry George Kelly in 1897 in Kiama, Australia, and the subject of the documentary Women He’s Undressed, directed by Gillian Armstrong, was a master at making screen goddesses look beautiful. He put Ingrid Bergman in her white suits in Casablanca, created Leslie Caron’s ingenue looks for An American in Paris, encased Shirley MacLaine’s gams in poison-apple-green stockings in Irma La Douce, made Natalie Wood’s Gypsy stripper gowns, and was responsible for the coin outfits barely covering the chorines in Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933.
Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca
Orry-Kelly arrived in Manhattan in 1921, and scrounged out a living in those crazy days, working as an actor, a painter, and a set designer until he realized that costumes were his true calling. He went west in 1932, and ended up working on hundreds of films. He won three Oscars and was a huge success—even after losing practically everything and going into rehab for alcoholism, he rebuilt his career to arguably even more spectacular heights.
But there is a dark vein running through this tale. In a rabidly homophobic Hollywood, Orry-Kelly lived as openly and as bravely as a gay man could. (In his New York days, he cohabited and purportedly had a very cozy relationship with Archibald Leach, who went on to become Cary Grant.)
Orry-Kelly journeyed to New York to pursue an acting career and shared an apartment there with Cary Grant. A job painting murals in a nightclub led to his employment by Fox East Coast studios illustrating titles. He designed costumes and sets for Broadway's Shubert Revues and George White's Scandals. He served with the United States Army Air Corps during World War II until being discharged for alcohol problems. His three Academy Awards for Best Costume Design were for An American in Paris, Cole Porter's Les Girls, and Some Like It Hot, and he was nominated for a fourth for Gypsy.
Orry-Kelly worked on many films now considered classics, including 42nd Street, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, Oklahoma!, and Auntie Mame. He designed for all the great actresses of the day, including Kay Francis, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, Dolores del Río, Ava Gardner, Ann Sheridan, Barbara Stanwyck, and Merle Oberon.
Orry-Kelly was known for his ability to "design for distraction" to compensate for difficult figure shapes. He also had the job of creating clothes for the cross-dressing characters played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. His skill is shown by the fact that while Some Like It Hot was in production, Cutris and Lemmon would go into the ladies' room after eating lunch without being spotted as men. He wrote that when he finished draping Dolores del Río in white jersey, "she became a Greek goddess ... she was incredibly beautiful". The elegant clothes he designed for Bergman's character in Casablanca have been described as "pitch perfect".
A longtime alcoholic, Orry-Kelly died of liver cancer in Hollywood on February 24, 1964. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills. His pallbearers included Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Billy Wilder and George Cukor and his eulogy was read by Jack L. Warner.
2018 is the centennial of prolific composer, pianist and conductor, Leonard Bernstein and the entire country will get to join Live from Lincoln Center with what will be just one of countless celebrations throughout the year.
In its annual New Year’s Eve Concert, the New York Philharmonic will pay tribute to its Laureate Conductor with “Bernstein on Broadway.” Included in the evening’s program will be selections from the “Candide,” On the Town,” and “West Side Story.”
(Image courtesy of PBS website)The New York Philharmonic Website reports:
Who can resist Bernstein on Broadway? Toast the New Year and our Laureate Conductor’s 100th with West Side Story’s star-crossed lovers, On the Town’s fun-loving sailors, and Wonderful Town’s bright-eyed New Yorkers as portrayed by Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford, Hamilton’s Christopher Jackson, Cinderella’s Laura Osnes, and Next to Normal’s Aaron Tveit. Audience favorite Bramwell Tovey conducts.
Paul Bowles was born today, December 30, in 1910. was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life.
Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making several trips to Paris in the 1930s. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and in New York wrote music for theatrical productions, as well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with his first novel The Sheltering Sky (1949), set in what was known as French North Africa, which he had visited in 1931.
In 1947 Bowles settled in Tangier, at that time in the Tangier International Zone, and his wife Jane Bowles followed in 1948. Except for winters spent in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) during the early 1950s, Tangier was Bowles' home for the remainder of his life. He came to symbolize American immigrants in the city.
In Paris, Bowles became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. On her advice, he made his first visit to Tangier with Aaron Copland in the summer of 1931. They took a house on the Mountain above Tangier Bay. Bowles later made Morocco his full-time home, and it inspired many of his short stories. From there he returned to Berlin, where he met British writers Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood was reportedly so taken with him that he named a character Sally Bowles in his novel after him. The next year, Bowles returned to North Africa, traveling throughout other parts of Morocco, the Sahara, Algeria, and Tunisia.
In 1937, Bowles returned to New York. Over the next decade, he established a solid reputation as a composer, collaborating with Orson Welles, Tennessee Williams, and others on music for stage productions, as well as orchestral pieces.
In 1938, he married Jane Auer, an author and playwright. It was an unconventional marriage; each of their intimate relationships were with people of their own sex, but the couple maintained close personal ties with each other. Bowles has frequently been featured in anthologies as a gay writer, but during his life, he always regarded such typecasting as both absurd and irrelevant.
After a brief sojourn in France, the couple were prominent among the literary figures of New York throughout the 1940s. Paul Bowles also worked under Virgil Thomson, as a music critic at the New York Herald Tribune. His light opera The Wind Remains, based on a poem by Federico García Lorca, was performed in 1943 with choreography by Merce Cunningham and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. His translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's play Huis Clos ("No Exit"), directed by John Huston, won a Drama Critic's Award in 1943.
In 1945, Bowles began writing prose again, beginning with a few short stories including "A Distant Episode". His wife Jane, he said, was the main influence upon his taking up fiction as an adult, when she published her first novel Two Serious Ladies (1943).
In 1947, Paul Bowles received a contract for a novel from Doubleday; with the advance, he moved permanently to Tangier. Jane joined him there the next year.
Bowles traveled alone into the Algerian Sahara to work on the novel. He later said, "I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert." He drew inspiration from personal experience, noting years later that, "Whatever one writes is in a sense autobiographical, of course. Not factually so, but poetically so." He titled the novel The Sheltering Sky, from a song, "Down Among the Sheltering Palms," which he had heard every summer as a child.
The Bowles couple became fixtures of the American and European immigrant scene in Tangier. Visitors included Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. The Beat writers Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso followed in the mid-1950s and early 1960s.
In 1952, Bowles bought the tiny island of Taprobane, off the coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). There, he wrote much of his novel The Spider's House and returned to Tangier in the warmer months. He returned to Sri Lanka most winters.
Bowles had a cameo appearance at the beginning and end of the film version of The Sheltering Sky (1990), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Bowles' music was overlooked and mostly forgotten for more than a generation, but in the 1990s, a new generation of American musicians and singers became interested in his work again. Art song enthusiasts savor what are described as "charming, witty pieces."
Bowles died of heart failure on November 18, 1999, at the Italian Hospital in Tangier, aged 88.
The Hillreports: Residents living near the Colorado home where Vice President Mike Pence and his family are staying for the holidays have posted a rainbow “Make America Gay Again” banner.
Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo told The Times that a deputy from his office was there when a man came out and hung the banner.
"He was real sheepish and thought he might be confronted by the Secret Service or deputies who'd tell him he couldn't do it," DiSalvo said.
"When they said, 'We're not here to control your free speech rights,' they came out with chili and began feeding them," he said of the couple.
Joseph F. Beam was born today, December 30, in 1954. He was a gay rights activist and author who worked to foster greater acceptance of gay life in the black community by relating the gay experience with the struggle for civil rights in the United States.
An only child, his boyhood in Philadelphia was difficult and solitary; he was often the only non-white pupil in his classes at parochial schools. Later, at Franklin College, he was influenced by the civil rights and the Black Power movements, and played an active role in the local Black Student Union. Also, as a member of the Franklin Independent Men, he helped organize several conferences on campus and was active in college journalism and radio programming. After graduation in 1976, Beam remained in the Midwest, enrolling first in a master's degree program in communications and then working as a waiter in Ames, Iowa. He returned to Philadelphia in 1979.
Giovanni's Room in the Center City District in Philadelphia was one of the main bookstores and contact points for lesbians and gays in the 1970s and 1980s. Beam, himself gay, became well acquainted with local and national gay figures and institutions while employed there in the early 1980s. His articles and short stories began appearing around the same time in numerous gay newspapers and magazines, including Au Courant, Blackheart, Changing Men, Gay Community News, Philadelphia Gay News, The Advocate, New York Native, Body Politic and the Windy City Times.
The Lesbian and Gay Press Association awarded him a certificate for outstanding achievement by a minority journalist in 1984. The following year, he was hired as a consultant by the Gay and Lesbian Task Force of the American Friends Service Committee. He joined the Executive Committee of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays in 1985, and became the editor of their new journal Black/Out.
Beam began preparing and collecting materials for an anthology of writings by and about black gay men in 1982. His goal was to counteract the absence of positive images of gay men of color in the media and their exclusion from the cultural world of white gay rights activists. Inspired by the humanism of the black feminist and lesbian movement, he saw his work as part of a broad effort to correct and redefine the reality of race, sex, class and gender in the United States. Through his writings, he sought to alleviate the alienation of black homosexuals and help create a community of their own.
In the Life was published by Allyson Press in 1986; it was the first anthology of writing by gay black men. It was ignored by most African-American critics and institutions, but was greeted as a literary and cultural milestone in the gay community.
Beam was working on a sequel to In the Life at the time of his death of HIV-related disease in 1988. This work was completed by his mother, Dorothy Beam, and the gay poet Essex Hemphill, and published under the title Brother to Brother in 1991. Both books were featured in a television documentary, Tongues Untied, in 1991.
“As a writer, Joe was more profound than prolific,” wrote his friend Craig Harris after his death. “His articles and essays were poetic, containing turned phrases and puns, metaphors in meters that made his writing musical with penetrating meaning. He took great pride in his skill and devoted time to multiple rewrites, crafting his work to create the style which other writers of the Black genre dubbed 'Beamesque.'”
With no explanation, the White House has terminated members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS amid widespread discontent with President Trump’s approach to the epidemic.
After six members of PACHA resigned in June, the White House on Wednesday terminated the remaining 16 members without explanation via a letter from FedEx.
Scott Schoettes, a Chicago-based HIV/AIDS activist and senior attorney for Lambda Legal, was one of the six who resigned in June over Trump’s inaction on HIV/AIDS and said on Twitter the remaining members were fired.
“No respect for their service,” Schoettes said. “Dangerous that #Trump and Co. (Pence esp.) are eliminating few remaining people willing to push back against harmful policies, like abstinence-only sex ed.”
Lilly Wachowski (formerly Andrew Paul "Andy" Wachowski) was born today, December 29, in 1967. She is a film director, screenwriter, and producer. Her sibling is Lana Wachowski, formerly Laurence "Larry" Wachowski, and both are trans women. Collectively known as the Wachowskis and formerly as the Wachowski Brothers, the pair made their directing debut in 1996 with Bound, and achieved fame with their second film The Matrix (1999), a major box office success for which they won the Saturn Award for Best Director. They wrote and directed its two sequels: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both in 2003), and were deeply involved in the writing and production of other works in that franchise.
Following the commercial success of The Matrix series, they wrote and produced the 2006 film V for Vendetta (an adaptation of the comic of the same name by Alan Moore), and in 2008 released the film Speed Racer, which was a live-action adaptation of the Japanese anime series of the same name. Their next film, Cloud Atlas, based on the novel of the same name by David Mitchell and co-written and co-directed by Tom Tykwer, was released in 2012. Their film Jupiter Ascending and the Netflix series Sense8, which they co-created with J. Michael Straczynski, both debuted in 2015. Sense8 was canceled after two seasons in June 2017, but later that month, it was announced that thanks to strong support from the fans, it would return with a two-hour series finale in 2018.
The sisters have worked as a writing and directing team through most of their professional film careers, from Bound through the first season of Sense8. Following her gender transition, Lilly Wachowski took a break from active writing and directing; Lana worked on the second season of Sense8 without her.
Lilly has been married to Alisa Blasingame since 1991.
Lilly and Lana Wachowski
In March 2016, Lilly Wachowski came out as a transgender woman, issuing a statement to the Windy City Times after a visit from a reporter from the Daily Mail newspaper. While on the red carpet of the 27th GLAAD Media Awards, Lilly commented she had been hiding she was transgender throughout her "whole life."
In 1880, on the first anniversary of her marriage, author Sarah Orne Jewett penned a romantic poem to her partner. “Do you remember, darling, a year ago today, when we gave ourselves to each other?” she wrote. “We will not take back the promises we made a year ago.”
Jewett wasn’t addressing her husband—she was writing to her future wife, Annie Adams Fields. Over a century before same-sex marriage became the law of the land, Jewett and Adams lived together in a “Boston marriage,” a committed partnership between women.
They weren’t the only ones: For several years near the turn of the 20th century, same-sex marriage was relatively common and even socially acceptable. These women shared kisses, hugs and their lives—but today, few remember these pioneers of same-sex relationships.
Though homosexuality was taboo during the 19th century, intense and romantic friendships among women were common. At the time, women were encouraged to exist in a sphere separate from that of men. Public life, work and earning money were seen as the purview of men.
Starting in January, Illinois will bar a rare criminal defense allowing the use of a victim's sexual orientation as justification for violent crime, a ban gay rights advocates say they will attempt to replicate in about half a dozen states next year.
Defense attorneys will no longer be able to mount the so-called "gay panic defense" in Illinois, the second state after California to prohibit the tactic. There are variations, but the defense argument generally goes like this: A person doesn't realize someone is gay or transgender and engages in a flirtation, then discovers that person's sexual orientation and that discovery triggers a passionate involuntary response such as murder.
It isn't common, but one study shows it has surfaced in about half of all U.S. states and has been used with some success. Advocates say bans are necessary because crimes against gay and transgender people are on the rise, but some attorneys remain skeptical, calling the ban politically motivated and unnecessary because the old-fashioned defense wouldn't hold up in court today.
Some people just do not know when to give up. Welcome to Trump's America.
The Washington Postreports: Roy Moore, the Republican nominee who lost Alabama’s closely watched Senate race this month, has filed a last-minute legal complaint alleging “election fraud” and asking the state not to confirm the victory of Democrat Doug Jones.
In the complaint filed in state court, Moore’s campaign argues that Alabama “will suffer irreparable harm if the election results are certified without preserving and investigating all the evidence of potential fraud.” It cites rumors of election fraud that have already been investigated and refuted by the Alabama secretary of state, argues that high Democratic turnout in key areas was statistically unlikely, and reports that Moore himself has taken a polygraph test — an attempt to disprove allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances on teenagers when he was in his 30s.
Moore’s lawyers filed the complaint at 10:33 p.m. Wednesday night and announced it to reporters less than two hours later. At 1 p.m. Thursday, Alabama’s election officials — all Republicans — are scheduled to certify the election. Early Thursday morning, they gave no indication that they would delay that process. In Washington, leaders of both parties expect Jones to take his oath of office when the Senate returns next month.
With Alabama officials certifying Doug Jones' win in the U.S. Senate election, Republican Roy Moore has few options left to turn back a defeat that he has yet to concede.
The state's Republican governor, secretary of state and attorney general on Thursday [Dec. 28, 2017] certified Jones' win by 21,924 votes, a margin of 1.6 percent, over Moore. Jones is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 3, when Congress returns from break. Jones' win came after Moore was dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls that occurred decades ago.
In a Thursday statement, Moore seemed close— or at least closer — to acknowledging his loss but stood by his assertion of fraud in the election that saw him battling both deep-pocketed Democrats and establishment Republicans.
FX has given a series order to Pose, the dance musical from Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson and Brad Falchuk that stars Evan Peters, Kate Mara and James Van Der Beek. The network has ordered eight episodes for Season 1, which is scheduled to begin production in February in New York. It’s slated to premiere on FX in summer 2018.
The history-making Pose, which received a pilot order in March, will feature the largest transgender series regular cast, as well as the largest LGBTQ cast ever for a scripted series. The trans actors were cast after a six-month nationwide search led by casting director Alexa Fogel. They are MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Hailie Sahar and Angelica Ross. All will be playing transgender characters. Also co-starring are Tony winner Billy Porter as well as newcomers Ryan Jamaal Swain and Dyllon Burnside. In the photo above, Moore as Angel competes in the 1987 ballroom category in a scene from the pilot. Ballroom legends and survivors served as consultants.
“I am thrilled to join forces with John Landgraf and FX Networks and FXP and Dana Walden, Gary Newman and Fox 21 Television Studios to present what I think is a game changer of a show, which at its heart is an uplifting series about the universal quest for identity, family and respect,” said Murphy. “Along with being a dance musical and an affirming look at American life in the 1980s, I’m so proud that Pose and FX has made history right from the beginning by featuring the most trans series regular actors ever in an American television production. Additionally, the first season Pose will feature 50-plus LGBTQ characters - a record in American television history. I can’t wait for people to see this incredibly talented, passionate cast.”
In 2018, director Lenny Abrahamson and producer Ed Guiney will make a movie about Emile Griffith, a bisexual boxer who killed his homophobic competitor in an infamous 1962 match. The Emile Griffith film will likely come out in late 2018 or sometime in 2019.
On March 24, 1962, openly bisexual American boxer Emile Griffith fought Cuban fighter Benny “The Kid” Paret at Madison Square Garden in a match televised by ABC. During the weigh-in for the fight, Paret allegedly did a mincing walk towards Griffith, touched his butt and called him a maricón — a Spanish slur roughly meaning “faggot.” Griffith reportedly had to be restrained from attacking him on the spot.
Though his sexuality wasn’t entirely a secret, the press and Griffith’s then girlfriend were both present at the weigh-in and not entirely aware of his sexuality. In 1962, having sex with someone of the same-gender could land you in prison, get you outed in newspapers and effectively kill your career.
During a debate on funding for sex ed, Zurich city council member Daniel Regli lashed out at Lust und Frust (“Pleasure and Pain”), a site that is supported by the city’s education department. Regli complained the site promoted promiscuity and homosexuality, but didn’t lay down the “fact” that “homosexuals with multiple partners take their lives between the ages of 30 and 40… because their anal muscle is not holding up as it should. ”
Regli has had to rescheduled appearances to avoid critics, some of whom have called for his resignation. In a statement, the progressive-minded Young Socialists said if Switzerland’s hate crime law included homophobic statements, he’d be up on charges.
Regli is a member of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a right-wing populist political party with strong Christian leanings. Claiming a doctor friend told him about this startling statistic, he told the news show 20 Minuten, “I said Saturday what nobody wants to hear.”
Marlene Dietrich was born today, December 27, in 1901. She was a German actress and singer who held both German and American citizenship. Throughout her unusually long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she maintained popularity by continually reinventing herself.
In the 1920s in Berlin, Dietrich acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance in The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international fame and resulted in a contract with Paramount Pictures. Dietrich starred in Hollywood films such as Morocco (1930), Shanghai Express (1932), and Desire (1936). She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and "exotic" looks, and became one of the highest-paid actresses of the era. Throughout World War II, she was a high-profile entertainer in the United States. Although she still made occasional films after the war, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a marquee live-show performer.
Dietrich was noted for her humanitarian efforts during the war, housing German and French exiles, providing financial support and even advocating their US citizenship. For her work on improving morale on the front lines during the war, she received several honors from the United States, France, Belgium, and Israel. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.
She met her future husband, Rudolf Sieber, on the set of Tragödie der Liebe in 1923. Dietrich and Sieber were married in a civil ceremony in Berlin in May 1923. Her only child, daughter Maria Elisabeth Sieber, was born on December 13, 1924. Unlike her professional celebrity, which was carefully crafted and maintained, Dietrich's personal life was kept out of public view. She was bisexual, and quietly enjoyed the thriving gay scene of the time and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. She also defied conventional gender roles through her boxing at Turkish trainer and prizefighter Sabri Mahir’s boxing studio in Berlin, which opened to women in the late 1920s. As Austrian writer Hedwig (Vicki) Baum recalls in her memoir, "I don't know how the feminine element sneaked into those masculine realms [the boxing studio], but in any case, only three or four of us were tough enough to go through with it (Marlene Dietrich was one)."
Dietrich was married only once, to assistant director Rudolf Sieber, who later became an assistant director at Paramount Pictures in France, responsible for foreign language dubbing. Throughout her career, Dietrich had an unending string of affairs, some short-lived, some lasting decades. They often overlapped and were almost all known to her husband, to whom she was in the habit of passing the love letters from her men, sometimes with biting comments. When Dietrich arrived in Hollywood and filmed Morocco (1930), she had an affair with Gary Cooper, even though he was already having an affair with Mexican actress Lupe Vélez. Vélez once said, "If I had the opportunity to do so, I would tear out Marlene Dietrich's eyes." Another of her famous affairs was John Gilbert, famous for his alleged affair with Greta Garbo. Gilbert's untimely death was one of the most painful events of her life. Dietrich also had a brief affair with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., even though he was married to Joan Crawford. At the filming of Destry Rides Again, Dietrich started a love affair with co-star James Stewart, which ended after filming. In 1938, Dietrich met and began a relationship with writer Erich Maria Remarque, and in 1941, the French actor and military hero Jean Gabin. Their romance began when both were supporting the Allied troops in World War II. The relationship ended in the mid-1940s.
In the early 1940s, Dietrich also had an affair with John Wayne, her co-star in two films. Dietrich had a strong friendship with Orson Welles, who for her was a kind of platonic love and whom she considered a genius. Sewing circle was a phrase used by Dietrich to describe the underground, closeted lesbian and bisexual film actresses and their relationships in Hollywood. In the supposed "Marlene's Sewing Circle" are mentioned the names of other close friends such as Ann Warner (the wife of Jack L. Warner, one of the owners of the Warner studios), Lili Damita (an old friend of Marlene's from Berlin and the wife of Errol Flynn), Claudette Colbert, and Dolores del Río (whom Dietrich considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood). The French singer Edith Piaf was also one of Dietrich's closest friends during her stay in Paris in the 1950s, and always rumored something more than friendship between them. Greta Garbo has been commonly regarded as Dietrich's greatest film rival, but there is also a rumor of an affair between them. Her last great passion, when Dietrich was in her 50s, appears to have been for the actor Yul Brynner, with whom she had an affair that lasted more than a decade; her love life continued well into her 70s. She counted Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw, John F. Kennedy, Michael Wilding, and Frank Sinatra among her conquests. Dietrich's show business career largely ended in September 1975, when she fell off the stage and broke her thigh during a performance in Sydney, Australia. The following year, her husband, Rudolf Sieber. Dietrich's final on-camera film appearance was a cameo role in Just a Gigolo (1979), starring David Bowie, and in which she sang the title song. An alcoholic dependent on painkillers, Dietrich withdrew to her apartment in Paris. She spent the final 11 years of her life mostly bedridden, allowing only a select few—including family and employees—to enter the apartment. During this time, she was a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller.
In 1982, Dietrich agreed to participate in a documentary film about her life, Marlene (1984), but refused to be filmed. The film's director, Maximilian Schell, was allowed only to record her voice. He used his interviews with her as the basis for the film, set to a collage of film clips from her career. The final film won several European film prizes and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 1984. Newsweek named it "a unique film, perhaps the most fascinating and affecting documentary ever made about a great movie star".
On May 6, 1992, Dietrich died of renal failure at her flat in Paris at age 90.
Joseph Mantello was born today, December 27, in 1962. He is an American actor and director best known for his work on Broadway productions of Wicked, Take Me Out, and Assassins, as well as earlier in his career being one of the original Broadway cast of Angels in America.
Mantello began his theatrical career as an actor in Keith Curran's Walking the Dead and Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz. On the transition from acting to directing, Mantello said, "I think I've become a better actor since I started directing, although some people might disagree. Since I've been removed from the process I see things that actors fall into. Now there's a part of me that's removed from the process and can stand back."
Mantello directs a variety of theatre works, as The New York Times noted: "Very few American directors - Jack O'Brien and Mike Nichols come to mind - successfully jump genres and styles the way Mr. Mantello does, moving from a two-hander like Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune to the huge canvas of a mainstream musical comedy like Wicked, from downtown stand-up (The Santaland Diaries) to contemporary opera (Dead Man Walking) to political performance art (The Vagina Monologues)." In 1997, he directed the film, Love! Valour! Compassion! starring Jason Alexander and written by Terrence McNally.
Mantello directed the Jon Robin Baitz play Other Desert Cities in 2011. He was romantically involved with Baitz at the time. He returned to acting with the role of Ned Weeks in the Broadway limited engagement revival of The Normal Heart in April 2011, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play. Mantello had previously been nominated for the Tony Award for his role as Louis in Angels in America.
He directed the Off-Broadway world premiere of the musical Dogfight in 2012. In January 2013, he directed the Broadway premiere of Sharr White's The Other Place. In 2014 he directed Sting's musical The Last Ship. He directed the Harvey Fierstein play Casa Valentina, which premiered on Broadway in April 2014.
He acts in the revival of The Glass Menagerie, which opened on Broadway in February 2017, which also starred Sally Field. He is currently working as the director of two upcoming productions for 2018: Three Tall Women and The Boys In the Band.
Wilson Cruz was born today, December 27, in 1973. He is an American actor known for playing Rickie Vasquez on My So-Called Life, Angel in the Broadway production of Rent, the recurring character Junito on Noah's Arc, and most recently, one of the first out characters on the new Star Trek: Discovery. As an openly gay man of Puerto Rican ancestry, he has served as an advocate for gay youth, especially gay youth of color. Wilson Cruz was born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents of Puerto Rican descent. His family eventually moved to Rialto, California. At age 19, Cruz came out to his parents as gay, first to his mother and then his father. While his mother was initially hurt and shocked, she eventually accepted the news. His father, however, threw him out of the house, and Cruz spent the next few months living in his car and at the homes of friends. He later reconciled with his father.
Cruz went to Hollywood to seek work as an actor, intending to be open about his sexuality from the beginning of his career. In 1994 he was cast as Enrique "Rickie" Vasquez, a troubled gay teen, in the short-lived critically acclaimed cult classic TV series My So-Called Life. This made Cruz the first openly gay actor to play an openly gay character in a leading role in a television series.
Following My So-Called Life's cancellation, Cruz went on to play J. Edgar Hoover's servant Joaquin in Oliver Stone's film Nixon. In 1996, he appeared with David Arquette as Mikey in Johns, about the day-to-day struggles of male prostitutes. In 1998, he portrayed Angel in the Broadway production of Rent and in 2000 played Victor in the final season of Party of Five. He also had a recurring role as Rafael de la Cruz on the series, Raising the Bar.
Cruz works with and advocates on behalf of LGBT youth, especially youth of color. He has volunteered his time as host for the Youth Zone, an online community at Gay.com for LGBT youth. He was the Grand Marshal of the 1998 West Hollywood Gay Pride parade and the 2005 Chicago Pride Parade. In 2008, he was the keynote speaker at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Lavender Graduation and Rainbow Banquet honoring graduating LGBT students.
Cruz joined the board of directors of GLAAD in 1997 in order to assist the organization through a leadership transition, and joined the staff of GLAAD in 2012 as a National Spokesperson and Strategic Giving Officer.
Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz said it was "surreal" when they were invited to join the cast of "Star Trek: Discovery" on CBS All Access. The co-stars told CBSN that they were always fans of the franchise.
"I've always been enamored with the series," [Cruz] said. "I did see myself as a part of this. I wanted to be a part of Broadway and I wanted to be a part of Star Trek."
Rapp and Cruz's characters, who share a romance, will be the "Star Trek" series' first gay characters. Cruz said it also thickens the plot as the characters learn to navigate their jobs along with their romance.
"It's about how I balance my responsibilities as the ship's doctor and how I balance my responsibilities to the person I love," he said.
In a little-noticed development, Amazon’s surprise announcement in September that it plans to open a second headquarters [HQ2] has prompted growing speculation on whether the corporate giant will consider a state or city’s laws on LGBT issues as a factor in choosing the location of the new headquarters.
In some cities, such as Atlanta and Houston, which are considered to be among the top contenders for the new Amazon headquarters, LGBT activists have expressed concern that their respective states’ poor record on LGBT rights could jeopardize their chances of landing the Amazon headquarters, even though the two cities have strong records of support for LGBT equality.
“The reality is many of the big cities in America, particularly in Texas - Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, El Paso - are islands in a big toxic red state,” said lesbian activist and former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who was named earlier this month as CEO of the Victory Fund.
The second edition of Mr Gay Handsome Nepal is underway in the capital. The program is organized by [an] organization working for the rights of LGBTIQ community in Nepal.
According to the organizers, the pageant . . . is the milestone event for the community and stated that it not only focused on handsome Nepali gay men but is also looking for Nepali gay men who will take on the responsibility to champion gay rights in the country as well as being involved in generating awareness of the LGBTIQ movement.
The organizers believed that the winner will play a powerful role in educating the public at large. According to the society, whilst the law in Nepal may be progressive and accepting of same-sex relations, much work needs to be continued in reaching out to closeted LGBTIQ people and providing them mental support and guidance.
See full My Republica story here. UPDATE: New Next Now further reports:
The wait is over: The winner of the Mr Gay Handsome Nepal 2017 has been crowned.
Manindra Singh was given the trophy at an event Tuesday night, as well as a cash prize of 50,000 rupees (a little less than $500).
Singh (above center) is definitely a thirst-quencher, but the Blue Diamond Society, the LGBT rights group that organizes the event, says the pageant is also focused on gay men who will champion gay rights in Nepal, not just the handsome ones.
David Sedaris was born today, December 26, in 1956. He is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "SantaLand Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. Much of Sedaris' humor is ostensibly autobiographical and self-deprecating, and often concerns his family life, his middle-class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, his Greek heritage, homosexuality, jobs, education, drug use, and obsessive behaviors, and his life in France, London, and the English South Downs.
Sedaris was raised in a suburb of Raleigh and is the second child of six. His siblings, from oldest to youngest, are Lisa, Gretchen, Amy, Tiffany, and Paul (The Rooster). Tiffany Sedaris committed suicide in May 2013. In his teens and twenties, he dabbled in visual and performance art. He describes his lack of success in several of his essays.
He moved to Chicago in 1983 and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987.
While working odd jobs across Raleigh, Chicago, and New York City, Sedaris was discovered in a Chicago club by radio host Ira Glass; Sedaris was reading a diary he had kept since 1977. Glass asked him to appear on his weekly local program, The Wild Room. Sedaris said, "I owe everything to Ira ... My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand." Sedaris' success on The Wild Room led to his National Public Radio debut on December 23, 1992, when he read a radio essay on Morning Edition titled "SantaLand Diaries," which described his purported experiences as an elf at Macy's department store during Christmas in New York.
"SantaLand Diaries" was a success with listeners, and made Sedaris what The New York Times called "a minor phenomenon". He began recording a monthly segment for NPR based on his diary entries, edited and produced by Glass, and signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown and Company.
In 1994, Sedaris published Barrel Fever, a collection of stories and essays. He became a frequent contributor when Ira Glass began a weekly hour-long PRI/Chicago Public Radio show, This American Life, in 1995. Sedaris began writing essays for Esquire and The New Yorker. In 1997, he published another collection of essays, Naked, which won the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Non-Fiction from Publishing Triangle in 1998.
He wrote his next book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, mostly in France over 7 months and published it in 2000 to "practically unanimous rave reviews". For that book, Sedaris won the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor.
In 2004, Sedaris published Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which reached number 1 on The New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List in June of that year. The audiobook of Dress Your Family, read by Sedaris, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album; the same year, Sedaris was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his recording Live at Carnegie Hall.
In 2008 he released, When You Are Engulfed in Flames and in 2010, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary. Sedaris released a collection of essays, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, in 2013, and in 2017 published a collection of his 1977-2002 diaries, Theft By Finding. Also in 2013, the film adaptation of an essay from Naked was released as a feature length movie entitled C.O.G. starring Jonathan Groff. Sedaris has contributed over 40 essays to The New Yorker magazine and blog.
Sedaris currently lives in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England, with his boyfriend Hugh Hamrick, whom Sedaris mentions in a number of his stories. Sedaris describes them as the "sort of couple who wouldn't get married." He enjoys collecting litter in the local area, where he is known as "Pig Pen," and has a garbage truck named after him.
The last music video for Christmas: Members of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC perform "Twelve Days After Christmas" at the 2015 holiday concert "Rewrapped." *Note that videos may not play on e-mail posts or mobile versions of the Gay Almanac. To visit the Web site, go to http://thegayalamac.com.
