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Life Upon The Wicked Stage
By the start of the 20th century, George M.
Cohan, Victor Herbert and other
heterosexuals were perfecting the Broadway musical sound with a blend of romance, wit and
American attitude. Low rents and proximity to major theatres made Manhattan's
Times Square area a popular home for "fairies" working in the business –
Gay men did not enjoy unalloyed
acceptance in this work environment, to be sure, but the theatrical milieu
did offer them more tolerance than most work places . . . Some men could
be openly gay among their coworkers, and many others were at least
unlikely to suffer serious retribution if their homosexuality were
discovered.
- George Chauncey, Gay New York (New York: Basic Books, 1994),
pp. 302.
That community was dominated by
Lee and Jake Shubert,
theatre owners whose empire stretched across the nation. As Herbert Goldman tells us in
Jolson; The Legend Comes To Life (Oxford
University Press, NY, 1988), the Shuberts hated homosexuals but had no objection to
employing them, either onstage or backstage. In fact, the Shuberts hired more gay
designers and chorus boys than anyone else in the business, but they wouldn't go so far as
to give effeminate men leading roles. The popular slang term for homosexuals was
"nance" -- a nickname version of "Nancy." One of
Al Jolson's favorite
offstage jokes involved this fictional exchange between two Shubert chorus boys:
FIRST BOY: "Do you know Nance O'Neill?"
SECOND BOY: "No. Who is he?"
(Note: Nance O'Neill was a popular stage actress reputed to have had a
love affair with the infamous Lizzie Borden.)
Al Jolson's use of “nance” mannerisms
onstage led some contemporaries to question his orientation. Having the flamboyant
"Pansy" Holmes as his personal dresser only added to the groundless talk. But
talk is all it was. Jolson was an active heterosexual, and smart enough to know that a little backstage gossip
would do him no harm.
The 1920s
In the years following World War I, general prosperity and a
new sense of the impermanence of life led many to lead lives on the cutting
edge. Open defiance of Prohibition made it easier for adventurous people to
explore other forbidden possibilities. The bohemian balls at Webster Hall
in Greenwich Village were among the
first places where effeminate "pansies" mixed with straight-acting
homosexuals and the general public. The balls advertised themselves by saying
"unconventional to be sure . . . only be discreet." Those
who were not discreet paid a heavy price. Hundreds were arrested in New York for
"perverted" sexual behavior during the "Roaring" 20s, and many were
committed to insane asylums to treat their "deviancy."
Many great stage and screen composers appeared in the
years between the wars, and dozens of new musicals debuted each season. There were jobs
aplenty in the theater, and many gay men found profitable careers there.
The British stage of the 20s and 30s was dominated by
two gay composer/actors – Noel Coward
(discussed in detail later on in this essay) and Ivor
Novello. The handsome Novello was even more popular with London
audiences than Coward. He also made some fascinating romantic conquests. According to
The Alyson Almanac (New York: Alyson Publications, 1990, p. 107),
Somerset Maugham got Winston Churchill to admit he had once slept with a man –
Novello. Asked what it had been like, Sir Winston answered, "Musical!"
Performing Can Be a Drag
Female impersonators were among the most popular vaudeville headliners.
Bert Savoy's behavior was outrageous both onstage
and off. He referred to men as "she" and camped it up at every opportunity. His
drag persona was a hip-swaying gossip who dished about herself and the sordid exploits of
her friend "Margie" while the dapper Jay Brennan (himself a former female
impersonator) listened. Savoy appeared in several editions of the Shubert's Greenwich
Village Follies. Mae West borrowed her famous hip-swaying walk from Savoy, and
several impersonators copied his act so thoroughly that Savoy went to court to protect
his routines. A typical Savoy gag –
"I'll never forget, dearie, the time
a baroness or somethin' ast me if I knew Sir Herbert Tree, an'
I answered, ‘No, but I knew his younger brother, Frank Bush."
In 1923, at the height of his popularity, Savoy's life was
cut short. He was strolling along a Long Island beach when a deafening
thunderclap made exclaim to friends, "Mercy, ain't Miss God cutting up
something awful?" As soon as those words passed his lips, Savoy was killed by a lightning bolt.
The flamboyant Karyl Norman billed himself
as "The Creole Fashion Plate" but fellow vaudevillians called him
"The Queer Old Fashion Plate." This did not prevent his having a long and
prosperous career, including a stint hosting a popular nightclub in midtown
Manhattan. However, most of vaudeville's female impersonators made a point of
butching it up offstage. Julian Eltinge, famous
for his glamorous gowns, was so popular that a Broadway theatre was named after him.
(Renamed The Empire, it still stands on 42nd Street.) This master of drag lived with
his mother, never married, and beat up anyone who questioned his sexual
preference – doesn't that tell you something?
Broadway Cartoons
Homosexuals remained invisible in the Broadway musicals of
the 1930s. Now and then a homophobic reference might appear, like when the cowboys in
George & Ira Gershwin's Girl Crazy sing that "on Western prairies we
shoot the fairies or send them back to the East." When Noel Coward
adapted his song "Mad About the Boy" for Broadway's Words and Music in
1938, producers forced him to cut a new verse in which a pinstripe-suited businessman
was to admit his infatuation with a male movie idol –
People I employ
Have the
effrontery to call me Myrna Loy.
However George Chauncey (Gay New York, p. 310)
tells us that "pansy acts" appeared in many clubs and burlesque shows, with
straight actors making vicious fun of homos in a "gay equivalent of blackface."
In 1941, Danny Kaye became a star portraying Lady
In the Dark's effusive – and ridiculous – fashion
photographer, "Russell Paxton." As written by bisexual librettist Moss
Hart, this character raves about a male movie star after a photo session
–
"Girls, he's god-like! I've taken
pictures of beautiful men, but this one is the end – the end! He's got a face that
would melt in your mouth."
When that line was used in the 1940s radio version of Lady in the Dark
the audience roared. So the theatergoing public was aware of homosexual stereotypes and did
not mind seeing them depicted on stage, so long as it was in a degrading cartoon form.
Things were somewhat different in Hollywood. During the first half
of the 20th Century, film become the most popular entertainment medium in the world.
As with the theatre, the creative needs of the motion picture industry made it a
natural home for gays and lesbians.
Next: Life Upon the Wicked
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