Tate Taylor

42-year-old Tate Taylor is the openly gay director/writer of the Academy Award nominated film, The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett's civil rights-era novel of the same name. Stockett, who has known Taylor since they were in a Presbyterian Church preschool together in Jackson, Mississippi, gave him rights to make the film adaptation in 2008, before the book was published. Actually, Taylor started writing the screenplay before a publisher was found, deciding he’d make an independent film based on an unpublishable manuscript.

Last month the film received four Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture and acting noms for Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer. The film won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Made on a $25 million budget, The Help has grossed more than $200 million so far.

On February 19 Taylor is set to receive the Writers Guild of America West's Paul Selvin Award for his adapted screenplay. The Selvin Award recognizes written work which embodies the spirit of constitutional rights and civil liberties.

“The studios, other than Dreamworks, didn’t want to produce it, because I insisted on directing it,” Taylor said. “… I can’t say that I blame them. You know, on paper, you just don’t let someone with limited experience go down there with a pile of money and start making a complicated ensemble piece. I’m not a sure-fire hit in the Hollywood economics and business model, but it happened because I was being stubborn and Dreamworks studios was being really cool by saying, ‘You know what? Let’s give it a shot’.”

Stockett and Taylor once shared a rent-controlled apartment in New York’s East Village. Stockett recounts that 60 literary agents turned her down. However, once The Help became a best seller, Stockett promoted Taylor as the person to write and direct the movie version. “I really wanted a Mississippian to tell the story, to translate it to the screen,” she says. Taylor commented, “We didn’t think there was any way a studio would do an all-female bi-racial drama set in the sixties. They just don’t make these movies anymore.”

Octavia Spencer, who plays Minny, was Taylor’s roommate while he was working on the screenplay in L.A. Filmed in Greenwood, Mississippi, the crew was greeted rapturously by the locals, nearly 1,000 of whom wound up as extras. Viola Davis, who many consider a shoo-in for a best actress Oscar win (tune in on February 26), arrived a month early. She had already started her research, watching civil rights documentaries like “Eyes on the Prize” and reading books about that era. “I read anything I could possibly get my hands on just to recreate what it was like to live in that time period,” she said.

Taylor summed up the pride he takes in this project: “What’s meant the most to me in this whole process is that people I don’t know sending me letters and emails saying ‘I was about to quit the business. It’s changed so much. It’s so jaded. It’s so economically driven. The art has been lost. And I heard what happened with you and and Kathryn and DreamWorks…and I am refueled.’ That makes me feel really good.”

In an interview with The Advocate, Taylor said, “I didn’t live through the ’60s, so one of the ways I was able to really understand that civil-rights struggle was by looking at what’s happening in America now with the gay community. Gays understand what it’s like to be discriminated against.”



After fifteen years of work in New York City and Los Angeles, Taylor recently moved into Wyolah, a 70-acre antebellum plantation in Church Hill, north of Natchez. He hopes to hold workshops and host industry hopefuls on the c. 1836 estate, poignantly built by slave labor. Taylor plans on restoring the plantation, turning the third floor of the main house into a space to hold such events. Many of the original Mississippi plantation outbuildings survive, including a great house with double porches, doctor’s office, brick kitchen (photo below), commissary, carriage house and barn. Wyolah plantation and its nine buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

An interview with Tate Taylor at the U.K. premiere of The Help:

Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg (1926-1997), a Beat Generation poet, wrote a long poem, Howl, in 1956. Its famous opening line:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.

The poem warns of the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States at the time, and its first hearing was an iconic moment in the social upheaval of the 1960s.

Allen Ginsberg was born into a New Jersey Jewish family, the son of poet/teacher father and a mother who was a member of the Communist party. At Columbia University Allen Ginsberg (who was never himself a Communist), met Lucien Carr, who introduced him to Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes, all future Beat Generation writers. They bonded over the potential they saw in the youth of America, as a counter movement to the post-WWII McCarthy era.

In San Francisco, Ginsberg met 21-year-old Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010), with whom he fell in love. Ginsberg encouraged Orlovsky to try writing poetry, and they became life-long partners. Orlovsky’s gentleness and kindness were a perfect foil to Ginsberg’s brittle coldness. There Ginsberg met members of the San Francisco Renaissance and other poets who would become part of a broader, expanded Beat Generation. Ginsberg planned a poetry reading at the Six Gallery, advertising the event as Six Poets at the Six Gallery. The reading, held on October 7, 1955, brought together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. It was the first public reading of Howl, the poem that brought world-wide fame to Ginsberg and many of the poets associated with him.

Because of its explicit, raw language, Howl was considered scandalous when it was first published. Banned for obscenity shortly after its 1956 publication, that action became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment; the ban was rescinded after a judge declared the poem as having redeeming social importance.

Orlovsky (left) and Ginsberg in Paris, 1957:

Ginsberg's speech and writings about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure in the conservative 1950s, but he continued to tackle sensitive and inflammatory subjects throughout the next four decades. His openness about homosexuality, including his love of young men, was a constant expression. In his poetry he wrote openly and graphically about his desire for the freedom of men to love other men, paving the way for other writers to express themselves more honestly. As well, his use of language deemed indecent challenged obscenity laws, ultimately changing them.

Allen Ginsberg succumbed to cancer fifteen years ago. He died on April 5, 1997, at age 70, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in New York City. All of us owe our legal freedom of expression to this man who bravely challenged the status quo.

Charles Frohman

Charles Frohman (1856-1915), an American theatrical producer of both stage and screen, was one of three founders of The Famous Players Film Company (1912), which merged into Paramount Pictures, celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. Today owned by Viacom, Paramount is America's oldest existing film studio and the last major film studio still headquartered in Hollywood.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In the late nineteenth century Frohman developed a “star and combination system” in which his stage stars and their original casts would tour the country after opening runs in New York City, a feat that revolutionized theater in the U.S. He mimicked the success of this system in London, as well. Frohman then organized the Theatrical Syndicate, which made stars of many playwrights and actors under his control. He thus wielded significant influence in matters of theatrical taste on both sides of the Atlantic. By the turn of the century he was the leading impresario of both New York and London, bringing British plays to New York and vice-versa. Frohman’s NY headquarters and office were in his Empire Theater, across the street from the Metropolitan Opera, at Broadway and 40th St. Beloved actor John Drew held sway here for more than 20 years (photo below), but Maud Adams, a celebrity actress in her day, created the role of Peter Pan here in 1907, the landmark event that theater goers would probably most remember about the Empire (sadly demolished in 1953).

However, Frohman soon set his sights on movies. The slogan for Frohman’s Famous Player Film Company was “Famous Players in Famous Plays,” offering feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by showcasing the leading theatrical players of the time, including Sarah Bernhardt and Mary Pickford. Famous Player distributed its films through the start-up company Paramount (1914), the first successful nation-wide distributor. Until this time, films were sold on a state or regional basis, which was costly to film producers. In 1916, Famous Player Film Company merged with Lasky Features and Paramount distributors to become Paramount Pictures.

Tragically, Frohman never lived to see the merger that would spawn the creation of a worldwide cinematic powerhouse. A discrete homosexual, Frohman had a longtime live-in partner, theater critic Charles Dillingham (1868–1934), who had became a well-known producer. Dillingham (1916 photo at right) produced nine musicals each by composers Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern. By 1914 Dillingham was operating the massive Hippodrome Theatre, staging some of the largest spectacles New York had ever seen. He also collaborated with Florenz Ziegfeld and showcased the dance team of Adele and Fred Astaire. Charles Dillingham was also the inspiration for Billings, the fictional character played by Frank Morgan in MGM's movie, The Great Ziegfeld (1936).

In 1915 Frohman left Charles in New York to go to the aid of his favorite playwright, J. M. Barrie (noted author of Peter Pan). Barrie’s current play was troubled by a faltering London production, and Frohman, at age 58, sailed to the rescue on the ill-fated Lusitania, which went down within sight of the Irish coast. Calmly puffing a cigar as the ship was torpedoed on May 7, 1915, Frohman met his end as bravely as any stage hero, coolly intoning: "Why fear death? It's the greatest adventure of all" (a paraphrase of a line from Peter Pan: “To die would be an awfully big adventure.") For his epitaph Frohman asked that he be remembered as "The man who gave Barrie’s Peter Pan to the world and Rostand’s Chantecler to America."

The date of this newsprint warning by Germany (above) is dated April 22, 1915; the Germans torpedoed the British liner on May 7.


The night of the Lusitania’s sinking, John Ryland, on staff at Frohman’s Empire Theater in New York,  was inspecting the building at closing time when he saw Charles Frohman sitting at his desk in his fifth-floor office. The light was on, and Frohman was looking over all of his pictures and theater memorabilia that were laid out on top of his desk. Ryland was perplexed, as he had seen Charles off on the Lusitania only a few days prior. The staffer asked why Frohman was back and if there was anything he could do. Frohman shook his head, saying, “No, you can’t help me, John. Just leave me alone here for a few minutes. Thanks – and goodbye.”

Ryland left the room and quickly returned with the house manager, two box office boys, a press agent, and Frohman’s office boy, Peter Mason, all of them unbelieving. Frohman’s office was dark, empty, and everything was where it was supposed to be. The men laughed at Ryland, although some were unsettled by his insistence of what he saw. After subsequently learning of Frohman’s death, Ryland never entered Frohman’s office again, despite continuing to work at the theater for the next twenty years.

Coinciding with the centennial anniversary of Paramount, the restored and remastered version of the silent film Wings (1927) was released last week on DVD and Blu-Ray. It won the first ever Academy Award for Best Picture in an award ceremony at the Hotel Roosevelt, which still welcomes Hollywood guests across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. This film about WW I fighter pilots also features the oldest extant male-male kiss, between actors Richard Arlen and Charles “Buddy” Rogers. Have a look at the restored footage: