Marcel Proust

 

French writer Marcel Proust was a novelist, literary critic and essayist who was known primarily as the author of the monumental novel “À la recherche du temps perdu” (“Remembrance of Things Past” or “In Search of Lost Time”) published in seven volumes (3,200 pages) between 1913 and 1927. This work featured many gay, lesbian and bisexual characters described in explicit encounters throughout all volumes.

Proust himself was gay, but he never publicly acknowledged it. He had relationships with men, including composer Reynaldo Hahn, novelist Lucien Daudet, and his chauffeur Alfred Agostinelli. Not to mention that, in 1918, Proust was identified by police during a raid on a male brothel. And most interestingly, in 1897 Proust fought a duel with writer Jean Lorrain after Lorrain publicly questioned Proust's relationship with novelist Daudet. The stuff of soap operas.

Love letters from Proust to Reynaldo Hahn were auctioned in Paris in 2018 by a grand niece of the writer. Those letters had never before been disclosed, and they were put on public display prior to the auction. Hahn was the first romantic partner of Marcel Proust, and the two remained close friends for the rest of their lives. They met in 1894 at the salon of Parisian painter Madeleine Lemaire, when Proust was 22 and Hahn 19. Their relationship was intense and lasted until the summer of 1896. They shared a love of music, painting, and literature. Proust wrote in a letter, "Everything I have ever done has always been thanks to Reynaldo". 

Proust is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His life, however, was marked by poor health (severe asthma from the age of nine) and the turmoil of the French Third Republic with its suppression of the Paris Commune. In later years his health continued to decline, and the last three years of his life were spent confined to his bedroom. He died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in Chaillot (Paris) in 1922, at age 51. He completed seven novels, short stories, translations of John Ruskin and left behind several unfinished works. His life has since been examined in a BBC television special, numerous novels, films and essays.

Steven Saylor (Aaron Travis)

Steven Saylor (b. 1956, photo above) is a Texas-born gay author of popular historical novels about ancient Rome. He studied history and classics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with honors in 1978. From 1979 until the early 1990s he wrote heavy S/M gay erotic fiction under the pen name Aaron Travis. Fourteen of the Aaron Travis books have been re-published in e-reader formats. One of the short stories, “Blue Light”, a psychological mind-bender, has become an S/M classic. Every gay man should acquaint himself with this 35-page tale of erotic seduction fantasy; this story will remain in your head for days and weeks: still just $.99 in Kindle format.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0076F14KC/stevensaylorwebsA

In the early 1980s, following a move to San Francisco, Saylor became an editor at Drummer magazine, a popular gay S/M publication at the time. He explained in a later interview that the erotic fiction he wrote in his twenties emphasized the seriousness with which he undertook the task, stating, “I probably did more actual rewriting on those stories than anything I've done since, because for me, writing erotic fiction is like writing a piece of music, because if one note is wrong, you lose the audience.”

His porn writing is highly intelligent and atmospheric, but also brutally sadistic at times. His characters come together not just for intercourse, but to play mind tricks on one another (as well as on the reader). He dives into your subconscious, grabs hold and completely wrings it out – a rape not of the body, but of the mind.

In his short story “Eden”, a young man has a fantasy about a reunion with a classmate named Bill. Even this short sample indicates that Travis is head and shoulders above the average male porn writer:

“Bill would open the door, smiling. I would step inside and throw down my duffel bag. Then he would take me in his arms and kiss me – for the first time, because we had never kissed. He would undress me, and when I was naked, he would push me to my knees. I would look up at his face, so happy to be back – he would take out his cock and tell me to suck it. I could close my eyes and see it. After such a long time apart, he would want to reclaim my ass. I could tell him, honestly, that no one else has had it, as I walked naked to his bed to lie face down, spreading my legs for his cock....

It wasn’t really Bill’s cock I was lusting for. It was Bill. His cock was just the part of him that he gave me to love.”

“Blue Light”, the BDSM tale mentioned above, is a story in which a top loses control of a scene; it's a psychological terror, the equal of an Edgar Allan Poe horror story. Proof that Saylor/Travis could wrote porn of high literary quality lies in this description of a penis from “Blue Light”:

“It hovered over me, white and thick. It was perfect, like the rest of his body. Alabaster white and enormously thick, tapered slightly at the base. The head was huge. The skin was pearly white and translucent, as smooth as glass, showing deep blue veins within. The circumcision ring was almost unnoticeable, the color of cream. The shaft looked as hard as marble, but spongy and fat, as if it were covered by a sheath of rubbery flesh. I could feel its heat on my face.”

The Aaron Travis erotic novel “Slaves of the Empire” gave glimpses of his later (non-erotic) historical novels published under his own name. The best known of them is Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series of thirteen novels set in ancient Rome. The first was published in 1991, and the most recent in 2016. The hero is a detective named Gordianus the Finder, active during the time of Sulla, Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Cleopatra. He has also written two epic-length historical novels about the city of Rome: Roma (2007) and Empire (2010). These books have been published in 21 languages and have earned numerous awards, including Lambda Literary Awards, the Crime Writers of America Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, the Herodotus Award from the Historical Mystery Appreciation Society, and the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers.

Saylor has lived with fellow University of Texas student Richard Solomon since 1976; they registered as domestic partners in San Francisco in 1991 and later legally married in October, 2008. The couple shares residences in Berkeley, California, and Austin, Texas.

The Seven Wonders, a prequel to the Roma Sub Rosa series, dates from 2016. Synopsis: In the year 92 BC, Gordianus has just turned 18 and is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a far-flung journey to see the Seven Wonders of the World. Gordianus is not yet called “the Finder” – but at each of the Wonders, the wide-eyed young Roman encounters a mystery to challenge his powers of deduction. Gordianus travels to the fabled cities of Greece and Asia Minor, then to Babylon and Egypt. He attends the Olympic Games, takes part in exotic festivals, and marvels at the most spectacular constructions ever devised by mankind – encountering murder, witchcraft, and ghostly hauntings along the way.

Richard Halliburton

Renowned thrill-seeker and global adventure writer Richard Halliburton (1900-1939) went rogue in his private, as well as professional life. Richard’s partner was his ghostwriter, Paul Mooney (1903-1939), but neither of them gave even a fleeting thought to fidelity. Mooney had another lover, William Alexander Levy (1909-1997), a twenty-something architect and interior designer. Movie-star handsome Halliburton commissioned a house from William to be built high on a cliff above Laguna Beach, CA, with three master bedrooms, one for each of the men – a cozy, if somewhat offbeat arrangement. The result was a stunning cantilevered Modernist structure of concrete, glass and steel dubbed Hangover House, built for $36,000 – a huge sum for 1937.

Halliburton, while forgotten today, was a household name during the 1920s and 1930s, as famous as Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. He was the idol of every schoolboy, and his popular radio broadcasts supplemented his adventure books, such as the Book of Marvels, which fueled the imaginations of countless youths. The Book of Marvels was published in two volumes (The Occident 1937, the Orient 1938), each filled with photographs and text that hooked armchair travelers who grew up in the days before Indiana Jones.

Raised in Tennessee as a small, sickly boy, Halliburton over-compensated as an adult with an action packed life of extreme adventures. In 1931 the whole world followed with interest his circumnavigation of the globe in an open cockpit single engine plane dubbed the Flying Carpet, the title of his fourth book. In it he described his outsized feats during that adventure, such as flying upside down over the Taj Mahal, photographing Mt. Everest and encountering head hunters in Borneo.

Always lusting after fame and fortune, Halliburton was aware that his high public profile required a heterosexual emphasis, so he embellished his writings with entirely fabricated female love interests. Nevertheless, his travel narratives included lingering accounts of male beauty, and his private letters were explicitly gay.

Halliburton was not above breaking the law or stretching the truth to achieve his goals. Just months after his graduation from Princeton in 1921, Richard climbed the Matterhorn. His wanderlust took him to Paris and on to the Rock of Gibraltar, where taking photographs of defense weapon emplacements landed him in jail; nevertheless, he published a dozen of his forbidden photos along with a breathless account of the escapade.

Richard continued to Egypt, sleeping on top of a pyramid and swimming the Nile. He hid himself on the grounds of the Taj Mahal, so that he could swim in its pools by moonlight. Traveling through the Malay peninsula, he steamed to Singapore as a stowaway, survived an attack by pirates, and trekked through Manchuria. When he reached Japan, he climbed Mt. Fuji in winter. Halliburton's books achieved enormous popularity, and he became one of the highest paid celebrity authors to appear on the lecture circuit between the two world wars.

A master of publicity and self-promotion, Halliburton shrewdly exploited his escapades in order to increase interest in his books and lectures. In one such stunt, he registered himself as a ship, paid a toll of 36 cents, based on his weight of 140 pounds, and swam the Panama Canal. He remains the only person to have swum all 48 miles of the waterway.

In March 1939, the famous Halliburton-Mooney duo and their experienced crew left Hong Kong in a commissioned Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, to sail eastward for the San Francisco Golden Gate International Expo. Three weeks into the journey they encountered a typhoon and perished; their bodies were never recovered.

In a letter written to his father, Halliburton expressed his carpe diem philosophy:

“And when my time comes to die, I’ll be able to die happy, for I will have done and seen and heard and experienced all the joy, pain and thrills – any emotion that any human ever had – and I’ll be especially happy if I am spared a stupid, common death in bed...”

Don Lemon

UPDATE April 24 2023: Don Lemon was fired from his job at CNN.

UPDATE November 2022: On September 15, 2022, it was announced that Don Lemon will co-anchor a new CNN morning show with Kaitlin Collins and Poppy Harlow. On October 12, 2022, it was announced that the morning show will be named CNN This Morning.

In 2009, Don Lemon (b. 1966) made Ebony magazine’s list of 150 Most Influential African-Americans. When he came out in 2011, the CNN news anchor jested that he was “a double minority,” being both black and gay. Born in Louisiana, Lemon found his first on-air work in Chicago as a co-anchor at NBC5 News and as a correspondent for The Today Show and The NBC Nightly News. Joining CNN as a reporter six years ago, he covered the 2008 presidential election and the accusations of child molestation against Bishop Eddie Long,  during which Lemon revealed that he himself had been molested as a child. As well, he hosted a panel on transgender representations on The Joy Behar Show.

Currently a network correspondent and weekend anchor for CNN Newsroom, Lemon has won the Edward R. Murrow Award for covering the Washington DC sniper’s capture. As well he won an Emmy Award for a special report on the real estate market in Chicago.

Lemon stands out for his willingness to challenge public figures and his own industry. He tackled his own demons in his memoir, Transparent (2011), revealing the difficulties of being both black and gay. In the book he discussed racism in the black community, homophobia, and the sexual abuse that he suffered as a child. Lemon also publicly condemned the “pray the gay away” therapy.

Lemon has become an eager spokesperson for the LGBT community, speaking at events for the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, and he has received honors from the Anti-Violence Project and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Association

“I abhor hypocrisy,” Lemon stated in a recent interview. “I think if you’re going to be in the news business and telling people the truth..., then you’ve got to be honest. You’ve got to have the same rules for yourself as you do for everyone else… I think it would be great if everybody could be out. I think if I had seen more people like me who are out and proud, it wouldn’t have taken me 45 years to say it.”

Fairy Tales: Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christan Andersen (1805-1875), known as the father of the modern fairy tale, was forced to go to work at the age of eleven, when his father died insane. Hans was apprenticed to a weaver and tailor in Odense and later worked at a tobacco factory. He had a high pitched voice and effeminate mannerisms, and once his trousers were pulled down when other workers suspected that he was a girl. At the age of 14 Andersen left Odense for Copenhagen to seek a career as a singer, dancer or an actor – he had a beautiful soprano voice. Eventually he was able to find sponsors to pay for his education. Andersen was an eccentric, overly sensitive student and exceptionally tall, almost ungainly, with an enormous nose that marred his looks. His feet, arms and legs were disproportionately large for his frame. In his later fairy tales, a common theme was that the ugly physical appearance of the hero often concealed great inner beauty, not revealed until after a series of misfortunes. He knew what he was writing about.

Andersen managed to publish his first novel upon graduation in 1829 and went on to become Denmark’s leading man of letters, writing novels, dramas, poetry, travel books and autobiographies. In 1837, at the age of thirty-two, he began writing the fairy tales for which he was known throughout the world. Andersen traveled across Europe and Africa, and was once hosted by Charles Dickens in England, although Dickens was nearly driven mad by Andersen’s prissy, effeminate ways and hypochondriacal bent.

Biographers tend to label Hans Christian Anderson as bisexual, and a few even suggest that he may have remained celibate for his whole life. However, he engaged in many romantic relationships, especially with young men, with whom he exchanged torrid letters. Many of his fairy tales were autobiographical, especially those that describe impossible love and poor self image, such as The Ugly Duckling* and The Little Mermaid. Andersen’s The Shadow is a fairytale that parents seldom read to their children, because it's so disturbing. It suggests that each of us has a shadowy part that will, if we let it, destroy us.

*From "The Ugly Duckling":
“He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.”

His statue in Central Park (NYC) features the author sitting and reading to a stray duck. The 1956 sculpture by Georg J. Lober was constructed with contributions from Danish and American schoolchildren. It was cast at the Modern Art Foundry in Astoria, Queens.

Upon his death in 1875, his private journals were discovered, in which he detailed his enthusiasm for masturbation. He placed a cross mark in his journal for every time he masturbated. I kid you not. In the book “Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller,” Jackie Wullschlager writes of the open love letters Andersen wrote to handsome young men. He also wrote similar letters to a few women, such as the soprano Jenny Lind, but the women were always unapproachable and out of his league. His letters to young men were obviously an outlet for his sexual desire and his sensuous, romantic nature. Andersen's novel, O.T., depicting an intimate male friendship, was influenced by his unrequited love for Edvard Collin, whose eventual marriage sent Andersen into a tail-spin. When Andersen died, he was initially buried next to Collin and his wife Henrietta, until descendants of Collin had the bodies of Edvard and Henrietta re-interred elsewhere, leaving Andersen’s grave standing alone (in death as in life!). A healthier, reciprocal romantic relationship was carried out with the Hereditary Grand Duke of Weimar, Carl-Alexander von Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, whom Andersen met in 1844.

Andersen titled his autobiography “The Fairy Tale of My Life.” There is indeed something miraculous about the transformation of a poverty-stricken, uneducated child into a world-renowned writer. In it we learn that Andersen suffered from dyslexia and agoraphobia – not to mention the fact that he was a strict vegetarian. He also feared being burned or buried alive.

When Andersen's funeral was held at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Copenhagen (August 11, 1875), a national day of mourning was declared. Throngs of people attended the funeral, including royalty and many celebrities. His fairy tales were translated into more languages than any other books except the Bible, and his stories continue to influence and inspire children and adults alike.

The Little Mermaid
Highly disturbing and morbid tale about a mermaid who makes a diabolical bargain with a sea witch and suffers her tongue to be cut out and her tail to be lost, all for the love of a prince. Inevitably, he completely fails to recognize the enormity of her sacrifice.

The Red Shoes
Vanity is the sin of the anti-heroine (vindictively named Karen after Andersen's loathed half-sister) in this nasty tale, which was made into an acclaimed film in 1948. Karen's sin of going to church in bright red shoes and failing to care for her grandmother is punished by her being forced to dance unceasingly – forever. Rest comes only when her feet are cut off with an axe. Nice!

The Ice Maiden
There is a touch of the earlier Snow Queen in this novella, a dark, tragic love story about Rudy and Babette who are stolen away by the icy Glacier Queen, a terrifying figure who represents death.

Poultry Meg's Family
One of several of Andersen's highly charged and erotic tales. The sexually voracious heroine, inspired by a Danish historical figure, swaps a comfortable life with her rich husband for a bit of "rough trade" and lovers who beat her.

Anne Lisbeth
Spooky story telling the fate suffered by a woman who rejects her ugly son and becomes a nursemaid to the count's son instead. Retribution comes in the form of rejection by those she has served, the drowning of her own son and guilt-ridden nightmares. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Arthur C. Clarke

Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) was a visionary whose works, which blended scientific expertise and imagination, led to tantalizing ideas and possibilities about outer space and our relation to it. When he died in Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956, he was an out gay man, having posted particulars on his own web site (arthurclarke.org) in 2004.

He and film director Stanley Kubrick gave us the classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey; they were jointly credited with the screenplay. Astronomer Carl Sagan, cosmonauts and media producers alike credited Clarke with influencing the public’s attitudes toward space exploration. Gene Roddenberry acknowledged Clarke’s influence for the courage it took to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of ridicule from television executives. Clarke is almost universally proclaimed the preeminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. He delighted in confronting his fictional characters with obstacles they could not overcome without help from forces beyond their comprehension.

“I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books,” he admitted. Yet he did not acknowledged his sexual orientation until 2004, even though he was known to host orgies with young Sri Lankan men for nearly fifty years. Many commented that he thus did a disservice to gay writers throughout the world who admired his work. However, it should be noted that the main character of Imperial Earth was bisexual and lived in a futuristic society in which exclusive heterosexuality and homosexuality were not practiced. Also, the main character of his novel Firstborn was gay.

Among his output of nearly 100 books are some, such as Childhood’s End, that have been in print continuously. His works have been translated into 40 languages. In 1962 he suffered an attack of poliomyelitis, which returned in 1984 as post-polio syndrome, a progressive condition characterized by muscle weakness and fatigue, forcing him to spend the last years of his life in a wheelchair. Still, he kept writing, and accolades continued unabated. English born, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998.

In an effort to keep his homosexual proclivities private, he married an American diving enthusiast named Marilyn Mayfield in 1953. They separated after a few months. An important relationship was with male diver Leslie Ekanayake, who lived with him in Sri Lanka; in fact, the two are buried next to each other. As well, many of Clarke’s young male partners were installed as servants in his Sri Lankan household. Although Clarke was likely spooked by the traumatic false accusations of pedophilia by an English tabloid, his efforts to remain closeted were so successful that few acknowledgments of his homosexuality are extant, even after his 2004 self-outing and subsequent death in 2008. Kubrick biographer John Baxter cites Clarke's homosexuality as a reason why he left England, due to more tolerant laws with regard to homosexuality in Sri Lanka. Fellow science fiction writer Michael Moorcock commented, “Everyone knew he was gay. In the 1950s I'd go out drinking with his boyfriend” (Clarke himself was a teetotaler).

Dominick Dunne

No one could drop names like the bisexual celebrity chronicler Dominick Dunne (1925-2009). For a quarter of a century he contributed regular columns to Vanity Fair magazine, starting the year after VF relaunched in 1983. Dunne began his career at the magazine with a gut-wrenching dispatch from the trial of his daughter’s killer. As VF’s resident diarist, he hobnobbed with legends of Hollywood and high society and chronicled the great scandals of the times. He contributed articles about Claus von Bülow, Imelda Marcos, the Lyle and Erik Menendez murder trial, Adnan Khashoggi, William Kennedy Smith’s rape trial, the death of multi-billionaire banker Edmond Safra, Brooke Astor’s neglect by her son, Phil Spector’s murder trial, the Princess Diana inquest, the O.J. Simpson trial, and even Monica Lewinsky. 

Dunne came to own this sort of gossipy reporting, and no one of his caliber has emerged to take his place. He reported on the underbelly of the world of the rich and famous for an audience of the world's literary and social elite. His monthly column provided an insider’s glimpse into high society, captivating VF’s readers. Justice, a collection of articles that had appeared in Vanity Fair, was published in 2001.
                   
Shortly after Dunne died at age 83, his son Griffin outed him publicly as a "bisexual" during an interview on Good Morning America, as he was promoting his father’s last book (Too Much Money). In the semi-autobiographical book Dunne wrote,  “I’m nervous about the kids, even though they are middle-aged men now, not that they don’t already know. I just don’t talk about it. It’s been a life-long problem.” In Frank Langella’s tell-all book, Dropped Names – Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them, Langella devotes a chapter to Dunne, who commiserates with the author about the agonies of being a closeted gay man.

Griffin said it was just like his dad to “finally come out and then leave. It was hardly a big deal either way.” His son said that when Dunne was getting stem cell treatments in Germany to fight his fatal cancer, a man named Norman was “looking after him,” and that they obviously had a “long loving relationship.”

Dominick with wife Ellen and their three surviving children (two others had died in infancy): Griffin, Dominique, and Alexander (photo from the early 1960s).

Dunne was married for 11 years and was the father of five children, only three of whom lived to adulthood. Born into a wealthy family in Hartford, Connecticut, at age 19 Dunne was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in World War II, for saving the life of a wounded comrade. His family, however, was outside full acceptance by the New England old money society. A Catholic family surrounded by wealthy Protestants, the Dunnes were also considered nouveau riche – two major strikes against them. Dunne’s grandfather, who ultimately became a tycoon, had worked as a butcher. Of his grandfather, Dominick wrote: “He was simply a remarkable man, my grandfather. He was knighted by the Pope for his philanthropic work, but he never forgot he had been born poor. Never!”

Dominick’s father, dismayed by his son’s artistic leanings, called him a sissy and beat him for it, once so viciously that his left ear swelled to three times its size and turned purple. Throughout adulthood, Dominick remained partially deaf in his left ear.

In 1965 his marriage to socialite Ellen Beatriz Griffin ended in divorce. He began his career in New York as stage manager of The Howdy Doody Show but moved his family to Hollywood in 1957, where he worked as a television executive producer. He subsequently produced feature films, including the gay-themed classic, The Boys in the Band (1970). Dunne threw grand parties attended by celebrities such as Dennis Hopper, Natalie Wood, Tuesday Weld, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen. Unfortunately, drugs and alcohol became an unmanageable part of his life, and in 1974 he escaped to a cabin in Oregon (without a phone or television), where after six months he regained sobriety and began a career as a writer, at the age of 50. When he learned of his brother’s suicide, he moved back to New York City.

Eight of his books became best sellers, and it is for his career as a novelist and investigative journalist that he is best remembered. Several of his books were made into TV movies, and he became the master American chronicler of crime and celebrity.

On Halloween of 1982, Dunne was informed that his actress daughter, Dominique (best known for her portrayal of the teenage daughter in Poltergeist) had been found strangled. Her assailant was her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, a chef in Los Angeles. Dunne wrote about the murder trial in the newly relaunched magazine Vanity Fair. On the basis of dollars per word, Dunne became the highest-paid magazine writer in America.

In August of 2009, Dunne lost a long battle with bladder cancer while in residence at his East Side apartment in NYC. He was survived by two sons, Alexander and Griffin. The latter has acted in films such as An American Werewolf in London and After Hours.

Dunne’s country house in Hadlyme, Connecticut, was featured in Architectural Digest in May, 1992. The colonial-style home on five acres included a garage apartment, which Dunne turned into an office and work space for writing. Although he lived alone, he had frequent house guests from all over the world and made close connections with local citizens.

Note from your blogger -- this is a revision of a post originally published in 2012.

Dr. Richard Isay

Psychiatrist Richard Isay Fought
Mental Illness Label for Gays

Dr. Richard A. Isay (1934-2012) was a psychiatrist and gay-rights advocate who badgered the professional psychiatric community to declassify homosexuality as an illness. Dr. Isay (pronounced EYE-say) was a married father of two sons who did not accept that he was gay until he was forty years old. At the time of his death from cancer, he was married to Gordon Harrell, an artist twenty years his junior.

Isay, who was a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and faculty member at Columbia University, also authored several books, among them “Commitment and Healing: Gay Men and the Need for Romantic Love” (2006), “Becoming Gay” (1997), and “Being Homosexual” (1989).

Along his path to changing the way the psychoanalytic profession viewed homosexuality, Isay was attacked by his peers. Troubled by his own sexuality, Isay underwent ten years of therapy, after which he accepted that he was homosexual. Although he remained closeted for a time, he assisted gay patients in accepting their sexual orientation, instead of promoting a “cure” by way of therapy. He published articles promoting homosexuality as normal, not an illness or defect of development.

When Isay acknowledged his homosexuality at professional gatherings, he was attacked by his colleagues, who stopped referring patients and suggested the he needed more therapy himself. Nevertheless, over the course of fifteen years Dr. Isay championed the premise that the medical field based its views on ideology, not evidence.

Even though the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a disease in 1973, many members of the American Psychoanalytic Association (the oldest professional group for analysts in the United States and one of the most influential) continued to regard it as an illness. In 1992 Isay threatened to sue that association, ultimately forcing them not to discriminate in training, hiring or promoting gay psychoanalysts. Isay’s stubbornness paid off. By 1997, in a major turnaround, the American Psychoanalytic Association became the first national mental health organization to support gay marriage.

During the course of his illustrious career Isay also served as vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association and as a member of the board of the Hetrick-Martin Institute for LGBT youth in Manhattan.

Steven Sampson, a patient who became a friend, wrote after Isay’s death, “I think Richard was sort of a ‘bridge’ person, providing a bridge between different worlds that don’t always communicate. He was married with children, yet he was gay and had a long-term committed relationship with a man, in an environment in which long-term relationships were rare.”

From Andy Humm for Gay City News: Tobias Picker, the composer and a patient of Isay’s, wrote in an e-mail, “Richard said that fear of death came from feeling unloved. He knew he was completely loved by his husband, Gordon, and his family, and it was easy to see that he felt that love utterly and completely. He knew he was much beloved by his patients too. Not long ago, he told me...that he had no fear of death –– that he never gave it a thought.” Picker added, “For those who didn’t know him, his writings leave behind a lasting legacy of love.” Both his sons said that Isay’s favorite literary figure was Ferdinand the Bull from the Munro Leaf children’s book, the gentle beast who preferred flowers to bullfights. Richard Isay, famous for the fights he took on and won, was himself a "gentle beast".

In addition to his sons and husband, at the time of his death Isay was survived by his former wife,  a brother, and four grandchildren, one of whom served as best man when Isay and Gordon Harrell were married in the living room of Isay’s son Josh. Dr. Isay is buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery (below), along with other gay luminaries Leonard Bernstein, Fred Ebb (of Kander and Ebb) and Louis Moreau Gottschalk (see individual blog posts in sidebar).

Sources:
New York Times (Denise Grady)
Gay City News (Andy Humm)
Headline photograph: Ozier Muhammad (NYT)

Edward Tanner, a.k.a. Patrick Dennis

Author of Auntie Mame

Edward Everett Tanner III was born in 1921 in Illinois into a prominent family of staunch Republicans. Edward, nicknamed "Pat", was a popular high school student who excelled in writing and theater. In 1942, at the age of 21 he joined the American Field Service, working as an ambulance driver in North Africa and the Middle East. After WW II he married Louise Stickney, with whom he had two children, even though he had struggled with homosexual leanings his entire adult life.

Under an assumed name at the age of 36 he wrote a best-selling novel, which remained on the NYT Bestseller list for more than two years, selling more than 2 million copies in the first edition. A year later he became the first writer to have three books on the NYT Bestseller list at the same time. His books were mostly biting social satires which almost single-handedly introduced "camp" into mainstream American culture. He also wrote several books under the female pseudonym, Virginia Rowans.

Tanner made millions from his 16 books and became the toast of New York society. His novels were made into wildly popular films, plays, television series and musicals, but by the 1970s his writing style had fallen out of fashion. A week after he was profiled in Life magazine, he attempted suicide and was committed to a mental hospital for eight months. After years of leading a double life as a gay man, he had fallen in love with another man and decided he had to abandon his family. He had always been a profligate spender, and by the time he left his wealthy wife, he was broke and had to go to work as a butler, a job he actually enjoyed. Giving full vent to his homosexual orientation, he became a fixture in the Greenwich Village gay scene in New York.

His employers at the time, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Croc (founder of McDonalds), had no idea that their butler, Edward Tanner, was in fact the writer Patrick Dennis, author of Auntie Mame, which in stage, movie and musical forms would provide Rosalind Russell and Angela Lansbury with major theatrical roles.

Mr. Dennis died from pancreatic cancer in 1976, at the age of 55, his days as a dilettante long behind him. In the year 2000 his ashes were interred with the body of his wife Louise in St. James’s Cemetery in Stony Brook, Long Island.

Note: I can especially recommend an obscure book by Mr. Dennis: Tony (1966). The narrator, whose name is never disclosed, meets Tony, a name-dropping scoundrel, when they become college roommates. Tony is a complete fraud and a pathological liar, yet the narrator chronicles their decades long love-hate friendship in hilarious style. Tony morphs into whatever form will get him ahead. An inveterate social climber, even Tony’s sexuality is “fluid” when a wealthy homosexual man falls in love with him (the man’s mother writes a very large check to have Tony fly the coop). Many aspects of  Tony’s character are autobiographical (the author had three real life identities as Edward Tanner, Patrick Dennis and Virginia Rowans, not to mention the bisexuality), and the reader can easily lose track of the number of times Tony reinvents himself . This is perfect “beach” reading, and used copies are readily available from Amazon and Alibris.

A 2002 biography, Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis, written by Eric Myers, is available in a Kindle edition, and used copies of the print editions are likewise available from Amazon and Alibris.

Ronan Farrow

Ronan Farrow (b. December 19,1987) is an openly gay journalist and author of the current best-selling book Catch and Kill (2019) that describes the challenges in investigating the coverup of sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, whose trial is currently underway in New York. The term “Catch and Kill” refers to a technique by which disreputable media companies purchase stories and subsequently bury them, thus preventing publication of damaging material. Farrow also investigated similar accusations against other prominent men, including U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Mr. Farrow initially began his investigative reporting on Weinstein while an employee at NBC, which decided against publishing his initial findings in 2016 (i.e., "catch and kill"). Ronan then took his story to The New Yorker, and they published his investigative reports in October, 2017. The magazine subsequently won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for Farrow’s reporting. Farrow’s disclosures effectively ended the career of Weinstein and gave rise to the #Metoo movement. That year Ronan was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People.

Farrow has worked as a lawyer, speechwriter, investigative reporter, author, television journalist and activist. He also held positions in the Obama administration and the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2011 Ronan began dating podcast host and former presidential speechwriter Jon Lovett (37), who had also worked at NBC and the offices of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They became engaged in 2019 and bought a home in Los Angeles last August. In addition to hosting Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It, Lovett works as a television producer and writer under the umbrella of Crooked Media, a Los Angeles based political media company, which Jon co-founded in 2017. 

Farrow remains based in NYC, where he enjoys spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline from the terrace of his Lower East Side penthouse apartment (below). Farrow and Lovett are an influential bi-coastal gay power couple.

Farrow holds a B.A. degree in Philosophy from Bard College, and at age 15 became the youngest ever graduate of that institution (he enrolled as a freshman at age 11). When he turned 16 he began studies at Yale Law School, where he received a J.D. degree in 2009, subsequently passing the New York state bar examinations. He was later a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University while working towards a doctorate in philosophy; he submitted his thesis in 2018.

Ronan has a nearly unbelievable and complicated family situation. He was born Satchel Ronan O’Sullivan Farrow as the grandson of Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan, remembered for playing the role of Jane alongside Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan films of the 1930s and 40s. Among O’Sullivan’s children was actress Mia Farrow, who conceived Ronan when she was in a relationship with filmmaker Woody Allen. Although they never married and always maintained separate residences, she appeared in 13 of Woody Allen’s films. Mia had been previously married to legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra and pianist and conductor André Previn.

Ronan is estranged from Woody Allen, who married Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn. Upon Allen’s marriage to Soon-Yi, Ronan stated, “He’s my father, married to my sister. That makes me his son and brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression.”

Enough said.

Sources:

Wikipedia, The Guardian, NPR, The Telegraph, The New Yorker