The New York Times Review (3/11) for the revival of Noel Coward’s Design for Living, the play that can’t get any gayer, stresses the paradox that the straighter its played, the more gay it becomes. Another paradox: the less there appears to be in content, the more deeply hilarious it becomes.
From the “Pass-It-On” department, the Chicago Sun-Times (3/19) reports k. d. lang’s home in LA was once owned by Rock Hudson. The home featured in the March/April issue of Metropolitan Home has been redecorated in tones to prevent pawprints from her dog, Saylor.
History Magazine (3/10) reports a flap in scientific circles about proving whether or not the Black Diaries of Irish revolutionary Roger Casement were forgeries or not. The article, strangely enough, doesn’t mention Casement’s gayness, but the diaries were extremely explicit, detailed accounts (and measurements) of someone’s cruising habits. The diaries were used to criticize Casement’s character in his trial for treason. He was executed by Great Britain in 1916.
The New York Times (3/20) reports on the fashion industry’s latest fad. They’ve done heavy drugs, now it’s gay male porn. The March issue of Numero Hommes, a French men’s wear glossy, features 30-some pix of a hairy-chested trucker, definitely a bear, enjoying a bubble bath, wearing only a cap. Maxim Fashion magazine features, from the other end of the male spectrum, an article purporting to be boy-band aspirants wearing only sox. At least one editor did note that some straight male readers had problems with this type of (un) coverage.
From the “Well-Imagine-That” department, the Chicago Sun-Times (3/18) ran an interesting retrospect on the 60th birthday of Wonder Woman without mentioning her heavily lesbian underpinnings. They did manage to mention the menage a trois her originator, William Moulton Marston, the inventor of the polygraph, lived in.
The New York Times Magazine (3/11) in its end column “lives” has a story by gay columnist Dan Savage on his relationship with his adopted son DJ. DJ, reports Savage with great relief, only wants tools and trucks. Says Savage, “He’s a standard-issue boy, not a sissy like I was. Of course, I would love him just as much if he were into dolls.” The relief stems from peoples’ beliefs that gay parents might try to steer adopted children into gay lifestyles.
The Chicago Tribune (3/11) reviews a new novel that seems to open a new genre, the closet-as-refuge. Recent History, by Anthony Giardina, features a gay main character whose father is also gay, who chooses to marry a woman, have children and never act on his gayness. The reviewer calls Luca, the “hero” of this book, “a thinking man’s homophobe.” Cross it off the Xmas gift list.
The New York Times (3/16) reviews the release on DVD of William Wyler’s Ben-Hur. As with many DVDs, this contains a commentary and documentary on the other incarnations of Ben-Hur. In the commentary, Gore Vidal says he was brought in to repair the shooting script with a recommendation for a hint of homosexuality between main characters Messala (Stephen Boyd) and Ben-Hur (Charleston Heston). This article says that idea was squelched (but an older interview with Boyd said he played it exactly that way. Heston was ignorant of the suggestion.) By the way, this movie is in the historically minority position of being better than the book. The late Victorian novel of Ben Hur is very close to being the most sentimental, badly written dreck ever committed to paper. The DVD is recommended highly by the article, though some of the galley scenes are a little rinky-dink.
John Singer Sargent, the portrait artists who died in 1925, is being looked at in a new way, reports The New York Times (3/15). I’ll say! Known mostly for his paintings of rich Americans, a new side of him emerges in “John Singer Sargent: The Sensualist” in the Seattle Art Museum. The exhibition has pulled 229 previously unshown charcoal sketches of male nudes which, if they are like the detail of “Portrait of Vincenzo Fusciardi” shown in the article, must be spectacular. Trevor Fairbrother, the author of the book on the painter, says the sketches show “a particular interest in masculinity” rather like Walt Whitman and Henry James. “Whitman, James and Sargent had permission to express a responsiveness to men in their work as long as they led “proper” public lives,” writes Mr. Fairbrother. One can see shy Sargent wanted to be circumspect—he had to leave Paris in 1884 because a painting of his, “Madame X,” had a strap slipping off the shoulder of his model.
Jim’s e-mail address: daunsenbere@prodigy.net