Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

We live in the age of dumb and mean. And, we live in an era with a POTUS that wears ill-fitting suits with pants that drag on the floor and ties longer than the crotch. No wonder he is angry all the time. He looks dreadful. Here is 45’s fashion advice:

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

Fred Rogers:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me: ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”

I was thinking about him today while reading my feed on The Facebook, especially the posts about the Manchester murders.

Usually when you say that someone is “nice”, you are really saying nothing at all. Either you don’t know them all that well or you are just not thinking about it all that much. It doesn’t matter. Fred Rogers was nice. He was nice in a meaningful, sincere way. He might have been the nicest man to ever appear on television. And, his signature sweater/trouser/sneaker look is nice too. It’s a combination that has, against all odds, never gone out of style.

Mr. Rogers was a man of action. He didn’t think what was being broadcast on television was good enough for kids. So, he decided to change it himself. For more than three decades, he did. He taught kids how to tackle their first day of school. He taught children to be themselves. He taught them how to carry a tune. Some people who grew-up with his show think his was the greatest television show of all time. You probably watched it as a kid. Most young people did. You are probably better for it.

But, today I want you to consider his status as a true Style Icon, and the greatest examples of how to achieve a Gay Mr. Rogers Style. In every episode, Mr. Rogers would pop in the door wearing a blazer, a dress shirt, a tie and some slim trousers with the perfect modern break. He would then go to (but not in) the closet and replace that perfect blazer with a cool cardigan. Then, he’d sit down and slide his dress shoes off and slip into his famous blue sneakers before dispensing wise platitudes. You kids could rock this look nowadays and never look anything less than adorbs.

If you doubt his Style Icon status, consider that his red cardigan and the sneakers are in a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute. That must mean something!

To get that Mr. Rogers look is simple, yet difficult. No matter what the rest of your closet has in it, you need to have one excellent white and one excellent blue button-down shirt. I can’t find any episode where he isn’t wearing either a white or blue button-down.

You only need two shirts, but you should have lots of ties. They can be solid. They can be polka dot. They can be striped. The tie can be anything, because Rogers didn’t do busy sweaters, or nutty colors and patterns in his shirts. This allows you to choose which tie to wear based on how you are feeling, and not on how well it will go with the rest of your clothing.

Wear simple trousers, and simpler belts, no fancy buckles and no odd colors, brown or black belts every gosh darn time. In our own era, jeans are fine. I can’t imagine a modern gay guy leaving his good trousers on when he gets home from work. Be comfortable, but never sloppy. You want to look smart, but not too composed, when you Grindr hook-up arrives.

To really achieve the Mr. Rogers look, you must have some variation of cardigan sweater. Here is where you can be bold with the colors, although some colors are bolder than others. Because of Mr. Rogers, generations of people think of the cardigan as a warm, inviting piece of clothing for only the very nicest people in the world.

Mr. Rogers:

“I like you just the way you are.”

Unconditional acceptance, arguably the most positive and compassionate message that any LGBTQ child, youth, or adult could have found anywhere on television during Rogers’ tenure.

Sadly, it’s been 14-years since the passing of America’s favorite neighbor. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood ran from 1968 to 2001, with an astonishing 895 episodes. This means that just about everyone over 20-years-old has an indelible image in their memory of Mr. Rogers, dressed in his iconic cardigan, canvas sneakers, and button-down shirt and tie. Remember, this is a look that works well for a certain kind of lesbian too. And, also remember, be nice kids.

The post Is It Time To Bring Back The Look of Fashion Icon, Mr. Rogers? appeared first on The WOW Report.

May 25, 1939– Sir Ian McKellen:

“I remember losing only one job because of my coming out of the closet. I was supposed to play one of the lead roles in Harold Pinter‘s Betrayal which eventually were given to Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons. The producer Sam Spiegel dropped a sexist comment about wives during a meeting and when I replied I was fortunate to be gay, I was quickly shown the door.”

We both belong to the Screen Actors Guild and we both became passionate about the theatre after seeing a stage production of Peter Pan. We both started acting as a child, did university theatre, moved on to regional theatre and came to work in films and television later in life… and we are both big old queers who thought working in the theatre was a good place to meet guys. The similarities end there. McKellen is the greatest actor of the last 50 years and I am just a dilettante. He is one of the people that I admire the most in this wicked world and he continues to inspire me.

McKellen became an actor to meet men. He admits that he felt isolated when he was younger, but thought he would meet other gay people if he embarked on a stage career:

“I’d heard that a lot of professional actors were gay. Acting seemed like a chance for me to meet like-minded people. You know, at that time same-sex love in Britain got you into prison. Homosexuality was being completely hushed up. Gay teachers, politicians or firemen – that was something unthinkable. When I was young I thought I was the only gay Brit. That’s why I was glad to find people like me in the actors’ guild.”

Early in his career he was spotted by Dame Maggie Smith. She recommended McKellen to Laurence Olivier, who was then building his new National Theatre at the Old Vic. His first production at the National was Franco Zeffirelli‘s 1965 production of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, with Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Albert Finney, Derrick Jacobi and newcomer Michael York.

Romeo And Juliet (1976)

McKellen worked his way up through the ranks in regional repertory theatre and tours of the classics. At the Edinburgh Festival in 1969, he performed both the title roles in Richard II and Edward II (that’s a lot of IIs) and Romeo And Juliet; he blew away audiences and critics alike, and probably did some blowing on his own. McKellen:

“I remember one heady evening in my dressing room at the Piccadilly, when I introduced Noel Coward to Rudolf Nureyev. I thought, I suppose I’ve arrived.”

McKellen was persuaded to join the Royal Shakespeare Company by artistic director, Trevor Nunn. He showed true range by playing both Doctor Faustus and Romeo in the same season. His Macbeth in 1976, with Dame Judi Dench as his Lady M, is probably the greatest of all time. The company took Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night on tour in the late 1970s, traveling to 26 towns in the UK, before touring the USA. McKellen claims that he loves to take theatre to the people: “It is truly the most enjoyable thing I have ever done.”

On Broadway in 1980, McKellen played Antonio Salieri in Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, the role for which F. Murray Abraham would later win an Academy Award. McKellen was consoled with the Tony Award. Also on Broadway, he played Richard III as a wicked plotter creating a fascist state in future England. He brilliantly recreated that role on film in 1995.

Never really in the closet to the theatre community, in 1988, McKellen admitted he was gay while discussing Section 28, the lovely Margaret Thatcher’s evil legislation that would have made the “public promotion of homosexuality” a crime. He became one of the foremost campaigners for Gay Rights in Britain, co-founding The Stonewall Group. Fellow actor John Gielgud was also a contributor, but only in secret.

ian gay

McKellen originated the role of Max in Martin Sherman’s Bent (1979), about the suffering of homosexuals under the Nazis. The film version in 1997 featured Clive Owen as Max, but with McKellen in the role of Uncle Freddie and with Mick Jagger appearing in drag. In 1993, he appeared on television in PBS’s Tales Of The City (1992) and in And The Band Played On (1993) about the discovery of and early fight against HIV. As activist Bill Kraus, McKellen stood out in a cast that included Richard Gere, Anjelica Huston, and Steve Martin, receiving an Emmy nomination (his first of six).

Even as a full-blown film star, McKellen continues to return to ensemble theatre appearing in productions of The Seagull, The Tempest and Noel Coward’s Present Laughter.

Forgive me, but I have never seen an X-Men film, despite my love for McKellen and Hugh Jackman. I have an aversion to anything with wizards or dragons, so I skipped those Hobbit flicks. I hope they made McKellen wheelbarrows of money. But, McKellen is responsible for two of my favorite performances of all time in a pair of my very favorite films: hilarious and outrageous in Cold Comfort Farm (1995), and pretty, witty, and gay in his Oscar nominated turn as gay director James Whale in Gods And Monsters (1998).

In the 2013-2014 Broadway season, McKellen and his pal Sir Patrick Stewart performed in a repertory presentation of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, quite the acting hat trick.

For the past few years, I thought his turn opposite openly gay Derek Jacobi, his classmate at Cambridge in the 1950s, in the British sitcom Vicious was rather delicious fun. The two friends play a pair of bitter, hilarious old queens in a long longtime relationship.

He is BFFs with writer Armistead Maupin, meeting during the filming of Tales Of The City. McKellen was the best man at Patrick Stewart’s wedding in 2014.

“I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about- nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I never want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern; legal and social equality for Gay people worldwide.”

Last year, McKellen starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in a filmed version on Ronald Harwood‘s play The Dresser directed by Richard Eyre. It is available on Starz.

I can’t think of a living person that I admire more. Six Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe, a SAG Award, four Drama Desk Awards, and two Academy Award nominations, McKellen is one of the greatest actors of all time and a relentless activist for equal rights.

McKellen is currently the voice of Cogsworth, Beast’s loyal majordomo, who was cursed into a pendulum clock, in Disney live-action adaptation of Beauty And The Beast.

He is not a fan of the American President:

“President Breaking Wind has impacted us all. Some like him, think they can identify with him, believe him because they’ve seen him on television perhaps and think the billionaire and his billionaire team are truly friends. The rest of us, including the majority of voters in USA, see through the charade: after all, the schtick is not exactly subtle. But he’s riled us, got under our skin, making us angry and despairing that he should have got through to the final of his show and turned democracy into a tv/twitter spectacular.”

He remains happily single as he turns 78-years-old today.