Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

June 10th, 1922– Francis Ethel Gumm:

“If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?”

The “Judy Queen” was a certain kind of gay archetype from the mid-20th century, an era that brought the first baby steps towards Gay Rights, but it was also a time when gay behavior was coded and gay stereotypes allowed straight society a chance to deal. Judy Queens flocked to her films, told stories about her at brunch, memorized her albums, screamed and trembled at her concerts, and 40,000 of them showed up to weep at the viewing her body at NYC’s Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in June 1969.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, as gay people found their footing and began demanding to live an open life, the gay guys had to live down those stereotypes, many of us hitting the gym and butching it up. Now near the end of the second decade of the 21st century, Gay, as we have known it, is on the way out. Getting married, buying a house and having children are the thing. We are assimilating. The journey has taken gay people from Oz back to Kansas. Now, many gay people disown the notion of a Judy Queen as an embarrassment. The world is going Post-Gay. There’s no place like home.

How did this Judy Queen happen? Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and Cher show strength, in their talent, and with a kind of nonchalance about how society regards them. These women have demanded to be true to themselves. Garland, the generation before, lived her life with self-effacement, insecurity and pressed-down emotions. She was willing to be whatever the audience wanted her to be. Garland begged to be loved. Madonna says we are fortunate to get to love her.

How can I come up with a true gay connection to Judy Garland? Let’s see… her father was gay, two of her husbands were gay, the man she handpicked as a husband for her famous daughter was gay, her LGBTQ fans remain the most fervent fans, even in 2016. The fruit of her loins is Liza Minnelli for heaven’s sake. And then there is the matter of that little film titled The Wizard Of Oz (1939).

With Liza in 1963 on The Judy Garland Show

Garland’s influence is never all that far away from the dreaded, threatening Gay Agenda. The Stonewall Riots have been attributed to the outrage and heartache experienced by Garland’s funeral. Her A Star Is Born co-star, James Mason, gave the eulogy earlier that day, June 27, 1969. The Stonewall Riots is, of course, the name given to the events of early morning on June 28, 1969, when a group of LGBTQ patrons of the Greenwich Village gay bar, The Stonewall Inn, resisted their routine arrest for being queer with a spontaneous and violent protest. We now refer to the two nights of rioting as just “Stonewall”. At the mafia operated Stonewall Inn, patrons were required to sign in. The most common pseudonym used was “Judy Garland”. The two events are widely and correctly understood to be the spark that ignited our modern Gay Rights movement, but the Garland connection is probably an urban myth. Who knows?

We do know that the term “Friend Of Dorothy” is a 20th century form of coded identification between gay people. The term was named for Garland’s most famous role, of course. The phrase dates back to at least WW II, when homosexuality was illegal in the USA. In L. Frank Baum’s Road To Oz (1909), one of sequels to the original Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, the character Polychrome meets Dorothy’s traveling companions, and exclaims: “You have some queer friends, Dorothy”.

Dorothy replies:

“The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends.”

Most important, Dorothy is accepting of those who are different, including The Cowardly Lion who is living a lie: “I’m afraid there’s no denyin’, I’m just a dandy lion…”

Garland’s 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall is a showbiz landmark. Only two years earlier, she had been advised to retire from performing after being diagnosed with Hepatitis, but instead she took on a series of concerts in Europe and the USA that absolutely reestablished Garland’s reputation as The Greatest Entertainer Of All time. The Carnegie Hall concert is still regarded as the greatest evening in live concert history. The double album recording of that concert, Judy Garland At Carnegie, spent more than a year on the Billboard charts and won seven Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year.

Garland had a 40+ year career. She made more than 50 films, at one point working on as many as four a year at MGM in the late 1930s-1940s. She was nominated for the Academy Award for her role in the remake of A Star Is Born (1954) and received another nomination for Judgment At Nuremberg (1961). In 1940, she was presented with a special Oscar for her outstanding performance as a “screen juvenile” for The Wizard Of Oz and Babes In Arms. Garland won a Special Tony Award in 1952 for her contributions to the revival of Vaudeville with her record-breaking 19-week show at the Palace Theatre. In 1962, she won an Academy Award as the youngest-ever winner of the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. She was just 39-years-old. Her first film was in 1929 and her final movie was ironically titled I Could Go On Singing in 1963.

Garland was often unreliable, erratic, drunk or high, or too nervous to perform. She was fired from four big films. But, she was given those drugs by the studio doctor, and she was bullied by directors and studio heads, and she was exhausted from a grueling work schedule since early childhood.

Despite the fact she was diminutive (not quite five feet tall), there is real on-screen gravitas in that pint-sized package. Even though MGM thought the studio had to struggle to make her physical appearance marketable, the camera truly loved Garland. She possessed considerable charisma and had sex appeal to spare.

Her pal Frank Sinatra stated:

“Whenever Judy Garland sang, a little bit of her died.”

Photograph by Richard Avedon

On a June night six years ago, I stayed up late watching DVDs of her CBS television series from the early 1960s. I was entranced by her persona and yet horrified by her histrionics. Sometimes when listening to her recordings, I am put-off by the way that she sings every single song as if it were her last. Her over the top interpretations of the great standards push me away. But… then I hear the original, or even her late in life version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow and I end up crying. Judy Garland loved to be loved and she loved her fans for loving her and they loved her right back. I love her for that.

“I could live without money, but I cannot live without love.”

1968

June 11, 1933– Gene Wilder:

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.”

His passing at the end of last August left me impossibly sad. Wilder was much loved, not just by me and my circle, but by film fans, young and old, all around our pretty planet.

In 2014, I was in treatment for Stage-4 Cancer and I didn’t much feel like doing any of the things that I love most: reading, writing, walking, eating, drinking, masturbating, but I did watch hours and hours of programming via Turner Classic Movies, the default channel on my television set. I caught many films, some much loved, and many that I had not seen in decades. While I was in treatment, I probably watched over 500 movies.

I had not seen Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde (1967) since its first run in the theatres, and I was surprised at what a really great film it was. Its violence was shocking at the time with all that graphic killing, but I had not remembered that it was the beginning of Gene Wilder’s film career. His small, but memorable role, was so “out there” and original, how had this escaped my orbit, especially when Wilder has long been a favorite actor for me?

Wilder’s wild, wacky performances in films like Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971), and the double whammy of Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974) make him a truly unforgettable Comedy Icon.

Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee to a Jewish family. His father had emigrated from Russia. His mother was very ill from Rheumatic Fever, and her doctor warned little 8-year-old Wilder: “Don’t ever argue with your mother, you might kill her. Try to make her laugh.”

After high school, Wilder studied Theatre at the University Of Iowa, with a year studying acting and fencing at the Old Vic in England. After serving in the US Army for two years, Wilder moved to NYC, where he took odd jobs, including working as a fencing teacher, to support himself while he studied acting and how to make his mother laugh. He studied at HB Studios, where I also took classes many years later.

Wilder decided that he “couldn’t quite see a marquee reading ‘Jerome Silberman’ as Macbeth” and he made up a stage name, Gene Wilder. He took his new first name from the main character in Thomas Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward, Angel, and his last name from the gay playwright Thornton Wilder.

Wilder found work in Off-Broadway and Broadway plays. In 1963, he appeared in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage And Her Children starring Anne Bancroft, who introduced him to her cute boyfriend, Mel Brooks. Wilder and Brooks became besties. For years, Brooks had been tinkering with a bizarre and unconventional idea about doing a musical comedy about Adolf Hitler, and he wanted to cast Wilder in what would become The Producers, his first screenplay.

Wilder got that role in The Producers (1968) playing Leo Bloom opposite Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock. It proved to be a box-office flop with decidedly mixed reviews. But, Wilder received an Academy Award nomination. He was suddenly hot in Hollywood. The film became a cult classic.

With Mostel and Kenneth Mars in The Producers. Photograph from Embassy Pictures

But, offers were still few. Studios didn’t really know what to do with him. He did a bit in Woody Allen‘s Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask (1972). As a last-minute replacement for Gig Young who was too drunk to perform, Wilder returned to Brooks’ direction in Blazing Saddles (1974) a stroke of luck that defined his career.

Blazing Saddles is a western like no other. It probably could never be made in today’s PC America. Brooks decided to be an equal opportunity offender, and the profane, demented film became a cult classic. The film premiered at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank. Wilder and co-star Cleavon Little rode horses to the gala opening, and watched the film on horseback.

1974 was a particularly full year for Wilder. He reunited with Mostel for a film adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s surrealistic classic Rhinoceros, and he played The Fox in a musical adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince for Stanley Donen. He played the title role and co-wrote, with Brooks, Young Frankenstein, my favorite comic film of all time. Like Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein was designed to lampoon a genre, this time Horror films. For me, it is a nearly perfect movie, unrelenting in its jokes and sight gags. Wilder’s co-stars matched his comic genius: Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn and Peter Boyle as the monster.

Wilder wrote, directed and starred in the silly The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975) and the Rudolph Valentino spoof, The World’s Greatest Lover (1977). Young Frankenstein was a hit and still has a huge cult following, but the other films failed with the critics and at the box-office.

Yet, Wilder continued to do great work for the next decade. He became half of a comedy team with his friend Richard Pryor (he was the original choice for Blazing Saddles and received screenplay credit) in four fun films: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991). They all made money and Wilder was noted for his original deft comic touch.

With Radner in 1982, photograph from Columbia Pictures

In 1981, Wilder was cast opposite Saturday Night Live’s Gilda Radner in the fluffy Hanky Panky, directed by Sidney Poitier. Although they were both married at the time, Radner and Wilder fell in love on the set. The cutest couple ever, they married in 1984. The two brilliant comics had obvious affection for each other on screen and off. While trying to become pregnant, Radner was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and sadly she left this world in 1989. To honor her memory, Wilder started Gilda’s Club, a support group for people with cancer.

By the 1990s, with a string of flops and a quickly canceled television series, Wilder retired from show business. In 1999, he announced that he had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, the same kind of cancer that I was in treatment for when I watched him in Bonnie and Clyde. After his treatment, Wilder appeared as a guest star on Will And Grace in 2002 and 2003. But after that, he really did give up the biz:

“I like show, but I don’t like the business.”

In 2005, he published a well written, witty, but rather heartbreaking memoir, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search For Love And Art. He really took to writing and published two novels and a collection of short stories. There must be something about living through Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma that makes a curly haired guy want to give up acting for writing. Wilder:

“I’m not a natural writer. I’m not Arthur Miller, that’s a whole other thing, but let’s say more like Woody Allen. But the more I’ve written, the more I’ve found that there is a deep well in me somewhere that wants to express things that I’m not going to find unless I write them myself.”

Wilder was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party and progressive causes. He staunchly opposed the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.

“I’m quietly political. I don’t like advertising. I will give money to someone I support, but I am not getting on a bandstand. I don’t want to run for President. I will write another book instead.”

While preparing for his role as a deaf man in See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Wilder met Karen Webb of the New York League For The Hard Of Hearing, who coached him in lip reading. After Radner’s passing, Wilder and Webb reconnected, and in 1991, they married. They lived in the 1734 Colonial home that he had shared with Radner. I always felt bad for Wilder’s widow after he left this world. She was with him longer than Radner, but when he passed, social media was all abuzz about how Radner and Wilder were reunited at last.

He was taken by Alzheimer’s disease at his home. According to his family, Wilder died while listening to Over The Rainbow sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

“What do actors really want? To be great actors? Yes, but you can’t buy talent, so it’s best to leave the word ‘great’ out of it. I think to be believed, onstage or onscreen, is the one hope that all actors share.”

Wilder is missed. He remains a personal acting and writing idol for me. And, there is that whole cancer thing that we shared. There are now Gilda’s Club chapters across North America.

Who is your favorite LGBTQ horror character? That isn’t The Babadook!

You’re still a wonder, Wonder Woman!

Latest Images