Sunday, August 19, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Reminder: 'VITO' Airs on HBO check listings until Tues.
http://www.frontiersla.com/Blog/FrontierBlog/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10406781
Vito Russo
By Karen Ocamb
As you know, HBO was a presenting sponsor for this year’s Outfest film festival, and the documentary Vito was the opening night film for the festival's 30th anniversary. The highly regarded film airs tonight on HBO. As a preview, check out the interview Renee Sotile and Mary Jo Godges of Traipsing Thru Films conducted with director Jeffery Schwarz, composer Miriam Cutler and Russo's friend Bruce Vilanch, who says that Russo left him the only film of Bette Midler with Barry Manilow on piano performing at the gay Continental Baths.
Gay and AIDS activist Vito Russo thought it was critical that LGBT people understand the history of how we have been represented on film—which contributed to how society saw and treated us in real life. In that vein, I’ve been working on an overview piece on Outfest and some of the films I saw. I am writing two “stand alone” pieces on How to Survive a Plague and Love Free or Die about Bishop Gene Robinson in order to go more in depth. Please see the list of Outfest award winners at FrontiersLA.com.
Vito Russo and Bette Midler
Vito Russo As you know, HBO was a presenting sponsor for this year’s Outfest film festival, and the documentary Vito was the opening night film for the festival's 30th anniversary. The highly regarded film airs tonight on HBO. As a preview, check out the interview Renee Sotile and Mary Jo Godges of Traipsing Thru Films conducted with director Jeffery Schwarz, composer Miriam Cutler and Russo's friend Bruce Vilanch, who says that Russo left him the only film of Bette Midler with Barry Manilow on piano performing at the gay Continental Baths.
Gay and AIDS activist Vito Russo thought it was critical that LGBT people understand the history of how we have been represented on film—which contributed to how society saw and treated us in real life. In that vein, I’ve been working on an overview piece on Outfest and some of the films I saw. I am writing two “stand alone” pieces on How to Survive a Plague and Love Free or Die about Bishop Gene Robinson in order to go more in depth. Please see the list of Outfest award winners at FrontiersLA.com.
Vito Russo and Bette Midler
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Marilyn Monroe A Lesbian?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/26/marilyn-monroe-lesbian-book_n_1706190.html
Marilyn Monroe A Lesbian? Hollywood Icon Had Affairs With Women, New Book Alleges ...
She might have been one of the world's premier sex symbols, but Marilyn Monroe was plagued with well-documented personal insecurities -- among them the possibility she might be a lesbian, a new book alleges.
Author Lois Banner describes Monroe's doubts about her sexuality in her new book, "Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox," an extract of which has been published in The Guardian.
"She had affairs with many eminent men –- baseball great Joe DiMaggio, playwright Arthur Miller, director Elia Kazan, actor Marlon Brando, singer Frank Sinatra, the Kennedy brothers –- and she married DiMaggio and Miller," Banner writes. "Yet she desired women, had affairs with them, and worried that she might be lesbian by nature."
She continues, "How could she be the world's heterosexual sex goddess and desire women? How could she have the world's most perfect body on the outside and have such internal imperfections? Why was she unable to bear a child? The adult Marilyn was haunted by these questions."
Still, Banner's profile of Monroe, who died in 1962 at the age of 36, is more flattering in other respects. The author even argues that the icon, frequently brushed aside as a "dumb blonde" or simply as a sex object, had the makings of an early feminist.
"She certainly took actions that could be called feminist," she writes. "Her entire life was a process of self-formation. She was a genius at self-creation and made herself into an actress and a star. She formed her own production company, she fought the moguls to a standstill, and she publicly named the sexual abuse visited on her as a child: a major –- and unacknowledged –- feminist act."
Of course, Banner is by no means the first to argue that the "Some Like It Hot" star might have swung both ways. Monroe is believed to have admitted to sexual encounters with Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich, as well as acting coach Paula Strasberg.
She might have been one of the world's premier sex symbols, but Marilyn Monroe was plagued with well-documented personal insecurities -- among them the possibility she might be a lesbian, a new book alleges.
Author Lois Banner describes Monroe's doubts about her sexuality in her new book, "Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox," an extract of which has been published in The Guardian.
"She had affairs with many eminent men –- baseball great Joe DiMaggio, playwright Arthur Miller, director Elia Kazan, actor Marlon Brando, singer Frank Sinatra, the Kennedy brothers –- and she married DiMaggio and Miller," Banner writes. "Yet she desired women, had affairs with them, and worried that she might be lesbian by nature."
She continues, "How could she be the world's heterosexual sex goddess and desire women? How could she have the world's most perfect body on the outside and have such internal imperfections? Why was she unable to bear a child? The adult Marilyn was haunted by these questions."
Still, Banner's profile of Monroe, who died in 1962 at the age of 36, is more flattering in other respects. The author even argues that the icon, frequently brushed aside as a "dumb blonde" or simply as a sex object, had the makings of an early feminist.
"She certainly took actions that could be called feminist," she writes. "Her entire life was a process of self-formation. She was a genius at self-creation and made herself into an actress and a star. She formed her own production company, she fought the moguls to a standstill, and she publicly named the sexual abuse visited on her as a child: a major –- and unacknowledged –- feminist act."
Of course, Banner is by no means the first to argue that the "Some Like It Hot" star might have swung both ways. Monroe is believed to have admitted to sexual encounters with Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich, as well as acting coach Paula Strasberg.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Cyndi Lauper ~ She boosts a shelter for LGBT youth, she’s crazy about Pride, but don’t call her a gay icon
Cyndi Lauper’s a little sick of being called a gay icon. I try it out on her and get a bit of a slapdown.
“Don’t call me that,” she says. “Sometimes the icon thing, it sounds frivolous. It’s not only about makeup.”
She thinks about that for a second and relents. “...although I love makeup. I am the Viva Glam girl. I actually regret that I have only one face for all this makeup.
“But I’m not Streisand, I’m not Liza Minnelli. I don’t even dance. I tried doing that once at the Gay Games in 1994, but the shoes alone made that hard.”
Reading her words doesn’t give you the full sense of what it’s like to chat with one of the world’s most enduring pop stars. Let’s just say that when she gets on a roll, it’s impossible to stop her. We’re eight minutes into what’s supposed to be a 15-minute interview before I try to sneak in another question.
“I just have to finish what I was just saying,” she says.
Then there’s that voice, and the squeaky, heavy-duty Queens accent that makes her sound like she’s five years old and not the veteran singer and actor with 10 albums behind her, a Grammy and an Emmy, too. So “Don’t call me that” comes across as “Dooo’nt coo-all me thee-at.”
Though she rejects icon status, she does allow that she’s super-connected to the queer community. Her story about that is, as she says, not frivolous at all.
“I thought of the gay community as a refuge to get away from, well, straight people, actually, who kept asking, ‘Why are you so different?’ and I couldn’t take it any more.”
When she was asked to sing at the Gay Games in 1994, she jumped at the chance. But she was upset at the way the organizers treated the drag queens.
“The drag performers weren’t celebrated, and nobody wanted to focus on them. They were never even on the Jumbotron,” she recalls. “And I got a little mad and thought to myself, ‘Okay, don’t show them. I’m gonna make a video. I’m gonna make these gays famous. And I’m not just gonna show their shoes – you’re going to get to know them.’”
After she made the video for Hey Now in Europe, her friends encouraged her to get her own float in New York’s Pride parade.
“A guy came up to me and handed me a rainbow flag and said, ‘Your song True Colors inspired me to design this flag,’” she recalls. “I’d written sang the song for my friend Gregory, who died of AIDS.”
Since then, she’s helped launch the True Colors tour, with proceeds going to gay rights groups, and the True Colors shelter for queer youth in New York City. She also recently launched the Give A Damn campaign to promote respect for queer people – that’s the TV spot in which Oscar winner Anna Paquin comes out as bisexual – and appeared on TV’s The Celebrity Apprentice, naming True Colors her charity.
Lauper says she’d been hearing about kids at risk for years.
“When you’re a teenager, the streets are hard – and it’s harder when you don’t have your family. People were writing me, and I kept hearing the same story about being thrown out, losing your friends, losing your job, being discarded. I’m a mother now, and I know I could never do anything like that, fucking never.
“You can’t work in a community and look at people and see something terribly wrong and not step in.”
When I jokingly express the wish – shared by many of her queer fans – that she switch sides and join the gay team, she is again not amused.
“We need straight people to step up and change things, because in our country gay people don’t have civil rights. This is a civil rights movement. We need the straight community to stand beside our gay sisters and brothers to make change. We need the power of the people – and that means all of the people.”
At the June 7 meeting at the 519 in support of free speech at Pride and to organize against Pride’s decision to ban the term “Israeli apartheid” at the big parade (Pride has since changed its mind about that), some activists suggested taking action at Lauper’s big concert Saturday (July 3) at Queen’s Park. Next to the Pride Day parade, her event is considered this year’s biggest draw. When I ask Lauper what she thinks about a protest at her gig, she gives it some serious thought.
“Oh,” she says, and I can almost hear the gears turning inside her head. “In a way it is like apartheid [in Israel], because the Palestinians are outside of the city like the South African blacks were.
“They [Queers Against Israeli Apartheid] should hand out information so people can read about it. For crying out loud, if people can hand out pamphlets for hamburgers or manicures, [QuAIA] should hand out theirs, as long as it’s backed up by information. If you have people’s stories, that’s the best.”
With all the political talk and Lauper’s high-profile support of the LGBT community, it’s easy to forget that she has a new album.
Memphis Blues (Downtown) features covers of blues classics, including Rollin And Tumblin’ and Wild Women Don’t Get The Blues. It could be seen as a major departure for one of the queens of pop, but Lauper says that isn’t so.
“This album is like coming home. I was trained by [jazz singer] Betty Scott. She was the one who taught me to listen to Billie Holiday. This is the basis of everything I’ve ever sung. Everything is based on blues and call-and-response – dance, rock, hip-hop.”
Lauper also got the benefit of some of the genre’s greatest session players.
“When Ann Peebles walked in to do guest vocals, I cried. I wanted to tell her how many times I sang with her in a hotel room, how many times I listened to I Can’t Stand The Rain.”
Lauper even got work from Skip Pitts, the man who played the wah-wah guitar hook on Isaac Hayes’s R&B classic Shaft.
“How many times have I been in a recording studio and said to the guitarist, ‘No, no, I want it like the guitar in Shaft’?” she asks me rhetorically. “Then I’m in the studio and I turn around and there he is – Skip Pitts.”
susanc@nowtoronto.com
NOW
June 30-July 7, 2010
VOL 29 NO 44
Go to Music
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
SUSAN HAYWARD & LENA HORNE born on this day...
I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
[quoted in Brian Lanker's book "I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America", New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1986)] My own people didn't see me as a performer because they were busy trying to make a living and feed themselves. Until I got to café society in the '40s, I didn't even have a black audience and then it was mixed. I was always battling the system to try to get to be with my people. Finally, I wouldn't work for places that kept us out . . . it was a damn fight everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New York, in Hollywood, all over the world.
You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.
It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.
Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
A little nepotism never hurt nobody, honey. If you got it, use it. Press on with it. Remind them of it.
In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I'm black and a woman, singing my own way.
On love: Don't be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can.
My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman, I'm not alone, I'm free. I say I'm free because I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody. I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else.
Trivia
Was diagnosed with brain cancer, allegedly the result of being exposed to dangerous radioactive toxins on location in Utah while making The Conqueror (1956). All the leads John Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, Hayward and the director Dick Powell died of cancer. The case is still a scandal.
Interred at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, Carrollton, Georgia, USA.
She portrayed an alcoholic in three films, Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), My Foolish Heart (1949) and I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)) and was nominated for an Oscar for each performance.
Her footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre are the only ones set in gold dust.
Her first marriage to actor Jess Barker was a stormy one and ended with a bitter custody battle of her twin sons and a suicide attempt by Susan. Her second to rancher Eaton Chalkley was a long and happy one until he died suddenly of hepatitis nine years later. She left Hollywood for five years in deep mourning, returning in 1971.
Took over the ballsy role of stage star Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls (1967) in 1967 after Judy Garland was fired.
Was one of many starlets in 1939 who auditioned for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939).
Measurements: 36 1/2-26-35 1/2 (as noted in "Hollywood Studio Magazine), (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Replaced an ailing Barbara Stanwyck in Heat of Anger (1972) (TV), which was to have been a pilot for a TV series to be called "Fitzgerald and Pride."
In Italy, almost all of her films were dubbed by either Lidia Simoneschi or Rosetta Calavetta. She was occasionally dubbed by Dhia Cristiani.
Reportedly did not get on at all with Bette Davis during the filming of Where Love Has Gone (1964).
Was the original choice to play Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950), but was dropped from the project after being considered too young. The part was then given to Claudette Colbert before being given to Bette Davis, who went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.
Was born on the same day, and same place (Brooklyn N.Y) as singer Lena Horne .
Personal Quotes
"I learned at a very early age that life is a battle. My family was poor, my neighborhood was poor. The only way that I could get away from the awfulness of life, at that time, was at the movies. There I decided that my big aim was to make money. And it was there that I became a very determined woman."
"I never thought of myself as a movie star. I'm just a working girl. A working girl who worked her way to the top -- and never fell off."
"My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug my way up in a town called Hollywood where people love to trample you to death. I don't relax because I don't know how. I don't want to know how. Life is too short to relax."
"When you're dead, you're dead. No one is going to remember me when I'm dead. Oh maybe a few friends will remember me affectionately. Being remembered isn't the most important thing anyhow. It's what you do when you are here that's important."
You aim at all the things you have been told that stardom means -- the rich life, the applause, the parties cluttered with celebrities. Then you find that you have it all. And it is nothing, really nothing. It is like a drug that lasts just a few hours, a sleeping pill. When it wears off, you have to live without its help.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
RUE ~ "Queen of Comedy"
"Golden Girls" star Rue McClanahan has died after a massive stroke. The actress passed away at 1:00 a.m. on June 3, her rep tells People. McClanahan, age 76, had previously suffered a minor stroke while recovering from bypass surgery earlier this year. Her rep notes that at the time of her death, McClanahan "had her family with her," saying, "She went in peace." Though McClanahan will best be remembered for her "Golden Girls" portrayal of Blanche Devereaux, she enjoyed a 50-year television career that included standout roles in "Maude," "The Love Boat," and most recently "Law & Order" and Tyler Perry's "Meet the Browns." Born in Healdton, Okla., McClanahan attended the University of Tulsa before moving to New York City where she worked as a file clerk before finding success in the theater. She was a life-long animal welfare advocate and vegetarian and supported PETA. McClanahan's death leaves Betty White as the only surviving regular cast member of "The Golden Girls," after Bea Arthur's death in 2009 and Estelle Getty's death in 2008. On a press call with Zap2it in late April, Betty spoke of her good friend and former cast mate. "Oh Ruesy. We talk about every, oh maybe three, four weeks. She lives in New York of course. And she had a bum go. She had a triple bypass and then had a stroke. And she's just doing fine. I talked with her. She's home and doing better and better and speech is all cleared up. She's in great shape. Isn't that good news?" McClanahan is survived by her sixth husband, Morrow Wilson, and her son Mark Bish. In her 2007 book "My First Five Husbands... and The One That Got Away," McClanahan wrote, "People always ask me if I'm like Blanche. And I say, 'Well, Blanche was an oversexed, self-involved, man-crazy, vain Southern Belle from Atlanta -- and I'm not from Atlanta.Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Secret Birthday Photo of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe Goes on Sale
by David Knowles
It's like a surprise party for gossip columnists and Camelotphiles: A rare photograph of Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy is up for sale. Just hours after Monroe sang her sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday" to then president Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, the film star attended a private party with the commander-in-chief where White House photographer Cecil Stoughton snapped the shot that has remained secret until now.
Taken at the home of Arthur and Matilda Krim on May 19, 1962, the photo also shows Kennedy's brother, Bobby, chatting with Monroe and the president. Harry Belafonte and his wife can also be seen. According to Kaya Morgan, the man selling the picture, Jackie Kennedy did not attend the party. "The photographer told me that when she heard Monroe would be there, [she] said 'screw this,' and left," Morgan told the Surge Desk.That the photo still exists may be the result of a Secret Service error. When Stoughton was developing his negatives from the famous party, the story goes, agents confiscated all those that showed Kennedy and Monroe together. But they missed one, Morgan said. The price for a previously secret piece of history? "A 30-inch signed original print will go for $23,000," said Morgan, who unveiled the photo on Tuesday in Los Angeles in part to commemorate Monroe's birthday.
Filed Under: Surge Desk
Tagged: Bobby Kennedy, Cecil Stroughton, Harry Belafonte, john f. kennedy, Kaya Morgan, Marilyn Monroe
Filed Under: Surge Desk
Tagged: Bobby Kennedy, Cecil Stroughton, Harry Belafonte, john f. kennedy, Kaya Morgan, Marilyn Monroe
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
.jpg)
