Born On This Day- January 27th... Ethan Mordden

Photo by Charles Higgins Jr for NY Times

His section in my bookshelves takes up quite a bit of space with more than 20 volumes of Theatre & Film commentary & history, with deeply held beliefs & blistering opinions. His fiction, includes the highly addictive, waggish & woeful Buddies series. For me Ethan Mordden is my era’s Charles Dickens.

Still in his 20s, he published his Better Foot Forward: The History of American Musical Theatre. He continues to write about his obsession with the performing arts. I relished his series on Broadway musicals, each one covering a decade. Other show biz books, out of dozens: Movie Star: A Look At The Women Who Made Hollywood (1983), Demented: The World of the Opera Diva (1984), & The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen: The Last 25 Years of the Broadway Musical (2004).

When I first started reading Mordden, he was writing reviews & semi-autobiographical pieces for Christopher Street magazine (Gosh, I wish I had not tossed my complete collection of Christopher Streets during a move). The stories were written in the voice of Bud, a gay man in NYC telling stories about his chosen family of other urban gay men. Mordden collected the sketches into- I’ve Got a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore (1985), which started a series that is rather like a NYC Tales Of The City. Mordden published the Buddies serial: Buddies (1986), Everybody Loves You (1988), Some Men Are Lookers (1997), & How’s Your Romance? (2005). Other novels that are smart & engaging: How Long Has This Been Going On? (1995) & my favorite- The Venice Adriana (1998), set in the world of Opera.

In Fall 2010, Mordden released- The Guest List: How Manhattan Defined American Sophistication, from the Algonquin Round Table to Truman Capote’s Ball. This one of my favorite books about my much loved NYC, with anecdotes of: Algonquin Hotel, Stork Club, Alexander Woollcott, Irving Berlin, Edna Ferber, Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, the Lunts & Helen Hayes. Their books, plays, performances, speeches, dinner parties, masked balls, loves, hates, likes & dislikes became the stuff of dreams for the rest of the nation, Mordden chronicles the city’s most powerful, potent, persuasive period.

Along with the Armistead Maupin books & Felice Picano’s Like People in History, Mordden’s Buddies Series remains an inviting way to remember an important era in urban gay male history. Start with the first & spend a season moving on to the others. I recommend him highly. Mordden makes his home in Manhattan. Her turns 63 years old today.

Born On This Day- January 27th... One Of My Favorite Writers- Ethan Mordden

Do you remember Christopher Street Magazine? Near the end of each month, I would march myself down to The Different Drummer Bookstore on Broadway-Capital Hill, Seattle, to purchase my new edition of this magazine, unafraid for the 1st time in my life, of being seen buying homo-stuff. I had 10 years worth of saved copies before getting rid of them during a rare purging of material belongings event. The pieces started as short, journalistic nots in Christopher Street. Ethan Mordden would relate to readers, the semi- fictional tales of his “chosen” gay family in late 1970s NYC. For Mordden, creating such a family is essential for many gay men, as they can help to build "a stable, environment, somewhere you get accepted for what you are without qualifications."

The pieces became a series that I knew as- The Buddy Series & were published as: I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Tales from Gay Manhattan (1985), which was followed by Buddies (1986), & Everybody Loves You: Further Adventures of Gay Manhattan (1988). Mordden put aside the series for 9 years before offering Some Men Are Lookers (1997).


He has also written well-received studies of American film: Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies (1988), Movie Star: A Look at the Women Who Made Hollywood (1983), & Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s (1990).


I have enjoyed collected his books on Broadway musicals: Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (1983), Rodgers & Hammerstein (1992), & The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last 25 Years of the Broadway Musical (2004).


If you love the Tales Of City series by Armistead Maupin, I think you will enjoy the Buddy books. I actually re-read them once every decade. They are very funny & very human, superbly written & accessible. They make me laugh, they make me horny, & they make me cry.