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.
