Born On This Day- August 24th... Stephen Fry

“You are who you are when nobody's watching.” 

Comedian, successful novelist, star of the silver screen, raconteur & wit are all part of the dazzling resume of Stephen Fry.

Perfectly cast, he played The Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland & Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie.

I thought he was hysterical as King Charles l in Black Adder. He is good personal friends with Prince Charles & his horsey 2nd wife, even though his performance in Black Adder was a parody of Elizabeth 2’s son. Other favorite performances: Oscar Wilde in Wilde with Jude Law (“a role that I was fated to play”) & 2 of my all time favorite films- Gosford Park & Cold Comfort Farm. I understand that he appears in something refered to as The Harry Potter Series of films. Please, don't make me watch them, as much as I admire Fry.

I have also enjoyed his books- The Liar, Making History, The Hippopotamus & The Star’s Tennis Balls. Fry lives in London with his husband- Daniel Cohen. He famously drives a black TX4 London cab. Mr. Fry has & maintains a nifty blog- The New Adventures Of Mr. Stephen Fry.

"My first words, as I was being born... I looked up at my mother & said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.'"

Born On This Day- August 23rd... Louise Nevelson

Nevelson by Avedon

Louise Nevelson is known for her abstract expressionist “crates” grouped together to form a new creation. She used found objects or everyday discarded things in her assemblages, one of which was 3 stories high. Nevelson: "When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."

She was born Leah Berliawsky in Kiev in 1899, & was raised in Rockland, Maine From early childhood Nevelson wanted to be a sculptor, with wood as her medium. It took her more than 6+ decades to make her mark in the art world. Nevelson had one unhappy marriage when she was 18 years old. The union with business man-Charles Nevelson lasted for a decade, & produced one child, a son-Myron. Nevelson left her marriage in 1931 & devoted herself to her art.

She would go an entire decade before her 1st exhibit, which was failure. Nevelson had a 2nd show in 1943 & sold nothing. She took the entire show back to her studio & destroyed every piece. After changing direction, & after years of creating small scale pieces, Nevelson's breakthrough large works in wood were critically hailed in the late 1950s.

She infused abstract art with her personal story: the epic Jewish migration to the United States between the 1880s & the 1920s, her life as a woman artist, & her involvement in American modernism functioned as the source for her vast body of work.

I have a keen interest in American 20th century art, but I know more than even a dilettante like me should about Louise Nevelson. I had a friend in the 1980s, who wrote a one-woman show about Louise Nevelson, & I was present for most of her research & preparation.

Nevelson was the entrée for the USA at the Venice Biennale in 1963, but was still not able to make a living from the sale of her work Around this time she met the young artist-Diana MacKown. They soon moved in together. A new period of success & a more concentrated, engaged work followed. Most biographies & Nevelson’s NY Times obituary fail to mention their 26 year relationship. Nevelson’s son & heir had a metal door installed at the apartment the women shared above their studios. He had been estranged from his mother most of his life, but Nevelson had made no provisions for MacKown in her will. MacKown was supported by Jasper Johns, Edward Ablee, John Cage, & Merce Cunningham when she filed a lawsuit.

I met Nevelson once, at an opening of an exhibit at the Pace Gallery in the mid-1970s. She was there in her trademark scarf & gypsy garb. I was there with a contingency of friends of the actor- Michael Higgins, with whom I was acquainted & with whom Nevelson was acquainted. She sat in the back room, & received selected visitors who came to pay her homage. Tammy Grimes was part of our group & next in line to pay her respects. Nevelson looked at her blankly. Grimes seemed to have blushed: “I’m Tammy Grimes, I am an actress.” Nevelson still looked puzzled, but polite & rather regal: “How nice to see you”.

“You see, I think that we have measurements in our bodies. Measurements in our eyes. Look, dear, we walk on 2 feet. So we're vertical. That doesn't mean the work has to be vertical, but it means there is a weight within ourselves, or this flight. All these things are within the being: weight, measure & color. If the work is good work, it is built on these laws & principles that we have within ourselves. So when you use a vertical line or a horizontal line, or a texture or the way the shadow falls or a thinner piece or a heavier piece, it all kind of satisfies something in the soul - or, I don't like the word soul, satisfies something within the deed.You add or subtract until you feel. . . the form, the principle, that something that makes the house stand, that makes you stand."

Born On This Day- August 22nd... James Kirkwood

In an interesting reversal of our usual bedtime ritual, The Husband went to sleep early & I stayed up late & watched a very remarkable documentary- Every Little Step. The film travels behind the scenes of the auditions for 2006 revival of A Chorus Line to investigate the the interplay among the hopefuls. The film establishes a parallel between the events of the play itself & the offstage experiences of the aspiring performers who are auditioning. The filmmakers also work in a layer that pertains to the original inception of the musical, & its evolution from an idea by gay director/choreographer- Michael Bennett, who recorded an ensemble of dancers speaking confessionally & used that as the basis for the book of the show.

The filmmakers play those original tapes back, on-camera, resurrecting old ghosts. Composer Marvin Hamlisch also turns up revealing a racy little nugget about the history of the song- Dance: 10; Looks 3 . The film features extensive footage of the auditions themselve, on songs such as At The Ballet & I Can Do That, interweaving an aura of suspense throughout the narrative of who will eventually cast in the production itself. The title of the documentary is a reference to the lyric of that old war horse of a musical number One ("One singular sensation, every little step she takes").

Writer James Kirkwood reached the peak of his fame when A Chorus Line*, the celebrated musical, opened at the Public Theater in 1975. Executing a concept by choreographer Michael Bennett, with music by the late, great Marvin Hamlisch & lyrics by Edward Kleban, Kirkwood joined with co-writer Nicholas Dante to develop a script based on the tape-recorded reminiscences of Broadway "gypsies," the young men & women who sing & dance in the chorus lines of musicals. In 1976, his contributions to the show brought Kirkwood a Tony Award & a Pulitzer Prize.

James Kirkwood was a born in LA. His father was a director & his mother was silent film star- Lila Lee. Kirkwood was well known in the world of theater through his work as an actor, playwright, & comedian.His novels include P.S. Your Cat Is Dead (1972), Good Times, Bad Times (1968) & Some Kind of Hero (1975). He was a capable creator of popular fiction & most have gay elements, & a most of his work was adapted for the stage or screen. There Must Be A Pony is a thinly disguised story of his life with his mother that was made into a TV film with Elizabeth Taylor & Robert Wagner.

Kirkwood will always be best known for writing the book for a A Chorus Line, for which he won a Tony in 1976, as well as a New York Drama Critic's Circle Award & the Pulitzer Prize. A Chorus Line is credited with being the first Broadway musical to deal with homosexuality in a matter-of-fact way - the concept for the show came from gay choreographer Michael Bennett.

Frank Rich: "A Chorus Line was also the first Broadway musical to deal matter-of-factly with homosexuality, & from an inside point-of-view that makes its gay men seem far more accessible than the martyrs & oddballs that typified stage homosexuals in mainstream American drama of the post-Boys In The Band, pre-AIDS era."

Like The Wizard Of Oz, A Chorus Line shares the myth of finding acceptance & identity as an outsider seeking a place that feels ineffably like home.

A Chorus Line was still playing when James Kirkwood died from AIDS-related cancer at his home in NYC in 1989.

*Tiny footnotes: I auditioned for the first touring A Chorus Line in LA & didn't get very far, as I am only a serviceable dancer ("he moves well for not being a dancer"). My pal Walter Kennedy made the cut & was offered a role at the same time that has was asked to join a well known dance company. He chose the dance troupe, without regret, I believe. When I lived in NYC in the mid-1970s, I was briefly friends with Rebecca York who played Diana on Broadway.

Born On This Day- August 21st... Illustrator Aubrey Beardsley

Because of my interest in Oscar Wilde, the man who would become my husband, introduced me to the work of an astonishing late 19th centurt artist. He gave me a book about Aubrey Beardsley, an English artist who was often associated with Oscar Wilde. Wilde's publisher, John Lane, invited Beardsley to illustrate the English edition of the play Salome. When it was published in 1894, both the play & the witty, provocative, & blatantly erotic illustrations created a sensation. That same year Beardsley became famous as the art editor of The Yellow Book, a new arts & letters periodical that Lane inaugurated. Beardsley's stunning black-and-white drawings, title-pages, & covers helped make the new quarterly a great success. The Yellow Book also quickly a target of moralists concerned about the influence of the decadent movement on English society & art. One critic described Beardsley's designs for the periodical as "diseased, weird, macbre, & sinister."

Considering the shortness of his life, he died of TB at age 25, Beardsley's achievements are astonishing. A highly original creator, he transformed the art of illustration & profoundly influenced artists of his own & future generations.

His expert draftsmanship made his drawings particularly suitable to the technical advances in printing at the end of the nineteenth century. He came to maturity at a time peculiarly suited to his genius, when theories of decadence & aestheticism expression to perverse sexuality & fetishism of all kinds. Beardsley's work is sexually frank & sometimes pornographic. He drew erect penises & stylized pubic hair, & he fetishized objects such as shoes & cloths. He also depicted sexual obsession, lesbianism, sadomasochism, & male homosexuality with an honesty & passion intended to shock & provoke.

Beardsley is viewed a satirical artist, with a gift for caricature & the grotesque. He also created revolutionary designs & images & patterns of surpassing beauty. His influence has been immense, & can be discerned in the stylized lines of the new Art Nouveau movement.

Born On This Day- August 19th... Gustave Caillebotte

Several years ago, a favorite chocolate company- TCHO, out of San Francisco, had a series of bars with beautiful labels featuring Impressionist paintings from the de Young Museum’s Masterpieces from the Musee d’ Orsay exhibit. One bar featured an image that held my interest in no small way. It was a detail from an astonishing painting of 2 shirtless, muscled men planing a wood floor. The artist was someone that I was not familiar with. I was soon on the hunt to learn all about him. The Husband pointed out the same image was on the cover of a book of 19th century gay erotica, a gift from him 20 years ago. Perhaps I had just jumped right into reading that book & never studied the cover. In the Summer of 2010, I became fascinated with painter- Gustave Caillebotte, reading everything I could find on the artist & studying copies of his paintings.


Gustave Caillebotte used to be dismissed as a minor outsider of French Impressionism. He was much younger than the main gang. He was personally very rich, & collected & supported their work. He was an excellent curator, & arranged many of their exhibitions. He paintings were rather somewhat non-impressionistic. He was modest about his talents. In his latter years, he painted less, devoting his time to gardening & boating. But from his 1st participation in an Impressionist exhibition, with paintings of modern Parisian life, he showed an entirely singular vein of invention: painting male nudes & producing work with an overt gay sensibility. For all his adult life he feared he would die young, & did, for no clear reason, at age 45.

Caillebotte stands apart among the Impressionists. His paintings depict working-class men in an urban context in full transformation. Caillebotte also used very innovative perspectives. His paintings are rather personal, autobiographical. You feel as if you were spying on a very private man, whose short life remains a mystery. He was an artist who was an Impressionist by association rather than by style or temperament.

His career as an artist feels unresolved. Certainly it was short. He stopped painting in a focused way in his 30s. By the 1890s he had become a semi-recluse at his estate- Petit-Gennevilliers, a property on the banks of the Seine near Argenteuil. He ceased showing his work at age 34 & devoted himself to gardening & to building & racing yachts, & with his friend Renoir, who often came to stay at Petit-Gennevilliers, they would have discussions on art, politics, literature, & philosophy. Caillebotte died there.

Self Portrait of the artist

His paintings & drawings are full of male bodies, often with a concealed face, often setting the bourgeois with the working class.The painting that grabbed me is The Floor Scrapers (Les raboteurs de parquet). It shows men at work, shirtless, showing their muscular bodies. His row men also produce erotic feelings. In the Self-Portrait at the Easel (Autoportrait au chevalet), the artist is painting in his studio, while in the background a man, the bottom half of his face concealed by the painter's arm, reads on a coach. A through line of melancholy flows from the paintings... & a definitive homo-eroticism.

Self Portrait... he seems to have been a beautiful man

I knew nothing of Caillebotte before that chocolate bar, but I enjoyed the research of his enigmatic life. He never married or seemed to have any relationship with a woman, spending his time gardening, rowing,& befriending & painting interesting, handsome men. In 2010, when I first posted my proposition that Caillebotte might have been a homosexual, I received a comment from one his distant relatives, insisting that such a thing that could not be possible.

This is the image from the chocolate. It started a summer of research about the painter.

Born On This Day- August 19th... Malcolm Forbes

The personality trait I most deplore in others? Entitlement. Here is a little tale:

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes probably means nothing to anyone under 40 today. Yet when he died 21 years ago at the age of 70, he was one of the most famous men in America, the result of his shameless, showy smarts at self-promotion.

Forbes inherited Forbes Magazine from his father, its founder, B.C. Forbes, in the late 1950s when he was 38. The magazine had long been a successful business magazine with a strong personality identification with B.C. Forbes. By the early 1970s, Malcolm Forbes, now sole owner, turned it into a hugely successful business monthly magazine. One of his great sensations was the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 Richest.

In the 1970s & 1980s, Forbes lived a luminous, lavish lifestyle, separate from his sedate base on his inherited estate & his large family. In those years he became more prominent & took to the bright lights of NYC.

That was also his public image, although mainly because of his large yachts, his private jets, his residences around the world, & his planeloads of famous, powerful friends.

In late August of 1989, on a weekend, from the 18th to the 20th, Malcolm Forbes gave himself a 70th birthday party in Tangier, Morocco where he owned a palace, the Palais Mendoub. 800 guests were flown in on a chartered Concorde: famous friends, wealthy associates , USA governors, CEOs of multinational corporations, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Robert Maxwell, & Forbe's “date” for the event-Elizabeth Taylor.

It was a party of glitter, glamour & guise, comparable to Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball 23 years earlier. It was well publicized in the fashion & society pages, with a big whack of fairy-dust in the daily papers. It was good for business, mingling advertisers & potential advertisers with the elite of London & Manhattan & his “date” Elizabeth Taylor. It was good for his social reputation, transporting & taking care his very rich friends for free & in style in an exotic country with a Mediterranean climate. The party entertainment was on a grand scale: 600 drummers, acrobats & dancers, a fantasy with a cavalry charge which ended with the firing of muskets into the air by 300 Berber horsemen. The cost of this shindig was more than $3 million.

Forbes died less than 6 months after his party, at home on his estate in Far Hills, NJ. Shortly after he died, he was “outed” as by gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile. Forbes was long known as gay by some & unknown to many. In his later years he became quite the partyer, making up for lost time. The “outing” was a shock, especially to his friends who were not aware, or chose not to believe, that he was gay. Signorile published the story more with intention of showing how acceptable a gay man is without the predictable pale of prejudice. In this case, the band did not play on…

When Forbes died, he was held up by many conservatives as a great American capitalist. Signorile felt that the historical record also needed to show that he was homosexual; he interviewed many people who knew Forbes as gay, some of them men who’d been intimately involved with Forbes.

Highlighting how heated it was at that time to report on the undeclared homosexuality of a public figure who was dead, let alone living, many newspapers viewed Signorile's Forbes story as shocking & scandalous, & it took months for some papers to report on it. The NY Times ran the story 4 months after the fact in a story about outing, & still would not identify Forbes by name, saying that a 'recently deceased businessman' had been 'outed'. Years later, the NY Times would finally report that Forbes was gay, in a story about his son Steve Forbes’ run for the presidency. Steve Forbes has courted the Conservative Christian Right & has come out publicly against gay rights & same sex marriage while campaigning.

Born On This Day- August 18th... Marcel Carné

          

My 5 semesters of Film Theory & History have come in handy. How else would I have known of Marcel Carné, a prodigy who created dazzling, magical, original films of the French cinema from 1936-1945, including the Dadaist comedy-thriller Drôle de Drame (1937), the fatalistic melodrama Quai des Brumes (1938), the tragedy Le Jour se Lève (1939), Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942), & of course, his masterpiece, the magnificent epic Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)?

Carné's "poetic realism" consists of a meticulously recreated studio environment in which every element of lighting, decor, & design could be utilized to maximum expressivity.

Carné's last feature film, Le Merveilleuse Visite (1974), about a beautiful young man who turns out to be an angel visiting Earth, is an allegory of male beauty used as an indicator of innocence.

A man noted for his generosity & sensitivity, in his private life Carné tended to place personal relationships above political considerations: on the set of  Children Of Paradise, there were artists who would later be tried for collaborating with the Nazis, as well as artists who were members of the Underground resistance & Jews in hiding who were given shelter.

In 1970s, Carné wrote that he wished the openness of the post-Stonewall era had been available to him earlier in his career. Although he regretted that he had not infused his work with a political consciousness, he believed that his partiality to themes of impossible romance derived from his acute awareness of the oppression of homosexuals.

He was an outspoken champion of filmmakers- Pasolini & Fassbinder, who politicized questions of gender and sexual orientation.

Although his career was uneven, Children of Paradise is indisputably one of the classics of French film making, was voted the greatest film in French history by a poll of French film critics in the year 2000.

Carné was 39 years old when he directed Les Enfants du Paradis, his 7th film. Over the next 30 years he made 10 more features, some of which starred his longtime partner Roland Lesaffre. He died in Paris, at age 90 in 1996.

Born On This Day- August 16th... Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans has a special feeling for males. In his portrait photographs, he examines them from every angle, indoors & out, in groups & alone, clothed & naked. Sometimes he treats them as objects of desire & other times as objects of curiosity. Despite his camera’s studied distance from its subjects, his photographs read as very personal statements: "Here are the people & the things I like & this is the way I like to see them". This is why I feel so seduced by them." Tillmans brings eroticism to his photographs of fashion, the natural world, city skylines & club culture.

Tillmans moved to NYC in 1994, where he met & fell in love with the German painter Jochen Klein. After moving to England, Tillmans lived with Klein until he died of AIDS-related complications in 1997. When the German born artist was awarded the Turner prize in 2000, the feedback was quite pointed. Tillmans, a mere 32 years old, was the first photographer & the first non-British person to be given the prize. He was known for shooting London's street culture, the rise of Gay Pride, the nightlife of the clubbing generation. He worked for The Face Magazine. The studied authenticity of his photographs was thought of as an exercise in style, slight & understated. Some critics considered Tillmans to not even be an artist.

In 2001, Tillmans was awarded first prize in the competition for the design of the AIDS-Memorial for the City of Munich. In 2002, he filmed the video for Pet Shop Boys’ Home & Dry, composed almost entirely of shots documenting the mice living in the London Underground System.

A decade later, Tillmans is intensely fashionable & internationally acclaimed. He has had museum retrospectives all over the world.

Born On This Day- August 15th... Edna Ferber

"A closed mind is a dying mind."
Edna Ferber

I have always been crazy for The Algonquin Round Table, a celebrated group of NYC writers, critics, actors & wits. Members of "The Vicious Circle," as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 through 1929. The group would engage in wisecracks, wordplay & witticisms that, & then in the newspaper columns of Round Table members,they would be celebrated by the public. Later in life some of its members disparaged the group, yet its reputation has endured. I have always been fascinated by them & I have books about the group & many of the individuals including:



Franklin Pierce Adams, columnist
Robert Benchley, humorist & actor
Heywood Broun, columnist & sportswriter
Marc Connelly, playwright
George S. Kaufman, playwright & director
Dorothy Parker, critic, poet, short-story writer, & screenwriter
Harold Ross, The New Yorker editor
Robert E. Sherwood, author & playwright
Alexander Woollcott, critic & journalist
Tallulah Bankhead, actress
Harpo Marx, comedian & actor
Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
Alice Duer Miller, writer
Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright & screenwriter
Frank Sullivan, journalist & humorist
Deems Taylor, composer
Peggy Wood, actress
& Birthday Girl- author & playwright- Edna Ferber. 

Ferber's novels featured strong female protagonists. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons. Ferber held a firm belief that all people are equal & possibly that the least attractive may have the best character.


Many theatrical & film productions have been made based on her work: Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, Cimarron (which won an Oscar) . 3 of these works - Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk & Giant - have been made into musicals. When composer Jerome Kern proposed turning the very serious Show Boat into a musical, Ferber was shocked, thinking it would be transformed into a light musical entertainment typical of the 1920s. It was not until Kern explained that he & Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights. In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel- So Big, which by coincidence, is the title of a chapter in my own memoir- Jockstraps & Vicodin (a possible Pulitzer for me?).

There was a silent film made of So Big, & an early talkie movie remake in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, & Bette Davis in a supporting role. A 1953 remake of So Big starred Jane Wyman in the Stanwyck role, it is the version most often seen today.

Edna Ferber was a big ol' golf playing, softball team member, dating her former therapist, Indigo Girls loving lesbian. One of her "Old Maid" characters says: "Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning ...a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling." She wrote the gay favorites: Stage Door, Dinner at Eight, & The Royal Family. Ferber was portrayed by the actress Lili Taylor in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker & the Vicious Circle.

Born On This Day- August 14th... Horst P Horst

More photography. Another gay artist. Horst P Horst & Herb Ritts in the same week is an embarrasment of photographic riches.

I have recently come to the realization that although I would give myself a B- as an artist, I can draw & paint with more skill than most civilians. I can place objects in a space with smart aesthetic judgments, & my gardens have been artful enough to published many times, but I am sad to discover that I am a shitty photogrpher. I have come to believe that photography is like singing, dancing or acting, you can hone your skills, but either ya got it, or you ain't. Appearently, I ain't got it. The Husband does most of the shots that are posted of Post Apocalyptic Bohemia. His eye is keen & his design sense trumps my accidental good shots.

In the history of 20th century fashion & portrait photography, Horst P Horst's contribution is among the most artistically significant & long lasting, 1931-1991. He would become so legendary that like other icons, he would be known by just a single word name. Horst’s work is the epitome, elegance, style & rarefied glamour.

In 1930, he met Vogue photographer Baron George Hoyningen-Huene, & the pair became lovers. He traveled to England with the baron. They visited photographer Cecil Beaton, who was working for British Vogue. In 1931, Horst began his association with Vogue, his 1st photograph in French Vogue was published that year.

Horst had his 1st show at La Plume d'Or in Paris in 1932. It was reviewed by Janet Flanner in The New Yorker, & Horst was made instantly famous. Horst shot a portrait of Bette Davis the same year, the 1st in a series of celebrities he would photograph during his life. In 1932 he photographed: Noel Coward, The Lunts, Cole Porter, & Elsa Schiaparelli.

Horst met Coco Chanel in NYC in 1937. Chanel: “Horst was the queen of the whole thing". He would photograph Chanel’s creations for more than 30 years.

He met Valentine Lawford, a British diplomat in 1938 & they lived openly as a couple until Lawford's death in 1991. They adopted & raised a son, Richard J. Horst, together.

In 1941, The German born Horst applied for United States citizenship, & soon joined the US Army. He became an Army photographer, with much of his work printed in the Armed Forces' magazine- Belvoir Castle. In 1945 he photographed United States President Harry S. Truman, with whom he became friends, & he photographed every First Lady in the post-war period at the invitation of the White House.

In 1947, Horst moved into his house in Oyster Bay, New York. He designed the white stucco clad building himself, the design inspired by the houses that he had seen in Tunisia during his relationship with Hoyningen-Huene.

In the 1960s, encouraged by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, Horst began a series of photos of the high society: Consuelo Vanderbilt, Marella Agnelli, Gloria Guinness, Baroness & Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Helen of Greece & Denmark, Baroness Geoffroy de Waldner, Lee Radziwill, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor, Oscar de la Renta, Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent, Doris Duke, Emilio Pucci, Cy Twombly, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, & Paloma Picasso. The articles were written by his partner Valentine Lawford. Until the time of his death, Horst spent most of his time traveling & photographing. In the1970s, he began working for House & Garden magazine as well as for Vogue.

Horst' career can be said to have reached Old Master status when the world's most famous person- Madonna, created her celebrated hymn to classic fashion photography with her single- Vogue in 1990. In the video directed by David Fincher, she posed as a recreation of Horst's most iconic fashion image, a model seen from behind, wearing a partially tied, back-laced corset made by Detolle.

Horst knew & photographed most of the major figures of the 20th century. He died at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, at 93 years of age. A life lived creating beauty & life lived well.

Born On This Day- August 13th... Herb Ritts

"I think knowing people by first names, not by what they do sexually, is really what it's about. Not being afraid. Fear is the enemy. I've always been comfortable with being gay."
Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts is one of my favorite photographers. Photography is a medium that I have a passion for & Ritts was a master. He was a classicist in the manner of the great George Platt Lynes & George Hurrell, but he had a contemporary spin on portraiture & yet none of the settings & color of Annie Lebowitz. I love the work & admire all the artists I have mentioned, along with Helmut Newton & Bruce Weber, but Herb Ritts was a gay man of my generation & his work & subjects speak to me. Interestingly, Ritts was self taught.

Herb Ritts grew up in Beverly Hills with movie stars as neighbors & as a child his neighbor Steve McQueen would take him on rides on the back of his motorcycle. His images celebrated the beauty of the human body, especially the male body & created stylish, unorthodox portraits of celebrities. Ritts gained the same sort of renown as his subjects & he achieved nearly as much fame as those he photographed.

His work graced not only the covers & photo spreads of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Elle, & Harper’s Bazaar, but also album covers, advertisements, television commercials, & music videos.. Ritts claimed that his success in black & white photography stemmed from a photograph he happened to take of his friend Richard Gere while they were waiting for a tire to be changed in the California desert. That photo was ultimately used for publicity when Gere starred in American Gigolo (1980), & both men’s careers received an enormous boost.

Several anthologies of Ritts’s works have been published: Men/Women (1989), Notorious (1992), Africa (1994), Work (1997) & Herb Ritts (2000). Major retrospectives of his work were held in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1996–97 & in Paris in 2000.

Ritts was always candid about his own sexuality. He realized that he was gay while he was in college. He soon came out to his parents, who were accepting & supportive. In 1993, he appeared on an NBC special- The Gay 90s. After the special aired he received many letters from gay young people about coming out. Ritts claimed that he never set out to be a role model & said- “you get some of these letters & realize how important it is that there be encouragement for young gay people.”

Ritts died in LA from HIV pneumonia-related complications in December 2002. He was only 50 years old. He left behind his longtime partner Erik Hyman, an entertainment lawyer, & his work.

Narrowing down a few pieces of his work is not an easy task. Go to his website: Herb Ritts & spend sometime absorbing his unique viewpoint.

Richard Gere: "Some photographers embalm their subjects, but he enlivened them."

Born On This Day- August 12th... Radclyffe Hall

Outside of Rita Mae Brown & Fannie Flagg, I am not really all that keen on Lesbian Literature, although I kissed a girl & I liked it. But as the chronicler of the lives of famous gay people, I need to note that today is the birthday of Radclyffe Hall, who lived her lesbianism openly & proudly, & was the writer of what is arguably the most important lesbian novel ever written.

At 21 years of age, after a desperately unhappy upbringing Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall inherited a large sum of money that left in trust by her grandfather.

Hall lived with the singer Mabel Veronica Batten, who was 25 years her senior, until her death in 1916. Soon afterwards she began a relationship with Una Elena Troubridge, a talented sculptor. She was married to Admiral Ernest Troubridge & Radclyffe Hall sued him for libel after he described her as "a grossly immoral woman".

Hall liked to be called John & cultivated a strikingly masculine appearance, sporting cropped hair, monocles, bow-ties, smoking jackets, & pipes.

Although she had enough money to live in leisure, Hall set about to be a writer. She published several novels, including The Forge (1924), The Unlit Lamp (1924), A Saturday Life (1925) & several volumes of poetry. Her 4tg novel, Adam's Breed (1926) was a best-seller & won prestigious literary prizes.

In 1928 Radclyffe Hall published the explicitly lesbian novel- The Well Of Loneliness.  The publisher, Jonathan Cape, argued on the book jacket: "In England hitherto the subject has not been treated frankly outside the regions of scientific text-books, but that its social consequences qualify a broader & more general treatment is likely to be the opinion of thoughtful & cultured people."

There was a campaign by the press to get the book banned. The London Sunday Express urged: "In order to prevent the contamination & corruption of English fiction it is the duty of the critic to make it impossible for any other novelist to repeat this outrage. I say deliberately that this novel is not fit to be sold by any bookseller or to be borrowed from any library."

British Government put pressure of Jonathan Cape to withdraw the book. One official described the book as "inherently obscene… it supports a depraved practice & is gravely detrimental to the public interest".  It was ordered that all copies be destroyed, & that literary merit presented no grounds for defense. The publisher agreed to withdraw the novel & proofs intended for a publisher in France were seized in October 1928.

Several writers, including, Arnold Bennett, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, George Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, & T.S. Eliot signed a letter of protest about the banning of the The Well Of Loneliness to The Daily Chronicle. In the USA, the book faced obscenity trials, garnering letters of support from Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mencken, Sinclair, Dos Passos, St. Vincent Millay, & more, & both times the book triumphed. Its first year, the book sold more than 100,000 copies. It was finally published in the UK in 1949.

Although she continued to live with Troubridge, Hall fell in love with a Russian nurse, Eugenie Souline in 1934. Despite the initial protests of Troubridge, the trio of women lived together in Florence.

At the outbreak of the WW2, the 3 women left Italy & settled in Devon, England. Hall developed bowel cancer & died on 7th October 1943. Just before her death, Hall changed her will, leaving everything to Troubridge, including the copyrights to her works. In her new will she asked Troubridge to "make such provision for our friend Eugenie Souline as in her absolute discretion she may consider right".  Troubridge only provided Souline with a small allowance. The Well Of Loneliness has never gone out of print.

Born On This Day- August 12th... Alfred Lunt

I have always been absorbed by these types, the glamorous theatre & film personalities of the 1920s-1960s. “The Lunts” ruled the American theater scene during that era, with their dazzling partnership. Their careers flourished at a time when even the biggest stars would do national tours & successful actors worked exclusively year-round on the stage. Their friends included other glamorous theater people: Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Helen Hayes, Mary Martin, Ethel Merman & Laurence Olivier.

There was never a question of their devotion, but the offstage union of Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne was a marriage between a gay man & a Lesbian. Their presentation of themselves as the ideal couple may have been their most skillful performance.

When prodded by best buddy- Noel Coward, the couple would sometimes teasingly hint about their private lives. Their scandalous 1933 hit- Design for Living allowed the Coward & his co-stars to romp through a 3 way implying that there was sex between the 2 male characters. Design for Living remains one of my favorite plays. I remain fascinated by the ups, downs & pitfalls of a 3 way relationship .The production showcased the flawless comic gifts for which the Lunts were most admired, but they also excelled at dramatic pieces too, but the Lunts will always be known for the light comedy & the amazing chemistry.

When relaxing, they retreated in high style to their country manor- 10 Chimneys, in Lunt's home state, Wisconsin (home of presumptive VP nominee, Paul Ryan), where he could cook & redecorate while she sewed her chic clothing. The Lunts were my kind of couple; they ate off an orange crate, siting on Biedermeier chairs. The Lunts were Post Apocalyptic Bohemians, for certain. The theater was life for them, & their life was a piece of theater. Their dwellings were theatrical sets, their parties were stage shows, everyone who socialized with them was turned into audience. It was remarked that they knew next to nothing about what was going on in the world, had largely theatrical friends, usually acted together & rehearsed their parts in taxis, even in bed.

There are all sorts of marriages, I should know. Unlike in other show biz marriages, the spouses were equal stars; equally glamorous to the world & to each other, not much reason for jealousy. Passion was what they enacted on the stage. Fontanne : ''We were friends right away. . . . I loved him utterly. We were in the same profession. We were like twins. When we were acting, I always thought of him as another person. . . . I had a new lover every night, and so had he.'' '' Hmmm… sexual passion?

The Lunts had a design for living to suit them both: There would be deep devotion. . . . There would be close friendships, particularly the triangle kind that Lynn preferred: Lynn, Alfred & a gay male, kindness, courtesy, loyalty & generosity. There would be passionate, total commitment to their work.

After Lunt's death, Fontanne toasted him with a glass of champagne, saying simply, "To Alfred." We will probably not see their likes again.