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Martin Sherman (born December 22, 1938)
Dec. 22nd, 2013 10:35 am
A longtime resident of London, Philadelphia-born playwright Martin Sherman made his move to the big screen in the late 1990s with his original script Alive and Kicking/Indian Summer and the adaptation of his stage success Bent. Sherman has been published in two volumes of the collection Gay Plays, and many of his works focus on homosexuality.Sherman is an openly gay Jew, and many of his works dramatize "outsiders," dealing with the discrimination and marginalisation of minorities whether "gay, female, foreign, disabled, different in religion, class or color."
Bent was first performed in a workshop at the O’Neill Theatre Centre in Waterford, Connecticut, in 1978, before premiering in London (with Ian MCKELLEN and Tom Bell in the lead roles) and on Broadway (with Richard Gere, who won the Tony Award, and David Dukes) in 1979. The play was the first to deal with the internment of homosexuals by the Nazis during World War II. Set primarily in a concentration camp, it garnered controversy for a scene in which the gay inmates, unable to touch each other, achieve climax through words.
The 1997 film version, directed by Sean MATHIAS, starred Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau, McKellen, and Mick JAGGER, and featured early performances by Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, and Paul Bettany.
Sherman has had a number of stage successes in London (where he permanently settled in 1980). A Madhouse in Goa focused on the deceptive relationship between a young man and the woman he encounters on a Greek island. Vanessa Redgave played Isadora DUNCAN in Sherman’s When She Danced, and Rupert EVERETT won praise for his turn as the object of the affection of a British Army officer in North Africa in Some Sunny Day.
Sherman wrote the book for the Broadway smash Boy from Oz, starring Hugh Jackman and based on the life of Peter ALLEN.
Stern, Keith. Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals. Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.
( Further Readings )
From 1904 until she retired in 1935, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey toured the nightclubs and juke joints in the southern and midwestern states, belting out a newfangled meld of black spirituals and folk music known as "the blues." There was one brief interruption during those three decades: in 1925 Rainey was arrested at a Chicago party where the women—to the feigned shock of the Chi-town cops—were completely nude. The next morning Rainey’s friend Bessie SMITH bailed her out, and the history of music barely missed a beat.
Charles Willard Moore (October 31, 1925 – December 16, 1993) was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.
Sitting Bull, or Ta-Tanka I-Yotank, was the great Sioux leader and warrior who helped defeat General George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Donatello was the finest sculptor of the fifteenth century. He revived and refined the art of classical sculpture in the round, and many of his works are explicitly homoerotic. His David is lissome and his St. George became emblematic of beauty for admirers of the male form. 
Handsome hunk Van Johnson was one of the biggest stars in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, appearing in dozens of major films. 
Thomas Lee "Tommy" Kirk (born December 10, 1941) is a former American actor, and later a businessman.
Henry Dixon Cowell was an innovative proponent of Modernist theory in music and one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. He taught at the New School for Social Research (1928-1963) and developed techniques of “tone clusters,” where the fist or palm is used to hit several keys at once, and percussing directly on piano strings. He wrote some of the first “aleatory” works, where an element of chance enters into each performance. 
Plan 9 From Outer Space is a film that’s so bad it’s good, and its quirky style is the result of the determined creativity of director Ed Wood. Even the death of its star, Bela Lugosi, did not prevent Wood from completing the picture—using his wife’s chiropractor as a stand-in for Lugosi’s remaining scenes. 
Margaret Cho is Korean American, she’s queer, she’s funny, and she’s on TV—get used to it. Her birth name was Moran Cho, and all the kids at school called her “moron.” Naturally she developed a sense of humor and renamed herself Margaret as soon as possible. 
Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 - December 1, 1989) was an African-American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring. Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance. In 1977, Ailey was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988, just one year before his death. (P: photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1955)
A major figure on the British literary scene during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, critic Cyril Connolly was, with Peter WATSON, one of the founders and editors of Horizon, an influential literary magazine. His reviews in the Observer and the Sunday Times attracted a wide audience. 
Laurence Harvey (1 October 1928 – 25 November 1973) was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films, being best known for his lead performance in Room at the Top (1959).
As frontman for the British rock group Queen, Freddie Mercury (September 5, 1946 – November 24, 1991) often appeared onstage sporting leather shorts and a matching cap. Although he valued his privacy, in a March 12, 1974, interview for New Musical Express he confessed, “I am as gay as a daffodil, my dear!” When asked whom he’d like to have been in another life, Freddie Mercury replied “Marie Antoinette . . . she had all those jewels.” 
Walter Jenkins was a top advisor and chief of staff to President Lyndon Johnson until he was arrested for homosexual acts in a YMCA in 1964. A major scandal erupted and Jenkins resigned. Johnson was unable to replace Jenkins, and instead divided his responsibilities among several staff members. 
Friedrich Alfred Krupp was heir to his father’s munitions empire. A master of the soft sell, he developed a close and lucrative relationship with the Kaiser. Krupp introduced diesel engines to Europe and began construction of the German U-Boat fleet. 
The plays and novellas of the bisexual Heinrich von Kleist explore societal ramifications of transgressive sexuality and frequently yoke illicit sex and death.
Cherry Jones (born November 21, 1956) is an American actress and recipient of the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series and the 1995 and 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Most recently, she starred as Dr. Evans on NBC series Awake.
Jodie Foster began her acting career at age three, appearing in several Disney TV productions. By the time she achieved worldwide fame, at age thirteen in Taxi Driver, she had already made eight features, including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and One Little Indian. She won a Best Actress Oscar for The Accused in 1988 and another for Silence of the Lambs in 1991. She has also won multiple Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and SAG Awards. 
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Cosmo cover girl Gia Marie Carangi caught the eyes of both men and women. Her life story details the tragedy of a beautiful woman battling internal demons. In Gia’s case, the demons won in the end. 
Born RuPaul Andre Charles, cover girl RuPaul began her recording career in the mid-1980s and hit it big in 1993. “Supermodel” is the first number-one pop song recorded by a drag queen (if you don’t count BOY GEORGE). RuPaul has enjoyed a successful string of television and live appearances since then. Born in San Diego and raised in Atlanta, RuPaul always knew she was different from the rest. As she often notes, “We are all born naked, all the rest is drag.” She met her longtime boyfriend George at a bar, and was immediately attracted by his spirited dancing.
RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960), best known as simply RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, model, author, and recording artist, who first became widely known in the 1990s when he appeared in a wide variety of television programs, films, and musical albums. Previously, he was a fixture on the Atlanta and New York City club scenes during the 1980s and early 90s. RuPaul has on occasion performed as a man in a number of roles, usually billed as RuPaul Charles. RuPaul is noted among famous drag queens for his indifference towards the gender-specific pronouns used to address him—both "he" and "she" have been deemed acceptable. "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care! Just as long as you call me." She hosted a short-running talk show on VH1, and currently hosts reality television shows RuPaul's Drag Race and RuPaul's Drag U. Rupaul is also known for his hit song "Supermodel (You Better Work)".
Clark Gable is known to have indulged in at least one drunken same-sex encounter: with wildman actor William HAINES. 
Gable may have been particularly sensitive about his sexuality because his birth certificate mistakenly recorded him as a female. While he was growing up, his father often berated him and called him a sissy. When he was twenty-three Gable married forty-year-old acting coach Josephine Dillon, who told him, “I’ll at least make an actor of you, for you’ll never be a man.” Gable later claimed their marriage was never consummated. His third wife and the love of his life Carole Lombard once said disparagingly of his manhood: “If he was one inch shorter we’d be talking about the Queen of Hollywood.” (Picture: William Haines)
Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on 14 November 1939) is an American composer and electronic musician.
Karen Silkwood was a worker at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Oklahoma during the 1970s. In testimony before the Atomic Energy Commission in the summer of 1974, she accused the company of numerous safety breaches. Soon afterward, she found that her home had been mysteriously contaminated with plutonium. She herself was dangerously contaminated, as was her girlfriend/roommate Sherry Ellis. 
Terence Davies won the 1998 International Critics Award at Cannes for Distant Voices, Still Lives. The film went on to acclaim and popularity with audiences around the world. In 1992 he followed it with The Long Day Closes, which received similar accolades.
Roland Emmerich is an A-list Hollywood director specializing in films that explore the sometimes rocky relationship between humans and aliens. In 1994 his Egyptian-flavored sci-fi/action flick Stargate was a surprise hit, spawning a long-running TV series.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is revered as the Father of Modern Turkey. He had also numerous young male lovers, throughout his lifetime. As biographer Patrick Balfour put it, “Women, for Mustafa, were a means of satisfying masculine appetites, little more; nor, in his zest for experience, would he be inhibited from passing adventures with young boys, if the opportunity offered and the mood, in this bisexual fin de siècle Ottoman age, came upon him.”
Roy Simmons was an outstanding offensive lineman for the New York Giants, and he played for the Washington Redskins in the 1984 Super Bowl. In 1992, three years after he retired from professional football, Simmons publicly came out on The Phil Donahue Show.
According to piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz, “There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists.” Horowitz himself fit under two of those categories. He achieved international fame during a career that spanned six decades. In 1933 he married Wanda Toscanini under pressure from her father, the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini. The marriage was unhappy, not least because Horowitz continued to have trysts with young men. Later in life Horowitz became more open, frequenting gay bars with his lover. Once, when invited to dinner at the home of gay director George CUKOR, Horowitz accepted, but said, “However, I would much rather come on Sunday.” (Sunday parties at Cukor’s were notorious gatherings of Hollywood’s most eligible gay young men.) Horowitz’ sexuality has been well documented in several books, including the Glann Plaskin and Harold Schonberg biographies.
Although sexuality does not appear in any of the works of leftist political figure Manuel Azaña, he was committed to liberal freedom and revolutionary reforms.
k.d. lang was a hit as a country & western singer before she publicly came out as lesbian. Now she’s an even bigger star as a torch singer and has four Grammies under her belt buckle.
Lang has won both Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical performances; hits include "Constant Craving" and "Miss Chatelaine". She has contributed songs to movie soundtracks and has teamed with musicians such as Roy Orbison, Tony Bennett, Elton John, Anne Murray and Jane Siberry. Lang is also known for being a vegan as well as an animal rights, gay rights, and Tibetan human rights activist. She is a tantric practitioner of the old school of Tibetan Buddhism. She performed Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" live at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. Previously, she had performed at the closing ceremony of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Lang possesses the vocal range of a mezzo-soprano.
Henry Willson played a leading role in popularizing the beefcake craze of the 1950s. In his book, Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall (2002), Richard Barrios writes, "Talent agent Henry Willson... had a singular knack for discovering and renaming young actors whose visual appeal transcended any lack of ability. Under his tutelage, Robert Mosely became Guy Madison, Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr. was renamed Ty Hardin, Arthur Gelien was changed to Tab Hunter, and Roy Fitzgerald turned into Rock Hudson. So successful was the beefcake aspect of this enterprise, and so widely recognized was Willson's sexuality, that it was often, and often inaccurately, assumed that all of his clients were gay."
One of Willson’s first clients was also his live-in lover, former child star Junior Durkin (Huckleberry Finn), who died tragically in a car crash at age nineteen. Willson’s other protégés included Guy Madison, Tab HUNTER, and Rock HUDSON. So many of Willson’s clients were gay that it was often assumed that any good looking young man represented by him was likely of that persuasion. Willson arranged the marriage between his secretary, Phyllis Gates, and Rock Hudson in 1955 to protect Hudson’s image. Willson also traded information about the sex lives of Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter in exchange for an agreement that Confidential would not out Hudson. (Picture: Junior Durkin)
David Brock (born November 2, 1962) first entered the public discourse as a staunch advocate for far-right conservatism. Following the 1991 Senate hearings to confirm Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the US Supreme Court, Brock wrote a sharply critical article about Thomas’ accuser Anita Hill famously referring to her as “a bit nutty and a bit slutty.” In the January 1994 issue of The American Spectator, Brock wrote about Bill Clinton’s time as governor of Arkansas, spurring the “Troopergate” scandal. The case became entangled in Kenneth Starr’s investigation of the Whitewater scandal that eventually led to the president’s impeachment.
Explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky was one of the most well-known Russian celebrities of the 1870s and ’80s. Whenever he packed his bags for a jaunt across central and far eastern Asia, the Russian explorer invariably brought along a few handsome youths to assist him on his lengthy journeys. The Russian government accommodated him by commissioning his lovers as lieutenants in the army, which provided them with a salary.
Though Przhevalsky usually returned with collections of exotic plants and animals, it was eighteen-year-old Pyotr Kozlov who brought out the beast in the mustachioed voyager. When Przhevalsky died, Kozlov carried on his explorations. Other young men who enjoyed Przhevalsky’s favor were Robert Koecher (b. 1849) and Fyodor Eklon (1857-1883). (Picture: Pyotr Kozlov)
River Jude Phoenix (August 23, 1970 – October 31, 1993) was an American film actor, musician, and activist. He was the oldest brother of fellow actors Rain, Joaquin, Liberty, and Summer Phoenix. Phoenix's work encompassed 24 films and television appearances, including the science fiction adventure film Explorers, the coming-of-age film Stand By Me, the action sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the independent adult drama My Own Private Idaho. Phoenix's meteoric rise to fame led to his status as a "teen sensation". There are a number of stories that refer to Phoenix’s bisexual orientation. In the March 1994 issue of Esquire, an ex-girlfriend, Suzanne Solgot, is quoted as saying, “If he loved someone, male or female, he felt he should check it out.” The same article reports that River once accepted oral sex from a fellow actor in the name of research for his upcoming role as a gay hustler in My Own Private Idaho.
Walter Horatio Pater was renowned for his biographical essays about LEONARDO, BOTTICELLI, MICHELANGELO, and other Renaissance figures. His works and ideas influenced Oscar WILDE and many other writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Along with writer Edward CARPENTER, Pater espoused the concept of "Greek Love" that provided fhe basis for the queer culture of the time.
General Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey commanded all the southern French forces and led the French army that subdued Madagascar. After conquering Morocco, he was resident general (1912-1925) and French Minister of War (1916-1917). In 1921 he was made Marshal of France.
Nancy Elizabeth Lieberman (born July 1, 1958), nicknamed "Lady Magic", is a former professional basketball player who played and coached in the WNBA. Lieberman is regarded as one of the greatest figures in women's basketball.
Lieberman was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 1, 1958, to Jerome and Renee Lieberman. She was raised Jewish, and has become a born-again Christian. Her family lived in Brooklyn, when she was born, but soon moved to Far Rockaway, New York where she grew up with her older brother Clifford. Her mother brought up the children after a separation and divorce. While growing up, she was very interested in a variety of sports, playing baseball, softball and football with boys, before settling on basketball as her primary sport. She played basketball primarily on pickup teams with boys, not playing on a girl's team until she was a high school sophomore. While attending Far Rockaway High School in Queens, New York, she established herself as one of the top women's basketball players in the country by earning one of only 12 slots on the USA's National Team. In 1975, Lieberman was named to the USA Team designated to play in the World Championships and Pan American Games, where she brought home a gold medal and a silver medal in 1979.
Nancy Elizabeth Lieberman (born July 1, 1958), nicknamed "Lady Magic", is a former professional basketball player who played and coached in the WNBA. Lieberman is regarded as one of the greatest figures in women's basketball.
Lieberman was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 1, 1958, to Jerome and Renee Lieberman. She was raised Jewish, and has become a born-again Christian. Her family lived in Brooklyn, when she was born, but soon moved to Far Rockaway, New York where she grew up with her older brother Clifford. Her mother brought up the children after a separation and divorce. While growing up, she was very interested in a variety of sports, playing baseball, softball and football with boys, before settling on basketball as her primary sport. She played basketball primarily on pickup teams with boys, not playing on a girl's team until she was a high school sophomore. While attending Far Rockaway High School in Queens, New York, she established herself as one of the top women's basketball players in the country by earning one of only 12 slots on the USA's National Team. In 1975, Lieberman was named to the USA Team designated to play in the World Championships and Pan American Games, where she brought home a gold medal and a silver medal in 1979.
David Marquette Kopay (born June 28, 1942) is a former American football running back in the National Football League who in 1975 became one of the first professional athletes to come out as gay. His 1977 biography, The David Kopay Story, written with Perry Deane Young, offers insights into the sexual proclivities of heterosexual football players and their homophobia. In 1986, Kopay also revealed his brief affair with Jerry Smith (1943–1986), who played for the Washington Redskins from 1965–1977 and who died of AIDS without ever having publicly come out of the closet.
Kopay attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California. He entered the University of Washington in 1961 and became an All-American running back in his senior year. He was signed by the San Francisco 49ers. He played professional football from 1964 to 1972. After he retired from the NFL, he was considered a top contender for coaching positions, but he believes he was snubbed by professional and college teams because of his sexual orientation. He went to work as a salesman/purchaser in his uncle's floorcovering business in Hollywood. He is also a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.
