411: Gay Bar 12 - Eraser

Eraser, 1996

Directed by Chuck Russell Screenplay by Tony Puryear and Walon Green

Arnold Schwarzenegger as John Kruger Robert Pastorelli as Johnny Casteleone Rick Batalla as Kevin, the Bartender

Kruger, a Witness Protection specialist, goes to see Casteleone, a mob witness who has been given a new identity.

Outside the bar we see a fair number of men, some in vests or with arms around each other.

To the strains of the opening to “It’s Raining Men” cuts to three drag queens in the bar miming to the song.

Cuts to dance floor entrance – gym bodies but not overly masculine dancing – some with Arms around one another

Pans across floor to an extravagant pair in in polka dot lycra costume and pink fur stole dancing at one another who separate to let Arnold Schwarzenegger pass.

He makes his way to the bar and speaks to one of the men behind the bar who is Casteleone.

Let’s finish this particular saunter down memory lane with this unexpected appearance in a 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger film. And if it’s surprising to me, then it’s probably equally surprising to the audience of the time. However it fits in, as this is about the time that gay films or films with gay characters go mainstream / inoffensively acceptable with “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994), “The Adventures of Priscilla - Queen of the Desert” (1994), “Jeffrey” (1995), “The Birdcage” (1996), “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (1997), “In and Out” (1997). A thriller like “Copy Cat” (1995) can feature a personally pleasant gay character who frequents gay bars if only so he can be killed off.

So this particular scene exemplifies the standard gay bar / disco as it will appear for the next fifteen years to the current day. From being something secretive, faintly grubby, now we have all these gay bars that flatter audiences that gay life is just a little more glamorous and exciting: “Absolutely Fabulous”, ”Sex and the City”, “Will and Grace” , and “Queer as Folk”.

What you get here are as many disparate, but non-controversial aspects of the gay club scene as can be crammed into one scene in as short a time as possible. So you get flamboyant drag queens performing, and also one or two female impersonators in the general audience. The extravagantly dressed pair are not drag queens but instead evocative of the more avant-garde club scene, reminiscent of Leigh Bowery or the Club Kids in the early 90s (and I’m old enough to remember seeing Michael Alig and co on various NYC talk shows when I did homework after school). Otherwise the rest of the clientele are gym-toned and either in revealing or tops or else in waistcoats. What there aren’t are any clones of leather daddies. This isn’t “The Blue Oyster”.

The flipside to this openness is a corresponding ease on the part of the two straight men. This is lightly humorous scene, where the characters are just amused that they are in a gay bar and nothing more. The characters tease each other but aside from the opening “Was it your idea to leave me with the Village People?” line from Pastorelli, they don’t mock the gay men. They’re not uncomfortable being there. There’s no sense of their masculinity being threatened or fear of sexual assault.

410: Gay Bar 11 - Tough Guys

Tough Guys 1986
Directed by Jeff Kanew
Written by James Cruikshank and James Orr

Harry Doyle (Lancaster)
Archie Long (Douglas)

Harry Doyle and Archie Long are gangsters who have served a 30-year prison sentence. The two are paroled, now in their 70s. Will they be able to rehabilitate, will they team up for one last job, and how will they adapt as fish-out-od-water/time in the changed America of the 1980s? These are the premises from which this genial comedy builds. Since the two actors largely insist upon the dignity of their roles, there isn’t too much of the “rapping grandma” shenanigans which typically make old age / modern lifestyles culture clash comedy such a nightmare – although in this case it’s the La New Wave scene.

Having been released, one of the first things Archie does is visit his old bar, Mickey’s. When he enters everything appears as it should - Glenn Miller-style music is playing, and the bar still seems to be popular.

Douglas looks pleased, approaches the bartender and asks if Mickey is still around but is told Mickey has been dead for the last 20 years. Archie orders a beer, “one of those new light beers”, and downs it, only to observe that it tastes “watery”.

A man sat to his left says the beer “only has 95 calories”, and slides over to Douglas offering to buy him another. Douglas accepts, and the two briefly sit in silence nodding along to the music. The two start talking about how it’s good music.

Man:
Some people think it’s out of date.

Archie:
You kidding? I grew up on that music.

Man:
It’s great dance music.

Archie:
Yeah. (wistfully) I haven’t danced in thirty years.

Man:
(slight pause). Shall we?

Archie:
Shall we what?

Man:
Shall we dance?

Archie looks surprised, looks away from man. Cuts to bartender, who winks rather blatantly at him.

Cuts back to Archie’s wary face. His eyes shift to the left.

Cuts to other end of bar where two couples are dancing to the music.

Cuts back to man who realises nonchantly that his offer is not going to be taken up. Archie collects his hat and coat and leaves. Last shot in bar is of man having a drink.

Cut to street outside as Archie leaves bar, ruefully shaking his head and muttering “I can’t believe it”. Harry appears and Archie advises him “You don't want to go in there.”

This only lasts a minute or two and it’s a relatively underplayed scene. The jokes are about the change in mores, not about homosexuals. The joke has to work as Archie only gradually realises the changes, so these are very straight-seeming gay men. Not straight-seeming for the “relatively normal” arguments of the 1977 episode of Maude, but because if the bar was full of camp queens or leather bears there’d be no drama because Archie wouldn’t enter it. The bartender winking is bit crass. It’s more a wink meant for the audience rather than anyone in the film. The men dancing is a bit of a cheat since we had the full-view shot at the beginning, but since the rest of the scene has been shot to the right, a sudden cut to the left makes it seem as though this dancing has been off the radar in everyway.

409: Gay Bar 10 - Police Academy

The Police Academy film spanned the summer movie schedules of the 1980s. These popular films were the final drip-drip of the rowdy frat rebellion and party-hard hijinks that first scored big audiences in the late 70s “Animal House” and then numerous bandwagon-jumpers for the next decade or so. A franchise in the same way a Macdonalds is a franchise The somewhat under-achieving “Police Academy” films offered a standardised diet of good-natured misfits and underdogs, bosoms, parties and pranks with the same recurring cast for the better part of the decade to an easily pleased audience. Amidst all the repetitions of characters and situations, one of the gags that would soon become as familiar as a Big Mac was a visit to the Blue Oyster Bar which appeared in the first four Police Academy movies

In each film a straight character, usually some kill-joy petty authority figure, is directed to The Blue Oyster Bar, all unsuspecting of its real nature. Entering they find themselves in a dark bar confronted by a large array of leather-men: burly, hairy-chested, beards, mutton-chops, handle-bar moustaches, biker outfits, leather caps. The rough-sex stereotype of the contemporary gay lifestyle which had become more familiar to the general audience since the Village People and Cruising. The straight character is intimidated by the silent mass of leering gay men. Anxiety, anxiety at this perverse threat. What assaults will they be subject to? Tension builds….and then - just as the straight character is about to flee the bar - they are grabbed by one of the gay patrons. And forced to tango.

Because men dancing together is FUNNY. It disturbs the natural order, for any dancing insinuates sex. Whatever sweaty sexual dancing may happen in a real gay bar or disco, here it’s the highly formalised techniques and roles of tango. Yet the effete regimented nature of formal-dancing with its flamboyant flourishes is in opposition to the gritty roughness of a leather-man. The dancing is sufficient to itself for effeminacy as the leather-man maintain their facades with no mincing, lip pursing, limp wrists or other camp behaviour. Audiences get both the rough-sex stereotype and effeminate traits simultaneously, each in revolving opposition like a cat covered in butter.

Of course after the first film, the audience know what the set-up is. Thereafter no comic surprise, only watching somebosy finding themselves tricked into some embarrassing dancing. A comic interpretation of sexual intimidation
Police Academy (1984)
0.00 – 2.09

Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)
2.10 – 3.07

Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)
3.08 – 3.53

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)
3.54 -

407: Gay Bar 8 - The Pink Panther Strikes Again

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) Directed by Blake Edwards
screenplay by Frank Waldman and Blake Edwards

Peter Sellers - Chief Inspector Clouseau
Michael Robbins - Jarvis
John Clive - Chuck

This fourth outing for Sellers as Inspector Clouseau has him investigating a kidnapping. Having visited the manor home of the kidnapped scientist, Clouseau follows the butler Anisley Jarvis when he leaves the manor. The butler arrives outside a Soho club - The Queen of Hearts – from the outside of which we can hear cabaret/ bar noises. The leather-jacketed butler arrives on motorcycle, parks his bike and enters.

It’s probably too brief for audiences watching at the time to make out, but on re-watching you can make out two men on the far right in overly fashionable clothes and somewhat model-like stances. This is subliminal scene-setting. As soon as Clouseau follows Jarvis in, we cut to a bar scene with men, colourfully dressed, neckerchiefs. In the foreshot one man lights a coloured cigarette (not very butch) for his younger companion, which in its chicken connations is either daring, provocative or thoughtless.

As Clouseau walks further into the club, a tall man walks past with a parrot on his shoulder, and the parrot says to Clouseau “Hello sailor”. As Clouseau as he walks around, men eye him up, preening, simpering, and making fluttering/gesturing towards him.

By this time we’ve seen enough of the club to see that its flamboyant décor is more appropriate to a tart’s boudoir décor, very heavy on the pink. Clouseau is then greeted by Chuck, the maitre’d who wears a fuschia velour suit with open nipple who directs him to table as the cabaret act is about to begin.

Chuck, who has only a couple of line, is played by John Clive, an English character actor who had a line in fey, camp, fussy, even prissy roles. He plays an explicitly gay character in “Carry On Abroad” (1972) and has an appearance in the comic satire of fashionable London “Smashing Time” (19767), films which I may or not got around to at some point.

Then to our and Clouseau’s surprise the cabaret singer appears – Jarvis in drag. Jarvis is a drag act in the Danny La rue style, in blazing evening gown, an appearance in stark contrast to his earlier professional brusque manner. Apparently according to the internet, and who should know better, the song he sings is actually performed by Julie Andrews, the director’s wife. The song starts with some heavy emphasises on the word “queen” (ha-ha-ha).

While he performs we get several shots of the attentive audience. At certain time they touch each other’s shoulders, but there are definitely no kisses. (The two burly men in the middle are assassins and not clientele).

At first Clouseau is puzzled trying to figure out what’s happening. The performance ends with Jarvis singing his torch song to Clouseau, to his barely masked discomfort.

While Clouseau interrogates Jarvis the tall man from earlier appears. However he is now revealed to in fact be a woman dressed as a man, Bruno who has a dubbed masculine voice. So some further gender-bending there.

Meanwhile there several middle-aged couples dancing in background, their hands held highly, prissily about each other. Because men dancing is automatically funny because it’s abnormal. Just wait until we get to the Police Academy films. Then Jervis drags Clouseau into dancing with him to Clouseau’s further embarrassment. A fight breaks out when kidnappers approach. It is at least a proper fight, - there are no sissy flapping hands beating ineffectually. These two guys get knocked on top of each other.

So a gay club, eh? Pink, lots and lots of pink. Drag queen too, yep. Fashions which although 70sish – collars and colours - are stereotypically flamboyant, okay.

When you think as to what the gay bar scene was turning into in the mid-70s, this is very much a straight person’s idea of a gay bar, denatured and sexless, yet still creepily flirtatious. In its weird way this is a rerun of the unexpected drag queen in a flamboyant bar scenario in Walter Huston’s 1970 “The Kremlin Letter”. This isn’t offensive, but it isn’t realistically typical at all, and at a time when gay men were looking for positive representations this fell far short, earning some criticism in the gay press.

It’s in contrast to this sort of representation, that you get the ostentatiously normal gay bar in the 1997 episode of “Maude”

406: Gay Bar 7 - Some of My best Friends Are...

I haven’t seen it, few people have, but if I am waffling on about gay bars then I really can’t omit the 1971 film “Some of My Best Friends Are…”. A sort of counterpoint to “The Boys in the Band”, it is about all the different types of patrons who pass through a New York gay bar "The Blue Jay" one Christmas night.

Having confessed my ignorance, I shall merely direct you to this good description of the film here:

http://vinnierattolle.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/some-of-my-best-friends-are.html

and this one here: http://trashaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/some-of-my-best-friends-are.html

Some more of the history of the film, posters and various publicity materials are here:

http://www.queermusicheritage.us/jun2003a.html

1971 trailer

Because the film features Candy Darling a few of the clips have been uploaded:

405: Gay Bar 6: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972)

Unembeddable:
http://youtu.be/f5CZJGY3kQo
starts: 1.00
ends: 5.40

Directed by Bruce Beresford
Written by Barry Humphries and Bruce Beresford

Another film adaptation of a modern day Candide. In this case it’s the transfer to film of the Private Eye comic strip written by Barry Humphries and drawn by Nicholas Garland. The strip had two satirical targets: the drunken, boorish yet simultaneously priggish Australia left behind encapsulated in the character of Australian tourist Barry McKenzie and the venal, shabby, trendy, exploitative Britain he was visiting. Aside from actual satire, the strip was Humphries’s opportunity to introduce as many slang terms for sex, drinking, and vomiting. Because of this, and because it was perceived to denigrate Australians in the eyes of the world, the strip was banned by Australian censors and the notorious Australian customs board. As it had been running since the mid-1960s there’s an argument that the strip preempts many of the achievements of the American underground comix, but since it's unknown in America it falls beneath critics’ radar.

Most of the film is a fairly direct dramatisation of events, dialogue and characters in the strip. At one point Barry visits a former girlfriend only to discover that since moving to England she has become a butch lesbian with a similarly older butch girlfriend. Lesbians fall outside my remit, but in the film you’ll notice she’s a perfectly normal seeming young lady though the girlfriend is still an escapee from Radcliffe Hall. Barry and his ex then then go to visit a pub for further conversation. In the film version, more is made of it as being gay pub, and so it is that everyone in this pub is a drag queen.

Unlike the drag queens of four years earlier in “Candy” who were in modern dress and seemed relatively free and easy, these drag queens look more like doubles for Danny La Rue in some incredibly ostentatious evening gowns. Nothing else is made of them, although there is a brief appearance of a bitchy trollish bartender. They’re just a sight gag – a herd of men in frocks, to whose nature Barry is of course oblivious.

The second half of the scene in the toilet with the policeman is a direct dramatisation of the corresponding strip in “Private Eye” from November 1966, possibly one of the earliest instances of jokes about police entrapment of homosexuals in lavatories. However, his inevitable farcical transvestite turn makes more sense in the contexts of all these drag queens.

Two drag queens appeared singing the title sequence of “staircase” in 1969, a failure of a film with Richard Burton and Rex Harrison.

404: Gay Bar 5 - Candy

Starts at 8.20

Finishes at 0.35

Candy 1968
Directed by Christian Marquand
Screenplay by Buck Henry

Film adaptation of Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s satirical pornographic 1958 novel. The book was a sexual variant of Candide, in which Candy, a naïve beautiful girl makes her way through the world unwittingly arousing and almost inadvertently having sex with all the people she encounters. The book became notorious and one further aspect of Southern’s reputation for transgressing taboos.

The film features an enormous number of comics and stars making cameos in this films including Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, John Huston, Ringo Starr, Walter Matthau as doctors, politicians, generals, gurus. It’s not a good film, but it’s spottily entertaining with some weird performances and jokes to make up for longeurs, and the ten minute credit sequence in which all the characters reappear in a sort of allegorical tableau to a rock soundtrack is loads of fun like similar endings in “Buckeroo Banzai” or “The Life Aquatic”.

At one point in the book, Candy is arrested by the police, whose car then goes careering into a drag bar. So in this dramatization you get more screaming female impersonators on screen than have possibly ever been collected until “Paris is Burning” (1990). This is mostly just hysterical men in dresses running around shrieking and shrieking and shrieking amidst the rubble. Apparently a number of these are real drag performers not just actors for the days, but I’m afraid time has mostly forgotten them.

Eventually one of the stunned cops is able to declare that this is "a nest of commie, fag draft-dodgers!” and is about to start beating up the drag queens. However, the drag queens overwhelm the one cop - a little foreshadowing of what happened at The Stonewall Inn the next year.

There’s then the moment where the other cop confusedly finds himself kissing a man in a drag, and when he realises what he’s doing, knocks down his kisser, telling him “to fight like a man”. And of course, whenever a homosexual is threatened with violence, the natural response is a sadomasochistic “Yes! Yes! Give me some more!” So assorted perversity in this little scene of about 30 seconds. Actually, it's a little more significant than that. For the longest time "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1971) used to get trotted out in lists as the first gay kiss in mainstream cinema, but this mostly forgotten film preempts that by three years.

1968 also saw Frank Sinatra in “The Detective”, which was a lot, lot more seriously intended than this film. “The Detective” was a film rather overly in love with its pretensions to the gritty realities of police work. Its crime plot was about an investigation of a murder with sexual mutilation elements which ends up diving into the New York homosexual underworld including how the trucks on the docks were used as a scene for sex. So one to watch in a double-bill with Al Pacino’s “Cruising”.

403: Gay Bar 4 - Rodrigues

Charles Rodrigues
Playboy, December 1967

Did straight bars of the 1960s really feature giant paintings of naked ladies? How would I know. But an appreciation of naked ladies is one of the tickets to heterosexuality.

Did gay bars of the 1960s have giant paintings of naked men? Almost certainly not, since gay bars existed by flying under the radar and not being too blatant. But hey, this is just a comic reversal.

The patrons in their tight trousers (compare to trousers of the two straight men), their effeminate stance, and their bouffant hair.

Roughly contemporaneous with this cartoon is “The Gilded Lily” and its clientele in S. Clay Wilson’s “Ruby the Dyke and Her Six Perverted Sisters Stomp the Fags” (1967)

402: Gay Bar 3 - Alden Erikson

Alden Erikson
“Playboy” March 1965

A cartoon that at the time can be assumed to speak for itself. The readers will know what these men are. A whole bunch of homosexuals get kicked out of a suddenly closed gay bar – cocktail sign in the window. So what do homosexual men look like as a tribe in the mid-60s? Tight trousers (“fag pants” as they were known then), colourful tops, matelot-style stripes, ascots, and sunglasses worn even indoors. Oh, and a handbag

401: Gay Bar 2 - Ed Fisher

If this were some sort of full documentary effort than I’d include a few clips from the films “Victim” (1961) and “Advise and Consent” (1962), both movies in which fundamentally decent men are blackmailed because of their tortured homosexuality and which feature brief sallies into the twilight demi-monde of the invert. Tutt - Shocking. Both films proved a little prophetic in that both America and the UK would soon have their respective scandals about blackmailing of homosexuals in the government or secret service. Both of these films are rather sombre apart from some nice cameo character parts and really don’t fit in with this though.

The next gay bar in a humorous piece should be the one in the “Bar Scene” sketch by The Committee (1964), an American improv satire group, but I don’t have that album, though you can read a little more about it here:

http://ukjarry.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/44-american-satirical-cabaret-1963.html

So the next chronologically is this:

Ed Fisher
“The Realist”, November 1964

No actual homosexuals in sight but; “I’m trying to get the place known as a homosexual hang-out”?

The idea of gay men as scene-makers is a cliché. Even by the early 1960s there was the assumption that hairdressers and interior decorators are gay, and who knows how many artists and writers are “that way”. But 1964 saw the publication of Susan Sontag’s essay on “Camp”. Even if you weren’t a reader of “The Partisan Review” where it originally appeared or high-brow collections of essays, Sontag’s point was disseminated in reviews of the book and then became the buzzword in numerous newspaper and magazine columns. The new artistic mode was “camp”, but worse, Sontag also pointed out that homosexuals were its arbitrators and vanguard. Homosexuals were recognised as being in a position of explicit culture power. It is amazing how many book, theatre and art reviews in late 1964 and early 1965 push back against this, finding the flimsiest opportunity to criticise the idea of “camp” and to knock homosexuals (immature, developmentally retarded are the nicest arguments) in the process. So I think this may be what prompts this cartoon.

400: Gay Bar 1: Shel Silverstein

Gay bars and discos are an opportunity to show a whole load of homosexuals in one place. What do they do? How do they behave together? What do they drink and how do they dress? If one homosexual is funny, then surely a whole mass of them should be a scream. Bearing in mind that for the longest time a gay bar was a barely legal venue, only operating under sufferance because of organised crime backhanders, with the patrons still subject to sudden arrest by cops and prosecution resulting in loss of their jobs and social shame. Fun times.

from “Silverstein in Greenwich Village”
Shel Silverstein
“Playboy”, September 1960

So here are some contemporary denizens who huddle together in the modern metropolis. Like knows like because they have overly styled, lengthy hair, expressive eyes with long lashes or eyebrows for men. Sensitive features and postures. An earring on the bartender. At least one patron looks as though he’s eying up another across the bar.

The gag in the cartoon is a reverse with the unexpected interposition of heterosexuality.

The psychiatrist is also a 1960s touch, particularly since it seems almost every, or at least every other, gay man of the time was seeing a shrink to try and deal with his sexuality.

To put this bar in some sort of context: “The New York Times” ran a lengthy feature , “Life on W. 42d St. A Study in Decay.” by Milton Bracker on 14 March, 1960. A large part of this “decay” is devoted to the homosexual presence on Times Square and 42nd Street. The reporter details encountering such homosexuals as “a Negro who wore fluffed up hair and heavy black make-up on his brows and lashes” and a "a white youth with thick blond hair and handsome features who wore makeup on his eyebrows" who "spoke effeminately and shifted his hips and legs as he spoke." Disgraceful. Worse may be a heterosexual “youth in a black jacket and tapered trousers” who listened to “‘nothing but rock’n’roll’” and considered “homosexuals … ‘nice people.’” He should know better. Amidst all the sex cinemas there’s also the Jewel Box Review – with "25 Boys and 1 girl – Astounding Deception!!!" it was a drag show. Drag will play a big part in the forthcoming depictions of gay bars in the 60s and 70s.

391: Anita Bryant 7: Maude

Maude
The Gay Bar” - 3 December 1977

Story by Michael Endler and Thad Mumford
Script by Michael Endler, Thad Mumford, Arthur Julian, and Bill Davenport

Maude Findlay - Bea Arthur
Walter Findlay - Bill Macy
Dr. Arthur Harmon - Conrad Bain
Vivian Harmon - Rue McClanahan
Mark Duncan - Macon McCalman
Hubie Binder - Larry Gelman
Phillip - Kraig Metzinger
Bartender - Frank Campanella
Man - Craig Richard Nelson

Part 1

Part 2

Maude is an outspoken, liberal feminist. Maude’s husband Walter invites their conservative Republican neighbour Arthur Harmon and his wife Vivian to stay a couple of days while their house is fumigated. Maude is upset because as far she is concerned Arthur is nothing but a “narrow-minded conservative” and his stay will mean nothing but arguments. Vivien tells Maude that she has instructed Arthur that he mustn’t raise any subjects that might start an argument with Maude. Immediately he bursts into the room shouting.

Arthur: “I hope you’re satisfied Maude Finley! A bunch of homosexual pansies has just opened a bar in Tuckahoe!”

A new bar has opened in the shopping centre. Arthur first thought it was a Mexican restaurant because it was called “The Gay Caballero”. Muade argues that gays are entitled to have bars and to exist. Arthur trots out the “If God wanted gay people he wouldn’t have created Adam and Eve, he’d have created Adam and Steve”.

Arthur refuse to leave as he has arranged for the new head administrator at the hospital, Mr Duncan to drop some papers off, and Arthur is angling for a new position. After Mr Duncan leaves, Arthur’s friend Hubie rushes in. Hubie wants to talk with Arthur about how they can using zoning laws to close down the bar. – “laws against immoral behaviour, laws against lewd conduct” while Maude protests these laws are outdated.

Hubie: “We have to think of the children….First it’s a gay bar, next it’s a gay geography teacher”

Arthur: “Teaching our children how to get from Tuckahoe to Greenwich village

Hubie and Arthur then start to plan a picket of the bar. When Maude says they’re harassing men sitting around innocently in a neighborhood bar, Arthur replies “Sitting around innocently? Are you kidding? Why, they’re in there dancing with each other, exchanging phone numbers, looking at pictures of Al Pacino!”

Maude says he’s ridiculous and asks if he’s ever been into a gay bar, since he’s ignorant of what’s going on. Maude challenges him to visit “The Gay Caballero” the next afternoon with her, and says this will prove that all his preconceptions are false.

Arthur “What does go on in there?”

Maude: “I don’t know but I’m dying to find out!”

END OF 1ST HALF

Arthur enters Maude’s home asking Walter if his jacket is too butch for a gay bar. Walter tells him that Maude will be late and to go ahead and she will meet him at the bar. Arthur presses Walter to go with him. Maude’s grandson Philip overhears them mention “The Gay Caballero” and wants to know why they’re talking about a gay bar. Arthur is a little shocked Philip knows about it but says he’s going there because he’s part of a group that wants to close it. Philip wants to know why.

Arthur: “Alright, Philip, I guess you’re old enough to understand a few facts. Now. The first fact is gay people are….er, well, they’re Sick. They have a sort of a disease.”

Philip: “Is it a contagious disease? Is that why you want to close the bar?”

Arthur: (grasping for words a little)“No, it’s not contagious, really. But you see gay people shouldn’t be out at a bar having a good time. They should be at home. Alone. Being ashamed that they’re gay. Trying to get cured.”

Philip: “What’s the cure for being gay?”

Arthur: (pause) “Bowling!”

Philip: (perplexed) “Bowling?!”

Arthur: “Well it’s a start. These gay guys have to start doing something manly. That’s what brings them around.”

Philip: “I thought you didn’t want them around”

Arthur: “Philip, I seem to be having trouble getting you to understand the danger of this gay bar. What’s wrong? I’ve always been able to communicate with you”

Philip: “It’s not your fault Dr Harmon. It’s just that this year in school I’m taking a course in logic.

Philip leaves. Arthur drags the reluctant Walter with him, telling him, “You have to protect Philip against this pernicious, insidious sickness.”

Scene cuts to the Gay bar. There is a protracted camera pan of the bar to confirm just how normal the décor and patrons are.

Walter and Arthur enter the bar. Arthur immediately says, “Look at these people. It’s disgusting. I wish all their mothers would walk in here right now”. When Walter says they look alright to him, A replies “You don’t think look like us do you”. Walter points out a man wearing the same jacket as Arthur. Arthur says “He’s probably trying it on to not look like a sissy”

Arthur and Walter take seats at the bar and are greeted by a tall, gruff bartender.

When the bartender has his back turned Arthur says, “Do you see that bartender, he’s a flaming queen”.

When the two order Walter says he doesn’t drink so he’ll have an orange juice. The whole bar goes quiet and everyone turns to stare at him, and the bartender forcefully tells him they don’t serve orange juice anymore

When the bartender notes its their first time there, he says its full of nice guys, and they even have a bowling league (which makes Arthur choke). Maude enters, orders a drink, ands says it’s just a quiet, respectable bar, well-behaved customers. Arthur says he’s not fooled “It’s still early. After a few martinis, they’ll all start acting gay”

Maude: “After a few martinis, Anita Bryant would start acting gay”.

A male couple opposite Arthur are talking, and one takes the others hand and claps it to his cheek. Arthur is frantic, and in a panic grabs Walter’s hand to grab his attention, prompting Maude to dryly ask Arthur to take his hand off her husband.

Walter excuses himself to go to the lavatory: “I’m dying to find out what they write on their walls”

To prove gay men are like everybody else Maude grabs one of the couple and ask if she and Arthur can talk to him.

Arthur tells him: “I believe very strongly that people who indulge in strange sexual behaviour have no place in this community”

Man: “I see your point. But you straight people have to live someplace”.

Arthur: “My friend here has been trying to tell me that aside from sexual preferences there’s no differbnce between you and I. And I object to that, very strongly”.

Man: “So do I” (stands up. Excuse me I’d like to get back to my date.”

Arthur: “No matter what you say, Maude, these gay people shouldn’t be on display. They should be hidden away someplace, where decent human beings aren’t forced to look at them.”

Maude: “Like in a gay bar”

Arthur: “Yes (catches himself) No! The fact is there are laws that prohibit places like this. And this one should be closed down.

Bartender comes over, and A tells him they’re going to close the bar down because it is violating Tuckahoe ordinances. Bartender tells them he knows, which is why they’re not in Tuckahoe, whose borders end on the other side of the street. When he realises it’s legal, he backs down. Maude thinks he and his vigilantes are still going to harass the bar, but Arthur says he believes in the law and would never break it. Maude rediscovers he reasons for having him as a friend, since despite his bigotry and stupidity, he is a man of principles. When the two hug, the bartender admonishes them: “None of that stuff in here”

Just as the pair are about to leave Mr Duncan suddenly enters the bar. Arthur blusters, but Duncan tells him it’s alright “We’ll just make this our little secret” then turns around to tell the bartender he’ll have his “usual”. The episode finishes with Arthur looking dumbfounded.

---------------------------------------------

This references Anita Bryant in a number of ways. There are a couple of jokes about Bryant. There’s the obvious joke by Maude naming Bryant. Then there’s the offended reaction by the bar to Walter’s drink order alluding to gay bars boycotting orange juice because Bryant was the spokesperson for Florida orange juice.

The whole episode though is inspired by Anita Bryant and her Save Our Children campaign. A story that was six months old, it would still be in the public’s memory but long enough to knock up this script. Arthur and Hubie’s homophobia is justified by protecting children hence the name of Bryant’s organisation. Like the Dade Country ordinance, Hubie and Arthur want to repeal the presence of the homosexuals by recourse to legal options.

What I have left out of my recap is most of Maude’s arguments in which she argues for gay equality, that gay people are just like everybody else and have their rights too. It’s good that such a strong argument is consistently put throughout the episode but there is very little that is actually humorous as it is all sincerely meant. If the viewer isn’t prepared to be convinced by Maude, there is the alternate avenue of being convinced of the irrelevancy of homophobia by Arthur who is the more interesting character here. It’s notable that he’s allowed to use most of the mildest gay slurs. However he’s also an arrogant, idiotic blowhard – a kind of upper middle class Archie Bunker (and this sitcom is produced by the same team as "All In The Family” ). In various ways all of Arthur’s points are refuted by the episode and it’s significant that he is defeated in argument by the small boy who he is claiming to protect. As Arthur is a recurring character, his bigoted lines are not delivered in a real tone of hate or ugliness which allows the audience to focus more on their stupidity and comic idiocy.

That the episode then actually visits the bar is fairly brave. Possibly one of the earliest example on US TV. The bar however, for ideological reasons, is the most normal seeming bar yet shown on TV or the cinema to date – hence most of my screenshots of the décor and patrons for reasons of comparison with other gay bars. No flamboyant sissies, no bitchy queens, no leathermen, no dancing couples, no drag queens, nor any shame. This repudiates all the curiosity that Arthur, Maude and Walter express.

Of course, anyone who has even the faintest awareness of formal structures in sitcoms, knows that once they’d introduced Mr Duncan, Arthur’s superior in the first half of the episode, once they all made the trip to the bar it was dead cert that he would make another appearance at the bar thereby turning out to be gay.

359: S. Clay Wilson - early works 1967 - 1969

“Ruby the Dyke and Her Six Perverted Sisters Stomp the Fags” (1967) in “Radical America Komiks, 1969
An early example of the patented S. Clay Wilson battle panorama. This early in his career he enjoys drawing disparate and unlikely groups having it out, whereas later these frenzied scenes are usually reduced to pirates or bikers. Hence diesel dykes beating the shit out of fashion gays. Ruby the Dyke will become a regular character in his work. It is a little difficult to discern in the melee, but Clay’s “fags” are typical stereotypes of the mid-60s. They wear tight “fag pants”, and Cuban high-heeled, sharp toed “fruit boots”, and the striped shirts that were thought rather gay at the time too. And why, there’s a gay bar too, “The Gilded Lily”, because that’s the sort of name people tend to think gay bars are called. Anyway, here it is, violence, with the suggestion of “perverted” sex because of the nature of the combatants.


“Yellow Dog” #4, 1968
Hey, rough tough greasy dirty gay bikers. Ambiguity is probably deliberate as to the intent of “Whad’ya eat last?”


“Yellow Dog” #8, 1969
Also another early appearance of a S. Clay Wilson stalwart, the Checkered Demon. Here meeting a lisping sissy in fashionable attire, although it’s the second panel that merits the inclusion here. The sixth panel – is it sex or violence – take your pick.
“Yellow Dog” was a very early San Francisco commix anthology. Most of its content were either whimsical cartoons or sequences of psychedelic doodles. So the two pieces by S. Clay Wilson here are little less in-yer-face than thbe works he would very shortly be publishing in “Zap” and that would define his career and subject matter.

358: The Gay Deceivers

Original trailer: http://www.videodetective.com/TitleDetails.aspx?publishedid=524840 (since it refuses to bloody embed)

Tagline; Is he or isn’t he? Only his draftboard knows for sure

Released in 1969, this daring-for-its time comedy (it was immediately slapped with an X) starred boyish Kevin Coughlin as Danny a preppy 22 year-old with a steady girlfriend (Brooke Bundy) and handsome Larry Casey as Elliot a lady’s man and lifeguard who get drafted. To avoid being sent to Vietnam, the friends pretend to be gay lovers who desperately want to serve their country. The two are convincing enough to be deemed unfit for active duty but wary Colonel Dixon (Jack Starrett) questions the boys' true intentions and warns them that if at any point they are found to have misrepresented themselves, they will immediately be shipped to Vietnam. Celebrating their success, they panic when Danny notices that they are being spied on by the Colonel. The duo shack up in a one bedroom apartment decorated in pink with a heart-shaped bed in a swinging gay complex and try to convince their landlord Malcolm (Michael Greer), his partner Craig (Sebastian Brook), and the resident stud, Duane (Christopher Riordan) that they are homosexuals. Both Malcolm and Craig have penchants for unannounced visits, which complicates the task of deception for the boys. Lady friends are eager to visit the new digs, which could unravel the whole scheme if the neighbors discover the truth and alert the authorities. Visiting relatives, too, want to inspect the new premises, and need to be kept in the dark, ensuring they don’t mistake the elaborate charade for reality. At the landlord’s costume party, Elliott takes a woman to bed not realizing it’s a guy in drag. A frustrated drunken Elliot then starts a fight in a gay bar, which is witnessed by Danny and his unsuspecting girlfriend, leading to further complications. Their friends and relatives become convinced that the two are gay, which is when they begin finding out for themselves about the discrimination and social ostracism that the gay community faces in the America of 1969. When Elliot loses his job as a lifeguard (because he might “be a bad influence on kids”), Danny's fiancé leaves him, and his family begins to look on them as mentally ill perverts, the boys decide that Vietnam might not be the worst case after all, and confess to the draft board, but by now, it could be too late. The twist is that even after the pair is caught, they aren't inducted. The Army investigators assigned to watch them are themselves gay and are trying to keep straight people out of the Army: “We don’t want their kind in the army, do we, Joe?”.



Really this is just a curio of gay cinematic history.
It’s an exploitation flick in several sense – both slightly raunchy and also exploiting topical social topics such as the Vietnam War and homosexuality. And so it gains retrospective attention as a forgotten trailblazer, and also for its exploration of various controversial themes. Of course, plotwise it’s basically a farce, with feigned homosexuality as its motor. It is not a forgotten treasure, but is about as good as its elements will allow. Productionwise its low budget origins are obvious. As various critics at the time pointed out, audiences will only enjoy it if they were “prepared to find homosexuals an endless source of humor”. And the film does stand out as being possibly the first comedy where homosexuality is the entire premise of the plot and humour. Other comedies during the sixties had their camp and faggy cameos, but here it is the main meal. Similarly, there are a growing cohort of dramatic films about homosexuality – although most of those finished with a dead homosexual protagonist. In summer of 1969 when this film was released, “Staircase” and “The Boys in the Band” were also appearing in cinemas. Unlike those two films, it’s homosexuals have satisfactorily accommodated their lives to their sexuality and a gay lifestyle. Also through the course of the film, the two straight men become friends with their landlord, who is in a genuine relationship, neither of whom are self-loathing. Likewise, admittedly for comic effect, it does make excursions into the gay bar scene and a drag party. The film-makers evidently realised that in presenting homosexuals, they stood a good chance of attracting an interested homosexual audience, and so they attempt to satisfy them with a number of flesh shots of the male leads
Even as the film was capitalising on the public’s willingness to be entertained by homosexuals (by the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s there is a scattering of jokes about gay men having to explain their roommates to their family and butch up their apartments), it clashed with the new political confidence in the emergent gay community. When the film opened in San Francisco, just two weeks after Stonewall, it was picketed by a dozen members of the Committee for the Freedom of Homosexuals. However the film did prove to be relatively successful – a search of the newspapers shows that it had lengthy runs and was not merely a fly by night on the screens.

And then there’s Michael Greer as Malcolm “The Gay Landlord”. It is a very large extremely swishy queeny performance that probably makes slightly more sense in a theatre, seen from seat 78HH (apparently Greer had a long successful career in cabaret). It’s a far way away from the tortured characterisations of “The Boys in the Band” and “Staircase”. Quite a few reviewers felt he added interest and zest to an often lifeless film (supposedly Andrew Sarris suggested Greer should be nominated for an Oscar). There is the sense, however, of someone attempting to steal or dominate every scene, for good or bad. It’s not a particularly nuanced performance, but then it’s not supposed to be (and is probably not a million miles away from Tim Brooke-Taylor’s performance in the 1969 film “12+1”). It’s simply a matter of how can he get a laugh out of his characterisation without actually being offensive, since this is a gay man playing gay (which can often be slightly dangerous territory). Greer stated he wanted to be overt yet innocuous, to make an audience “think it is possible to like a fairy simply for himself”. It probably comes down to individual taste as to how well viewers feel he succeeds.



This scene seems to have stuck in quite a few veiwer’s memories. For good or ill, Greer certainly makes some sort of impression at the end.

311: Sing If You’re Sad To Be Gay

"Gay used to be one of the most agreeable words in the language. Its appropriation by a notably morose group is an act of piracy." - Arthur Schlesinger, 1971

One of the side effects of the popular adoption of the word “gay” to describe homosexuals was that the word also opened several new avenues for casual jokes about homosexuals. There was the lazy tactic of employing a camp gesture or mannerism every time the word “gay” happened to be used, a conspicuously limp wrist or bitchy “ooooh”ing. The other tactic, not necessarily humorous, but often employed by conservatives was to protest that homosexuals had hijacked “gay”, that “they’ve taken away our lovely word”. So the next step after that was to complain that “gay” men didn’t seem at all gay. That homosexuals were in fact the opposite of gay. Demanding rights and equality, gay men are all so angry, or strident, or depressed. They were no longer funny, silly, delightful and trivial, which had previously made them at least a bit acceptable. There may also be some implicit mockery that being homosexual is actually a more miserable condition, and that “gay” is just a pretence.


from “Auberon Waugh’s Diary”
by Auberon Waugh
illustration by Nicholas Bentley
in “Private Eye” 10 January 1975

The comment about Enoch is a reference to the British politician Enoch Powell, who gave an educated voice to racist fears about immigrants. So Waugh employs racism, misogyny and a little homophobia, but each is somewhat ironically and allusively played off of each other, while under the cover of Waugh making a pretence to liberal understanding.
Bentley does capture a look of weary disdain in his homosexual’s face. Although really he’s only drawn the one figure several times in different attire, with long, curving bouufant hair, and slightly casually kicked up heels.


by J.B. Handelsman
in “Playboy” January 1978
Most of the patrons of this gay bar look more like fashion models than gay men of the period, but if you assume that gay men are fashionable then it’s easier to copy a few models than have to think about what you really have to depict. I really don’t know about the neck scarves though. Although right in the background there is a more burly type and even a black man.


by Ken Pyne
in “Punch” 14 April 1982
Of course Gay Pride is the magic phrase in this cartoon, with all of its social connotations. It is a typical Ken Pyne cartoon, since most of his straight characters are also normally miserable and lamenting their condition. So nothing actually denigratory here. You’ll notice most of the men have earrings in this bar. Whether that’s because of fashion, or merely a way of indicating effeminacy, I can’t be sure. The main figure in stripy trousers and hat could probably have been drawn at any point in the ten years previous. I’m a bit dubious about the bell bottoms and lapels as well.


by Michael Heath
in “The Spectator” 25 September 1982
Just your usual sombre Heath-man. Nothing even faintly gay. Which is rather the point.

233: "The Kremlin Letter" with George Sanders

“The Kremlin Letter” (1970)
Directed by John Huston
Screenplay by Gladys Hill, and John Huston, adapted from the novel by Noel Behn
George Sanders as “The Warlock”

John Huston’s films are usually a particular type of worldly, cynical entertainment. His films are made for a mature audience, and since here Huston takes advantage of the then recent loosening up of screen classification codes, “mature” can also mean a certain amount of “sexing things up”.
If you’re going to have a gay spy then it’s probably going to be a lot more credible to have a gay English spy. Particularly, as later in the film he’s having a relationship with a Russian. Other than showing him in a clinch, what more dramatic way of proving he’s homosexual than performing in drag in a gay bar? Otherwise “The Warlock” is a perfectly capable spy, so no sissy insinuations of incapability. It’s not played harshly for laughs, although Saunders is a rather bulky woman, and the big cigar avidly stuck in an older and partially de-dragged face makes for a deliberately grotesque contrast. I think you’d be hard-pressed, other than the twitching of the lips when he sights his prey in the museum, to argue that it’s a stereotypically gay performance, that Sanders plays it more queeny than any of his other roles. I’ve read one or two reviews that argue that playing in drag is a humiliation for sanders, to which the only reply is, “Have you seen the poor man in ‘Psychomania’?”

Should we see anything special in the bar being situated in San Francisco, in 1969? Probably not too much. It’s a very stylish brittle crowd (haughty faces and flapping hands), looking as though they’ve all escaped from “I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet” (circa 1966) – so maybe not that au courant actually.

44 - American satirical cabaret 1963: "Second City" and "The Committee"

from "Revel with a Cause: Liberal satire in postwar America" by Stephen Kercher, 2006

Second City scenes addressing the dark, secret lives of middle-class families often evinced a mood of pathos and sentimentality. Pointing out the harmful effects of familial and intergen­erational misunderstanding was likewise the objective of "Family Re­union," a poignant, long scene performed during the Second City's 1963 "13 Minotaurs or Slouching toward Bethlehem" program. In this scene, in­formed by the painful experiences of at least one Second City performer, the mother, father, and brother of a young gay man named Warren pay him a long overdue visit in his Chicago apartment. Despite relaying mul­tiple hints about his homosexuality, Warren's conservative Midwestern family refuses to acknowledge his true identity. As Warren comes close to disclosing the truth about himself, his brother, father, and mother brusquely depart, ironically informing him, "If you've ever got anything bothering you that you want to talk over, you know where we are." (p166)

[Father played by Del Close; Mother by Ann Elder; Jack Burns; Dick Schaal]

The connection between the Committee and its predecessors was most apparent in the range of subjects it chose to address onstage. Paro­dies of folksinging groups and modern psychological jargon and comic scenes involving sex, seduction, and surreal confrontations with mechan­ical people were all part of the repertoire the Committee prepared for its Broadway run. Scenes about homosexuals and effeminate (often "intel­lectual") males were occasionally performed by the Compass, Second City, and Premise, so it was not a surprise that the Committee included one entitled "Bar Scene" in its program. Here the Committee comically depicted what might happen when a straight businessman (Larry Hankin) accidentally wanders into a San Francisco gay bar. Once again ratifying popular satire's thoroughly masculine orientation, the Committee here comically ridiculed (much to the audience's delight) Garry Goodrow's gay character. (p251 - this skit is recorded on "The Committee: An Original Cast Album", Reprise, 1964)