The Gay Metropolis 1940-1996

Weaving oral history with precise cultural analysis, THE GAY METROPOLIS is the definitive social, cultural and political history of gay life in the major cities of the world over the last fifty years. Focusing on New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, Kaiser chronicles how urban centres have been crucial in the genesis and evolution of gay culture. THE GAY METROPOLIS combines intimate stories of people as famous as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Gore Vidal, and as little known as Sandy Kern, a young Brooklyn woman who first heard the word 'lesbian' when a neighbour spied her with her arm around her girlfriend at the end of a wartime blackout.

This was a fascinating read when I first read it a decade or more ago, but I had lent it to a friend and never got it back ..... so I was pleased another friend mentioned it again recently, so I got another copy and enjoyed reading it all over again. As social history it can't be beat. Charles Kaiser has concentrated on New York, but it does not detract from an overall understanding of the 20th Century gay tapestry. 

We go from the closeted 1940s where though, as in wartime London, gay life flourished in secret * (see that extract from Gore Vidal's THE CITY AND THE PILLAR below), to the even more closeted 1950s when being gay was as bad as being a communist and they were hounded from government posts, and there was no mention of gay life anywhere, to the start of the gay, black and women's liberation movements of the 1960s, culminating in that Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the success of plays like THE BOYS IN THE BAND. It was routine in the early sixties for gays to kill themselves in films like ADVISE AND CONSENT, THE CHILDREN'S HOUR and THE SERGEANT, at least the British film VICTIM made an impact, as did SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY at the start of the 1970s when gay activism took to the streets and became more visible as the decade wore on, climaxing with the gay decadence of disco, Studio 54, "After Dark" magazine and the availability of gay material on those new video-cassettes .....

The 1980s though is a whole different story as that strange new illness began making inroads into the gay community and how it responded in the face of political indifference from the Reagan goverment...  there are lots of life stories here, and its all uplifting stuff by the mid Nineties - now 20 years later, the changes to gay life would be unimaginable then.  I think its an essential item for any gay bookshelf, maybe next to Vito Russo's THE CELLULOID CLOSET. Not only that, a very engaging read!  

Kaiser shows how before the sexual freedoms of the Seventies, World War II was a great liberator: "the war had caused a great change. Inhibitions had broken down. All sorts of young men - away from home and their towns and farms for the first time - were trying out all sorts of new things". 

Gore Vidal's 1948 novel THE CITY AND THE PILLAR set in Forties New York:

"Jim went straight to a Times Square bar frequented by soldiers and sailors. He studied the room carefully like a general surveying the terrain of battle. Then he selected his objective: a tall Army Lieutenant with broad shoulders, dark hair, blue eyes. Jim squeezed in beside him and ordered a drink. Jim's leg touched the Lieutenant's leg, a hard muscular leg which returned the pressure. 

"You in the service?" asked the Lieutenant. His voice was slow, deep, far Western.

"Yeah, I was in the army too"

"What outfit?"

They exchanged information. The Lieutenant had served with the infantry during the invasion of North Africa. He was now stationed in the South as an instructor. 

"You live around here?"

Jim nodded. "I got a room downtown".

"I sure wish I had a place. I got to stay on a sofa wih this married cousin".

"That sounds pretty uncomfortable".

"It sure is".

"You could", said Jim, as though he were thinking it over, "stay at my place. There's plenty of room".

The Lieutenant said no, he couldn't do that; they had another drink and then went downtown to bed.

Next, we are going off to that 1970s gay sauna THE RITZ ! 

"Myra Breckinridge is all woman ... or something!"

Now let us turn to MYRA ... interesting to see that Russ Meyer's 1970 BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS is now issued on Bu-ray and dvd and reviewed in magazines like "Sight & Sound" .... it  was always regarded as the ultimate Trash Classic, often twinned with Fox's other 1970 bomb: the film they made of Gore Vidal's hilarious satire MYRA BRECKINRIDGE in all those late-night double features at cult cinemas.  Will MYRA follow suit onto Blu-ray now too ? Do we even want to see it again - there are clips on YouTube including a Mae West cut featuring only Mae's scenes.. (I have MYRA and BEYOND on a twin dvd pack actually, I am sure thats enough for me).

I absolutely loved Gore's book at the time, being in my early twenties, it was a savage satire on Hollywood and those movie buffs. England's one time pop singer (for five minutes) and part-time actor (A PLACE TO GO) Mike Sarne was the surprising choice chosen to direct, as he put veterans John Huston (Buck Loner) and Mae West (the insatiable agent Leticia Van Allen) through their paces, with Raquel Welch gamely playing sex-change Myra, with critic Rex Reed as her alter ego Myron. The critics hated it, the public generally ignored it, but those in the know rushed to see it as did my best friend Stan and myself - I can remember us standing in the queue waiting to get in, to be greeted by the bare bones of the novel and endless 20th Century Fox clips featuring Shirley Temple and the like .... it was really nothing like the book, but how could it? Huston and Mae seemed to be enjoying themselves (Mae arrives at her office, equipped with a bed, where a host of guys - including a young Tom Selleck - are waiting for her ... Mae says she has a full day so "one of those guys will have to go"). Farah Fawcett-Major got her big break here too as the innocent Mary-Anne. 

The climax with Myra donning a strap-on and sodomising that hunk Rusty Godowski (Roger Herren) was certainly eye-popping for the time ...

A sample of some of the dialogue: 

Myra: I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess. The new woman whose astonishing history started with a surgeon's scalpel, and will end... who-knows-where. Just as Eve was born from Adam's rib, so Myron died to give birth to Myra. Did Myron take his own life, you will ask? Yes, and no, is my answer. Beyond that, my lips are sealed. Let it suffice for me to say that Myron is... with me, and that I am the fulfillment of all his dreams. Who is Myra Breckinridge? What is she? Myra Breckinridge is a dish, and don't you ever forget it, you motherfuckers - as the children say nowadays.

Myra:  Gentlemen... I am Myron Breckinridge! Uncle Buck, your fag nephew became your niece two years ago in Copenhagen and is now free as a bird and happy in being the most extraordinary woman in the world!

Leticia: How tall are you when you're off your horse, cowboy?

Young Man at "Interview": Um, six feet, seven inches, ma'am.

Leticia: Well, never mind the six feet, and let's talk about the seven inches.

Myra: Where are my tits? Where are my tits?

MYRA was outrageous in 1970 even in that druggy, crazy counterculture era of MIDNIGHT COWBOY, WOMEN IN LOVE, FELLINI-SATYRICON, Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT, Visconti's THE DAMNED. Transgender is seemingly trendy now - could MYRA's time come again? I am in the mood for VALLEY OF THE DOLLS now ....

Winter reading sorted

Two new books have just arrived, comprising over 1,200 pages of what should be enjoyable reads with lots of gossip about those two titans of 20th Century literature and drama: Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal.

The Tennessee tome is by John Lahr, who wrote that enduring biography of Joe Orton PRICK UP YOUR EARS, so he is on familiar ground with the life of Tennessee titled MAD PILGRIMAGE OF THE FLESH, now in paperback and 784 pages.  The blurb states:

Tracing Williams's turbulent moral and psychological shifts, acclaimed theatre critic John Lahr sheds new light on the man and his work, as well as the America his plays helped to define. Williams created characters so large that they have become part of American folklore: Blanche, Stanley, Big Daddy, Brick, Amanda and Laura transcend their stories, haunting us with their fierce, flawed lives. Similarly, Williams himself swung high and low in his single-minded pursuit of greatness. Lahr shows how Williams's late-blooming homosexual rebellion, his struggle against madness, his grief-struck relationships with his combustible father, prim and pious mother and 'mad' sister Rose, victim to one of the first lobotomies in America, became central themes in his drama. Tennessee's own MEMOIRS were an enjoyable read, so this should continue where he left off.

Then there is Gore - a longtime friend of Tennessee's - they were both young and in Rome in that "Golden Age" after the war in 1948 ... Gore died in 2012 and his later years cannot have been pleasant, confined to a wheelchair and back in America after his decades in Italy and in declining health and drinking rather too much. See Vidal label for my obituary on this titan of American literature who dominated the stage of American politics and letters for so long. It seemed nobody loved Gore as much as he loved himself and was a man of vast contradictions and pretensions, an intellectual and a workhorse - all those novels, essays, appearing on TV at every opportunity - a tireless sexual adventurer and maybe genius. As the blurb states, his houses were grand, his feuds legendary (with Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Bobby Kennedy), his friendships with the Newmans (Paul and Joanne), JFK, Princess Margaret, Nureyev - are all covered here too, as well as his stints in Hollywood. Author Jay Parini got to know Vidal and it is all here - in 450 pages. Love the title: one of Gore's waspish comments: EVERY TIME A FRIEND SUCCEEDS SOMETHING INSIDE OF ME DIES. I also like his "It is not enough to succeed, others must fail". Gore too wrote two autobiographies, but this should be an unbiased look at that amazing life. There are two pages on Tennessee and his works at the Tennessee label. 

Two hefty tomes then, with lots of juicy gossip, for those long winter nights by the fire ...

Sexplosion !

"Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange - how a generation of pop rebels broke all the taboos" - this fascinating tome by Robert Hofler is an easy read, particularly for those of us who lived through those heady years. Let's see: "Rich, funny, and comprehensive SEXPLOSION takes you inside the tumultous, energizing years of 1968 to 1973, when artists, film-makers, and writers defied authority and challenged every taboo to create a sexual revolution that reverbates to this day. This is a superb evocation of an era" Patricia Bosworth says. or "Hofler pays tribute to the trailblazing artists who paved the way for the freedom on screen that we take for granted today", according to Jeffrey Schwarz.

It is a different world now looking back to those late 60s when censorship was still in full force - how much society can change over 40 years! Gay liberation and Women's Lib were still in their infancy - equality seemed a long way off then; unlike now, the newspapers were virulently anti-gay - in England the tabloids hounded closeted gay celebrities like Kenny Everett and Russell Harty to their deathbeds, and then the Aids crisis began .... Back in the '60s in America homosexuals were routinely called 'fags' or 'faggots' (it was 'poofs' here in England) even by the likes of liberals like Billy Wilder or John Huston (and in films like VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, THE LOVE MACHINE) - lots of straight men hated women whom they saw as castrating, dominating tyrants. 
Philip Roth certainly felt so - he refused to complete his manuscript for PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT as his hated ex-wife was getting half of what he earned, after tricking him into marriage with a fake pregnancy, as she had bought the urine sample from a pregnant woman, so he was not going to hand her another fortune - then, conveniently for him, not so for her, she was killed in a car crash, so heigh ho, and off to the printers !!! and that very funny book became one of the defining texts of the era, along with John Updike's COUPLES and Gore Vidal's MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, which we loved with a passion. Even the trash-but-fun movie did not dent our affection for it. How we howled at Mae West's line as she arrived at her office crowded with studs: "one of those guys will have to go..!"and poor Rusty gets it in the end, we had seen nothing like it !

Hofler goes into the genesis of all these, and in the theatre the problems with getting Mart Crowley's BOYS IN THE BAND, Tynan's OH! CALCUTTA! and Rado & Ragni's HAIR on stage with their nudity and depiction of gay life and those new freedoms. It seems critic Kenneth Tynan was more an unmitigated shit than one had realised. We knew about his S&M fetishes and caning women, but he was also rabidly anti-fag, and wanted nothing gay in his revue, and even wanted to hire only heterosexual actors! 

Also in the cinema, John Schlesinger was pushing boundaries with MIDNIGHT COWBOY, which featured some of the Warhol crowd, like Viva, also busy in Warhol products like LONESOME COWBOYS. Warhol's own films, as created by Paul Morrisey - FLESH, HEAT, TRASH - also raked in the money, though they would not pay for Holly Woodlawn to get bail from prison to attend her film opening!  Ken Russell meanwhile was getting the British film censor John Trevelyan (who was a regular on tv and in discussions on censorship I attended at the BFI), to pass his WOMEN IN LOVE (Olly and Alan had their own problems with that nude wrestling scene...) and the even more notorious THE DEVILS, while Visconti ran into problems with Warner Bros over his Nazi orgy in THE DAMNED and DEATH IN VENICE .....  which to the Warner Bros executives was about a middle-aged man chasing but never quite getting his hands on a knowing thirteen year old boy who seems to be leading him on. No wonder they wanted Tadzio changed to a girl called Tadzia !

Hofler though does not mention Fellini's SATYRICON or Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT, two other hits of the counterculture era, as we zoon on to BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (which earned Natalie Wood more than any other film she made, as she had a percentage deal) and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, DEEP THROAT and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (right). Amusing story about that - arch-manipulator Kubrick stayed at home in England but persuased Malcolm McDowell and Anthony Burgess, the book's author, to go to America and handle the interviews for ORANGE. Then Burgess realised he was not making anything from the film's success as he had earlier sold the rights for a few hundred dollars ....

Schlesinger ran into more trouble with his next one, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, but was now an Oscar-winning director, so got his way, having to replace his initial choices Ian Bannen and Hiram Keller which was not working out, with the more laid back Peter Finch and Murray Head. Princess Margaret though hated the film with its depiction of "men in bed kissing" - surely she knew enough gays! The kinky sex and violence of PERFORMANCE (left) also frazzled Warner Brothers who did not know what to do with it. STRAW DOGS with its brutal rape was also causing lots of problems. Then there was the notorious making of LAST TANGO IN PARIS ....

A fascinating era in all, as the new freedoms slowly became commonplace- as covered by "Films & Filming" and other magazines.  Another discussion I attended in 1970, when 24, at the BFI was on the topic of 'Actors & Nudity' - a hot topic then with more and more actresses and actors too, having to get their kit off. 
I remember Billie Whitelaw being vocal at this, and Zeffirelli's naked Romeo, Leonard Whiting, in a crushed velvet blue suit. He was standing next to me afterwards at the gents urinal  ... not a suitable moment to chat though.
Censorship still raged in Ireland then, a look at WOMEN IN LOVE at the local cinema I grew up in, in 1970 or so reduced us to helpless laughter - the wrestling scene had been reduced to a few shots of them panting on the carpet, making it even more suggestive. They were running MIDNIGHT COWBOY the following week - I wondered how much of that was left ...
How times change: Finland is now issuing quite explicit Tom of Finland stamps! 

Some books I like ... (1)

... and have to re-read every few years. This began as 6, but now its 10. I like to have a book on the go, and discover new writers (like Irish Donal Ryan and Kevin Barry), and keep up with established writers like Colm Toibin; currently I am browsing chunky short story collections by Willian Trevor and Tennessee Williams. Some books though stay with one, and one has to have them to hand. Of course writing about favourite books (or films or music) leaves one open to having one's taste criticised -  Here are the first 5:

THE BELL - Iris Murdoch. I must have been a precocious teenager, I remember reading those early Iris Murdoch novels on the beach in Ireland (it was that pre-internet world). THE BELL first published in 1958 is among her best, funniest and most liked. One can re-read it happily every few years. The misadventures of Dora Greenfield ("Dora hated pointless sacrifices" when she was going to offer up her seat on the crowded train, leads to an amusing sequence of events). 
Imber Abbey is home to an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell is being installed and then the old bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered by teenager Toby, abetted by Dora the erring wife who returns to her husband. 
Michael Meade, leader of the community outside the convent, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disastrous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and excercises discreet authority. Religion and sex are the motifs here - Michael also impulsively kisses Toby which sets off another series of events... . Iris Murdoch's funny and wise novel is about religion, the fight between good and evil and the terrible accidents of human frailty, but is also deliciously funny, leading to a hilariously tragic climax. A great introduction to Murdoch's novels like THE SEA THE SEA, THE UNICORN, THE RED AND THE GREEN and many others. BBC did a nice serial of THE BELL in 1982, with Ian Holm, Michael Maloney and others, it would be nice to see that again.

THE LEOPARD - Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa. This chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them. 
Published posthumously in 1958, the book remains a marvellous read. Luchino Visconti of course made one of his best films based on it, released in 1963 (as per my comments at Visconti label). The characters are so vivid: Don Fabrizio the still virile Prince, his large family, Tancredi and Angelica, and that sumptous ball at the end, when the Prince realises that things have to change in order to stay the same. The novel too gives us flash-forwards to the characters, like Angelica, in their later years. I particularly like my early '60s edition, nicely hardbound and embossed. 

THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY - Patricia Highsmith. For a novel first published in the mid-'50s this is surprisingly explicit about Tom Ripley's desires and nature, and those of the crowd he hangs around with in New York. Tom is a small time embezzler but sees his opportunity when sent on a mission to Italy .... We know the story of course from the various films (particularly my favourite, Rene Clement's PLEIN SOLEIL capturing that 1960 era perfectly). The novel has been through many editions and reissues - I have had several - and is, like most Highsmiths, still in print.This led me to devouring all of Highsmith's other novels, including of course STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and EDITH'S DIARY. She was also a master of the short story, with several collections. The collection on animals is marvellous, I love and often re-read her MING'S BIGGEST PREY, about Ming, a very jealous cat in Acapulco - it really feels like the cat is narrating this and is brilliantly done. 

COLLECTED POEMS by C.P. CAVAFY. I cherish my Hogarth Press edition of Cafavy Poems (and also that paperback, a different translation, with the David Hockney illustrations, below). I have now seen this new edition BEFORE TIME COULD CHANGE THEM, 'The complete poems, with an introduction by Gore Vidal' - and just had to have it, so it is on its way to me.

"In the dull village"

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) of course was the poet of Alexandria, in Egypt, and has come to be recognized as one of the greatest poets of modern times. Elegiac, deeply sensual, and able to plumb the heart with language of immense richness, Cavafy evokes the great lost classical world of the Mediterranean with unparalleled beauty. Much of his poetry - written about 100 years ago, deals with love, specifically homosexual. It speaks of human desire, the experience common to all mankind of love offered, sought, and lost. His verse is beautiful and embracing, and remains as alive and sensuous as it was when he wrote it.
There are so many of his poems I like and return to: "The City", "Candles", "In The 25th Year of His Life", "He Swears", "Before Time Altered Them", "Two Young Men 23 to 24 Years Old", "Days of 1909, '10 and '11", "Kleitos' Illness" as well as specific Greek themes like "Waiting For The Barbarians", "Ithaka", "Nero's Deadline", which splendidly evoke the Ancient World. If you do not know Cavafy, do try to discover his works. 

YEVTUSHENKO: SELECTED POEMS - This Penguin Paperback was an early '60s favourite of mine, it was interesting finding it again the other day. The blurb says: "Yevgeny Yevtushenko is the fearless spokesman of his generation in Russia. In verse that is young, fresh, and outspoken, he frets at restraint and injustice, as in his now famous protest over the Jewish pogrom at Kiev. But he can write lyrically too, of the simple things of all humanity - love, a birthday, a holiday in Georgia. And in "Zima Junction" he brilliant records his impressions on a visit to his home in Siberia". Yevtushenko is now much older, but was the Rudolph Nureyev of poetry then. Even now looking at those titles like "Lies", "Waiting", "Colours", "Encounter", "People", "Babi Yar" and that long marvellous poem "Zima Junction" brings it all back, being 18 or 19 again. 

Part 2 soon (Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, Edna O'Brien, Mary Renault, James Joyce).

Gore on Hollywood

I just have to share this delicious paragraph from Gore Vidal's 1976 collection of essays: MATTERS OF FACT AND OF FICTION (Essays 1973-1976) from the Heinemann hardback edition:

The bad movies we made twenty years ago (meaning the 1950s) are now regarded in altogether too many circles as important aspects of what the new illiterates want to believe is the only significant art form of the twentieth century. An entire generation has been brought up to admire the product of that era. Like so many dinosaur droppings, the old Hollywood films have petrified into something rich, strange, numinous - golden. For any survivor of the Writer's Table it is astonishing to find young directors like Bertolucci, Bogdanovich, Truffaut reverently repeating or echoing or paying homage to the sort of kitsch we created first time around with a good deal of "help" from our producers and practically none at all from the directors - if one may quickly set aside the myth of the director as auteur. Golden-age movies were the work of producer(s) and writer(s). The director was given a finished shooting script with each shot clearly marked, and woe to him if he changed MED CLOSE SHOT to MED SHOT without permission from the front office, which each evening, in serried ranks, watched the day's rushes with script in hand ("we got some good pages today" they would say, never good film). This applies to the movies of the thirties, forties and fifties.

Gore continues in this acerbic vein on the current best-sellers of the '70s - I dare say the above applies to the many journeyman directors each studio had in regular employment. Of course the visionary directors (like Max Ophuls, Nick Ray, Hawks, Huston, Cukor or Minnelli) imposed their own style on even the most routine material or studio assigment ....
Another task Gore undertook on the 1959 BEN HUR, apart from that work on the script, was advising the set decorator for Mrs Hur's kitchen that they did not have tomatoes back in the ancient world! Re-reading him again now is an unalloyed pleasure. Highly recommended.

Gore Vidal + R.I.P.s

Well he had to go sometime - he seemed alarmingly frail in the last few years after his long sojurn in Italy.  Gore Vidal (1925-2012) of course was a novelist, essayist, playwright and screenwriter, and a leading liberal voice and commentator from the 1960's onward. I was in my 20s then and loved his screamingly funny novel MYRA BRECKINDRIGE (heck, we even liked the movie ...) and its follow-up MYRON, capturing that dawn of movie-buffery perfectly. I also liked those collections of essays - essential to have them in bound volumes (like Pauline Kael's movie reviews). I particularly liked MATTERS OF FACT AND FICTION in 1977 where he cast his eye over the current best-sellers and told of his times with the "golden bird" Tennessee Williams in Italy after the war when they were young ... other titles included YELLOW STAR AND PINK TRIANGLE and REFLECTIONS ON A SINKING SHIP. His first memoir PALIMPSEST in 1995 was illuminating and his second, POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION in 2006 even more so - not only on his ruminations on sex and politics and than bisexual world he believed in, but also all those people he knew from Garbo to Tennessee Williams and Nureyev and the Newmans as well as the Kennedys and oh just about everyone ...

Then there is the fiction: that influential early novel THE CITY AND THE PILLAR in 1948, making him famous or notorious in his 20s, those short stories in A THIRSTY EVIL, and those other novels we liked dealing with Roman history or American politics: JULIAN, KALKI, TWO SISTERS, THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS, MESSIAH, BURR, WASHINGTON DC, EMPIRE, HOLLYWOOD and those others .... what a prodigious output. Those plays like THE BEST MAN and his time in Hollywood, scripts for THE CATERED AFFAIR, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER and he supposedly sexed up BEN HUR for Wyler to give Massala the motivation of lusting after Ben (but they did not tell Heston), then there was CALIGULA .... he appears in FELLINI'S ROMA and THE CELLULOID CLOSET and also scripted Clements' IS PARIS BURNING? (Clements, war labels).

The quotes: "It is not enough to succeed, others must fail".

He was seen as the last of the ruthless, witty grandees prepared to rat on his own political class. He ran for Congress from New York State, been welcome for a while in the White House when Jackie Kennedy (to whom he was related) was its chatelaine;  He moved from TV chatshows (where he was always a lively presence) to Hollywood studios to literary feuding.  He famously refused to enrol as a heterosexual or a homosexual, not confusing desire with team games; and yet he wrote one of the first influential gay novels. He was perhaps the last defiant man of letters, and he got us to love Hollywood in the "golden age".

Vidal & Newman in Greece

Because of his matter-of-fact treatment of same-sex relations in such books as THE CITY AND THE PILLAR, Vidal is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation. In the September 1969 edition of ESQUIRE, for example, he wrote, "We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word 'natural,' not normal." I also recall a great long interview he did for PLAYBOY in the late 60s.

Gore, Tennessee & JFK in 1958

PALIMPSEST is a book about a young man on the move, on the make, on the rise: sexy and brash. It also includes a romance: Vidal's boyhood lover Jimmy Trimble who died at Iwo Jima. Then there was Howard Austen, his partner for 53 years (the secret, Vidal insists yet again, was "no sex"). He was also once engaged to Joanne Woodward and was lifelong pals with her and Paul. Confined to a wheelchair after his return to the States, Gore has finally departed at age 86. We really won't see his like again. But we will be returning to that treasure trove of fiction, comment and memoirs. There are several compendiums of his selected writings... One of today's obituaries refer to him as "the man who knew everyone" - rather like our Dirk Bogarde here in the UK, and asks "Could anyone again ever have the career of Gore Vidal?"

Thanks to the great PEPLUM site for this photo of William Wyler, Christopher Fry, Gore and Charlton Heston on the set of BEN HUR, which proves that Gore was involved in the production, despite Heston and others later playing down his involvement ...

Also:

Chris Marker (1921-2012) - Of all the French film-makers who emerged in the 1950s, Marker was by all accounts the most forward-looking with pioneering films like SANS SOLEIL. His masterpiece - I have not seen it but know it is acclaimed - is LA JETEE, a poetic time travel tale from 1962 told almost entirely in still images (and now Nr 50 in the new "Sight & Sound" top 50 films).

Tony Martin (1913-2012) - Vocalist and actor, he lived to be 98, a peer of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Although he never became a full-fledged movie star, he was featured in 25 films, most of them like ZIEGFIELD GIRL and TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, made during the heyday of the Hollywood musicals. A husky 6 feet tall and dashingly handsome, he was often cast as the romantic lead - first married Alice Faye and then in 1948 Cyd Charisse whom he spent 60 years with until her death in 2008 .... you could say some guys have all the luck.

Maeve Binchy - the popular Irish novelist who has died aged 72. Her books are great upbeat reads which make one feel good, capturing the upbeat sunny side of Irish life, I have enjoyed several of them - whereas Edna O'Brien, my particular favourite, caught that darker undercurrent of the Irish character, a nice contrast to the Binchy view.

Marvin Hamlisch - aged 68, composer and musician, winner of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. . THE WAY WE WERE, A CHORUS LINE  etc. He started out his professional career as a rehearsal pianist for FUNNY GIRL, beginning a long history of working with Barbra Streisand.

Robert Hughes - aged 74, Influential Australian art critic and historian, author of that great tome on the settlement of Australia "The Fatal Shore" and that television series THE SHOCK OF THE NEW. He was also Time magazine's art critic.

Judith Crist - aged 90, that other infuential American movie critic (along with Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris). I loved her pithy comment on that dreadful 1965 Warren Beatty-Leslie Caron comedy PROMISE HER ANYTHING - "but don't take her to this"!