Booksbooksbooks

Singer Michael Callen died in 1993. He may be most remembered as a member of the a cappella group The Flirtations, but that not was what first put him in the national spotlight.

Poet Essex Hemphill died in 1995 and may be remembered from the infamous PBS broadcast of Marlon Riggs’ documentary Tongues Untied, but he was already a famous out poet-performer in his own right. The achievements of these two artists turned AIDS activists, fighting on the front lines during the height of the epidemic, are chronicled in Martin Duberman’s moving dual biography Hold Tight Gently.

The title in fact comes from Hemphill’s groundbreaking book Brother to Brother, a collection of stories, essays, and poems by and for gay black men. Callen and Hemphill were fearless activists and were among the inestimable number of American gay male artists lost in the first 15 years of the AIDS epidemic.

Duberman not only has complete command of the social and political landscape of the AIDS era, he was intimately involved with advocacy himself and writes from the inside track of the heroic and sometimes desperate measures of gay organizations in fighting for medical and civil rights of people living with AIDS.

Time has not softened Duberman’s scalding assessment of the governmental indifference, medical politics, and prevailing homophobia that cost so many gay lives.

The author also doesn’t pull back from revisiting the often-counterproductive infighting of a community overwhelmed with loss and at war with the straight world. His perspective and analysis of this monumentally important movement of AIDS activism, is, from several angles, rescued history. Strategically, Duberman includes some of his own diaries entries the grimmest years of the epidemic.

Callen and Hemphill were artists at the height of their creative powers when they were diagnosed with HIV-AIDS. As different as they were in background, careers, families, and relationships, they were on some parallel tracks with a selfless and fierce commitment to AIDS activism, despite personal sacrifices.

Callen, a gay white man from the Midwest moved to New York to perform and after his diagnosis fought for AIDS patient advocacy. He was first diagnosed with AIDS in the early 80s and early on worked to get information about diagnosis, treatment, and prevention to the gay community in New York. He was a long-term AIDS survivor and fierce advocate for getting explicit information out about safe sex, working tirelessly for advocacy of people with AIDS being part of the medical and social response to the epidemic.

He appeared before congress to bring AIDS awareness and expose political hypocrisies and homophobia. Callen knew as much or more about the medical facts and theories of AIDS and worked with everyone from Dr. Mathilde Krim to gay citizens and all minorities dealing with AIDS.

Hemphill, a black gay man from Washington, DC, worked to bring together the disparate voices of black gay men, lesbian writers and artists in performance and print in DC, Philadelphia, and eventually on a national level, artists and activists reaching out for visibility, dialogue and inclusion, in what was to become dubbed the Second Harlem Renaissance. He fought for recognition of gay identity, challenging national African American civic and religious leaders to deal with acceptance of GLBTQ minorities within hetero-normative minority communities.

Both Callen and Hemphill retreated from activism and returned to the sanctuary of their creative lives as their health declined and creating some of their best work evocative of their artistic, political, and gay lives. Callen writing and recording songs that would result in his finest vocal collection of his material as a solo artist and his collaborations with the Flirtations. Duberman includes some of Hemphill’s most stirring poetry from his final book Vital Signs.

At the height of the AIDS epidemic, Duberman founded CUNY’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies to further LGBT scholarship and curriculum. This book stands among his finest achievements, as impressive, in different ways, as his masterful 2007 biography of American art and ballet curator Lincoln Kirstein.

Like it is in that work, Duberman’s objective analysis, as well as his activist voice, is incisive, passionate, and poetic.

– See more at: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/hold-tight-gently-michael-callen#sthash.3GdjIaGk.dpuf

fr. Right before I met Vincent

endlessly, from last night

pulse
echo of

concussive silence

till the shirt

come off at 7:40
Murmurings
rancid whispers
vodka-qualude
babble sings
wandering off
to eternity
a trail of clothes
ending in a
glitteringly butch
shadow
ensemble 
silky movements 
à l’après-midi d’un faune
Angling over the
busted wall
when did you
share me
with candy
from the club last night

flashback to set the

night on fire

is it still 3:20
1972 drenched
nameless corps
are still the lost
 beautiful ones
faces of
galleria Atlantis
live in the rumbling
strata 
anonymous
vilified
former crimes
faith of knowing we
we are giving our bodies to each
other

unlost havoc of lust & love

Sounds of onyx
eyes reflected 
on marble
crack below on
Leaves
scrapping branches 

busting through
mercury running 
Fingers onto
the temples
we hear
sonic psalms
La la la Sacre du Printemps

to dancedancedance

to escape the sound
Of the blood inside a
Coldest room
waiting for scarred
voices deep 
ascending
soul & sugar 

 

David was there
Angelo was there
John Anthony was there
Michael was there
Marcel was there
Miguel, Jimmy, & Andy

was there

we think
or that might have been another night

Donald was there
Tommy 

everybeautifulbodywasthere
et. fuckin’ al. baby
nobody stumbled or faded
empty hearted
as the corners
of the rooms folded up
inside
lustrous

cobalt silhouettes
pulsing
club noise drowning
concussive dissonance
as the body starburst
endlessly
through that smashed atom
dancing perpetuo
perpetually going
when the night beheld
all my
rainbow warriors~ 
so mighty fucking real

Gay lives

Farley Granger died at 85 this week. He bucked the studio system, insisting on good parts and when it came to living openly as a gay man, he refused to play into Hollywood’s antigay policies. A wonderful actor and unique star, he will be missed.

 In 2007 he was in Philly to receive an award from the Philadelphia International gay and lesbian film festival.  I had a chance to interview him and his partner Robert Calhoun for an Edge piece.

The following is part of that interview ~~

 

They would pause first, then finished each other’s sentences.

A beautifully romantic idea rarely seen in real life. But for screen legend and gay icon Farley Granger and writer Robert Calhoun, it is a description that would apply after 45 years together.

I met them when they came to Philadelphia where Granger was honored for cinematic artistic achievement at the 13th International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The couple is also on a mini tour to promote Include Me Out, Granger’s bare bulb memoir co-written by Calhoun.

Looking a little dazed from travel, the men graciously recount many details of Granger’s life in films and on stage in the lounge of swank Hotel Sofitel, where they were preparing for a reception in their honor that evening at XIX Nineteen Caf�, the elegant penthouse restaurant at the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue Philadelphia. After receiving his award, the film festival continued to honor them with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the 1948 thriller that starred Granger as a gay killer modeled in Arthur Laurents’ screenplay after the real-life murderers Leopold and Loeb.

Calhoun immediately interjects as they sit down. “We did the book together and I’m inclined to more detailed memories.” It is Granger, though, who fills in the emotion and star power.

Granger was scouted at age 17 by a studio rep for movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn and appeared in the film North Star before going into the Navy. When Granger returned to Hollywood after his discharge, he refused to be controlled by the Orwellian studio system and backed away from it. How intrusive were they when he began his career in post WWII Hollywood?

“Very.” Granger said without hesitation

Calhoun: “Farley did the first two films for (influential producer) Lewis Milestone starting when he was 17. He did North Star and then at 20th The Purple Heart then he went into the Navy. When he got out he got back and went to see Lewis Milestone and then …”

Granger: “Milestone said ’Aaron Copland is in town doing the music for my film and he would love to see you again. Why don’t you call him?’ We had dinner at the famous James Wong Howe restaurant and Aaron came in and I was smoking a cigarette and we laughed about that … and we just giggled about everything really. I was saying things like ’what do you really think of Prokofiev?’ to him and making an ass of myself I’m sure. And we were just having a wonderful time. The next day I was called into Goldwyn’s office and told I’d been seen with Aaron Copland and that was very bad thing to do…” Calhoun: “because Copland ’was a known homosexual.’” they said.

Granger: “’I said, I don’t believe what you’re telling me …’ They said he’s gay and I said I know that and I said ’… it’s my life and I’ll see who I want to see, if you don’t like it, get rid of me. But I certainly will not give up Aaron Copland for you, being as stupid as you are and I walked out.’ I was furious.”

Calhoun: “That was 1948 in Goldwyn’s office and a vice president did most of the talking and Goldwyn said there imposingly silent behind his desk … But he (Granger) directed this to Goldwyn and said ’and furthermore I met him at your studio on a film you made called North Star.’”

Robert notes that Granger never expressed any fear or regret for how he handled them. It certainly didn’t hinder his career. “Goldwyn wanted to loan me out a lot of times to other studios because he only made one or two movies a year. He would loan me out and they were bad scripts. Ali Baba things that Tony Curtis did and I didn’t want to do them, so I said no.” Granger laughs when I ask him if they didn’t get rid of him because he was such a screen presence who was not only great looking but a naturally talented actor, and that they were afraid of him.

“Both probably.” he says with a wicked laugh….

Calhoun: “You’re not scary, but you’re not going to be pushed around. He also was not a part of the gay cliques that existed in Hollywood. The weekend swim parties at George Cukor’s house. Farley was not part of those groups. He chose to be with the New York/Metro musical crowd at Gene Kelly’s open house weekly. And musical people didn’t care who did what with whom. Farley found those parties so much more fun.”

Granger’s star was sealed as a leading man working with director Alfred Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train and Rope, both films with homosexual angles. In Rope, Granger and John Dahl play college age buddies who kill a fellow student for vicarious thrills. Rope was written by gay playwright/screenwriter Arthur Laurents (West Side Story and Gypsy), with whom Granger had a relationship. The meticulous Hitchcock never brought up the word homosexual, so ’it’ was never discussed, but the actors played it pretty straightforwardly as lovers.

On Strangers on a Train Calhoun said “It just sort of happened. They didn’t discuss it, but it’s so apparent that Robert Walker knew what he was doing … and Farley certainly was aware. It was interesting that it thread that very fine line of being acknowledged or acknowledged between the two of them.” Granger said that Walker was great to work with. “Hitchcock never brought up the word homosexual in either of the films,” Calhoun added, “which is odd because he obviously knew what he was doing.” Granger (with an ironic laugh): “Yes, he certainly did.” The actor also recalls taking tennis lessons from gay tennis great Bill Tilden at Charlie Chaplin’s house for his role as a tennis pro in ’Strangers.’ Granger invited his friend choreographer Jerome Robbins to dinner to meet Chaplin. “They came and they were wonderful and later that evening they ended up dancing together, which was just heaven to see.”

Granger bought out the remainder of his contract and was headed to New York to study and work in theater, his real dream. His agent told him that instead he had to make back the money he had just given back to Hollywood and should go to Italy to work with maverick gay Italian film director Luchino Visconti on a film called Senso.

Granger: “I didn’t know Visconti. My agent said that Goldwyn would let me out of the contract if I gave him all of my money. And I said sure I’ll do that. Then he said there’s this Italian movie and they wanted Ingrid Bergman and Brando, but they couldn’t do it. It was supposed to be very good. I loved Italy anyway, so I said ’Yes I’ll do it.’ We ended up living there.”

Granger was also in a famed, but ill-fated revival of The King and I co-starring Barbara Cook, who would become a lifelong friend. “Everyone wanted to take it to Broadway and Hammerstein said he and Richard Rogers would do it. But nothing happened.” Just as it was about to happen, there was an actor’s strike, and then Oscar Hammerstein died. Granger: “We were good. She was the best.”

Calhoun: “Barbara eventually sent us a copy of a letter that she had from Laurents writing to Rodgers saying how terrific he thought the show was. How much more impressed he was with the revival. Rodgers wrote back that, by far Farley and Barbara were superior than the original production on Broadway.” It was time to stop, but, like Barbara, I could have danced all night with Farley.

The couple was greeted by a full room of admirers at the Hyatt. Just desserts because Philly has special meaning for them: they fell in love and committed to each other on one of the saddest days in our nation’s history – the day President Kennedy was shot in 1963. “It was in Philadelphia that we really became a pair.” Calhoun said.

In memorium

It is with sadness that I tell you that Jan Carroll, my longtime close friend and blogger partner died December 22 after battling lung cancer for many months. Not only did Jan grace these pages with her remarkable photographs, she was, as she dubbed herself, my EB on the blog- for editor bitch. Among her many talents, she knew spelling and grammar & would catch anything dodgey or suspect. But mostly, and in general, she knew style.

Needless to say I relied on her. Truth be told though, her photographs kept me going with AT2 more than anything else. We started two years ago and I didn’t know what I was doing really, but Jan, I found out, knew all things blogisphere.

Even though she downplayed the artistry of her photographs, everyone who saw the blog loved them. Her eye speaks for itself. My brother Rob, a visual artist, said Jan had what they used to call in art school, the extra dimension. That unexplainable element of composition, color, subject. A singular point of view. The composition, the angle, the otherwise unseen. My friend Lesley Valdes said that even though she never met Jan, there seems to be so much of her in her photographs. I bugged her many times to consider a book of her photographs, trying to convince her it was unique that she actually nurtured the flora and fauna before she photographed it.

And really that was Jan in so many ways. There was so much of her in everything she did. If you were lucky enough to be her friend you basked in the hugeness of her art, heart and of her mind. Looking back, I can say with certainty that Jan altered the way I thought about the world, natural and otherwise.

I can’t even begin to remember all of things that she and her husband Steve have done for me over the years. But the biggest gift of all has been their friendship and love. Unwavering and sincere.

The other thing you could only envy was Jan’s remarkable wit and her ability to laugh at herself. She laughed at others as well, but if were her friend, she never would be cruel. Honest, perhaps, but never a cheap shot. It is the compassion that she showed for others and other species is something that will always be with us in spirit.

This photo of Jan with beloved Frieda, her frenzied wired-haired fox terrier who we all came to love in the 70s. This was taken around the time I used to hang out with her at her parents’ pool in Springfield- we used to practice dives. I would try the fancier stuff and she would tell me where I was off. Jan always did the same launch –a pretty flawless arrowpoint dive.

Goodnight dear, dear friend, you taught me so much more about true hearts, minds and dives.