THIS ISSUE is set to land on the eve of the election, an event that seems so fraught as to be unapproachable from where we sit. So let us focus instead on a lighter topic. “Gossip” for us is not about today’s Hollywood stars, but concerns notable LGBT figures who made waves in their time and continue to stir our fascination, prurient or otherwise.
We begin with a scandal that unfolded in the Colonies shortly before the American Revolution. Robert Newburgh, a British chaplain, was accused by two grenadiers of being a “buggerer.” Andrew Holleran takes us through the strange world in which such a charge could be leveled on scant evidence—okay, Newburgh was a flamboyant dresser—and it was up to the accused to take legal action to clear his name.
Fast forward to the early 20th century and novelist D. H. Lawrence, whose books scandalized the reading public on both sides of the Pond. Lawrence was the first great writer in English to include explicit sex scenes in his novels, and, as Andrew White argues here, his interest in sex included a fascination with the male body, which shows up in several intimate scenes involving naked men in pairs.
A similar fascination was shared by Salvador Dalí, whose paintings of familiar objects in unfamiliar settings include phallic configurations and hints of homoerotic contact. But if his work is open to interpretation, his personal life—as documented here by Ignacio Darnaude—leaves no doubt about his affair with one of Spain’s greatest poets, Federico Lorca, a gay man whose writings and drawings are a testament to his courage to be himself in dangerous times.
One of the juiciest stories in this issue is Val Holley’s tale of Leonard Bernstein’s summer of ’47, when he was supposed to be planning his marriage to Felicia Montealegre but instead had a steamy fling with a handsome admirer, Richard Romney. This affair really was the stuff of gossip; what’s amazing is that Bernstein somehow kept it going while his busy conducting schedule never missed a beat.
Frank Rizzo reports on a couple that made no secret of their love. Donald Windham and Sandy Campbell met as young men and stayed together for decades, hobnobbing with writers like Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote and, in Windham’s case, becoming a successful novelist in his own right. Campbell’s fortune enabled the pair to establish the generous Windham-Campbell Prize for eight writers each year.
Another gay man who has used his largesse to benefit the arts is Salah Bachir, who’s interviewed here by Matthew Hays. A successful media impresario, Bachir has a knack for mobilizing celebrities—and he knows them all—to raise funds in support of artists and institutions as well as LGBT communities and causes. His new memoir, First to Leave the Party, reflects on the many famous people that Bachir has befriended and coaxed over the years.
