IN 1938, Daphne du Maurier’s melodramatic novel, Rebecca, became an international bestseller, and Hollywood producer David O. Selznick acquired the film rights for $50,000. Also in 1938, Alfred Hitchcock, then a noted director of British-made suspense movies, signed a contract with Selznick and was soon named to direct the screen adaptation of the novel. Thus began the making of Rebecca (1940) …
MoreSome scientists believe gay men and lesbians share a number of biological characteristics, including the length of fingers, density of fingerprint ridges, direction of hair whorl and other traits.
This article appears in the June 25, 2007 issue of New York Magazine.
MoreTHIS BOOK is a great idea and, sadly, rather a great disappointment. The subject – broadly speaking, the relationship between the spiritual and sexual aspirations of three key gay male writers of the last century has long warranted investigation. It is only lately, and in passing, that Forster’s engagement with Eastern society and religion has been considered in the context of his sexuality.
MoreThe Breeding Imperative First it was New York’s high court, and now Washington state’s has ruled against legalizing same-sex marriage using the old argument, in effect, that marriage is for making babies.
MoreTHE COMING OUT STORY is the foundational myth of modern gay life. The term itself dates from outbursts of liberation activity in the late 1960’s and the militant slogan Out of the Closets and Into the Streets.
MoreIN 1922, “one of the most terrible plays ever presented in New York,” as the Evening Telegram (Dec. 20, 1922) called it, shocked Broadway with its portrayal of a family that lives off prostitution, a father’s failed attempts at Jewish respectability and, most importantly, a riveting lesbian love scene.
MoreIN 1949, alerted by his friend William Burroughs that his name had appeared in compromising letters seized by police in a drug raid, a 21-year-old Allen Ginsberg worried where to secure his journals and manuscripts of poems lest authorities suddenly descend upon his own apartment and confiscate these records of his drug experimentation and of his inner conflicts over his homosexuality.
MoreHE WAS NO ORDINARY JOE: during his short but meteoric career as the baddest queer of the postwar British stage, Joe Orton (1933–1967) was getting it both ways. A…More
DURING THE TWO DECADES between 1967 and 1987, dramatist, actor, and agent provocateur Charles Ludlam would rebelliously change theatre in America for the next generation. As the founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and the author of 29 raucous and highly entertaining plays, Ludlam quite literally became the “belle of the ball” of the West Village countercultural theatre scene during this period.
MoreCHICAGO’s TRAP DOOR THEATRE opened its 2006-07 season with a production of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. The play, written in 1971, and made into a film the next year with Fassbinder as director, tells a story of a famous fashion designer from the title who falls for the first time in her life for a woman, young, pretty Karin, and experiences unknown feelings that, at the end of the play, turn her into a changed woman. The play is about a lesbian love affair’s dynamics and the lessons learned by the characters and the audience alike.
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