Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo
by Michael Schiavi
University of Wisconsin Press
320 pages, $29.95
WHEN, as a college freshman, I first picked up The Celluloid Closet, by Vito Russo (1946–1990), already a classic treatise about the presence of gay and lesbian characters in Hollywood films, I knew very little about film and had not seen many of the movies that it discussed. Nevertheless, I was instantly captured by Russo’s humor, his vivid descriptions of the movies he loved, and by the controlled anger that he brought to his analyses. This was not just a film buff showing off; instead, The Celluloid Closet brought to the forefront the voice of an informed, funny, politically aware gay activist.
It is to Michael Schiavi’s credit that he manages in Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo to give equal weight to both sides of Schiavi’s thorough research for this biography included extensive interviews with Russo’s friends and family members, along with access to Russo’s personal writings. The family interviews, especially those with his brother Charles, add special insight into Russo’s formative years. We learn that his burgeoning love for show business and his developing sexuality were influenced by his childhood in East Harlem. Vito was present, for example, when the West Side Story filmmakers were “setting up camp on his [high]school’s very street to film the Sharks and Jets opening ballet sequence.” By that time, he had spent years haunting various New York City movie palaces, thrilling to everything from 1950’s schlock horror and sci-fi films to more serious westerns and dramas. Charles Russo’s interviews also reveal the less happy aspects of Vito’s youth, as his high intelligence and lack of athleticism marked him as different from the other boys and led to constant homophobic taunts. Within the extended family, however, there were potential role models. Vito’s older female cousin Chickie sported a black leather jacket, men’s hairdo, and back-pocket switchblade. By the time Vito was a teenager, he had attended parties hosted by his cousin Vinny, who had liaisons with men and lived openly with his boyfriend. A young Vito also spent time attempting to cruise the gay scene on Central Park West. Even after a move to New Jersey with his family, he still found ways to enter gay life and culture, reading such books as Maybe—Tomorrow and Mr. Madam, watching gay-themed movies like Victim and Advise and Consent, and hanging out with working-class drag queens. Marking the beginning of a lifetime of resistance to oppressive cultural norms—resistance that would guide him through his work with the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and his later involvement in glaad and act up—he left the Catholic Church and, defying strong parental disapproval, continued to have sexual and social connections with other men. Schiavi is right when he says that Russo’s out-ness as a teenager was “a stunningly precocious conclusion to reach nearly a decade before Stonewall.” Along with charting Russo’s evolution to activism, his boyfriends, and his social relationships—including his up-and-down connection with Bette Midler and long-term friendships with Arnie Kantrowitz and Lily Tomlin—and the effect of AIDS on his world, Schiavi chronicles the public flowering of the lecture and slide show that would become The Celluloid Closet. The various strands of Vito’s life—his activism and social work in GAA, including running a film series at the group’s headquarters; his employment in the film circulation department at the Museum of Modern Art; and his writing gigs with GAY and The Advocate—were woven together in the creation of the book. Years spent around closeted actors influenced his choice of the guiding metaphor found in the title, and also contributed to his understanding of the Hollywood system. In applying his political knowledge to an easily accessible cultural medium, Vito Russo was able to bring the ideas and ideals of gay liberation politics to a mass audience in a way few others have managed. In this smart biography, Michael Schiavi centers Russo as one of the leading cultural figures of the gay liberation era. Philip Clark, a Washington D.C.-area writer, is the co-editor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS
Russo’s work: as a student of Hollywood and as a gay activist. In a fast-paced narrative, packed with great stories, Schiavi illuminates the early life experiences, notably the early influence of family and neighborhood, that led Russo to pursue both film criticism and political activism, which he melded to such great effect.
