love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble—more noble than other forms.” The 19th-century term “invert” was derived from the term Conträre Sexualempfindung(contrary sexual feeling) proposed in 1869 by Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal, a German professor of medicine. Westphal’s neologism was more scientific and less poetic than any of the prior terms, but it was a translator’s nightmare. After several tries and much metalinguistic discourse, “inverted sexual instinct” became the usual translation, and persons with such instincts were labeled inverts. This word offered several advantages: It was not religious or mythological, and it applied to both women and men. But “invert” didn’t catch on outside medical journals. And it was too close to “pervert,” another stigmatizing word that was use in by the late 19th century to describe those attracted to their own sex. These terms battled it out for general acceptance in the late 19th century, but the term “homosexual” finally won the day. It was not a medical term nor a legal term; it was coined in 1860 as a German word by the Hungarian journalist and gay rights activist Karl Maria Kertbeny. Purists complained that it combined the Latin root sexwith the Greek prefixhomo, but by the 1890s it had pretty much cleared the field. Havelock Ellis overcame such scruples because the word worked: It has, philologically, the awkward disadvantage of being a bastard term compounded of Greek and Latin elements, but its significance—sexual attraction to the same sex—is fairly clear and definite, while it is free from any question-begging association of either favorable or unfavorable character. … The term “homosexual” has the further advantage that on account of its classical origin it is easily translatable into many languages. It is now the most widespread general term for the phenomena we are dealing with. It also provided the template for a large family of related words and phrases—“heterosexual,” “bisexual,” “transsexual,” “asexual,” “intersexual,” as well as “homophobic” and related “phobias.” SEXUALREVOLUTION: GAY, QUEER WHILE LEARNED PROFESSIONALS STRUGGLED for words with which to talk about sexuality, ordinary people were using a rich vocabulary. Every language had its own. In English, “queer,” MATTHEWHAYS WINNER OF TWO EMMYS for his writing, Bruce Vilanch has penned jokes for many of the funniest comics of the past century, from Bob Hope to Robin Williams. With his latest book, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote (Chicago Review Press), Vilanch recalls his involvement in some TV projects so dire they have become legend, includingThe Star Wars Holiday Special andThe Brady Bunch Hour. Many of Vilanch’s vivid anecdotes are almost surreal, and he acknowledges that most of the shows would have been forgotten had they not been granted new life on YouTube. Along with his stinging wit, Vilanch is a tremendous raconteur. His new memoir is essential reading for any retro TV enthusiast. Reached by phone at his home in L.A., Vilanch expressed enthusiasm about being profiled inTheG&LR. “It’s my go-to place to catch up on lesbian poets from another century,” he said. Matthew Hays: People usually only want to talk about the high points and not the rest, as we know. Faye [Dunaway] doesn’t want to talk about Mommie Dearest, of course. Yet here you are. Was it cathartic to revisit these moments in your career? Bruce Vilanch: I hadn’t forgotten them, but I thought that they were getting buried. And then the Internet came along, and we realized they were in a shallow grave. What was amusing about it was that the people who were most interested were not yet born when I committed these television acts. With brands like StarWars andTheBrady Bunch—brands that live on forever—they couldn’t really understand how anyone said yes to these things, and how anyone came up with them. So there was an eager audience, especially during Covid. I got asked a lot about it during podcasts. So I realized there was a book in it. MH: One of the things that struck me as I read the book is that you’re an optimist and a good sport. You seemed to have a great attitude even when you were doing some pretty bad TV. BV: You just keep going on. Back then, the ‘70s were really crazy. There was Battle of the Network Stars, where you had soap opera stars doing shot put. The StarWars Christmas Special was no less ridiculous than many of the other things happening at the time. People rediscovered the Christmas Special online long after StarWars hadbecome the Scientology of the Nerds. So the show kept resurfacing, and people wondered how it happened. Many of these things were decided in clouds of smoke and were executed in even bigger clouds of smoke. If you look at the list of things that were being done at the time, they included Wayne Newton at SeaWorld doing a duet with an orca. MH: You’re writing about the 1970s and ‘80s, and at that time, there weren’t many queer characters on TV. Yet you were working with a number of performers who were gay: Paul Lynde, Robert Reed, Rip Taylor, many of the Village People. Did it strike you as odd at the time that there were so many gay people behind the scenes, yet it was still the love that dare not speak its name? BV: It didn’t strike me as weird because that was just the way the world was. Everyone had gay people in their family or knew gay people, but it wasn’t discussed because it had long been coded as something bad. No one wanted to ascribe that to performers they liked. So that was what the world was like. It was after Stonewall, but it took a while for it to take momentum in the larger world. I Bruce Vilanch, Comedy Writer to the Stars ARTIST’S PROFILE 26 TheG&LR
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