Correspondence.
Dear Editor:In her article "Can a Woman Be a Man On-Screen" [March-April 2001] Denise Noe incorrectly stated that "Sallie Tilden" was the star of Derek Jarman's "Orlando." In fact, Tilda Swinton played Virginia Woolf's eponymous hero/ine, and very well too. When talking about the real-life Brandon Teena, Noe described him as "slim and baby-faced." This is only half true, The excellent documentary about Brandon clearly showed that while he was definitely baby-faced, he was also somewhat on the chunky side, and quite a bit heavier than Hilary Swank.
Carol Jevrem, Columbus, Ohio
To the Editor:
I just finished reading your May-June issue and it seems to me so "inclusive" that it reminds me of ONE Magazine. And of course that was "helped" by seeing the review by Lewis Gannett of Christopher Isherwood's book, Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945-51, and its mention of Mattachine and ONE affecting views on homosexuality in Southern California in that time period as well as the "behavior" of Isherwood and others who were not actually "out."
One of the "issues" we had at ONE was the failure of celebrities, actors, writers, etc., especially wealthy people, to support our work, and later the other groups and publications. I wondered where they were when we needed them, as it seemed later that all you heard was the famous "gay" writers who seemed so open, yet had been in the closet while we did the work--that included Capote, Williams, Isherwood (who later did work with ONE), etc.
In the review it is said that ONE Magazine was a precursor to ONE, Inc., and of course they were started at the same time. That was part of the purpose of making ONE separate from Mattachine, which was secret at that time: to be a public agency, publish the magazine, and be a social service and educational organization. Dorr Legg was one of the main founders, but it makes this thought difficult to put into perspective when you realize that another Mattachine cofounder, Dale Jennings, also a ONE cofounder and in fact "producer" of the first issues of the magazine as well as an editor, soon left the active movement and then became a famous writer. His book The Cowboys was later made into a John Wayne movie. He worked in the background, and supported and was a member of the Homosexual Information Center [HIC], doing newsletters, reviews, etc. And fellow ONE/Tangents editor Joseph Hansen also was and is a famous author and HIC co-founder, as was his wife, Jane. And actor Morgan Farley was active in ONE and HIC, and in fact found our location at 2256 Venice Blvd. when we had to leave our founding location, 232 S. Hill, due to earthquake problems on the upper floors.
But these were rare people willing to work with us.
No gay attorneys or publishers worked with us; all of our early help came from non-gay people. It was attorney Eric Julber who took the magazine case [in which the U.S. Post Office objected to the journal as "obscene"] to the U.S. Supreme Court--and won--and attorney Herb Selwyn, and psychologist Dr. Evelyn Hooker (also mentioned in Gannett's review), and educators such as Vein Bullough and wife Bonnie, who made our work as successful as it was in challenging laws and professional attitudes toward homosexuality.
By the way, Dale Jennings, Tony Reyes, and Martin Bloch were the three people who signed ONE's incorporating papers, yet Don Slater and Dorr Legg and later Jim Kepner were the main people running ONE. The magazine did have a woman editor at one time, and the main artists were female. When HIC incorporated in 1968, it was Don Slater, Billy Glover, and Jim Schneider who signed the papers and HIC was probably the first openly homosexual organization to get the tax exemption. ONE had formed The Institute for the Study of Human Resources to be its exempt funder, which it still does, and ONE, Inc. is a funder now itself.
In relation to the above and your publication, it seems to me that the issue, then, in the 50's (I arrived in 1960) is the same issue for gay publications today: can you get readers with educational material or must you be mainly entertaining and maybe frivolous? Do you need pictures to get buyers? It seems to me that the articles in ONE in the 50's and 60's are the same ones in publications today. But, of course, ONE was the only magazine at first. Then ONE tried ONE Institute Quarterly in an effort to be "serious." But most people didn't like the quarterly. It was too serious or academic or whatever. And the magazine, we learned, was of interest for the news section, Tangents, and letters to the editor and the fiction, by such people as Joseph Hansen, Bob Waltrip, Leo Skir, etc. Can a serious publication succeed today?
To get back to your issue, my thoughts on the wonderful article by Ed Madden, "Confederacies of Desire"--confederacy of dunces?--again made me wonder at the sudden interest (on C-SPAN, PBS, etc.) in Civil War reenactments. When I was growing up in Louisiana I never heard of such a thing, and I am sure it was because we had been in World War II and men coming home from a real war did not need to play at war.
And after being kicked out of the army in 1956 for being homosexual (which followed graduation from LSU in 1955), I went to Los Angeles, where I worked a few years with non-gay employment and lived the gay life. There I found ONE magazine at the newsstand, and later met Jim Kepner. I went to Mattachine's convention in Denver in 1959, worked with Hall Call and Don Lucas in Mattachine in San Francisco for a month or so, and came to volunteer at ONE in 1960 as a staff member. We divided in 1965 over internal disputes involving priorities. I worked with Don Slater's ONE, which became The Tangent Group of ONE and then Homosexual Information Center. At the death of Dorr Legg, Walter Williams started the work to rejoin the parts of ONE, beginning with Jim Kepner's International Gay & Lesbian Archives and later Don Slater's Homosexual Information Center. After the three had passed on, but with their approval, the three parts became ONE Institute and Archives, an adjunct library at the University of Southern Californi a.
Many people who I haven't named worked to bring us to this day, and it will only be a worthwhile resource in the years to come if people work to maintain it, as well as the other libraries and archives and centers around the country--and if people continue to use these resources to learn about homosexuality from a balanced view. Your publication contributes to this effort, and may there be many more like you and like ONE.
Billy Glover, Boossier City, Louisiana
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| Publication: | The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide |
|---|---|
| Date: | Jul 1, 2001 |
| Words: | 1157 |
| Previous Article: | July August, 2001: "Body Culture". |
| Next Article: | Gay Bait and Switch. |