Bob Kaiser, Hannah Jopling, Cathy Kaiser, Andy Tobias, Lucy Howard, David Dunlap, Frank Clines, David Bartolomi, Andrew Morse, Henry Bloomstein, Thorn Stoelker, Tema and Mark Silk, Ros Kaiser, Sarah and Bob Hyams, Rebecca and Tamara Kaiser, Dudley Greeley, Renata Adler, Steve Marcus, Martha Ritter, Roy Finamore, François Fortin, Andrew Jacobs, Didier Malaquin, Barbara Epstein, Marcia Chambers, Gloria Emerson, Steve Kay, Michael Lerner, Linda Healey, Tony Lukas, Mary Murphy, John Moore, Philip Gefter, Peter Kaplan, Lesley Stahl, Steve Rattner, Maureen White, Shelley Wanger, David Auchincloss, Ginger Crosby, Paula Kaiser, Blair Clark, Kirk Semple, Sarah Burke, John Flannery, Zarrina and Antony Kurtz, Christiane Audibert, Hope Kostmayer, Edward Flanagan, Michael Butler, Ellie Gelman, Maralee Schwartz, Elsie Bernice Washington, David White, Steve Friedman, Judy Hottensen, Cohn Dickerman, Caleb Cram, Eddie Borges, Nick and Heyden Rostow, Jane Berentson, Bruce Knecht, Mary de Bourbon, Will Lung, Sharon and Charles Stouter, Alice McGillion and Martin Arnold all provided crucial support.
David Kaiser, David Garrow, John Herman, Gail Gregg, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Carl Chiappa, Mark Polizzotti, Roy Aarons, James Stewart and Judy Knipe read early versions of different portions of the manuscript, and each of them made valuable suggestions and corrections. David Kaiser also sets the standard for historical precision that I aspire to. Stephanie Lane and Nancy Lunney read nearly all of the book as it was being written, and they were unstinting with their advice and their enthusiasm.
When I was halfway through this project, I realized that my most important inspiration had been Before Stonewall, the first great television documentary about gay people in America, created by John Scagliotti, Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg. All historians interested in this subject owe a special debt to Michael Denneny because he has edited so many of the best books about gay life in America, induding And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts’s landmark volume on the AIDS epidemic.
The other books I found most useful were Coming Out Under Fire, Alan Bérubé’s superb history of gays in the military during World War II; Making History, Eric Marcus’s excellent oral history of gay activism since the war; Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell; Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities by John D’Emilio; City Poet by Brad Gooch; Liberty and Sexuality by David J. Garrow; Straight News by Edward Alwood; Being Homosexual and Becoming Gay by Richard A. Isay; Reports from the Holocaust by Larry Kramer; The Politics of Homosexuality by Toby Marotta; The Gay Militants by Donn Teal; Gay New York by George Chauncey; Sondheim & Co. by Craig Zadan; Perfect Enemies by Chris Bull and John Gallagher; The Long Road to Freedom, edited by Mark Thompson; and all the books written or edited by Martin Duberman, especially Stonewall. Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World remains the luminescent novel about New York life in the 1980s.
Kathy Robbins is much more than the best agent anyone ever imagined; she is also a fine editor, a great conceptualizer and a magnificent friend. All of her colleagues at the Robbins Office—especially Tifanny Richards and David Halpern—provided a powerful support system. Bill Clegg is my critic and collaborator in several important departments.
Dawn Seferian is an amazing editor, the kind who always manages to bolster an author’s confidence. Jayne Yaffe’s meticulous copyediting improved many different sections of the manuscript. Robert Overholtzer produced an elegant design.
Murray Kempton was the dean of modern American iconoclasts; that made him a role model for all serious journalists. My favorite moment with him occurred during a magical dinner a couple of years ago in Barbara Epstein’s apartment. Suddenly Murray leapt up from the table, darted to the bookcase and pulled down a volume of Auden; then he declaimed the couplet that became the opening epigraph for this book.
Because he believed the subject was important, Richard Slusarcyk volunteered four years ago to be my partner on this project. He contributed thousands of hours of research and made many important discoveries, including the Journal-American’s remarkable treatise on gay life during the Lonergan affair. This book could not have been written without him.
Elizabeth Lunney joined me at a decisive moment to bring order out of chaos; she also offered many pithy and thoughtful suggestions. Raymond Geller enabled me to finally understand Judy Garland’s importance. Linda Amster performed her usual roles as brilliant investigative reporter and wonderful friend. Anny Miller, Shields Remine and Duncan Arp transcribed hundreds of hours of interviews and offered constant encouragement.
Rob Boynton, a splendid colleague who defies categories, ended a four-year trauma by suggesting the perfect title for this book. For more than a decade, Ed Koch has been a devoted friend. I have tried (and probably failed) to insulate my judgments of his mayoralty from the effects of that friendship.
Media and Zoë Brecher, Sam Shapiro, Ben and Alex Goldberger, Adam Hirsh, Charles and Peter Gelman, Juliet, Catherine and Arabella Kurtz, Nick Everett, Stephen Adler, Jonathan Erickson, Tito Bianchi, Ben Wheeler, Katie and Jeremiah Lane, David Crossland, Vanessa Vadim, Marc Stouter, Victoria Pringle, David Leonhardt, Jonathan Mallow, Will Bleakley, Abraham, Ezra and Isaac Silk, Zoë Cooprider, Mark and Ghita Levenstein, Tess and Ethan Hyams, Dana GreeleyArtz, Delari, Tara, Margo and Garth Johnston, Jennifer Lunney, Theodore and Celia Rostow, Kate McNamara, and Arthur and Annie Sulzberger offer evidence every day that the twenty-first century will be more enlightened than the present one.
Michael and Laura Fisher Kaiser, Judy Barnett, Sal Matera, Ann Jensen, Steve and Nancy Shapiro, Eric Gelman, John Brecher, Dorothy Gaiter, Bill Carey, Eleanor Randolph, Peter Pringle, Janet Suzman, Rich Meislin, Hendrik Uyttendaele, Jean Vallely, Steve Weisman, Paul Goldberger, Susan Solomon, Merry Mclnerney, Michael Finnegan, Michael Anderson, and Judy Knipe nurtured the author through countless crises. Rick Whitaker helped me make many new discoveries about the gay metropolis.
I cannot even suggest how deeply my life was affected by all the men I loved who have already perished. Their deaths sometimes make me feel guilty to be alive; but my memories of their incredible accomplishments—especially Tom Stoddard’s accomplishments—infused me with a sense of urgency to record our history as accurately as I could.
My parents shared all of their virtues, especially their flair for storytelling and their loathing for all forms of prejudice. Since the moment I first told them “I’m gay” they have traveled their own magnificent journey, from shock to discomfort to total support. For thirty-six years, our closest friends, Katie and Arthur Hustead, have been essential to all Kaisers.
Nephews and nieces play an especially large role in the life of an uncle with no children of his own. Emily Kaiser made a superb contribution to this volume when she discovered Christopher Isherwood’s critique of The City and the Pillar among Gore Vidal’s papers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Emily, Charlotte, Daniel and Thomas Kaiser give me more happiness than they can possibly imagine.
After nearly two decades, Joe Stouter remains my indispensable collaborator: the person without whom nothing important is possible.
—New York City, May 1997
Notes
EPIGRAPH
ix “Joseph, Mary, pray for those”: W. H. Auden, “For the Time Being, a Christmas Oratorio, “Collected Poems, 283.
INTRODUCTION
xi “When you were starting out”: James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (documentary).
“If I had the power”: Joseph Epstein, Harper’s, September 1970.
xii “I think especially”: “The Architecture of Community” 24th Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, delivered in Washington, D.C., by Vincent Scully, May 15, 1995.
“We know our son”: Author’s interview with Richard Isay, July 7, 1996.
“Anglican over-soul” … “who knows me.” Peter J. Gomes in Robert S.
Boynton, “God and Harvard,” The New Yorker, November 11, 1996.
xiii “never contemplated a form”: Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book, 102.
“Origin: a king’s insistence”: Autho
r’s personal archive.
xiv “almost everything about homosexuality”: Author’s interview with Richard Isay.
“Homosexuality is assuredly”: Sigmund Freud, reprinted in Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, 27.
xv “the official party apparatus”: Hidden from History, ed. Martin Duberman et al., 374.
“Hitler said afterwards”: William L Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 220–25.
xvi “a magic by-word”: Donald Webster Gory, The Homosexual in America, 107–108.
I: THE FORTIES
3 “On any person who desires”: E. B. White, Here Is New York, 1.
“I think the trick is”: James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (documentary).
“We kids would stand” … “out of my head and heart”: Author’s interview with Sandy Kern, June 29, 1993.
5 “In my world” … “very into not being gay”: Author’s interview with Otis Bigelow, April 28, 1994.
7 The other man sharing: New York Times, January 10, 1989, and ibid.
“the silver and china queens”: Author’s interview with Arthur Laurents, June 14, 1995.
Bigelow, Merrick and Barr selected: Author’s interview with Otis Bigelow, April 28, 1994.
8 “It was a little bit”: Author’s interview with Murray Gitlin, February 26, 1993.
“It was like being under”: Author’s interview with Franklin Macfie, May 12, 1993.
“The city smelled totally different”: Author’s interview with Jack Dowling, May 5, 1993.
“I had a tuxedo” … “I had to face”: Author’s interview with Otis Bigelow, April 28, 1994.
11 “George was family to me”: Author’s interview with Philip Johnson, May 5, 1995.
While still a student at: New York Times, August 19, 1926, and March 5, 1974.
“gave the appearance”: Author’s interview with Paul Cadmus, October 29, 1992.
“stunning” … “I went back to school”: Author’s interview with Otis Bigelow, April 28, 1994.
12 Hoyningen-Huene had been born: New York Times, September 23, 1968; and William A. Ewing, The Photographic Art of Hoyningen-Huene, p. 13.
“You’re doing all this moping”: Author’s interview with Otis Bigelow, April 28, 1994.
“gay society at that point”: Ibid.
“fairies” … “gay hangouts”: George Chauncey, Jr., “The Policed: Gay Men’s Strategies of Everyday Resistance” in Inventing Times Square, 323.
13 “very abrupt and candid”: Tennessee Williams, Memoirs, 66, quoted in foonote in ibid., 419.
For speakeasies versus gay bars: George Chauncey, Jr., Inventing Times Square, 325.
“You’d see a cop”: Author’s interview with Roy Strickland and William Wynkoop, June 3,1993.
For statistics on sex offenders: Donald Webster Cory, The Homosexual in America, 56.
14 A red tie was sometimes … tone down their behavior: George Chauncey, Jr., Inventing Times Square, 326-27, and Before Stonewall (documentary).
“The sexual scene I’m sure” … “anything you want to”: Author’s interview with “Stephen Reynolds,” September 24, 1992.
15 “We were at that early”: Author’s interview with Jack Dowling, May 5, 1993.
“the naïveté of the public”: Author’s interview with Paul Cadmus, October 22, 1992.
16 “I grew up and came out”: Author’s interview with “James Atcheson,” October 1, 1992.
“What seems to me”: Richard Watts, Jr., New York Herald Tribune, June 14, 1942.
“Webb was playing the part”: Author’s interview with “James Atcheson,” October 1, 1992.
17 “It’ll ruin the party” … “consistency in music”: Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 41–43, 49.
The degree of protection … “the opportunity to commit suicide”: for a comprehensive account of the Welles affair, from which these facts are taken, see Ted Morgan, FDR, 677–86.
19 As a result, when the: George Chauncey; Jr., Inventing Times Square, 324–25, and Donald Webster Cory, The Homosexual in America, 45.
“Biblical condemnations of homosexual behavior”: John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 13.
“so sordid”: Newsweek November 8, 1943.
“a tall, powerfully built”: Ibid.
20 “He was a gay one” … Ritz Tower apartment: New York Journal-American, October 25, 1943; New York Post, October 26, 1943; and New York Times, October 22, 1943.
Faced with imminent separation … Las Vegas: New York Post, October 29, 1943. “neat soufflé” … “door for him”: Meyer Berger, New York Times, October 26, 1943.
21 But the unprintable details: Author’s interview with Gore Vidal, January 14, 1994.
“he admitted he had killed”: New York Times, January 3, 1946.
“I was in the army”: Author’s interview with Gore Vidal, January 14, 1994.
Although his uniform was covered: New York Times, October 29, 1943, March 29, 1944, and New York Journal-American, October 28, 1943.
“I raised my hand to knock”: New York Times, March 29, 1944.
Lonergan ordered breakfast … “shouted in the District Attorney’s office”: New York Times, October 29, 1943, and New York Journal-American, October 28, 1943.
22 “You can’t keep your eye”: New York Post, October 25, 1943.
“openly labeled in newspapers”: New York Times, October 29, 1943.
“For the first time in”: Time, November 8, 1943.
23 “Psychiatrists Give Views”: New York Journal-American, October 30, 1943.
25 “dubious joking about sexual”: Richard Watts, Jr., New York Herald Tribune, June 14, 1942.
“Was he born or made?”: Time, April 3, 1944.
“The majority of people”: Author’s interview with William Wynkoop, June 3, 1993.
On April 17, 1944: New York Times, April 18, 1944.
“civilly dead”: Ibid., February 6, 1954.
Ten years after Lonergan: New York Times, February 6, 1954.
In 1965 Lonergan challenged: Ibid., August 14, 1965.
26 He died of cancer: Ibid., January 3, 1986.
“Just after I’d graduated” … “taken me to the doctor’s”: Author’s interview with Roy Strickland, June 3, 1993.
27 Six months after the Japanese: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 35.
28 To win their rightful place: Coming Out Under Fire, 8.
Allan Bérubé reports: Ibid., 10.
On the eve of the: Ibid., 9.
29 “accepted and left alone”: Ibid., 11.
“had carved out the”: Ibid.
“an aspect of three”: Ibid., 15.
In 1942, army mobilization: Ibid., 19.
30 “subject to ridicule” … “the male pattern”: Ibid., 20.
“be on the lookout” … “machine-gunned”: Ibid., 19–21.
was “very afraid that”: Author’s interview with Murray Gitlin, February 26, 1993.
“an awful lot of gay”: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 23.
“I wanted to go in” … “to hang in”: Author’s interview with Stanley Posthorn, May 12, 1993.
32 “One of the worst”: Before Stonewall (documentary).
“instantly called”: Ibid.
“I never saw so many” … “paid again. Ever”: Author’s interview with Stanley Posthorn, May 12, 1993.
33 “They brought him back”: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 197.
34 “This plane came overhead”: Ibid., 197–98.
“all went to the plane”: Ibid., 198.
“I got in my car” … “wonderful boys were killed”: Author’s interview with “Stephen Reynolds,” September 24, 1992.
36 “It was a greaf: Author’s interviews with Stanley Posthorn, May 24, 1993, and March 28, 1994.
37 “My God!”: Author’s interview with “James Atcheson,” October 1, 1992.
“The army set up a”: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fi
re, 88–89, 97.
“Despite their hairy chests”: Life, December 12, 1942.
38 “I was wandering” … “army was a strange place”: Author’s interview with Arthur Laurents, June 14, 1995.
“You are not fighting”: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 97.
“My sisters were all” … “was very hidden”: Author’s interview with Franklin Macfie, May 12, 1993.
39 “anything feminine” … “going too far!”: Author’s interviews with Jerre Kalbas, June 1, 1993, and March 27, 1994.
“People sort of did”: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 98.
“Manhattan parties got to be”: Ibid., 113.
“During the war”: Gay Sunshine Interviews, vol. 2, ed. by Winston Leyland, 213.
“New York in wartime” … “incessant”: Author’s interview with Arthur Laurents, June 14, 1995.
40 “Everybody was released”: Author’s interview with Gore Vidal, January 14, 1994.
“Just as I put on”: Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 109–10.
“We never thought” … “not in my group”: Author’s interview with “Stephen Reynolds,” September 24, 1992.
“The men who don”: Ebony, March 1952 and March 1953, and Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 116.
41 “the first Mrs. Johnson” … “way to treat anybody”: Author’s interview with Philip Johnson, May 5, 1995.
“impeccable enunciation”: Franz Schulze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work, 93–95.
42 “model of dignity”: The New Yorker, May 4, 1940, quoted in James Gavin, Intimate Nights, 88.
“blacks and whites”: Ibid., 87–88.
“general aura”: Author’s interview with Philip Johnson, May 5, 1995.
“Phillip [sic] Johnson”: William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 213.
Kirstein biographical details: New York Times Magazine, June 20, 1982.
The Gay Metropolis Page 48