Saturday, May 25, 2013

Boys' Night Out Revisited

Do you remember Boys' Night Out, the 1962 "sex comedy" starring James Garner, Howard Morris, Tony Randall and Howard Duff as the middle-aged Boys with Kim Novak as the blonde they all lust after?

Typical of the era, this a Hollywood comedy where the sex is all talk but no real action. Not on screen, anyway. (One can safely assume that then, as now, the real action was behind the scenes in Hollywood land.) I watch movies like this and feel suddenly nostalgic for a time in American life I was too young--and too black--to know. In the sixties only white people were having wild romantic misadventures like this. Apparently.

Tell me you remember this movie. If you don't, watch for it on Turner Classic Movies or one of those "romance" premium channels and see what you make of it.

Me, I love-hate the stuff. The performers in Boys' are second generation Golden Era ; slick, smoothly attractive, energetic and amusing. Watching them go through their paces is undeniably entertaining. But the story is utterly predictable. The early sixties was basically still the fifties. The New Frontier notwithstanding, America was still shoveling the same old shit about "morality." And Hollywood was still lumbered with a Code that mandated it tease American audiences with the promise of something it had no intention of delivering.

Howie (Morris), George (Randall), and Doug (Duff) are mad men in gray flannel suits, youngish marrieds longing to break free of the suburban restrictions of their lives. They envy what they imagine to be the swinging bachelor existence of their hunky buddy Fred (Garner), who, um, still lives with his mom, Ethel, played by the droll Jessie Royce Landis. (Catch her peevish tsk about the effrontery of a feisty waitress: "Have you noticed how insolent the help is becoming lately? Ever since the Kennedys got in!" It can't be coincidence that the witty Landis was Cary Grant's wisecracking mom in North by Northwest and Grace Kelly's wry and wily mom--and Grant's future mother-in-law--in To Catch a Thief.

And as long as I'm mentioning great character players, they really should have given the marvelously pixilated Ruth McDevitt more to do in this movie; she's nearly wasted as a snoopy neighbor. As is Jim "Mr. Magoo"/"Thurston Howell The Third" Backus as the opportunistic realtor. Where did the delightfully loopy Jim Backus go?)

Following yet another unexciting evening of wives, kids, and TV dinners, the married friends hit on the idea of jointly renting an apartment in the city and installing in it a Girl. A knowing, accommodating Girly-Girl they will democratically share. All they need is their pal, good ole Fred, to help them out. Unmarried, unencumbered Fred must know lots of knowing, accommodating girls or know where to find at least one, right? Fred is appalled--and intrigued. With misgiving he allows himself to get talked into setting things up.

Of course, nothing goes according to plan--that's supposed to be the fun, isn't it?--for Cathy the Girl (Novak) turns out to be brainy as well as beautiful. She's a grad student studying the adolescent fantasies of the adult suburban male. Well, of course. Cathy and Fred meet cute haggling over the rental of the deluxe apartment Fred has found for the guys. Realizing its purpose, Cathy decides for her own purposes to go along with the arrangement. (Incidentally, Christina Hendricks could have killed in this role.)

Cathy "goes along" only to a point; this is a Hollywood studio release featuring major movie stars, after all. We know going in nothing truly eyebrow-raising is going to happen in that bachelor pad. We're here to see how it's not going to happen.

And so what we get is the predictable: cold feet and confusion ensue as the neighbor snoops, the wives find out, and their mad men panic. Hysteria reigns, but only momentarily. The comely Cathy was never really a husband-stealing siren but a Good Girl in training to be a suburban spouse. In the end she wins over the wives by becoming one of them, marrying the hunky Fred and trading in her thesis for kids and TV dinners. Ah, Hollywood! In the America of 1962 I'll bet that ending was supposed to be very reassuring, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

What would life have been like if I'd been born a Cathy or some variation thereof? As I say, a part of me loves this movie and movies like it--the superior The Seven Year Itch comes to mind--and thinks the whole outrageous notion of being an alluring movie sexpot, all curves, hips and sly, full-lipped smiles, would be a hoot. Oh to be a Girly-Girl pursued by a quartet of furtive, randy skirt chasers!

Oh, put your eyebrows down. I said a "part of me" likes the idea. The rest of me--the part with the brain--knows damn well that a sexy woman being relentlessly pursued by skirt-chasing men would actually feel harassed, beleaguered, even demoralized. I retain enough memory of my twenties and thirties to know that only in fifties and sixties Hollywood movies is the experience of being pinched, palmed, and cornered by determined males something amusing.

Was the producer of Boys' Night Out Ross Hunter? It sure looks and feels like his kind of movie. Ross Hunter was not a skirt-chaser, unless we're talking Scottish kilts. He was gay. Like every Hollywood queer of his era he understood being gay was not necessarily a problem so long as you dedicated yourself to satisfying the heterosexist imperative. So while he cast Kim Novak as the Lust Object, the focus of the men's collective fantasies, one can't resist wondering whom Hunter would have cast if he'd had his Homo druthers. What would be the all-male version of Boys' Night Out (Note how the title totally works for this revision.)

Let's see.

In the Garner role--? Too easy. Rock Hudson. The strapping, handsome, homosexual Hudson, by 1962 an assured charmer with a silky baritone and impeccable comic timing, would have been perfection as the conflicted Fred.

For the others... I don't know. Tony Perkins? Rory Calhoun? Van Johnson? No, wait--how old is Van Johnson? I mean--you know what I mean--would Van Johnson have been too old in '62 to be one of the young and restless Boys? I think yes, so maybe not him... But you see where I'm going with this, yes? (Wait--wasn't Tony Randall gay? Was Rory Calhoun gay? Is it wrong that I honestly don't care?)

And for the blonde Lust Object...

He wouldn't have to be blonde of course, but since Novak was, I'm thinking inside the box. Who would have been the '62 equivalent of the young Brad Pitt? (Who is not gay, granted, but I'm talking sexual appeal, not orientation.)

Tab Hunter? How old was Tab Hunter in 1962? About thirty, wasn't he? About the same age as Novak that year? (Would thirty be too old? What is thirty in gay years?)

I mean, how different would this movie have been--and how different its impact--had the Boys all been down low brothers-in-arms? With Rock cast in the role of Fred, whose growing love for Tab, the blonde Boy Toy, forces him--forces them all--to confront his fears and come Out?

Okay, it would never have been made. Not in 1962, and not in any era with that cast. But that's a movie I would have paid to see, wouldn't you?

See Boys' Night Out starring Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, Anthony Perkins and Rory Calhoun! With Tab Hunter as the delectable, dreamboat Boy Kevin! Howie, George and Doug are family men desperate for some man-on-man action. Watch the fun as with the help of their mother-dominated, confirmed bachelor friend Fred, they set up their own private playpen to make their fantasies come true! Nothing goes according to plan! The neighbor snoops! The wives find out! The mad men panic! And hysteria reigns!

But only momentarily.

Conceivably we could flip this in all sorts of directions: how about a gay black version of Boys' Night Out? Circa 2013? (Because frankly I'd have no idea how to cast it circa 1962.) With--help me out here--Tyler Perry in the role of Fred? What do you think?

And the closeted suburban mad men would be played by... Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan and Martin Lawrence? None of whom are gay--that I know of--but all of whom are very funny, and were very funny together in the 2010 remake of Death at a Funeral. They could, I think, bring a similar manic chemistry to another film about adolescent men having a lot of trouble growing up.

Note: Oh. According to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, it wasn't Ross Hunter who produced Boys' Night Out but the brainy beauty Cathy, star Kim Novak herself, who also worked tirelessly to promote the film. According to Mankiewicz, despite Novak's best efforts Boys' Night Out did only so-so box-office. Kim, slightly less svelte at age 29 than she used to be, took the film's relative failure as a sign that it was time to consider retirement.

Ah, well. If only the dynamic duo of Hudson and Hunter had been available... And the America of '62 had known how to lighten up.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Desperately Seeking Hepburn. And a Good Multi-Vitamin


Hand-wrote a good piece yesterday that I meant to post here. I'd planned to, just as soon as I got home. On the train I half-read my book, half-visualized myself at my desk pounding out my thoughts, publishing my words, and smiled the whole trip home.

But then I got home. And I didn't sit down and write. I hesitated, letting myself be distracted by thoughts of dinner (Why didn't I thaw the chicken breasts? should I just do a salad? are there any croutons? is there time to go out and buy some croutons?), wondering where UPS was with my package (I mean what the hell? where is it? the tracking page showed it "out for delivery" since before 1 AM!), my mom's sciatica (Is the physical therapy even helping? is she going to be in a wheelchair this time next year?) and The Looney Tunes Show (Okay, the jury's still out about the transformation of Bugs from anarchistic wiseguy to put-upon straight man but seriously, they nailed the perennially self-absorbed Daffy Duck; Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese should be pleased).

Then I was just...tired. I sat down for a while. Then I couldn't sit still. I didn't feel like sitting at another desk--having done it for six hours straight already--tapping on a keyboard. After a miserably cold and rainy April it was finally gorgeous outside; I should have been lacing my sneaks and heading to Washington Park for some much needed exercise.

Or continuing William J. Mann's dynamite bio, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn. I have to tell you, I am loving this book. I've just reached the chapter where the indomitable Kate, basking in the acclaim of her stage and screen work in The Philadelphia Story after a turbulent 10-year climb, is finally getting her chance to meet and work with actor's actor Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year, the first of their nine films. Tracy was a married, devoutly Catholic, deeply troubled, hard-drinking man's man whose torment has been glossed over in nearly every account of his life. I like how Mann's sympathetic but clear-eyed examination of Hepburn's life and myth offers as well a more honest appraisal of her beloved "Spence."

So I was just settling in with Kate when the phone rang; ohhhhhh....it was Mike. My lovely, lonely Michael, who always promises to keep it short but will bend your ear for two solid hours, saying goodbye three times before actually hanging up. (No offense, babe)

By the time I returned to the book I was too sleepy to concentrate, nodding off over the pages and snapping awake to read the same paragraph four times before giving it up.

Tomorrow, Kath,
I'm there
I swear

So that was it. With reluctance I powered off my PC, promising myself I'd post the piece tomorrow. I was just too damned tired to do anything.

I have got to do something about my metabolism. This is getting ridiculous.





Monday, May 6, 2013

My First Library

6 May
Monday PM

I predict by the end of the day this pen will be completely dried out. It's nice, with a micro tip and a stylish blue-black flow, but it's not really a day-to-day instrument. As writing instruments go.

Alright, I'm stalling. I want to write, I swear. But I can't collect my thoughts enough to do it. Really what I want is to continue uninterrupted this Hepburn bio (eerie and completely unexpected how much of my younger self I'm seeing in these engrossing pre-Tracy chapters of the Great Kate's life) but they're not paying me to sit around reading library books now are they. I'll bet though that I could do just that if I were working at a library. Well maybe on quiet days.

I miss quiet days. And if they call me, or send me a letter or email, or however they do it, and tell me they're definitely interested, and I passed all the library-type tests and whatnot, would they let me choose the location? Blackstone is just up the street. But I've been going there since grammar school. Since in fact the day Miss Harte (slim, short, That Girl flip) took me there to get my very first library card. Afterwards, like girlfriends, we got in her junky little Volkswagen clown car and she took me shopping and we had 3 each of Baskin-Robbins 33 flavors. Then we got our nails done.

Alright, that last part was a flat-out lie. Sorry, just kidding around. Technically it wasn't just me Miss Harte took to Blackstone library. It was almost her whole 4th grade class and I'm thinking we took a school bus to get there. We all got a tour of the place, upper and lower level, and were asked by the lady who ran the place (tall, glasses, pelican nose) what kind of stories we liked. As you can see, the library has a book for every interest. What are some of yours? Idiotically, everyone talked at once and I don't have a clue what I said. But she smiled, indulgently, and talked to us for quite a little while, long enough for me to notice Miss Harte's expertly pretty, pearl-pink nails, and after we each got our very own individual library cards with our individual names elegantly typed on them; thin, sandpaper colored things with rounded edges. Then we were encouraged to look around us and see what we might like to check out and take home. For this first trip we were allowed one book each.

It was fun at first, everybody scattering and giggling and rushing gleefully around like demented mice in a book-lined maze. Until Miss Harte, who practically never gets mad, raised her soft voice and started sharply scolding people, reminding us where we were and why we were there. I found this oversized book filled with some really ghastly pictures. That was the one I decided to check out, my very first library book, Great Disasters. On the cover was a faded picture of a huge oval-looking thing suspended above the ground, the bottom half of it engulfed in a cloud of fire.

At the circulation desk Miss Harte looked at it and then at me. Are you sure about this, she said, one eyebrow rising up. I hesitated. Why was she asking? Was it really so weird? What kind of books were the other girls checking out? I stared at the arch of her eyebrow, and the perfect nails holding  my book.

"Definitely," I said, taking it back from her. With a sense of real accomplishment, I handed over my new card to the pelican at the desk. "Thank you," I said politely.


Thursday, May 2, 2013

On Jason Collins and The Embrace of White Culture

 

Dear Queerty commenter,

I'm not sure why the website flagged this reply to you. Maybe it took me too long to pull my thoughts together, type them out, and click the send button which triggered some spam sensor or other. At any rate this is what I was trying to say:

Yeah, I was kind of waiting for this.

As soon as I read Jason Collins explaining the significance of the number 98 on his jersey, I knew some tone deaf malcontent (straight or queer, and most likely Black) was going to take issue with it, objecting on the grounds of race. Collins making the decision to come out of his NBA closet is an awesome cultural, social and political moment. But it seems all you've managed to take from it is how wrong it feels for him to honor the memory of a dead White boy.

Just tell me this, please. Precisely whom of all those Black men and boys whose brutalization Collins is supposedly ignoring would you have him publicly recognize? You yourself named no one in particular and that, surely, is the point. There are too many to name (especially if we include in the tally all the Black women and girls you don't bother to acknowledge), and their deaths by gay bashing are harder to track as such because their grieving families often cloak the details, refusing to allow their slain children to be publicly identified as LGBT. Too often it is Black homophobia, and the denial it produces, that subverts proper justice for Black victims of anti-gay violence.

Matthew Shepard's 1998 torture/murder was heinous and heartless, galvanizing the grief and anger of all kinds of people--not just White and not just gay--here in the United States and around the world. It was also one of the few gay bashings that shocked mainstream press organizations out of their collective indifference, forcing them to acknowledge that LGBT lives matter--and so do our deaths. Matthew's murder, the sheer mindless cruelty of it, became a call to action, and his face and name have--with his parents' full cooperation--come to symbolize the horrifying consequences of homophobia.

This, I'm sure, is why Jason Collins selected 98. It isn't that other victims, known or unknown, don't matter; rather the nod to Matthew is meant to acknowledge all the victims of intolerance and hatred--Black Trannies, White Bisexuals, Lesbian Latinas, Asian Gays and every gender, racial and ethnic rainbow member in between--that Matthew's martyrdom represents.

I'm sorry, but I do not see how Jason's public acknowledgment of Matthew Shepard translates as an "embrace of white culture and all that comes with it." Nor, at this writing, has Collins revealed he has a boyfriend or partner, White or otherwise. But even if he does, so what? You seem to be suggesting that Black queers should stay on their side of the color line where they belong. You identify as a Black gay man--are you sure you want to say that? Would that sentiment be agreeable to you coming out of the mouth of a White person?

To your final point, if Black gay relationships are "invisible," overwhelmingly the reason for it is that too many Black men, most especially those with public profiles, persist in living DL existences.

In which case your quarrel is absolutely not with Jason Collins.

Jason Collins Has Come Out -- Why It Matters



I work in an office filled with lively, opinionated folks of various ages yet so far most have been quiet as church cathedrals on the subject of NBA player Jason Collins coming out as gay. Maybe there's conversation going on, just not in my hearing. Interesting.

There's plenty of chatter going on about Collins in cyberspace of course, including the inevitable and dismissive "Who cares?" and "Why does it even matter?" For sheer towering cluelessness, there's also a fair sprinkling of my personal favorite: "Straight people don't come out as straight, so why do gay people think they have to?"

Let's take that last bit of disingenuousness first.

I've said this before (as have many others before me), but apparently whenever someone of note comes out of the closet it bears repeating: straight people don't have to "come out" as straight because historically the culture in which we live already presumes everyone to be straight, expects them to be. Slowly, as more LGBT people make their presences felt, this becomes less the case. Even so there remains a marked tendency on the part of many people to assume that because they are heterosexual so is every single person they encounter in the course of their day.

Besides, that argument is false: straight people actually do come out, all the time, in all sorts of ways. They telegraph their heterosexuality in water cooler conversation about remembered romantic getaways with their spouse or significant other, upcoming wedding anniversaries and family celebrations. They do it by expressing affectional interest in a new acquaintance, or sexual interest in a person passing by them on the street.

As to the knee jerk "who cares" and "why does it matter" responses, well, bunk.

Of course it matters and on some level everybody cares. Maybe you're so over it, but most people are fascinated by gossip about who is or might be queer, particularly when the talk involves celebrities, especially when the talk involves male celebrities. Whether or not LGBT people should be allowed to legally marry, adopt, teach in public schools, be accorded legal protection from discrimination in housing and employment, and serve in the armed forces--or play team sports--without having to lie and hide, continue to be subjects of heated debate, here and elsewhere around the world.

In that circumstance, it's impossible to read the "who cares" retort as anything but a wish to close down any further discussion about the subject of non-heterosexuality: stop talking, I don't need to hear about this, I don't want to know. Invariably these people insist they have no problem with gay, and really don't care one way or the other. You're gay? Fine, whatever, but I don't need to know. Just shut up about it.

But that's precisely the problem. As someone eloquently posted to Facebook recently, the price of your acceptance of me should not have to be my silence. That you'd require me to be invisible as a condition for allowing me to breathe the same air as you effectively condemns me to a life on the margins, where I can never feel sure of my welcome in your house or indeed my value as a fellow human being. Silence sends me right back to the closet.

Silence also kills. Especially if, like Mr. Collins and me, you are Black.

According to recent data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Black people account for almost half of AIDS deaths in the U.S. since the epidemic's beginnings and we remain the racial/ethnic group most affected by the disease, with young Black gay men accounting for more new rates of infection than any other race/ethnic, age or gender group. Poverty, higher rates of incarceration, and lack of access to comprehensive health care are the significant factors that explain this.

But stigma--the shame and disgrace associated with homosexuality--all but ensures the spread of HIV and AIDS. The fear of revealing yourself as gay, and the unconscious conviction that you are something broken, defective, less than and your life without worth, because you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, becomes for far too many in communities of color a barrier to seeking testing and treatment services, and life-saving prevention information.

That fear and shame discourage many Black LGBT people from coming out to their family and friends. The consequent lack of emotional support deepens feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression that drive risky behavior.

So it turns out coming out matters. A lot. Whenever someone comes out, they confront the gossip and change the conversation about what being gay means. Instead of everyone else defining you, you define yourself. You tell people who don't know, what gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender is simply by telling them who you are. If silence breeds denial, disrespect and self-hatred, your "starting the conversation" can break down the walls misunderstanding, foster empathy and acceptance, and save lives.

This is why Jason Collins coming out matters. Because he matters.

Because we all do.