July 22

[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]| [{(o)}]|[{(o)}]

1860 – Frederick William Rolfe (d.1913), better known as Baron Corvo, also calling himself 'Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe', was an English writer, novelist, artist, fantasist and eccentric.

Rolfe was born in Cheapside, London, the son of a piano manufacturer; he left school at the age of fourteen and became a teacher. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1886. With his conversion came a strongly felt vocation to priesthood which persisted throughout his life despite being constantly frustrated and never realised. In 1887 he was sponsored to train at Oscott seminary near Birmingham and in 1889 was a student at the Scots College in Rome, but was thrown out by both due to his inability to concentrate on priestly studies. At this stage he entered the circle of the Duchess of Sforza-Cesarini, who, he claimed, adopted him as a grandson and gave him the use of the title of 'Baron Corvo'. This became his best-known pseudonym; he also used several other pseudonyms. More often he abbreviated his own name to 'Fr. Rolfe' (an ambiguous usage, suggesting he was the priest he had hoped to become).

As 'Baron Corvo' he was an occasional contributor to the Yellow Book published by John Lane; these contributions consisted of a series called Stories Toto Told Me, humorous retellings of Italian peasant legends about the saints, later collected in book form with that title and with a larger sequel, In His Own Image. These made his early reputation, such as it was, and this was enlarged by his Chronicles of the House of Borgia (1901), a serious if idiosyncratic historical study in extravangant Baroque prose. His extensive and obsessive erudition about the Renaissance period, of which the Chronicles is the most solid result, bore fruit in his two loosely-linked and intensely imagined historical novels of the Borgia period, Don Tarquinio (described by the author as 'a Kataleptic Phantasmatic Romance'), and Don Renato.

Throughout Rolfe's life, his argumentative nature made him many enemies and lost him numerous friends. Many passages of his books can be read as more or less veiled descriptions of homosexuality; this is explicit in his posthumous work The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (published 1934) in which he also took revenge on his many actual and imagined enemies. Eventually, out of money and out of luck, he died in Venice from a stroke.

Rolfe's fiction steers well clear of any 'mainstream'. His works still find interested readers today, perhaps largely on account of his prose style and the unusual personality it reveals; erudite, ornate, and somewhat pretentious, they belong on the same shelf with Symbolist prose poetry.

His most autobiographical novel is Nicholas Crabbe and his best-known by far (and least-distracting in its eccentricities) is Hadrian the Seventh (1904), a fantasy autobiography in which an obscure literary Englishman, George Arthur Rose, bearing many similarities to Rolfe (including his heavy smoking) is elected Pope and moves forward with an ambitious programme to set the world to rights. The book was very successfully adapted by Peter Luke as a stage production in London in 1968, in which the part of Hadrian/Rolfe was played by Alec McCowen. Further productions with Barry Morse played in Australia, on Broadway, and in a short USA national tour.

1889 – James Whale, film director, was born in Dudley, England, the sixth of seven children (d.1967). Thought not to be strong enough to follow his father and brothers into the local heavy industries, he trained as a cobbler. Having discovered some talent for illustration, he used his additional income to pay for evening classes at the Dudley School of Arts and Crafts.

In 1915, during World War I, he enlisted in the army and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. He was taken prisoner of war in 1917, and while imprisoned, discovered a talent for staging theatrical productions. After the war, he returned to Birmingham and embarked on a professional stage career. In 1928, he was given the opportunity to direct two fringe performances of R. C. Sherriff's then unknown First World War play Journey's End, starring the then also largely unknown Laurence Olivier. The production was such a huge success that it transferred to the West End where it played for 600 performances. Whale was invited to direct the Broadway transfer of the play and subsequently, the Hollywood film version in 1930.

His second film was the first version of Waterloo Bridge - later remade with Olivier and Vivien Leigh. But Whale is best known for his extraordinary and pioneering work in the horror genre - for his third film was Frankenstein (1931).

He subsequently directed The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - all extraordinary and groundbreaking films; apparently influenced by German silent cinema, Whale was one of the first directors ever to move the camera through the shot, creating a new fluidity of movement.

Whale directing "Frankenstein"

His other notable films include the 1936 version of Showboat and The Man In The Iron Mask (1939) - many of his other films were unsuccessful and have faded into obscurity. He walked away from directing in the early 1940s.

A novel about James Whale The Father of Frankenstein by gay writer Christopher Bram formed the basis for the film Gods and Monsters (1998) in which Ian McKellen played Whale.

In 1929, Whale and David Lewis, a young story editor and later a producer, began a relationship that lasted more than two decades. Although their sexual relationship was an open secret, they lived rather cautiously discreet lives among the English colony in Hollywood. The sexual component of their relationship ended in the early 1950s, but they remained friends until Whale's death. Whale is sometimes described as a closet homosexual, but for the time, he lived quite openly as a gay man in Hollywood.

In later life, he suffered a series of strokes which left him with memory problems and suffering from depression and loneliness - he seemed unable to put his war experiences behind him. He committed suicide by drowning in his swimming pool in 1957 - he was 67. For years, his death was shrouded in mystery as his suicide note, which read: 'The future is just old age and illness and pain ... I must have peace and this is the only way ...' was withheld by Lewis, until just before his own death many years later.

  Richard Plant with photo of younger self

1910 – Richard Plant (d.1998) was a German-American writer. He is said to have written, in addition to the works published under his own name, several detective novels or Kriminalromane, on which he collaborated with Dieter Cunz and Oskar Seidlin, and which were published under the collective pen-name of Stefan Brockhoff.

Richard Plant was born Richard Plaut in Frankfurt am Main to the family of the town councillor Theodor Plaut. Upon the accession of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933 and the zealous enforcement of the provisions of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code against homosexuality, he was obliged to leave Germany for Switzerland in concert with his partner, Oskar Seidlin. Here he obtained a doctorate from the University of Basle (Universität Basel) in 1935.

His first non-academic book seems to have been a children's tale, Die Kiste mit dem großen S., published in 1936. This was followed in 1938 by his Taschenbuch des Films. In the same year, Richard Plaut arrived in the United States, where he eventually adopted the name Richard Plant. Here another children's book, S.O.S. Geneva, co-authored with Oskar Seidlin, was published in October 1939. His next book had to await the end of the Second World War, when The Dragon in the Forest appeared in 1948.

From 1947 to 1973 Plant taught at the City University of New York, and discontinuously also at the New School for Social Research.

He is the author of The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (1986; German translation, 1991).

Richard Plant died in New York City on March 3, 1998.

 Margaret Whiting and Jack Wrangler

1924 - Margaret Whiting, singer, born. Her late-life marriage to gay porn star Jack Wrangler, much younger than herself, raised many eyebrows. When they first began dating, he protested, "But I'm gay!" to which she replied, "Only around the edges, dear."

1930 – Lewis Todd (d.2012) was a prominent figure in Greenwich Village life and Democratic politics for more than 40 years. An early pioneer in the Gay Civil Rights movement, he remained a leader in it up until his death. He was a founding member of The National Lesbian and Gay Task Force as well as of The Stonewall Democratic Club and The Village Reform Democratic Club.

As a young man, during the Korean War he enlisted in the Navy and served on the USS Smalley.

Lew Todd was a small businessman approaching middle age when Stonewall mobilized the gay community. Still, he threw himself into the flurry of largely youthful and ebullient energy that the 1969 Christopher Street riots spawned. Todd jumped into the gay liberation movement with both feet. The owner of a Mr. Softee ice cream route, he sold his business to help pay for his activist pursuits.

Todd funneled his energies into organizing gays around the country. He and Morty Manford, a lawyer and gay activist whose life was cut short by AIDS, took to the road over a six-month period to encourage new Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) chapters across the US. Hitting gay bars at peak hour on Wednesday nights, they would ask the bartender to turn off the music so they could explain the organization to patrons. The new chapter would then meet on Friday or Saturday evening to elect officers.

Gay marriage was a demand in those early glory days of activism, as was the call for an end to mob control of gay bars. In 1973, Todd and others invested in the Ballroom, a restaurant and nightclub what would serve a homosexual clientele on West Broadway in Soho. The group chose the location for the low rents then available in the neighborhood, but knew they were running up against the State Liquor Authority's regulation against serving homosexuals in bars. Todd and his partners never went to court, instead simply filing an application with the SLA, which folded rather than fight the issue. The Ballroom became the city's first club operated by and for gays.

From 1985-95 he worked for the FDNY where he had administrative responsibilities for the last 10 years of his work life.

He died September 3, 2012.

1935 – Grover Dale is an American actor, dancer, choreographer and theatre director. He studied dance from 1945 to 1952 before he appeared in his first professional job in with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera in 1953.

Dale's Broadway stage debut was in the 1956 musical, Li'l Abner as a dancer. He appeared in the original cast of West Side Story as Snowboy, a member of the Jets gang. Other stage credits include the role of Andrew in Greenwillow, in which he also understudied Anthony Perkins as Gideon Briggs. He made his film debut in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Dale was involved in a six-year relationship with actor Anthony Perkins that ended in 1973 when he married actress/singer Anita Morris; they remained married until Morris' death in 1994. Their son, actor James Badge Dale (born 1978), played the role of Simon in in the 1990 film Lord of the Flies, Chase Edmunds in the TV series 24, and is the lead actor in Rubicon.

1939 – Robert Giard (d.2002) was an American portrait, landscape, and figure photographer.

A native of Hartford, Connecticut, Giard majored in English literature and received a B.A. from Yale University in 1961, then an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Boston University in 1965. For a time he taught intermediate grades at the New Lincoln School. By 1972, he began to photograph, concentrating on landscapes of the South Fork of Long Island, portraits of friends, many of them artists and writers in the region, and the nude figure.

In 1974, Giard settled in Amagansett, Long Island, with his life partner, Jonathan Silin, an early childhood educator, where they remained for nearly thirty years until Giard's death. In the beginning years of his career, Giard did much of his landscape photography during the late autumn, winter, and early spring when many of the fashionable houses of the Hamptons were boarded up for the season.

Ultimately, it would be in the area of the formal portrait that Giard¹s career made its most indelible mark. In 1985, after seeing a performance of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart dealing with the crisis of AIDS, Giard set about documenting in straightforward, unadorned, yet sometimes witty and playful portraits, a wide survey of significant gay and lesbian literary lights. His portraits included such iconic figures as Edward Albee, Allen Ginsberg, and Adrienne Rich, as well as emerging novelists making their first mark, including Sapphire, David Leavitt, Shay Youngblood, and Michael Cunningham. A selection of these portraits, culled from the five hundred examples he had by then already amassed, was published by MIT Press in 1997 as the anthology Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, which then served as the companion volume to the New York Public Library's 1998 exhibition of the same name.

Robert Giard was the recipient of many grants and awards, and the published version of Particular Voices won a Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Photography/Art Book in 1997. Giard had a long and distinguished solo and group exhibition career throughout the United States. Examples of his work are in collections of Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Public Library, New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress. Giard's complete archive, including work books and ephemera, is now housed in the American Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

The Robert Giard Foundation was formed in 2002 with the aim of preserving his photographic legacy, promoting his work for educational purposes, and encouraging the work of young photographers. The annual Robert Giard Fellowship is a $7,500 grant to visual artists whose work addresses sexuality, gender, and issues of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identity.

 
Two Novels by Robert Taylor

1940 – A captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Robert Taylor had to deal with the stresses of being a closeted gay man on top of the other burdens war puts on any soldier. In his first novel, The Innocent, he tells the story of a similarly situated gay man.

The Innocent tells the story of a gay man, Captain Matthew Fairchild, an intelligence officer stationed in Saigon. Despite the effort it takes to hide his sexuality from a homophobic supervisor, and a secret affair with a Vietnamese busboy named Nham, Fairchild has been doing good work and receiving the commendations of his superiors. Then he stumbles across information about a massacre and a possible military cover-up, information that soon puts him at odds with the military hierarchy.

Taylor was born in Abilene, Texas; son of Larry and Virginia (Kerby) Taylor. He graduated from Texas Tech University, with a B.A. in journalism. Hobbies and other interests include singing, making homemade books.

He had joined ROTC as a way to help pay for college and upon graduation was commissioned as a second lieutenant in Army Intelligence. Graduating first in his class at Intelligence school led to an assignment at the Pentagon, in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. The war in Vietnam kept him from being released after his original commitment of three years was up. He was promoted to first lieutenant and then captain. He was sent to Vietnam in October 1966 and was assigned to the Intelligence staff of the Commanding General at Headquarters, U. S. Army Vietnam. At the end of his year there, he was awarded a Bronze Star for Meritorious Service.

During his years in the Army, Taylor had lived with the constant fear that his homosexuality would be discovered, which would have led to an automatic dishonorable discharge. Once he was a civilian again, he was determined to leave that kind of fear behind. Although all the institutions of society were, at that time, still united in their abhorrence of homosexuality, he nevertheless told his family, friends, and coworkers that he was gay and has lived openly ever since.

Taylor’s first novel, The Innocent, was published in the fall of 1997 by Fithian Press in Santa Barbara, California, and is still in print in a second printing. His second novel, All We Have Is Now, was published in hardback by St. Martin’s Press in New York City in June 2002 (later republished in paperback by The Haworth Press in 2006).

His life partner is Theodore Thomas Nowick.

1956 – Stein Erik Hagen is a Norwegian businessman. He is chairman of Orkla, where he is a major shareholder, and holds large stakes in Steen & Strøm, Jernia and Komplett through his family company Canica. According to the news magazine Kapital, Hagen is worth NOK 24 billion, making him the second richest person in Norway.

Hagen is educated at Kjøpmannsinsituttet (now part of the BI Norwegian Business School). He founded the RIMI discount store chain along with his father in the 1970s, and retained ownership until the 2000s, when he sold to Swedish ICA and Ahold. Most of the money was ploughed into Orkla. Hagen reportedly owns one of the biggest sailboats in Europe and used to own his own island in the Caribbean.

Stein Erik Hagen has three children from his first marriage, and a son from a later relationship. In 2004 he married Mille-Marie Treschow, the couple announced in 2012 that they were separating.

In October 2015, Hagen came out on the Norwegian-Swedish talk show Skavlan. Later the same day he added that he was bisexual, and that his ex-wives and family have known about his sexuality for many years.

He was almost 30 when he realized he was bisexual. "I gradually discovered that I was attracted to men," he says.He waited because he wanted his children to be older when he came out to the world.  "I have full support from the kids," he said. "It feels good. They support me 100 percent."

Homosexuality was decriminalized when Hagen was only 16. He wasn’t out but was always a gay rights supporter and campaigner.

1962 – Gil Cuadros (d.1996) was an American gay poet, essayist, and ceramist known for his writing on the impact of AIDS.

Cuadros grew up in Montebello, California with parents from Northern California. He did not have a close relationship with his father. He attended Schurr High School, where he met photographer Laura Aguilar, with whom he remained close friends throughout his life. After high school, Gil Cuadros attended East Los Angeles Community College for one year before transferring to Pasadena City College. Cuadros worked at a photo lab where he met his lover, John Edward Milosch. In 1987, Milosch died and Cuadros was diagnosed with AIDS.

Laura Aguilar encouraged Cuadros to attend Terry Wolverton's writing workshops for people with HIV at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which Cuadros did in 1988, igniting a passion for writing. Despite initially being told that he had six months to live, Cuadros lived for eight years after his diagnosis, stating that "writing literally saved my life or at least extended my life."

Cuadros won the Brody Literature Fellowship, in 1991 and he was one of the first recipients of PEN Center USA/West grants to writers with HIV. Cuadros’ only book, City of God was published in 1994.

Cuadros died of AIDS at age 34, on August 29, 1996. Joshua Guzman writes that Cuadros' literature made an impact on the history of AIDS by providing a testimonial that "explores the impact that AIDS has had on the gay Chicano community."

1973 – The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) is given first mission status in Canada. It begins holding services at Holy Trinity Church in Toronto under Rev Bob Wolfe.

1973 – Born: Singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright, who has built a successful career with witty lyrics and rich melodies that have earned him comparisons to Cole Porter and George Gershwin. Wainwright cites Al Jolson, Edith Piaf, and Nina Simone as artists who were among his early inspirations.

Wainwright comes from a distinctly musical family. His father is American folk-singer and humorist Loudon Wainwright III, and his mother is Canadian folk-singer and songwriter Kate McGarrigle. Born in Rhinebeck, New York, Rufus Wainwright grew up in Montreal, where his mother made her home after his parents separated when he was three and subsequently divorced. His sister Martha is also a singer songwriter.

At the age of fourteen Wainwright discovered that he was gay and came out publicly. He has consistently been forthright about his sexual orientation.

His self-titled first album came out in 1998. His sophisticated tunes were compared to the work of Harry Nilsson and George Gershwin. Rolling Stone magazine named him the best new artist of the year. He also resisted suggestions by his record company bosses that he play down his sexuality, which, even today, is unusual.

Wainwright's second album, Poses (2001), showed him maturing as a musician and was well received by both critics and his fans. In the same year, he contributed songs to the films I Am Sam, Shrek and Moulin Rouge, which brought him to a wider audience.

While his career was flourishing, his personal life was troubled. He became addicted to alcohol and drugs, including methamphetamines. In addition, he was depressed. He took to meeting men over the internet and engaging in loveless affairs. To break this dangerous pattern, Wainwright went into rehab and therapy. Upon his recovery, he plunged back into his work, creating new material for the albums Want One ( 2003) and Want Two (2004), which have seen him break through internationally to a yet wider audience, although he has still to break through fully into the mainstream.

Wainwright is a singer with complete security of intonation, even over a dense accompaniment. In addition to being a pianist, he can also play the guitar, often switching between the two instruments when performing live. While some of his songs feature just Wainwright with his piano, many songs are accompanied by various instruments and backing vocals, some songs even by a symphony orchestra, displaying rather complex layering and harmonies with an operatic feel. Wainwright is an avid opera fan, and the influences on his music are evident, as well as his love of Franz Schubert's Lieder. Some of Wainwright's songs have been described as 'Popera' (Pop Opera) or 'Baroque Pop'.

In June 2006 Wainwright played a pair of sell-out shows at New York's Carnegie Hall where he recreated Judy Garland's entire 1961 performance with special guests. He recreated this performance at the London Palladium in 2007.

His album Release The Stars was released in May 2007. His first opera Prima Donna, a four-handed story of a day in the life an opera diva with a libretto in French, premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2009 to mixed reviews. A sixth studio album was released in spring 2010.

In late 2010 Wainwright became engaged to his partner Jörn Weisbrodt.

In 2011, Wainwright announced that he and friend Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard Cohen, had had a child in a parenting partnership. Their daughter Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen was born on 2 February 2011 in Los Angeles.

On 23 August 2012, Wainwright and Weisbrodt married in Montauk, New York.

1977 In Toronto a second march is organized by the Coalition Against Anita Bryant to protest the homophobe’s visit to the city takes place.

1980 – The U.K. House of Commons extends the Sexual Offenses Act to cover Scotland, decriminalizing most private consensual sex acts between men.

2008 – In Greece, an Athens court rules that the term lesbian “does not define status and personality and therefore the Lesbos islanders have no reason to complain that they felt personally slighted by its use.” The word lesbian is derived from the name of the island of lesbos where the Greek poet Sappho lived.

2010 – Argentina legalizes same sex marriage.

2011 – A bill to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is introduced in U.S. Congress, overturning the 1993 law prohibiting lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from serving openly in the US military.

2011 – Norway: A lesbian couple, Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, who had been camping on a neighboring island, use their boat to ferry forty people to safety as 69 other people are being shot and killed.

2013 – Jamaica – Sixteen year old Dwayne Jones attends a party in Montego Bay dressed as a woman and dances with men. A mob identified Dwayne as male and killed him. His story gained international attention and outcry as an example of the anti-LGBT violence issues in Jamaica.