Elisa Rolle's Blog, page 243

February 2, 2017

Lou Harrison (May 14, 1917 - February 2, 2003)

Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo.
Born: May 14, 1917, Portland, Oregon, United States
Died: February 2, 2003, Lafayette, Indiana, United States
Education: University of California, Los Angeles
Burlingame High School
San Francisco State University
Black Mountain College
Lived: Harrison House, 6881 Mt Lassen Ave, Joshua Tree, CA 92252, USA (34.12816, -116.22678)
Partner: Todd Burlingame, William Colvig
Awards: Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada

Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and KPH Notoprojo (formerly called KRT Wasitodiningrat, informally called Pak Cokro). William (Bill) Colvig was an electrician and amateur musician who was the partner for 33 years of Harrison, whom he met in San Francisco, California in 1967. Colvig helped construct the so-called "American gamelan“, a full Javanese-style gamelan, modeled on the instrumentation of Kyai Udan Mas at U.C. Berkeley. Harrison lived for many years with Colvig in Aptos, California. They purchased land in Joshua Tree, California, where they designed and built the Harrison House Retreat, a straw bale house. Harrison died in Lafayette, Indiana, from a heart attack while on his way to a festival of his music at The Ohio State University. Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the music of non-Western cultures into his work, with a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, including ensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and his partner William Colvig.
Together from 1967 to 2000: 33 years.
William “Bill” Colvig (1917-2000)
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 - February 2, 2003)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?...
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?...

Harrison House Music & Arts is a non-profit artist residency, performance and community arts program based in the late composer Lou Harrison’s desert retreat in Joshua Tree, California. In addition to providing an enriching creative setting to dedicated artists the program offers high-quality performing arts and workshops to the local and visiting community.
Address: 6881 Mt Lassen Ave, Joshua Tree, CA 92252, USA (34.12816, -116.22678)
Type: Guest Facility (open to public)
Phone: +1 760-366-4712
Place
Harrison House is the straw bale "composer’s cave" that Lou Harrison completed in 2002 on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park. Of his chosen construction method Lou Harrison noted, "America grows enough straw in one year to satisfy all of its building needs." The design, inspired by the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, is a unique structure featuring a vaulted hall that measures 36' X 12' with a sixteen foot ceiling-- proportions chosen by Harrison to create a superb and intimate sound environment for acoustic music. Harrison had one year to visit and enjoy his studio retreat where he worked on his final musical composition "Scenes from Nek Chand" for custom-made steel guitar. This structure is a special integration of design, form, materials, light, acoustics and history. The experience of being inside has been likened to a chapel, mosque or temple. It is a special gem of approximately 1,000 square feet. The vaulted main room is flanked on both sides by three equal-sized spaces. To the north are three outdoor patios separated by rounded buttresses. To the south is a "monkish" bedroom, a bathroom with all fixtures built into the corners, and a fully equipped kitchen in which Harrison’s long-time friend, and renowned artist/choreographer, Remy Charlip painted the cabinetry. Artists who have been in residence have continued to adorn the house with their work. Harrison chose Joshua Tree as the location for his retreat because the dry desert air agreed with him, the stark beauty and desert ecology attracted him and he delighted in taking his friends on tours of the area. A rich cultural history, surreal geological features and a fascinating variety of plants and animals describes the area in and around Joshua Tree National Park. The arts also hold a place in its history, including prehistoric petroglyphs and historic murals painted on buildings throughout the nearby town of Twentynine Palms. Artists have been visiting the Joshua Tree desert for decades to nourish their creativity and this burgeoning arts community continues to flourish.
Life
Who: William “Bill” Colvig (1917-2000) and Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917- February 2, 2003)
Lou Harrison was an American composer. Bill Colvig was an electrician and amateur musician who was the partner for 33 years of Harrison, whom he met in San Francisco, California in 1967. Harrison lived for many years with Colvig in Aptos, California. They purchased land in Joshua Tree, California, where they designed and built the Harrison House Retreat, a straw bale house. Harrison died in Lafayette, Indiana, from a heart attack while on his way to a festival of his music at The Ohio State University.

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 02, 2017 01:54

Israel David Fishman (February 21, 1938 – June 14, 2006)

Buried: Montefiore Cemetery, Springfield Gardens, Queens County, New York, USA
Anniversary: February 2, 1974

Israel David Fishman was best known for founding the Task Force on Gay Liberation (TFGL), a section of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Libraries Association. After leaving librarianship, Fishman went to Los Angeles, California for a period of work and study at the Gay Community Services Center. He returned to New York in the winter of 1973. A course in Swedish massage led to a new career as a masseur. On February 2, 1974, Fishman met Carl Navarro at a performance of the play Out of the Frying Pan at the West Side Discussion Group (a regular gathering of gay men in New York City). The two became boyfriends (their preferred term), and began living together shortly thereafter, beginning a lasting relationship. The couple's activities included, for a number of years, lengthy annual trips to Italy, where they established many friendships. They celebrated their twentieth anniversary with a festive dinner party in 1994. They celebrated their 32 anniversary just before Fishman’s sudden death.
Together from 1974 to 2006: 32 years.
Israel David Fishman (February 21, 1938 - 2006)
Anniversary: February 2, 1974

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 02, 2017 01:50

Hilton Edwards (February 2, 1903 – November 18, 1982)

Hilton Edwards was an English-born Irish actor, lighting designer and theatrical producer. He was the son of Thomas George Cecil Edwards and Emily Edwards. Edwards was born in London.
Born: February 2, 1903, London, United Kingdom
Died: November 18, 1982, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Lived: 1 Bathurst Mansions, 460 Holloway Road, N7
4 Harcourt Terrace, Dublin
Buried: Saint Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton, County Dublin, Ireland
Partner: Micheál Mac Liammóir
Books: Elephant in flight
Parents: Emily Edwards, Thomas George Cecil Edwards

Hilton Edwards was an English-born Irish actor and theatrical producer. Micheál MacLiammóir was an English-born Irish actor, dramatist, impresario, writer, poet and painter. As Alfred Willmore, he was one of the leading child actors on the English stage, in the company of Noël Coward. While acting in Ireland with a touring company of his brother-in-law Anew MacMaster, MacLiammóir met Edwards. Deciding to remain in Dublin, where they lived at Harcourt Terrace, MacLiammóir and Edwards threw themselves into their venture, cofounding the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928, which remains Dublin’s most progressive theatre. MacLiammóir is the subject of the 1990 play The Importance of Being Micheál (also published as a book) by John Keyes. Edwards and MacLiammóir were the subject of a biography, titled The Boys by Christopher Fitz-Simon.
Together from 1927 to 1978: 51 years.
Hilton Edwards (February 2, 1903 – November 18, 1982)
Alfred Willmore aka Micheál MacLiammóir (October 25, 1899 – March 6, 1978)

Queer Places, Vol. 3 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906695
ISBN-10: 1532906692
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228901
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906692/?...
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZXI10E/?...

St. Fintan's Cemetery is located in Sutton, on the south side of Carrickbrack Road in Dublin, Ireland. It is in two parts: one older, with a ruined keeper's cottage and the remnants of old St. Fintan's Church; one newer, and actively used, lower down the hill. Just beyond the older portion is the still-flowing, still-visited St. Fintan's Holy Well.
Address: St Fintan's Cres, Dublin, Ireland (53.37883, -6.09371)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Place
Hilton Edwards, director, is buried here with his long-time partner Micheál Mac Liammhóir, author and playwright.
Life
Who: Hilton Edwards (February 2, 1903 – November 18, 1982) and Alfred Willmore aka Micheál MacLiammóir (October 25, 1899 – March 6, 1978)
Hilton Edwards was an English-born Irish actor and theatrical producer. Micheál MacLiammóir was an English-born Irish actor, dramatist, impresario, writer, poet and painter. As Alfred Willmore, he was one of the leading child actors on the English stage, in the company of Noël Coward. While acting in Ireland with a touring company of his brother-in-law Anew MacMaster, MacLiammóir met Edwards. Deciding to remain in Dublin, where they lived at Harcourt Terrace, MacLiammóir and Edwards threw themselves into their venture, cofounding the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928, which remains Dublin’s most progressive theatre. MacLiammóir is the subject of the 1990 play The Importance of Being Micheál (also published as a book) by John Keyes. Edwards and MacLiammóir were the subject of a biography, titled The Boys by Christopher Fitz-Simon.

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 02, 2017 01:43

Havelock Ellis (February 2. 1859 – July 8, 1939)

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis, was an English physician, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality.
Born: February 2, 1859, Croydon, United Kingdom
Died: July 8, 1939, Hintlesham, United Kingdom
Education: St Thomas's Hospital Medical School
Lived: 14 Dover Mansions, Canterbury Crescent, Brixton, London SW9 7QF, UK
Buried: Golders Green Crematorium
Spouse: Edith Ellis (m. 1891)

Havelock Ellis was a British physician, co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897. In 1887, he met Edith Lees at a meeting of the Fellowship of the New Life. Other members included Edward Carpenter, Edith Nesbit, Frank Podmore, Isabella Ford, Henry Hyde Champion, Hubert Bland, Edward Pease and Henry Stephens Salt. Another member, Ramsay MacDonald, said the group was influenced by the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1890 Ellis' first book, The New Spirit, was published. Lees later wrote: "When I first read The New Spirit, I knew I loved the man who wrote it." Their marriage was highly unconventional. They maintained separate incomes and, for large parts of the year, separate homes. It seems that they did not have a sexual relationship (apparently Ellis was impotent and a virgin until 60.) Ellis wrote that "on my side I felt that in this respect we were relatively unsuited to each other, that (sexual) relations were incomplete and unsatisfactory". Lees’s first relationship with a woman was with whom Ellis called "Claire" in his autobiography, My Life. In 1898 Lees published her first novel, Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll. During this period Edith began a relationship with Lily, an artist from Ireland who lived in St. Ives. “In Lily she found the ideal embodiment of all her cravings." Ellis claimed that he did not mind Edith's passionate relationship with Lily because Claire had absorbed all his capacity for jealously. Edith was devastated when Lily died from Bright's Disease in June, 1903.
Together from 1887 to 1916: 29 years.
Edith Lees (1861 – September 1916)
Henry Havelock Ellis (February 2. 1859 – July 8, 1939)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?...
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?...

English Heritage Blue Plaque: 14 Dover Mansions, Canterbury Crescent, Henry Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), “Pioneer in the scientific study of sex lived here"
Address: Brixton, London SW9 7QF, UK
Type: Historic Street (open to public)
Place
Brixton is a district of London, located in the borough of Lambeth in south London. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. The area remained undeveloped until the beginning of the XIX century, the main settlements being near Stockwell, Brixton Hill and Coldharbour Lane. The opening of Vauxhall Bridge in 1816 improved access to Central London and led to a process of suburban development. The largest single development, and one of the last in suburban character, was Angell Town, laid out in the 1850s on the east side of Brixton Road, and so named after a family that owned land in Lambeth from the late XVII century until well into the XX. One of a few surviving windmills in London, built in 1816, is just off Brixton Hill and surrounded by houses built during Brixton’s Victorian expansion. When the London sewerage system was constructed during the mid-XIX century, its designer Sir Joseph Bazalgette incorporated flows from the River Effra, which used to flow through Brixton, into his “high-level interceptor sewer,” also known as the Effra sewer. Brixton was transformed into a middle class suburb between the 1860s and 1890s. Railways linked Brixton with the centre of London when the Chatham Main Line was built through the area by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in the 1860s. In 1880, Electric Avenue was so named after it became the first street in London to be lit by electricity. In this time, large expensive houses were constructed along the main roads in Brixton, which were converted into flats and boarding houses at the start of the XX century as the middle classes were replaced by an influx of the working classes. By 1925, Brixton attracted thousands of new people. It housed the largest shopping centre in South London at the time, as well as a thriving market, cinemas, pubs and a theatre. In the 1920s, Brixton was the shopping capital of South London with three large department stores and some of the earliest branches of what are now Britain’s major national retailers. Today, Brixton Road is the main shopping area, fusing into Brixton Market. A prominent building on Brixton High Street (at 472–488 Brixton Road) is Morleys, an independent department store established in the 1920s. On the western boundary of Brixton with Clapham stands the Sunlight Laundry, an Art Deco factory building. Designed by architect F.E. Simpkins and erected in 1937, this is one of the few art deco buildings that is still owned by the firm that commissioned it and is still used for its original purpose. The Brixton area was bombed during WWII, contributing to a severe housing crisis, which in turn led to urban decay. This was followed by slum clearances and the building of council housing. In the 1940s and 1950s, many immigrants, particularly from the West Indies, settled in Brixton. More recent immigrants include a large Portuguese community (Little Portugal) and other European citizens. Brixton also has an increasingly ageing population, which affects housing strategies in the area. The Brixton Gay Community of the 1970s formed around the UK’s first gay centre and a series of nearby squatted houses. Between 50 and 60 men lived in these squats for anything from a week to ten years. In oral testimonies many of them describe how their experience shaped their politics, their ideas about sexual identity and community, and their creative lives. The South London Gay Liberation Front, the journal Gay Left and the Brixton Faeries are each linked to the squatting community, which in the mid-1980s was absorbed into the Brixton Co-op. The houses – and the communal garden that connects them – are still reserved for gay and lesbian tenants: a tangible legacy of the earlier community.
Notable queer residents at Brixton:
• David Bowie (January 8, 1947 –January 10, 2016) was born at 40 Stansfield Road.
• Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), pioneer sexologist lived at 14 Dover Mansions, Canterbury Crescent.

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228833
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906315/?...
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1KZBO/?...

Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain.
Address: 60 Hoop Ln, London NW11 7NH, UK (51.57687, -0.19413)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Phone: +44 20 8455 2374
English Heritage Building ID: 199262 (Grade II, 1993)
Place
The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000, and the crematorium was opened in 1902 by Sir Henry Thompson. The crematorium, the Philipson Family mausoleum, designed by Edwin Lutyens, the wall, along with memorials and gates, the Martin Smith Mausoleum, and Into The Silent Land statue are all Grade II listed buildings. The gardens are included in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Golders Green Crematorium, as it is usually called, is in Hoop Lane, off Finchley Road, Golders Green, London NW11, ten minutes’ walk from Golders Green tube station. It is directly opposite the Golders Green Jewish Cemetery (Golders Green is an area with a large Jewish population.) The crematorium is secular, accepts all faiths and non-believers; clients may arrange their own type of service or remembrance event and choose whatever music they wish. A map of the Gardens of Remembrance and some information on persons cremated here is available from the office. The staff are very helpful in finding a specific location. The columbaria are now locked, although they can still be visited (if accompanied.) There is also a tea room.
Notable queer burials at Golders Green Crematorium:
• Richard Addinsell (1904-1977), was a British composer, best known for film music, primarily his Warsaw Concerto, composed for the 1941 film “Dangerous Moonlight” (also known under the later title “Suicide Squadron”). Addinsell retired from public life in the 1960s, gradually becoming estranged from his close friends. He was, for many years, the companion of the fashion designer Victor Stiebel, who died in 1976.
• Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932), Scholar and advocate of a league of nations. He was the third of the five children of Lowes Cato Dickinson (1819-1908) and his wife, Margaret Ellen (d. 1882), daughter of William Smith Williams.
• Edith Ellis (1861-1916), psychologist. She was noted for her novels and memoirs.
• Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), psychologist. He and his wife, Edith Ellis, were psychologists and writers. He wrote the controversial "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," which was banned as obscene.
• Anna Freud (1895-1982) and Dorothy Burlingham (1891-1979), next to each other and to others in the Freud family, including Sigmund Freud.
• Kenneth Halliwell (1926-1967), British actor and writer. He was the mentor, partner, and the eventual murderer of playwright Joe Orton. Their ashes were mingled and scattered in the same garden.
• Leslie Poles Hartley (1895–1972), known as L. P. Hartley, was a British novelist and short story writer. Until his death in 1972, Hartley lived alone but for a household of servants, in London, Salisbury and at a home on the Avon, near Bath. Between the wars, Venice was a favoured and frequent destination.
• Ivor Novello (1893-1951), actor, writer and lyricist. His ashes are buried beneath a lilac tree which has a plaque enscribed "Ivor Novello 6th March 1951 ‘Till you are home once more’.” He has also a memorial inside the St. Paul's Cathedral (New Change, London, London, EC4M 9AD)
• Norman O'Neill (1875-1934), British composer and conductor. His studies were facilitated by Eric Stenbock, with whom it is said he had a relationship. He married Adine Berthe Maria Ruckert (1875-1947) on 2 July 1899 in Paris, France. Adine was a celebrated pianist and music teacher in her own right. When he died in 1934 he was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, London, as was Adine on her death in 1947. There is a plaque there in memory to both of them.
• Joe Orton (1933-1967), playwright. Orton and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, moved at 25 Noel Road, Islington, in 1959, at a time when the area was far from fashionable. Eight years later, Halliwell killed himself after murdering Orton.
Cremated here but ashes taken elsewhere:
• Sir Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), 1st Earl of Bewdley, K.G., P.C. was the leading Conservative politician between the two world wars and was Prime Minister for three terms (1923-4, 1924-29 and 1935-37). Ashes removed to Worcester Cathedral.
• Roger Fry (1866-1934), English artist and critic, a member of the Bloomsbury group. He had an affair with Vanessa Bell, and when she left him, he was heartbroken. Only in 1924 he found happiness with Helen Anrep, a former wife of the Russian-born mosaicist, Boris Anrep. His ashes were placed in the vault of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, in a casket decorated by Vanessa Bell.
• In his later years Lord Ronald Gower had been a crusader for cremation, and after his death on March 9, 1916 his body was cremated at Golders Green, and his ashes were interred at Rusthall, Kent, on March 14, 1916.
• John Inman (1935-2007), actor, star of “Are You Being Served?,” location of ashes unknown.
• Joan Werner Laurie (1920–1964) was an English book and magazine editor. She met journalist and broadcaster Nancy Spain in 1950 and they became life partners. Joan and Nancy lived openly together with their sons, and later the couple provided a home to Windmill Theatre owner and rally driver Sheila van Damm. She was learning to fly when she died, with Nancy Spain and four others, when the Piper Apache aeroplane crashed near Aintree racecourse on the way to the 1964 Grand National. She was cremated with Spain at Golders Green Crematorium, London. The relationship between Werner Laurie and Spain is described in Rose Collis' biography of Nancy Spain, published in 1997.

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 02, 2017 01:31

Adelaide Anne Procter (October 30, 1825 – February 2, 1864)

Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter never married.
Born: October 30, 1825, Bedford Square, London, United Kingdom
Died: February 2, 1864, London, United Kingdom
Buried: Kensal Green Cemetery, Kensal Green, London Borough of Brent, Greater London, England
Parents: Bryan Procter

Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, London, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Address: Harrow Rd, London W10 4RA, UK (51.52998, -0.22806)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Hours: Monday through Friday 9.00-17.00
Phone: +44 20 8969 0152
English Heritage Building ID: 1403609 (Grade II, 2012)
Place
The Cemetery of All Souls at Kensal Green was the earliest of the large privately-run cemeteries established on the fringes of London to relieve pressure on overcrowded urban churchyards. Its founder George Frederick Carden intended it as an English counterpart to the great Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, which he had visited in 1821. In 1830, with the financial backing of the banker Sir John Dean Paul, Carden established the General Cemetery Company, and two years later an Act of Parliament was obtained to develop a 55-acre site at Kensal Green, then among open fields to the west of the metropolis. An architectural competition was held, but the winning entry – a Gothic scheme by HE Kendall – fell foul of Sir John’s classicising tastes, and the surveyor John Griffith of Finsbury was eventually employed both to lay out the grounds and to design the Greek Revival chapels, entrance arch and catacombs, built between 1834 and 1837. A sequence of royal burials, beginning in 1843 with that of Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, ensured the cemetery’s popularity. It is still administered by the General Cemetery Company, assisted since 1989 by the Friends of Kensal Green. The Reformers’ Memorial was erected in 1885. It was erected at the instigation of Joseph Corfield “to the memory of men and women who have generously given their time and means to improve the conditions and enlarge the happiness of all classes of society.” Lists of names of reformers and radicals on north and east sides (together with further names added in 1907 by Emma Corfield.)
Notable queer burials at Kensal Green:
• A simple Portland stone headstone with curved and slightly moulded profile to the top is the burial place for James Miranda Stuart Barry (ca. 1789–1865.) The leaded inscription reads: “Dr James Barry / Inspector General of Hospitals / Died July 25, 1865 / Aged 70 years.” Commemorates James Barry, a.k.a. Margaret Bulkley, a leading military doctor and the first woman to qualify in medicine in this country, who lived all her professional life in disguise as a man.
• Ossie Clarke (1942-1996), Fashion Designer. Born in Liverpool, he showed an early interest in clothes design. In 1958, he enrolled at the Regional College of Art in Manchester, where he met painter David Hockney and the textile designer Celia Birtwell. He attented the Royal College of Art from 1962-1965, and secured a first-class degree. He first featured in Vogue, August 1965, and quickly made his mark in the fashion industry. His fashion show at Chelsea Town Hall was attended by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
• The name of Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904), an Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and leading women’s suffrage campaigner, is included in the Reformers’ Memorial.
• Sir Leander Starr Jameson, 1st Bt. (1853-1917)’s body was laid in a vault at Kensal Green Cemetery on Nov. 29, 1917, where it remained until the end of WWI. On 22 May, 1920, the burial was moved in a grave cut in the granite on the top of the mountain which Rhodes had called The View of the World, beside the grave of his friend, Cecil Rhodes.
• Isabella Kelly Hedgeland, née Fordyce (1759-1857), Scottish novelist and poet. Her son William was befriended as a boy by the writer Matthew Lewis, by many considered his protector and possible lover.
• In 2013 a memorial plaque to Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) was placed in Kensal Green Cemetery, where the singer was cremated back in 1991.
• Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) was an English poet and philanthropist. Critic Gill Gregory suggests that Procter may have been a lesbian and in love with Matilda Hays, a fellow member of the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women; other critics have called Procter's relationship with Hays "emotionally intense." Procter's first volume of poetry, “Legends and Lyrics” (1858) was dedicated to Hays and that same year Procter wrote a poem titled "To M.M.H." in which Procter "expresses love for Hays.” Hays was a novelist and translator of George Sand and a controversial figure ... [who] dressed in men's clothes and had lived with the actress Charlotte Cushman and sculptor Harriet Hosmer. Hays oversaw the tending of Procter's grave after her death and mourned her passing throughout her later years. Hays died in Liverpool and is buried at Toxteth Park Cemetery.
• Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) died in Hamilton, Bermuda, from bone cancer in 1977, aged 66. His cremated remains were deposited in the family vault at Kensal Green Cemetery.
• Dorothy “Dolly” Wilde (1895-1941), buried with her mother, Sophia Teixeira de Mattos. An Anglo-Irish socialite, made famous by her family connections, her uncle was Oscar Wilde, and her reputation as a witty conversationalist. Her charm and humour made her a popular guest at salons in Paris between the wars, standing out even in a social circle known for its flamboyant talkers.
Life
Who: James Miranda Stuart Barry (ca. 1789–1865)
Dr. James Barry was an army medical officer, and – as a lifelong transvestite – the first woman to qualify in medicine in the United Kingdom. She was born Margaret Bulkley, the daughter of Ann Bulkley of Cork, whose brother was the artist James Barry RA. The date of her birth has been variously placed between 1789 and 1799. A family crisis in 1803 had left the Bulkleys destitute, but an inheritance from her uncle, and the support of a family friend General Francisco Miranda, the Venezuelan revolutionary, allowed Margaret to travel to London to continue her education. In 1809, under the sponsorship of the eleventh earl of Buchan, she enrolled at Edinburgh University as a literary and medical student under the name of James Barry, and from this point until her death she passed as male. She received her MD in 1812 and the following year, after a brief spell as a pupil at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, enlisted in the medical ranks of the British Army. She served in Cape Town, Mauritius, Jamaica, St Helena, the Windward and Leeward Islands, Malta and Corfu, ending her career in Canada as Inspector General of Hospitals. She carried out a caesarean section in Cape Town in 1826, in which both mother and child survived – a feat not performed in Britain until 1833. She may herself have had a child in 1819, possibly by Lord Charles Somerset (1767-1831), the governor of the Cape. She was noted throughout her career for her kindness and concern for the oppressed, but also for her ferocious temper; at Sebastopol in 1855 she met Florence Nightingale, who described her as “the most hardened creature I ever met throughout the army.” Barry retired due to ill health in 1859, and died in London on July 25, 1865, the year that Elizabeth Garrett Anderson received her medical licence. Her long deception enabled her to become one of the most successful and respected military doctors of her time, insisting on rigorous hygiene and adequate living conditions for those in her care long before such demands became commonplace. Her strange appearance, flamboyant dress and flirtatious behaviour frequently gave rise to rumours about her gender and sexuality, but her secret was not finally revealed until after her death. Barry lived at 14 Margaret Street, W1W, towards the end of his life and eventually died here on July 25, 1865.

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 02, 2017 01:23

February 1, 2017

William Bory (August 18, 1950 - November 12, 1993)

Books: Orpheus in his Underwear
Nominations: Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry
Anniversary: February 1, 1973

Dr. Charles Silverstein, Ph.D. is an American writer, therapist and gay activist. His first published work was The Joy of Gay Sex, co-authored with Edmund White (1977). He is a frequent lecturer at conventions on both the state and national levels, author of eight books and many professional papers. “For the Ferryman (2011, Chelsea Station Editions) is a stunning memoir. Charles Silverstein spends a considerable bulk of the memoir charting the gay radicalism of the 1970s… [and] pairs these passages with intimate glimpses into his twenty-year romantic relationship with William Bory, a radical gay activist who was prone to several neuroses and a host of addictions. Rather than idealizing his lover, Silverstein captures Bory in all his complexities: charming, difficult and maddeningly broken.” -Angelo Nikolopoulos, Next.
Together from 1973 to 1993: 20 years.
Charles Silverstein (born April 23, 1935)
William Bory (August 18, 1950 - November 12, 1993)
Anniversary: February 1, 1973
We dated the "official" relationship as beginning February 1, 1973. Because that was the day that he moved into my Inwood apartment, although we had been intimate for many weekends beforehand. As one can see by the photograph, hair was still "in." A few years before, William's hair came down to his waist and mine to my shoulders. Lots of hair was a defining feature of New York's gay liberation. We met at the Firehouse operated by New York's Gay Activist Alliance and both of us were very active in their politics. For the Ferryman: A Personal History documents the conflicts and successes of both New York gay radical politics and the relationship between William and me. Gay love relationships were difficult at this time when they were perceived as sinful and illegal by the wider society. Although William died on November 12, 1993, I think of him often. I love him still. -Charles Silverstein

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 01, 2017 08:50

Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry.
Born: February 1, 1902, Joplin, Missouri, United States
Died: May 22, 1967, New York City, New York, United States
Education: Lincoln University
Columbia University
Lived: Langston Hughes House, 12 E 127th St, New York, NY 10035, USA (40.80724, -73.94082)
Buried: under the floor, beneath an engraving of one of his famed poems within the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.
Books: The Weary Blues, more
Awards: Quill Award for Poetry, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, more

Langston Hughes House is a historic home located in Harlem, New York, New York.
Address: 12 E 127th St, New York, NY 10035, USA (40.80724, -73.94082)
Type: Private Property
National Register of Historic Places: 82001198, 1982
Place
Built in 1869
An Italianate style dwelling, three story with basement, rowhouse faced in brownstone and measuring 20 feet wide and 45 feet deep. Noted African American poet and author Langston Hughes (1902-1967) occupied the top floor as his workroom from 1947 to 1967.
Life
Who: James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)
Langston Hughes was a poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue,” which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue.” Some academics and biographers today believe that Hughes was homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, similar in manner to Walt Whitman, whom Hughes cited as an influence on his poetry. Hughes’s story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father’s anger over his son’s effeminacy and "queerness.” The biographer Aldrich argues that, in order to retain the respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted. On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music. Hughes's ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture (515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037). The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 01, 2017 08:48

Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship.
Born: July 7, 1911, Cadegliano-Viconago
Died: February 1, 2007, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Education: Curtis Institute of Music
Milan Conservatory
Lived: Capricorn, Capricorn, Haines Road, west of Croton Lake Road, Mt Kisco, NY 10549, USA (41.23958, -73.73527)
Yester House, Gifford, Haddington, East Lothian EH41 4JF, UK (55.89542, -2.73147)
Buried: Yester Kirk, Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland
Movies: The Medium, Menotti: Help, Help the Globolinks, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Telephone
Children: Francis Menotti

Samuel Barber was a composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. He is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century: music critic Donal Henahan stated, "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music, for his opera Vanessa and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. At 14, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova, composition with Rosario Scalero, and voice with Emilio de Gorgoza. He began composing seriously in his late teenage years. Around the same time, he met fellow Curtis schoolmate Gian Carlo Menotti, who became his partner in life as well as in their shared profession. Menotti supplied the libretto (text) for Barber's opera, Vanessa. Menotti also contributed the libretto for Barber's chamber opera A Hand of Bridge. Barber's Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966. In recent years, a revised version for which Menotti provided collaborative assistance has enjoyed some success.
Together from 1929 to 1981: 52 years.
Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)
Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981)

Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228297
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532901909/?...
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1BU9K/?...

Yester House is an early XVIII-century mansion near Gifford in East Lothian, Scotland. It was the home of the Hay family, later Marquesses of Tweeddale, from the XV century until the 1970s.
Address: Gifford, Haddington, East Lothian EH41 4JF, UK (55.89542, -2.73147)
Type: Private House
Historic Scotland Building ID: 14693 (Category A, 1971)
Place
Construction of the present house began in 1699, and continued well into the 18th century in a series of building phases. It is now protected as a category A listed building, and the grounds of the house are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens. The lands of Yester were granted to Hugo de Giffard, a Norman, in the XII century. Yester Castle, around 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of the present house, was built by the Giffords in the later XIII century. The heiress of the Giffords married into the Hay family, who were raised to the peerage in 1488 as Lord Hay of Yester. In 1646 the 8th Lord Hay was created Earl of Tweeddale, and considered the building of a new house at Yester. The 1st Earl acquired his title for his support of Charles I, but later served in two Commonwealth Parliaments. His son, the 2nd Earl of Tweeddale, was appointed to the Privy Council of Scotland after the Restoration. He began improvements to the estate, including the planting of over 6,000 acres (2,400 ha) of woodland. It was around this time that the medieval village of Yester was moved to its current location at Gifford. The Earl consulted Sir William Bruce in 1670, with a view to commissioning a new house, although nothing was done at this time. Formal gardens were established and parkland laid out through the 1680s and 1690s. For his support of William of Orange, the 2nd Earl was appointed Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1692 and 1st Marquess of Tweeddale in 1694. John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale, who inherited the estate in 1697, appointed James Smith and Alexander McGill to begin work on a new house in 1697. The 2nd Marquess supported the Acts of Union and served at Westminster as a representative peer. When he died in 1713 the building work was still underway; the main house was complete by 1715, when the 3rd Marquess died. John Hay, 4th Marquess of Tweeddale, also served as a representative peer from 1722. The interior of the house was complete by 1728, but in 1729 the 4th Marquess appointed William Adam to make alterations to the roof and main façade, and in the mid-1730s to the interiors. William was succeeded as architect at Yester by his sons Robert and John, who carried out alterations inside in 1761, and another redesign of the façade in the 1780s, as well as redesigning the gardens in an informal style in the 1760s. The house was altered in the 1830s, with the entrance moved to the west front, and was modernised at the end of the XIX century by Robert Rowand Anderson for the 11th Marquess. The estate was sold after the death of David Hay, 12th Marquess of Tweeddale, in 1967. In 1972 it was bought by the Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti because of the acoustics of the ballroom. After Menotti's death, the house was marketed by his family with a price of between £12 million and £15 million. According to the sales particulars the house has a gross internal area of 3,213 square metres (34,580 sq ft). In September 2010 the guide price was reduced to £8 million, with the exclusion of 120 hectares (300 acres) of woodlands from the sale.
Life
Who: Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. Samuel Barber became Menotti's partner in life and in work, with Menotti crafting the libretto for Barber's most famous opera, “Vanessa,” which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958. As a student, Menotti spent much of his time with the Samuel Barber family in West Chester, Pennsylvania. After graduation, the two men bought a house together in Mount Kisco, New York, which they named "Capricorn" and shared for over forty years. In 1974, Menotti adopted Francis "Chip" Phelan, an American actor and figure skater he had known since the early 1960s. In the same year, Menotti, persuaded by the good acoustics of the main room, purchased the ancestral home of the Marquess of Tweeddale, Yester House, in the village of Gifford, East Lothian, in Scotland. While there, he jokingly referred to himself as "Mr McNotti". Menotti founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy in 1958, and its companion festival, Spoleto Festival USA, in Charleston, South Carolina in 1977. For three weeks each summer, Spoleto is visited by nearly a half-million people. Barber died of cancer in 1981 in New York City at the age of 70. He was buried in Oaklands Cemetery in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania. The plot next to him was for Menotti, but when Menotti died in 2007 he chose to be buried at the Yester Kirk (Gifford, Haddington, East Lothian EH41).

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 01, 2017 08:44

Charles Silverstein (born April 23, 1935)

Charles Silverstein is an American writer, therapist and gay activist. He is a frequent lecturer at conventions on both the state and national levels, author of eight books and many professional papers, ...
Born: April 23, 1935 (age 81)
Anniversary: February 1, 1973

Dr. Charles Silverstein, Ph.D. is an American writer, therapist and gay activist. His first published work was The Joy of Gay Sex, co-authored with Edmund White (1977). He is a frequent lecturer at conventions on both the state and national levels, author of eight books and many professional papers. “For the Ferryman (2011, Chelsea Station Editions) is a stunning memoir. Charles Silverstein spends a considerable bulk of the memoir charting the gay radicalism of the 1970s… [and] pairs these passages with intimate glimpses into his twenty-year romantic relationship with William Bory, a radical gay activist who was prone to several neuroses and a host of addictions. Rather than idealizing his lover, Silverstein captures Bory in all his complexities: charming, difficult and maddeningly broken.” -Angelo Nikolopoulos, Next.
Together from 1973 to 1993: 20 years.
Charles Silverstein (born April 23, 1935)
William Bory (August 18, 1950 - November 12, 1993)
Anniversary: February 1, 1973
We dated the "official" relationship as beginning February 1, 1973. Because that was the day that he moved into my Inwood apartment, although we had been intimate for many weekends beforehand. As one can see by the photograph, hair was still "in." A few years before, William's hair came down to his waist and mine to my shoulders. Lots of hair was a defining feature of New York's gay liberation. We met at the Firehouse operated by New York's Gay Activist Alliance and both of us were very active in their politics. For the Ferryman: A Personal History documents the conflicts and successes of both New York gay radical politics and the relationship between William and me. Gay love relationships were difficult at this time when they were perceived as sinful and illegal by the wider society. Although William died on November 12, 1993, I think of him often. I love him still. -Charles Silverstein

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

1 like · Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on February 01, 2017 08:36

January 31, 2017

Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968)

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an American actress of the stage and screen, and a reputed libertine. Bankhead was known for her husky voice, outrageous personality, and devastating wit.
Born: January 31, 1902, Huntsville, Alabama, United States
Died: December 12, 1968, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Education: Mary Baldwin University
Lived: 1 Farm Street, W1J
The Ritz, London, 150 Piccadilly, W1J
230 E. 62nd St.
Algonquin Hotel, 59 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036
Buried: Saint Pauls Kent Churchyard, Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland, USA, Plot: Section A, Lot 94
Full name: Tallulah Brockman Bankhead
Buried: Saint Paul's Churchyard, Chestertown

Tallulah Bankhead was an American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante. Bankhead was the daughter of US Congressman and Speaker of the House William Brockman Bankhead. According to her, “Daddy warned me about men and alcohol. But he never said a thing about women and cocaine.” She had numerous heterosexual affairs but considered herself “ambisextrous.” Rumors about Bankhead's sex life have lingered for years, and she was linked romantically with many notable female personalities of the day, including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Eva Le Gallienne, Hattie McDaniel, and Alla Nazimova, as well as writer Mercedes de Acosta and singer Billie Holiday. Actress Patsy Kelly claimed she had a sexual relationship with Bankhead when she worked for her as a personal assistant. John Gruen's Menotti: A Biography notes an incident in which Jane Bowles chased Bankhead around Capricorn, Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber’s Mount Kisco estate, insisting that Bankhead needed to play the lesbian character Inès in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit (which Paul Bowles had recently translated), but Bankhead locked herself in the bathroom and kept insisting "That lesbian! I wouldn't know a thing about it."
Patsy Kelly (January 12, 1910 – September 24, 1981)
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968)

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228833
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906315/?...
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1KZBO/?...

The Treadwell Farm Historic District is a small historic district located on parts of East 61st and East 62nd Street between Second and Third Avenues, in the Upper East Side neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City.
Address: E 61st and E 62nd St, New York, NY 10065, USA
Type: Private Property
National Register of Historic Places: Treadwell Farm Historic District (E. 61st and 62nd Sts. bet. Second and Third Aves.), 04000541, 2004
Place
Designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on Dec. 13, 1967, making it one of the first historic districts in the city, it is primarily made up of three- and four-story brownstone residences constructed in the middle- to late- XIX century. It also includes the Church of Our Lady of Peace, Trinity Baptist Church, and several turn-of-the-century apartment buildings, and is notable for the general uniformity of the heights of the houses and the style of the architecture, as well as the overall character and charm of the neighborhood. Treadwell Farm was named for the Treadwell family, who owned the land at the time it was developed. In the Colonial period, the property was part of the Peter Pra Van Zandt farm, although the historic district also includes a small triangular piece of the William Beekman farm. In 1815, Adam Tredwell, a fur merchant, and Stephen Thorne Jr. bought the Van Zandt farm, paying $13,000 for 24 acres. When Thorne died in 1830, Tredwell bought his half of the property. After Tredwell’s death in 1852, his daughter Elizabeth bought the Beekman tract, and the combined property was divided into lots; these were sold for development beginning in 1854. By 1868, restrictive covenants attached to the sale specified standards for heights, widths and construction of buildings on the lots, and also restricted the types of businesses which could be located there. The major development of the Tredwell Farm property took place from 1868–76, and was primarily in the form of Italianate row houses, with echoes of the French Second Empire style. The Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer, now the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Peace, was built in 1886-87, and six-story apartment buildings at 245 and 247 East 62nd Street were built in 1899-1900. Noted architects who designed buildings in the district include Richard Morris Hunt, Samuel A. Warner, James W. Pirrson and George F. Pelham. In the 1920s, between 1919 and 1922, most of the buildings in the district were significantly altered. Many stoops were removed and architectural detail reduced to a more simplified form. In addition, in 1930 a church in the Scandinavian Modern style, designed by Martin G. Hedmark, was built at 250 East 61st Street. By late in the XIX century, the Treadwell Farm area had deteriorated some, but affluent New Yorkers rediscovered it in the decades after WWI.
Notable queer residents at Treadwell Farm Historic District:
• No. 217 E. 61st St.: Montgomery Clift (1920-1966), lived here from 1960 until his death in 1966.
• No. 219 E. 61st St: Ava Alice Muriel Astor (1902-1956), died of a stroke in her East Sixty-First Street apartment on July 19, 1956, aged 54.
• No. 230 E. 62nd St.: Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968), moved into this townhouse in the late 50s. She died in New York in 1968.
• No. 211 E. 62nd St.: when Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was seven, her mother moved the family to 54 East 61st Street while her father stayed in a Paris hospital to battle his addiction to alcohol. In 1950, she rented suites at The Park Sheraton Hotel (202 West 56th Street.) She lived here until 1953 when she moved to 211 East 62nd Street. When that lease expired in 1958, she returned to The Park Sheraton as she waited for the house she purchased with Edna and David Gurewitsch at 55 East 74th Street to be renovated.
• No. 1 E. 62nd St: In the fall of 1959, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) rented a one-bed, one-bath, 900-square-foot apartment here. He was looking for a place where he could have privacy when he came to New York City. He had always stayed in hotels in the past. During the summer of 1960 he set up a small office here an attempted to work. He was in poor mental and physical health and could do little writing. Hemingway left New York for good soon after, and commited suicide in July 1961 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.
• No. 52 E. 62nd St, 10065: The Browning School is a US college preparatory school for boys founded in 1888 by John A. Browning. Arthur Jones succeeded Browning as Headmaster in 1920 and moved the school from West 55th Street to its present location on East 62nd Street. It offers study from Pre-Primary level (Kindergarten) through Form VI (12th Grade). Thomas Quinn Curtiss (1915-2000), son of Roy A. Curtiss and Ethel Quinn, graduated from the Browning School in New York in 1933. He went on to study film and theatre in Vienna and Moscow, where he was a student of the film director Sergei Eisenstein. In summer 1937, he met writer Klaus Mann in Budapest and followed him through Europe. Their romantic relationship lasted for several years, but eventually Tomski (as Curtiss is called in Mann's diaries) left him because of Mann's on-going heroin addiction. Mann's suicidal novel “Vergittertes Fenster” is dedicated to him.

By Elisa Rolle

Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228297
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532901909/?...
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1BU9K/?...

At St Paul's Kent (7579 Sandy Bottom Rd, Chestertown, MD 21620) is buried Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968), American actress of the stage and screen, and a reputed libertine. Rumors about Bankhead's sex life have lingered for years, and she was linked romantically with many notable female personalities of the day, including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Cornell, Eva Le Gallienne, Hope Williams ("who had a boy's body"), Beatrice Lillie, and Alla Nazimova, as well as writer Mercedes de Acosta and singer Billie Holiday. Actress Patsy Kelly confirmed she had a sexual relationship with Bankhead when she worked for her as a personal assistant. John Gruen's “Menotti: A Biography” notes an incident in which Jane Bowles chased Bankhead around Capricorn, Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber's Mount Kisco estate, insisting that Bankhead needed to play the lesbian character Inès in Jean-Paul Sartre's “No Exit.” Bankhead locked herself in the bathroom and kept insisting, "That lesbian! I wouldn't know a thing about it." Bankhead never publicly described herself as being bisexual. She did, however, describe herself as "ambisextrous".

comments

View more on Elisa Rolle's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 31, 2017 08:46

← Previous 1 2 … 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 … 404 405 Next →

Elisa Rolle's Blog

Elisa Rolle's profile
236 followers