I once saw the richly talented Shirley Maclaine in her one woman show at London’s Dominion theatre. Gay men have consistently relished the appeal of Shirley Maclaine - actor, writer, singer and truth-seeker extroardinaire.
Now well into her seventies, Maclaine has hung up her dancing shoes and resides in New Mexico, whose landscape she finds congenial to meditation, or “sageing” as she calls it. She admits even her friends think her “wacky”, but her memoirs are an energy blast as she recalls former lives in Atlantis, and discusses star-beings …..and that means extraterrestrials, not showbiz pals! So, just open your mind as we welcome this very special guest aboard. Read the rest of this entry »
When Mae West famously quipped, “a hard man is good to find”, she could not have envisaged the extent of the modern gay movement’s reliance on porn from mags to movies to the proliferation of domestic cam sites. She was a truly modern woman whose sexual awareness, electrifying satire, and forthright feminism were castigated by the moral majority in 1920s America.
Imprisoned on Devil’s Island for “corrupting the morals of youth”, Mae saw enough homosexuality to turn it into a play called The Drag. It was promptly dropped when she refused to rewrite it to please a nervous theatre manager.
For all her renown, she would have seen the gay porn now surfeiting the scene as pernicious. It is a revelation to look at her career again, which, she claimed, had “a redeeming social purpose”, and, in the light of this, to question where our present gay sexual obsessions are leading us. Read the rest of this entry »
Gay interest was surely aroused by the preview of Shame (the single and video), combining the talents of Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams for the first time since the latter went defiantly solo 15 years ago. Since then to his recent marriage, Robbie has pursued an unevenly successful career, teasing us with ambiguous messages as to his queer credentials.
Now we have a song of reconciliation and a video with clear visual references to Brokeback Mountain and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Barlow and Williams dance holding token females in a bar whilst gazing longingly into each others’ eyes. They both strip to the waist (showing some evident gym work), race joyfully to the top of a mountain ridge with a lake far below it, and then turn their faces back to the sun just as you think they will join hands and jump.
The end of this romantic sequence is perhaps symbolic of what Barlow has admitted may be only an eighteen month joint venture with the band, with Robbie likely to resume his lone career after that. What deserves deeper examination is the gay factor in all this, and how it helps us to decode the hidden meaning of the song’s chorus, “What a shame we never listened…” Read the rest of this entry »
Biggles took to the skies long before James Bond came to life in the imagination of Ian Fleming. A great British hero, invented by prolific writer Captain W. E. Johns, was fighting our country’s enemies. Through over a hundred books ( many now sought-after by collectors), Biggles along with his cousin Algernon (Algy) Lacey and the young Ginger Hebblethwaite were adventurers in a white European male-dominated world - far removed from gay cultural developments to come.
While Johns, a First World War pilot (who reached the rank of Lieutenant), went on to pursue a settled heterosexual lifestyle, closer reading of his stories may surprise us in their suggestion of a hero very much in tune with the modern gay movement, even down to some dubious titles: Biggles Gets His Men (1950 ), Biggles Takes It Rough (1961 ), Biggles Takes A Hand (1962 ), and Biggles Sees Too Much (1968 ).
No one could doubt James Bond’s liking for women (reflecting Fleming’s own sexual fantasies), laid on with a trowel in character names like Pussy Galore. By complete contrast, in one book Biggles comments that he much prefers smoking to contact with the opposite sex!
Fast forwarding to the 2005 tv episode of Dr Who which introduced Captain Jack, an RAF volunteer, and we find a character who is a conscious tribute to Biggles, even to the point of having a friend called Algy. Gay actor John Barrowman has since made the role of Captain Jack ( in Dr Who and the Torchwood series) very much his own. Read the rest of this entry »
Lee Alexander McQueen, aged only 40 and found dead by his own hand on the eve of his idolized mother’s funeral, was a gay fashion designer of undisputed genius. He combined Savile Row craftsmanship with rare imaginative style, from rippling visions of Kate Moss to the intersexual video posturings of Lady Gaga. His last act inevitably stirs memories of the shooting of Gianni Versace in 1997. Self-described as the “pink sheep” of his Lewisham-born family, McQueen was always confidently out and gay, as reflected in his bizarre and spectacular shows. It is significant though that he once compared his creations to armour, giving protection to the wearer, hinting at an inner vulnerability which had its own unerring cut and motif. Read the rest of this entry »
