Time to 'fess up to something else from my past...pornograpohy and now this...
Your hero (me) was in a roving musical comedy company. This was the summer after the life in porn and, no, no one recognized me. As with porn, this was nothing glamorous, to be sure.
The leading man was, forty years before, a matinee idol in the movies but now, he was old, the voice nothing like it had been and he had a serious alcohol problem to go along with it. The leading lady had more of a career in voice overs in commrrcials and movies. She was rather striking in her own way and she made sure to engage the attentions of all the male members of the company in every way you can think of and many that defy imagination and description. They were the "stars," and among my jobs was the fine art of waking up the leading man from his daily alcoholic stupor. My biggest fear was that I would, one day, find him dead. While he has since died, it did not happen on my watch.
Naturally there were other women in the company, we ere all horny and it was the days before the virus....so a whole lotta fun was had by all. If there was anything even remotely gay going on, I was unaware of it.
The lot of us travelled around in an ancient broken down bus, visiting such places as Williston, North Dakota, Glasgow, Montana, and Mobridge, South Dakota, to recall three. The largest city we played was, I think, Sheridan, Wyoming. Ah, the glamour of it all! The greasepaint! The limelight! Sharing a motel room with three other guys who hated me because someone in the audience winked at me (yes!
or the aforementioned leading lady was paying too much attention to me or who knows what? Lots of petty rivalries, jealousies and back biting and our manager liked it that way. Thought it made us better. Did I mention he was an outpatient from the Menninger Clinic?
We performed two standards: Show Boat (with its theme of interracial love and - get this - we were all white. Joe, who sang Ol' Man River in the manner of Jules Bledsoe and Paul Robeson was white and no one even noticed; Julie was white, too!
and South Pacific (again, with a theme of interracial love but....).
For small town, Christocratic America, even then, certain themes were not acceptable. Everyone wanted to hear Ol' Man River, so it was included, even with a white guy singing it. In South Pacific, the whole secondary theme of Joe Cable and Liat was hacked out. Yes, he sang "Younger than Springtime," but to a Navy nurse...and "Carefully Taught" simply wasn't there. Emile's kids were never seen, but no reference was made to him having had a wife from the Islands...you get the idea, so when Nellie ran out on him it was because he went on that secret mission with Joe Cable, and the whole idea of Neillie's bigotry was neatly avoided, as Nellie Forbush embodied small-town American values.
So, these musicals that were so cutting edge in their day, well, there were toned- down versions for the boondocks, toned-down versions that emphasized the fluffier songs and the funnier aspects, rather than the serious messages. When someone (not me) pointed this out when we first met our manager, he explained that cuts had to be made because "these hicks [and he used a far stronger word] have short attention spans and can't understand that stuff anyway. They want to see us perform and hear the songs." The strange thing is, these were AUTHORIZED versions of the musicals. I am aware of a version of West Side Story then making the rounds that had two rival Italian gangs. I do not know if anything like this is done any more.
So, if you have seen any of these in summer stock in small-town America, you might not have seen the work as its creators intended. As such, people often have mistaken notions of what's in them. Even the movies are not reliable, particularly in the case of Show Boat. It's sad....both of these are very, very good works and outside large cities they are hardly ever performed as they should be. Perhaps impressarios should wake up to the fact that most people, even Americans, are grown up enough to handle these themes.
As far as I know, none of the company was gay, openly or otherwise.
As far as gays getting into theater, well, why not? Nothing new there, look at Christopher Marlowe, Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton any one of whom could write circles around just about any playwright active today. Yes, shows like "Rent" and "Phantom" do have that ambiance about them, but so what? One either likes them or one doesn't and I think to dislike a character, a performer, a playwright, the playwright's
ouevre or whatever solely because that person is gay is silly.
Some musicals are really great...but to give you an idea of how things have changed, people now looking at the film Singin' in the Rain for the first time always think the Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor characters were gay lovers. For that matter, when The Odd Couple first appeared no one thought that Felix and Oscar were gay - now young people seem to always snicker at the concept and its implications which, to them, seem so obvious. This never occurred to me when I first saw them.
I do not think the issue is gays getting involved in theater, as gays were always there. I think the issue is that too damned many "straight" people are not secure enough in their own sexuality that they honestly believe there is this vast gay conspiracy afoot to convert their sons and daughters and maybe even them, too. There, I said it! Now I have this feeling that a lot of people will soon start sticking white hot needles into the knees of a waxen image - of me.
It's just like the people who found Communists under every bed and in every closet back in the fifties. Hmmm..beds...closets...coincidence?....decide for yourselves but I think these fears are irrational, irrespective of the era.
Can you tell I did not have much to do around the office today?
