Though sometim fotten, the history of gay liberatn was wrten wh the history of Ain Amerins md.
Contents:
- THE WAY WE WERE'S SECRET GAY BACKSTORY
- HOW BARBRA STREISAND AND ROBERT REDFORD’S ‘THE WAY WE WERE’ WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE GAY ROMANCE (BOOK EXCERPT)
- WRG GAY HISTORY
THE WAY WE WERE'S SECRET GAY BACKSTORY
As the first few hntg not of the tle song sound and the unmistakable voice of Barbra Streisand ton “mem’ri, ” most of n’t help but settle for yet another viewg of The Way We Were, even though we know how the turbulent romance of Katie Morosky and Hubbell Garder turns few of know about the beloved 1973 film’s behd-the-scen drama or s gay origs. In other rearch, he terviewed s two still-livg, inic stars, Streisand and Robert rult is a tale of clash between Lrents, Pollack, and producer Ray Stark, the differg styl of Streisand and Redford, and how a gay Jewish man, Lrents, channeled his love of betiful Gentile men to the years, Lrents said the character of Katie, a polilly radil Jew who falls love wh and marri apolil Gentile Hubbell, was based on a woman he knew llege. He had reason to make this statement; the 1960s and ’70s, gay wrers were often cricized for turng their experienc to fictnal heterosexual romanc.
So he set out to thoroughly explore the gay angle of The Way We Were. “There always has to be a gay angle, or I’m not terted, ” says Hofler, a gay don’t thk Hubbell is a directly fictnalized versn of any of the men Lrents loved, but he do thk the character was fluenced by the wrer’s relatnships wh some of them, cludg his longtime partner, Tom Hatcher, and actor Farley Granger. Gore Vidal was yet another famo homosexual bedazzled by Hatcher’s looks, and knowg Lrents’s taste handsome Gentile men, the novelist remend that his fellow wrer iend pay a vis to William B.
HOW BARBRA STREISAND AND ROBERT REDFORD’S ‘THE WAY WE WERE’ WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE GAY ROMANCE (BOOK EXCERPT)
As the MoMA crowd learned that summer on Quoque, Lrents was gay but his lover was a very bisexual man. By 1976, Jonathan Ned Katz, who had been traed as a textile signer, had e out of the closet and bee volved the gay liberatn movement, which officially menced 1969.
LGBT people had risted arrt at a mafia-owned gay bar, The Stonewall Inn, durg a police raid. Katz immediately drew analogi between black ristance and the rise of gay liberatn. He then me across a pamphlet, wrten by two gay activists, about the Nazi persecutn of gay people durg WWII, which, at the time, had not been rerd any major history book and was not even part of the public memory.
WRG GAY HISTORY
He eventually unvered a range of primary source documents om lonial urt s on sodomy to anecdot about Willa Cather to polil slogans om the lbian activist group Radilbians to then ntemporary news reports of gay men beg arrted for “disorrly nduct. On June 16, 1972, Katz’s play, Comg Out!, premiered at a firehoe the Wt Village, which a gay polil anizatn had rented. He had wnsed how, wh the exceptn of a sgle pamphlet, there were few documents about the persecutn and murr of thoands of gay men and women durg Hler’s reign.
He also regnized how the Nazis stroyed evince of a thrivg gay muny Berl before Hler took ntrol of Germany. Consequently, he feared that the history of gay liberatn the 1970s also risked not beg documented.
In a nversatn wh me 2012, he scribed how the Amerin Historil Associatn (AHA) did not reprent or even re about the history of gay people the 1970s. But even wh this radil shift, Katz had ltle nfince that the AHA would m self to rpectg, teachg, and centerg gay history. Katz did not have a doctorate history, let alone an unrgraduate gree, so he sadly had ltle standg or affiliatn wh the profsn—though he remas one of the most prolific and important gay historians four s later.