Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights

2. The Launch of ONE (1952-53)

2 The Launch of ONE (1952–53) Socially disdained groups have to find their own standards, generating internal codes for taking each other’s measure. Only by doing so can they avoid the devastating consequences of judging themselves in the terms used by people who disdain them, in whose system they will always amount to nothing. —Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days We were young and tired of whispering to each other. We were tired of locking the doors and pulling down the shades whenever we wanted to talk about who we were. So we just decided, “What the hell?” and decided to take a different course of action. —Dale Jennings As Mattachine’s popularity grew after Jennings’s trial in the summer of 1952, Hay felt his authority within Mattachine—the organization that he had created and nurtured—begin to diminish. Hay became increasingly annoyed by Jennings, who was becoming disdainful and seemed to oppose anything Hay favored (Timmons 1990, 178). Although Hay insisted that gays were a unique and especially talented people who had formerly played an integral role within “folk” and tribal societies and needed to unify in order to reclaim those sacred traditional roles, Jennings insisted that there was no essential difference between males who preferred sex with women the launch of one (1952–53) . 29 and those who preferred men—one might as well try to unify coffee drinkers. Hay wanted to call forth a separate class of people that Jennings felt should remain integrated. Where Hay desired visibility, Jennings wanted privacy. Hay craved publicity whereas Jennings wanted to be left alone. After he had been publicly outed as a homosexual and humiliated through the trial, his right to privacy was out of the question. Jennings grew restless. Neither he nor the Mattachine could retreat back into oblivion, nor would they want to. But the next move was far from clear. How could Jennings channel Mattachine’s collective energy into a productive endeavor on behalf of homosexuals? The answer came later in the fall in the form of an offhand idea tossed around at a party near downtown Los Angeles. A Heck of an Idea . . . One day in early October 1952, a Los Angeles engineer by the name of Fred Frisbie brought home a young black man he met while cruising. After a brief but intimate tryst, the stranger began talking about this amazing organization he was in called Mattachine. Not knowing what to expect but full of curiosity, Frisbie followed a hunch and invited his new friend to bring Mattachine to his house and offered to provide a keg of beer. Ten days later, seven cars pulled up to Frisbie’s capacious home near USC, and twenty-six revelers poured onto the premises. Frisbie recalled several young women present and four younger men who were barely over eighteen. The rest were adult males of thirty years or older, with a stately and erudite man named Bill Lambert the senior elder. One man began playing the parlor grand. Some gathered around the piano to sing while others danced, mingled, or joined in a game of cards dealt by a handsome man with an eye patch. Frisbie was especially entertained by a stout young man named Martin Block, who began “camping it up” with a cocktail umbrella. Frisbie felt right at home with this rebellious band of revelers. It was a surprisingly festive occasion he would recall fondly for the rest of his life.1 About ten days later, on Wednesday, October 15, Frisbie and the others met for another Mattachine discussion group at Bill Lambert’s home at the corner of Twenty-seventh and Dalton. Early in the meeting, Lambert invited Frisbie and his “wife,” a cross-dressed and effeminate man, to become official members of Mattachine, and they heartily accepted.2 According to corporate minutes published in the fall 1958 issue of ONE Confidential, Jennings,3 Block, Lambert, Rowland, and “John B.”4 attended that meeting. It was here that the idea to create a publication dedicated to homosexuals was first put forth. 30 . pre-gay l.a. Bill Lambert, later and most famously known as W. Dorr Legg, was proud that the idea for ONE first emerged in his house. He often credited this event as ONE, Incorporated’s, first organizational meeting, but that is not really so, as we will see. Nevertheless, ONE would hereafter celebrate the anniversary of its founding...