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

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Legg, in Homosexuals Today, noted that Lisa Ben had previously achieved some notoriety through writing science fiction (1956, 90). However, Ben later told historian Paul D. Cain that she “was not a minor star of science fiction” and asked that he help debunk that myth (Cain 2002, 13). 2. Personal interview, September 6, 2004. 3. Personal communication via e-mail, November 28, 2006. 4. Personal interview, September 23, 2004. Chapter 1: Mattachine (1948–52) 1.Comments made in Symposium on Outing, at the HIC office in the spring of 1990. The exact date was not recorded and has yet to be ascertained. 2. Ibid. 3. George Mortensen, personal communication, February 3, 2001. 4. On the berdache, see Lang (1998), Roscoe (1991), and Williams (1986). On twospirit people, see Gilley (2006) and Jacobs, Thomas, and Lang (1997). 5. It should be noted that during his years as a Communist, Hay had married his wife, Anita, in September 1938, and they adopted a daughter, Hannah, in 1943. During this time, he continued having affairs with men and cruising Pershing Square. He and Anita divorced in September 1951, about the time of his first anniversary with Gernreich . Hay (1996) and Slade (2001) cover the details of their unhappy relationship. 6. A copy of “Preliminary Concepts” is reprinted in Hay 1996, 63–75. 7. Paul Cain interview with Jim Kepner, January 8, 1994. 236 . notes to pages 17–30 8. Ibid. 9. According to an October 1990 letter to Dale Jennings. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. HIC Newsletter #42, undated (probably 1990). 14. According to Jennings’s birth certificate. 15. Undated fan letter. 16. Letter to “Lee,” June 7, 1983. 17. Letter from Jennings’s nephew, Patrick Dale Porter, to Jim Schneider, dated May 11, 2000. 18. Ibid. 19. Jim Schneider, personal communication. 20. These photos can be seen at the HIC Web site under Jennings’s personal profile . 21. Letter to Jennings from Don Slater, November 27, 1990. Also letter to Jim Schneider from Patrick Dale Porter, May 11, 2000. 22. Antonio Sanchez, personal communication, January 16, 2004. 23. According to Porter’s letter to Schneider, Tuck’s real name was Esther Mayer, and she had been an actress in Jennings’s theater company in the 1940s. 24. Letter from Patrick Dale Porter to Jim Schneider, dated May 11, 2000. 25. Screen Actors’ Guild. 26. According to ONE’s attorney Herb Selwyn, in the 1950s Section 288a involved oral copulation, a crime that was punishable with up to fourteen years in prison. Although the law could theoretically be applied to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals , it was seldom applied to heterosexuals (Marcus 2002, 38). Chapter 2: The Launch of ONE (1952–53) 1. Personal communication, letter from Fred Frisbie dated February 3, 2001. 2. Ibid. 3. Called “Dale Martin” in a copy of the original minutes on file in the HIC archives . 4. Identified as Johnny Button by Martin Block (Marcus 2002, 39). 5. July 1995 newsletter. 6. Lambert was his mother’s maiden name. 7. Interview with Paul Cain, March 12, 1994. 8. Personal communication, e-mail from Wayne Dynes, November 28, 2006. 9. Also known as Knights of the Clocks, an acronym for Cloistered Order of Conclaved Knights of Sophistry (Faderman and Timmons 2006, 112). 10. Although Legg claimed Knights was founded as early as 1947, Kepner found on perusing the secretary/treasurer records that it started later. Interview with Paul Cain, January 8, 1994. notes to pages 31–54 . 237 11. According to Martin Block, this meeting was held at Johnny Button’s West Hollywood home. Also according to Block, Button first proposed the idea of the magazine (Marcus 2002, 39). With this known, Legg probably referred to Button when he reported that the host of that week’s Mattachine discussion group came up with the idea for the magazine, then “thought better of the idea the next day, and quickly resigned” (Cain 2002, 5). 12. A pseudonym. 13. Now the location of the Walt Disney Concert Hall (111 South Grand Avenue). 14. Listed as “M. Snider” in Slater’s minutes of January 9, 1953. 15. Slater and Sanchez resided at 221 South Bunker Hill Avenue at the time. 16. Kepner has pointed out that the name evoked a “ubiquitous World War II joke about an army sergeant teaching a group of rookies to count off.” According to the joke, the sergeant came...