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David Furst: We continue our conversation about theater with a book called Gays on Broadway. It offers an insightful look at the often closeted contributions of gays in American Theater. It covers composers such as Cole Porter, who found success in the '20s and '30s, reveals hidden gay themes within Bell, Book, and Candle, and drag performances such as those in the musical La Cage aux Folles. In a review, the Guardian called the book, the first Survey of its kind. Gays on Broadway was written by musical theater historian Ethan Mordden. He's also the author of When Broadway Went to Hollywood, Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre, and Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide. Ethan, welcome to All Of It.

Ethan Mordden: Thank you.

David Furst: Listeners, we would like for you to join in on this conversation. Who was the first gay character, or what was the first play featuring queer themes that you ever saw on stage? How was it received? Was it positive? What was it about the production that made it unique? How do you feel about gay and lesbian representation in theater today? What are some of the tropes that you have noticed surrounding gay characters? Give us a call. Our number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433 WNYC or hit us up on social media @allofitwnyc. Ethan, the Guardian called your book, the first survey of its kind. Is that why you felt like you had to step in and write this? Did you feel that this specific history was missing or in danger of being lost?

Ethan Mordden: Not in danger of being lost because there's a lot of documentary proof but the fact is no one had ever sat down and gotten the men and the women together because it's always just the men or just the women. The whole idea is that it starts much earlier than anyone would think. People know there's boys in the band but they don't know as far back, let's say, as 1968 and they figure, "Oh, there must have been a little something before that." The fact is when I first got out of college, I had a lot of, let's say, old gay mentors. They were former stage managers and they were wise old queens, was the term we used then.

One of them told me that there was no gay before Tallulah Bankhead did a revival of a streetcar named Desire at the City Center in 1956. He said at those performances, everyone who attended was instantly struck gay. He said, "Including the candy sellers and the ushers, and on Tallulah's goodnights, even people passing outside the theater on the sidewalk." I said, "Wait a minute, what about Damon and Pythias or something? What about Cole Porter?" He said, "Dreams, phantoms." When you start examining the record, my book starts in the 1910s with drag queens believe it or not. They actually had them in those days.

David Furst: Dreams, phantoms, you bring a lot of those dreams and phantoms to life in this book. Can you bring us back to the start of this history as you tell it in the book?

Ethan Mordden: Yes. It begins with Julian Elton. They didn't call them drag queens then. They called them female impersonators. Julian Elton, his specialty was playing men who for some reason in the plot had to disguise themselves as a woman and go back and forth between regular clothes and--

David Furst: There's a long history of that.

Ethan Mordden: The fact is, whenever I tell people about this, they go, "That was in the 1910s. It just seems awfully avant-garde," but they didn't look upon drag the way we do today. On the other hand, the other famous drag queen who was Bert Savoy was like our modern drag queens. Very hissy, very overdressed, very showbiz. His shtick was he had a straight man who fed him the lines. He had all kinds of crazy double meanings. He would talk about a new recipe for all-day suckers and he would pronounce it.

Look, I'm falling into the trap of thinking he was a woman. He was very, very funny and very strange. The odd thing was he was so what he was that he didn't fit into any kind of story show so he was stuck with musical reviews where he would just come out with Jay Brannan, his straight man, and do his act. He would always talk about his friend Margie. He would invent these crazy adventures that Margie got into. As the audience laughed, he would come downstage, strike a pose and say, "You must come over," which is the closest thing I can think of to Mae West, and come up and see me sometime.

He was the matrix for Mae West, who was, this is going to sound strange, the next drag queen in the history but of course it wasn't really that kind of thing. She imitated the style of the drag queens. We always think of Mae West with her hands on her hips and making those strange little mmh noises in between her lines but the whole thing really comes from Bert Savoy. Then, of course, we hit the history in 1926 with a French play done on Broadway as The Captive. This was a lesbian play, and after four months of doing very good business, it was closed down by the authorities. Then the history becomes very serious because in the '20s, '30s, and '40s, there's this war between theater people and the city authorities who want to close the whole thing down.

David Furst: Anthony from Nutley called in to say that Mae West had a show on Broadway called The Drag. He wanted to know if you knew about that show.

Ethan Mordden: Yes, it's in my book. She actually had three. There were three shows. She was careful enough not to say by Mae West. It was always by Jane Mast. The odd thing is the scripts have survived. If you read them, you think, "This is not the Mae West I know. These are boring," yet, when she gets to Hollywood not long after, in the early talkies, and she writes her own lines or even sometimes the entire scripts, suddenly it's the Mae West we know. She's very funny, very sharp, and a truly satiric character. She wasn't just a movie star. She wasn't just someone with shtick. She really had a worldview, a feminist, I guess we could say worldview but also she had such contempt for authorities of all kinds.

Somebody said in one of her movies, he says, "I'm a Politician." Her answer is, "Yes, I don't like work either." The Captive was closed by the authorities, as I say, and that starts this whole war that the theater people are running against the sensors. Ultimately, I think it reaches this climax in the early '60s when A. M. Rosenthal, who was running The New York Times, ran a campaign against Edward Albee to drive him from the stage.

He and his flying monkeys figured out. You have to give them credit. I always think of the people like him as being extremely clueless but they knew that Albee was gay. They knew his plays were gay even when they weren't. There was an heir of independence and rebellion, which characterizes a lot of the battle for gay rights. He really tried to destroy Albee's career. In fact, Albee did have a few flops along the way, and for 10 years he was gone from New York.

David Furst: Listeners, we would like you to join this conversation. Who was the first gay character or the first play featuring gay themes that you ever saw on stage? Give us a call, the number 212-433-9692. You can also text us there, 212-433-9692, or send it on social media @allofitwnyc. Ethan, this is such a vibrant history that you tell in this book, and it is such a total page-turner. It is filled with irresistible descriptions. I just have to read this one of Ethel Merman. She is called blunter than a pawnbroker. A tough New York broad with the Filthiest mouth on Broadway. Why do actresses like Ethel Merman and say Mae West, as we've mentioned, have such a prominent role in this story?

Ethan Mordden: I think Ethel was really a gay favorite because of her talent. She was an astonishingly good singer. I saw her several times. I'm that old. I saw her in a couple of shows on Broadway and finally in Hello Dolly, which had been written for her but she's heard it down and then finally took over near the end of the run. I have to say there are complaints that people make about her as playing by the numbers. Once she gets it down, she never varies her performance and so on but the fact is she would walk on stage, and instantly all the other people there would be rendered invisible. You could not take your eyes off her. She had presence, so did Mary Martin, so did Gwen Verdon.

All these people that we find at the top of the list of the great favorites in what I call the Golden Age, they do all tend to be women, and they are all unique. I always call them the big ladies because they're larger than life and makes it simple and it's such a cliche, does our thinking for us but the fact is they are that big in their personality, in their talent, in their presence. Each one completely different from the other. Although they sometimes shared parts. For instance, Ethel Merman and Mary Martin both played Hello Dolly at various times but on the other hand, Ethel Merman could not have played Peter Pan, which was a great Mary Martin role. They're so distinctive and so different from each other. There's a whole book just in the great women stars of Broadway that I don't think really has ever been written.

David Furst: There's a lot of whole books it sound like they could come out of sections of your writing in this particular book, and you say in the introduction at one point, "Use this as your springboard for writing more on this topic."

Ethan Mordden: Yes. This is a largely unchartered territory. There are plenty more books to be written. I would welcome colleagues to try. I want to answer the question that you posed to your listeners. My first experience of a gay character, I was very, very young. The show was Candide, the musical by Leonard Bernstein. It was the last Saturday afternoon, my father took me because I was too little to go by myself, and we were in the front row. I've never been in the front row before. There was a scene in a casino in Venice near the end. People who are familiar with the score will remember Max Adrian and the original cast album singing, "Lady Frilly, lady silly, pretty lady."

There were, I think, six women that he was flirting with while he placed bets on the roulette wheel, and three of them were men. I sat there in the front row, and I see very clearly, and I could tell they were men. I knew I was supposed to know they were men, but I didn't know what a drag queen was. I'd never seen one before. I was completely bemused, I guess, is the term. This is my favorite musical actually. I had been obsessed with it, which is why I insisted. I told my parents, if they didn't take me, I really would burn the house down and they knew I meant it.

The fact is, just the sight of these people, makes a little kid-- I think I was like six years old. I was thinking, "There has to be a purpose, but what is the purpose?" I was thinking, "Am I supposed to know that they're men?" Nothing was made of it. They just were there. They were men alongside the women in this gambling scene. That's my answer to the question. That's my first gay character.

David Furst: We have a listener joining us right now talking about this very topic. Erica, thank you for joining us today from Manhattan.

Erica: Thank you. You asked, what was the first gay play we ever saw. I saw The Killing of Sister George in England, which is where it originated. I think in about '62 or '63. It was a lesbian play and it was sort of tragic comedy.

David Furst: Is that a production you're familiar with, Ethan?

Ethan Mordden: Yes. Actually, that's an important entry in my book. It gives you three leading women, all of whom are lesbians. There's a romance between the butch lesbian. She is the star of a soap opera, a radio soap opera. They were very big then in England. She is Sister George, a nurse. That's why she's called Sister George, and she has Childie. That's her young girlfriend. Childie, years later, grew up to be, and because of my age, my memory isn't what it is supposed to be, and I can't remember her name, but she plays all the roles that Maggie Smith turns down on English television, but she's that type. At this point, she was like 22 or something.

There's also a woman from-- It gets too complicated to explain, but the exciting thing is that Sister George alas the character, not the radio character, gets killed off. In other words, Sister George is fired from the soap opera. They killed her off and alas, all the station can now offer her is a role on a children's show, and she has to play something like Clarabelle the cow. I still remember the very, very end, she's facing this horrible tragic collapse of her career and she starts mooing. The audience was very-- I remember the atmosphere in the theater, we were all disturbed and unhappy and sympathetic, and the curtain came down. What an ending.

David Furst: Well, I hate to take a break on an ending like that. We have to take a very short break at Ethan, but we have a lot of great texts from you that we're going to get to in just a moment. Stay with us. You're listening to All Of It here on WNYC.

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You're listening to All Of It here on WNYC. I'm David Furst in for Alison Stewart. We're speaking with Ethan Mordden, the author of Gays on Broadway, and we're asking you to join our conversation. Who was the first gay character or maybe the first play featuring gay themes that you ever saw on stage? You can call us or text us at 212-433-9692, or send us a message via social media @allofitwnyc. Ethan, we heard from Liz in Glen Cove texting us, "Deathtrap! I was a young teen and went with my mom. The entire audience gasped at the Christopher Reeve kiss scene." Now, is that a movie, or was that also a--

Ethan Mordden: I was just going to say, that's the movie version. In fact, in the play, the two guys never kiss. I've always thought that they aren't really gay. The way the play suggested it, this is a murder mystery, a big thriller, and lots of twists, and so on. It's an older playwright who's just lost it, and he finds a younger playwright who's really got it, and he's going to try to trick him and so on, but they're also involved romantically, but are they? Are they just fooling each other?

I think the author of the play wasn't comfortable with the whole gay thing. Whoever made the movie, changed the whole thing around. Unmistakeably, these two guys are lovers, but they kill each other too so it's very exciting. The idea of the game murderer is--

David Furst: Spoiler alert.

Ethan Mordden: It's a trope. The idea is that a lot of earlier plays, the gays always had to be murderers because I don't know, somehow other people couldn't come to it otherwise. There was a play called Compulsion that was based on the Leopold and Loeb case. It was Roddy McDowall, and I forget his name, but they were the two young murderers. It was a thrill killing. It was quite a show because it was longer than three hours, which means overtime. It had an orchestra and a new score, written and conducted by Cy Coleman. It had a huge cast, tons of sets.

David Furst: Was this Dean Stockwell?

Ethan Mordden: Yes, I'm sorry, Dean Stockwell indeed. He and Roddy, both had been child actors. It was interesting that child actors now grow up and they become thrill killers who are both gay, but it was a fascinating show. That was the kind of thing that went on then. Gays were supposed to either be murderers or kill themselves at the end. This is all gone, I'm happy to say.

David Furst: Well, let's hear from another caller. This is Jonno in the West Village, thank you for joining us.

Jonno: This is a wonderful segment. Of course, I have three or four of Mr. Mordden's books in my apartment--

David Furst: Wow.

Jonno: --as responsible theater people do. This is great. I'm a native New York creature. I was born and raised in Manhattan. I'm 52 but I was brought to shows in 1982. As a kid, my mother brought me to see Torch Song Trilogy at the Little Theatre. It was not yet renamed the Helen Hayes. It was astonishing to see what was taking place because AIDS was just beginning and life and death were not certain or known. It was a fascinating topic. I was not yet sentient of gayness, I was a kid. I was just seeing struggle and crisis and a son and a mother arguing.

One of the themes that get glossed over is the mother saying, "Well, my friends are dying." The son says, "Well, my friends are dying too." Now, as a 52-year-old, my mom is still alive, her friends are. This is the age. It's a resonance today, but back then, I remember the usher looking at my mother and kind of giving a, "Are you certain this is appropriate for the little one?" My mother just bravely, she didn't know, she was just being a New Yorker. She said, "My child will see theater," and we huffed by in a fun way.

David Furst: [chuckles] That's incredible.

Jonno: I was blown away, and it left an impression. Of course, we still have Harvey today. He's magnificent, and thank you for this segment.

David Furst: Ethan, can you talk about that production and that experience?

Ethan Mordden: Yes. That's a very interesting show. It's in three acts, but they were introduced separately as three separate plays, and they're quite different from each other. It's an odd experience, act 2 doesn't quite follow act 1. Act 3 doesn't quite follow act 2. The first act, so to say, the first play is the musical because you keep getting this torch singer. I never understood why she was there except to fill this thing out.

Second part is the sex play because they're having sex a lot. Not really, of course, but you know what I mean, and the set is one big bed, but the third act is really the key part. That's the comedy. It's serious and major, and speaking of the mother and the son, the relationship that Harvey Fierstein's character has, with this very nosy and judgmental mother, is really something. I think some people just are used to it. Some people don't care. I found it extremely disturbing. I don't like the mother at all. I don't like nosy people. I don't like judgmental people, and she really is-- Let's face it, she's the mother of a gay man and she's homophobic. I have a big problem with this because I think it's doormat-esque to continue to have a relationship with someone who thinks you should not exist in effect. In any case, that's my opinion from the Blue Blue Sky about Torch Song Trilogy.

David Furst: You do a decade-by-decade breakdown in this book, charting the progress of gay writers and performers, but you do describe one show as the most influential play in gay history. This is The Boys in the Band from 1968. Tell us why this play had so much impact.

Ethan Mordden: It's really very simple, although it's a very rich play, and there's lots you can say about it. Up to 1968 in that play, there still was difficulty in putting on gay plays, getting actors to play gay roles. Your agent would say, "You'll never get a major role again if you take this role." After The Boys in the Band, and the important thing to remember is even though it played an off-Broadway theatre in the far west '50s, a senseless killing neighborhood, the playwright called it, was the part of town that no one ever went to. The show then started touring the country and it went to all Broadway-sized houses, The Wilbur, for instance, or The Colonial in Boston, or the Forest Theatre, or the Schubert in Philadelphia, these major houses. We shouldn't think of that as off-Broadway.

Of course, the revivals have been on Broadway and it toured the nation plus every regional theatre wanted to get their hands on it, not so much because it was important for gay civil rights but because it's a very, very funny play with a strange twist in it. Spoiler ahead, I'm not going to do it, but there really is something shocking that happens. The whole play is just filled with so much personality and craziness. It had to be a hit. The odd thing is, when they first put it on, they didn't think of it as a comedy at all, and the author Mark Crowley did not think of it as a comedy at all.

Cliff Gorman who played the very flamboyant gay character, he said, "The audience was roaring with laughter." He kept wanting to turn around thinking, "Someone is behind me doing imitations or something. What are they laughing at?" But it is a very funny play, and yes, it is the most influential play because it opened up the stage to gay theatre. After The Boys in the Band, you no longer had to feel if you played a gay character that you would never get a chance at a major role. It changed the landscape entirely.

David Furst: Well, we've been hearing from a lot of you this hour from phone calls, and also texts. We have a text here, "Saw Boys in the Band. My brother was in a production at Montclair State in the early 1970s. We're asking you, what was the first gay character or perhaps the first play featuring gay themes that you ever saw on stage?" Here's one, Bent in 1980, devastating and beautiful. Marvelous performance performances by David Dukes and Richard Gere. Can you talk about that production?

Ethan Mordden: Yes. This is a perennial. Everyone wants to put it on and every time it's done, the staging gets wilder and crazier. Originally, the production you're talking about, it was very realistic kind of thing but I will say, this was a time when nudity was just being experimented with on Broadway. I don't want to give anything away but there's a reason why one of the actors in this play comes out from having spent the night in this apartment and having had a romantic interlude with the Richard Gere character.

The guy came out and he was completely nude. He didn't have a stitch on and he strolled down stage. I'm doing this slowly because it was very-- Then along the apron of the theatre, and then all the way upstage, and then he went off stage, left. I tell you, I have never heard a theatre audience so still as in that moment. I swear we could hear the mice discussing their itineraries because everyone was shocked. It wasn't just nudity, and it wasn't just fleeting, and it wasn't in dark lighting, it was this arrogant, "Look at me, I'm going to do this."

It's like, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it," which was this old watchword from some decades ago. It was an amazing moment. As for Bent itself, it's very dark because it's about Nazi Germany and it's about people who are imprisoned and kind of thing but, that's a play that's gonna be with us for a long, long time because everyone wants to be in it.

David Furst: This is a book that's going to be with us for a long, long time. I wish we could keep going, but you can keep going reading the stories in the book Gays on Broadway, written by musical theatre historian Ethan Mordden. Thank you so much for joining us today on All Of It.

Ethan Mordden: No, thank you.

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