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| Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. | |
| Posted by: Delvino 07:08 am EDT 06/23/18 | |
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| Seeing the play this week, I was reminded of the legal dangers in just drinking in public. Leitsch's obit captures the climate. "The policy, supported by no law and apparently unconstitutional because it precluded the right to free assembly, led to charades by gay men and lesbians. They would sometimes minimize their sexual identities by avoiding affectionate touching or dancing with one another or any other conduct that might be interpreted as “queer.” Bartenders looked the other way and poured the gin. It was just another of the countless indignities and rights violations that gay men and lesbians endured in an age when vice squads raided bars frequented by gay clientele and entrapped men in homosexual “encounters.” Many publications, including The New York Times, referred to gay men and lesbians as “sexual deviates.” Hypocrisy infected the era. Gay men and lesbians were widely regarded as sick by the medical establishment, sinners by the clergy and criminals by the law. Judges accepted the testimony of undercover officers who had solicited sex from gay men and then arrested them. For those with a name, job or family to protect, lewdness charges could carry fines, jail time and ruinous publicity. Criminals also took their cut. There were scores of illegal bars in New York, many of them private clubs run by the Mafia, that catered to gays and lesbians. Drinks were watered, prices were steep, police raids were scheduled (with forewarnings), payoffs were routine and liquor licenses, if they existed at all, were rarely challenged by the liquor authority. “For decades, gay bars were our most visible institutions,” Perry Brass recalled in 2015 in The Philadelphia Gay News. “Gay men and lesbians found their only home in them. In New York, bars were raided cyclically: usually before elections, before major events like the 1964 New York World’s Fair, when Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. closed the bars to keep innocent tourists from wandering in, or when cops decided they wanted to squeeze out a bit more payola from Mafia barkeeps.” |
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| Link | Dick Leitsch, Whose ‘Sip-In’ Was a Gay Rights Milestone, Dies at 83 |
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| re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. | |
| Posted by: Pokernight 08:27 am EDT 06/23/18 | |
| In reply to: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. - Delvino 07:08 am EDT 06/23/18 | |
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| All of this is, of course, true. But, to be fair, you couldn't get a better hamburger in NYC in the Fifties and Sixties than the ones at Julius in the West Village.....even though you had to have a female escort to enter the joint. Alas, they're not good any more. I guess you might call it a trade=off? And you could see Julie Andrews in "The Boy Friend" at the Cherry Lane Theatre and have a drink at their bar next door. | |
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| re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. | |
| Posted by: larry13 03:27 pm EDT 06/23/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. - Pokernight 08:27 am EDT 06/23/18 | |
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| Unless you were trying to say you could see Julie Andrews attending a performance at the Cherry Lane while she was in "The Boy Friend" on BROADWAY, this memory is incorrect. | |
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| re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. | |
| Posted by: Pokernight 03:50 pm EDT 06/23/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. - larry13 03:27 pm EDT 06/23/18 | |
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| You're right....my bad.....you're good...…...I was thinking of Little Mary Sunshine and confused it with The Boy Friend (without Julie Andrews)……... | |
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| re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. | |
| Last Edit: bmc 02:04 pm EDT 06/23/18 | |
| Posted by: bmc 02:04 pm EDT 06/23/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Perhaps the best preparation for "Boys...": critical history here that frames the play's climate. - Pokernight 08:27 am EDT 06/23/18 | |
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| When the owner of a local gay bar passed away, our local newspaper in his obit stated He was the owner of the such&such bar, which was well known for its" loyal clientele".But not too many years later, they had gay engagements on the Sunday weddings/engagements paper | |
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