Paula Poundstone

Asexual American comedian Paula Poundstone has been active on the standup circuit since 1979. Following a spot on Saturday Night Live she began hosting television programs and appearing in minor roles as an actor; her notable appearances include late-night political correspondence during the 1992 presidential campaign and an HBO special for which she was honored with a CableACE Award (she also appears on Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Standups of All Time” list). She is also a regular panelist on the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, which she describes in an interview here. In addition to her standup and other vocal appearances Poundstone has also penned a comedic memoir, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say.

Stu Rasmussen

Stu Rasmussen, the first transgender mayor in the United States, had been elected in the small town of Silverton, Oregon, twice before transitioning, and then again after. A movie theater owner, former cable installer, and computer expert, Rasmussen ran on a fiscally conservative, locally-focused platform. When protestors appeared from out of state the town’s residents arranged a counter-protest in which they crossdressed out of solidarity. To raise money for the city Rasmussen has sold selections from his prodigious shoe collection. A musical based on his life (and election) was produced in Seattle and included in the New York Festival of New Musicals.

Rasmussen’s personal website is available here and his Facebook page is here.

 

Rock Hudson

Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., dubbed “Rock Hudson” by his image-crafting manager, was an American leading man and sex symbol of the mid-20th century, starring in both melodramas and fluffy comedies, along with a smattering of other genres, television, and live theater. Before moving to Hollywood Scherer had been an aircraft mechanic. Although he had no acting training he was able to break into the business on the strength of his good looks and persistence; later tutoring from Universal Pictures solved his inexperience problem, and he went on to be nominated for an Oscar. Scherer publicly announced that he was gay and HIV positive before passing away from AIDS-related complications in 1985, which became a pivotal event in drawing attention to the disease and humanizing homosexuality.

Fallon Fox

Dubbed the “Queen of Swords,” Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender fighter in Mixed Martial Arts history, has been coping with controversy for almost as long as she’s been competing. When she came out after her second professional fight there was a question of whether she had been licensed properly; though the issue of her inclusion was later resolved with the full support of the UFC, various fighters have since refused to compete with her or complained following losses. Outside of her matches Fox has been featured in a documentary about LGBT athletes and been inducted into the Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.

Fox’s personal website can be found here; her Facebook page can be found here; and her Twitter page is available here.

 

John Waters

A multitalented gay cult film creator, John Waters was the creative mind behind notorious Dreamlander productions like Pink Flamingos and the tamer Hairspray, which was later adapted as a Broadway musical. To all of his productions he has brought his trademark sense of offbeat, taboo humor, the kind that involves feces more often than not. Outside of his shock films, Waters is also a fine artist and writer. His humorous concept art installations have been featured in prominent galleries, including a photograph of flowers that squirts passers by with water. His adventures hitchhiking across the United States are documented in a memoir called Carsick, which contains comical fictional accounts of his journey along with the real one.

Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins’ role of “Norman Bates” in Psycho (and its sequels) was among the most iconic to come out of thriller director Alfred Hitchcock’s canon and an overwhelming presence in the actor’s life. Perkins had already been a theater actor and won awards for both stage and screen, like the part of a young Quaker man in Friendly Persuasion, a movie President Reagan later offered to Mikhail Gorbachev as a model of conflict resolution. Perkins also had a respectable singing voice, acting in several musicals and releasing three pop albums, though he never managed a career from it.

Perkins’ sexual orientation is subject to some interpretation. Although he allegedly had affairs with a number of male celebrities, he did marry and had at least one encounter with a different woman earlier in his life. He is popularly referred to as both homosexual and bisexual though he never openly called himself either; in fact, he suggested in one interview that psychotherapy had enabled him to have relationships with women.

 

Anthony Rapp

Although Anthony Rapp, the queer stage and screen actor, is best known for originating the role of “Mark Cohen” in the musical Rent, his career began when he was six years old with a title part in the Broadway production of The Little Prince and the Aviator. Along with several Rent revivals and numerous other small roles, Rapp has written original music and a memoir (which he’s since transformed into a production of its own); taken director roles; and gone on a musical tour with another Rent actor. Rapp consistently takes on the roles of queer characters, including a gay man in the short film Grind and a bisexual man in the Broadway production If/Then.

Rapp’s prolific Twitter feed is available here.

Paul Cadmus

Through his paintings and figure drawings Paul Cadmus depicted satirical scenes of debauchery and homoeroticism, drawing attention to same-sex relationships in ordinary daily life.Cadmus’s style, which blended Renaissance and neoclassical aesthetics with exaggeration, was referred to as magical realism, though he himself did not use the term. His government-commissioned image of two sailors flirting with each other, even while surrounded by heterosexual couples, was removed from its display after complaints were submitted, making it the first in a series of attention-drawing censorship disputes; sarcastic takes on class relations and Coney Island beach goers followed to similar controversy. On occasion he did paint serious pieces such as What I Believe, which depicted the positive role art Cadmus saw it playing in the future; later in life he dropped painting altogether and concentrated on charcoal figure studies of naked men.

 

Historiography Saturday: Gladys Bentley

The tux-wearing, blues-singing, self-described bulldagger known as Gladys Bentley played a somber tune in her recordings but switched out the lyrics to popular melodies at her New York City live performances to make the audience blush (and enrich her flirting with the available ladies). When the Depression hit and prohibition ended, taking with them the popularity of her music and the tolerance for outspoken lesbianism, she found a brief resurgence in the gay bars of San Francisco, but retired to become a minister.

Bentley’s dramatic retirement, marked by an article in Ebony magazine entitled “I Am Woman Again”, was a public departure from both show business and homosexuality. In the context of high-profile McCarthyism witch hunts her decision made sense; looking back it makes for a striking example of how an individual’s insistence on a certain identity is not above questioning. (One possible explanation for her subsequent marriage is that she was attracted to men as well as women, but given her claims to have married a woman in a civil ceremony and her bookings in lesbian bars, heterosexuality seems unlikely, and in a subsequent interview she implied that she was having a relationship with both a man and a woman.)

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim penned the lyrics and music for some of the 20th century’s most iconic musical theater productions over a career spanning more than five decades, from Company to Sweeney Todd. His mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, was a theatrical master himself, and his early tutelage involved writing entire musicals for critique. West Side Story, Sondheim’s Broadway debut, earned numerous awards and spawned a film adaptation. In later years Sondheim took on darker projects that have been criticized as “inappropriate” for musical theater but won him accolades and an enduring impact on the genre (and enough uses in film and television to fill an IMDB page).