I’m talking about back when gay stereotypes were a bit more homogenized, and liking musicals was considered a euphemism. I’m thinking the Wizard of Oz counts, as well as anything with Barbara Streisand in it (but what musicals is she loved for in the old guard gay world?). I wouldn’t however count things like Rocky Horror or Hedwig. I’m not looking for musicals with gay characters. I’m looking for which musicals would make one gay person think another person was gay for loving back when that was a thing, or what a Stonewall ish era gay person would consider the “canon” or “primer”.
Stage musicals used to be a lot more mainstream entertainment. Garland and Striesand had huge hetero fan bases in their time. I think you may want to focus on the “grand dame” performers themselves which traditionally have had huge appeal to gay audiences vs the musical itself. Retro-gay fanboys usually followed the performer not necessarily the performance.
Agreed. Streisand and Garland are HUGE gay icons (ever heard the phrase ‘friend of Dorothy’ as a euphemism?) but I’m not sure that any one particular musical is held up as such. Pretty much all of them, I would say.
Obligatory link to the friends of Dorothy performers at Brighton Pride. I love them!
Stage musicals were fully mainstream at least until the 1970s, and the stereotype that liking them is a sign you’re gay is like saying liking bagels makes you Jewish.
Before 1970, there was no musical that would make anyone think, “Oh, he likes that. He must be gay.” The stereotype arose some time in the 70s.
If there is a choice for a musical that is designed to appeal to gays, it’d be someone more recent, like La Cage au Folles or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. But both musicals are perfectly fine for straight men to enjoy (so long as they’re not homophobes, of course).
What makes a musical resonate with a particular stereotypical group of gay men is generally not the whole musical itself, but certain musical numbers. Numbers where they can identify with the main singer and even fantasize putting themselves in that number and going full-on diva (lots of emotion and drama). It’s a bonus if the overall ‘book’ of the play/movie is very good and speaks to the ‘gay experience’ of ostracization and persecution and the desire to belong and be appreciated. And it’s also witty and light hearted… and gay.
So, The Wizard of Oz overall has great themes of isolation and finding a place in the world. And it has a plucky heroine standing up to forces of social oppression. And it has a girly witch and an evil cackly hag-witch for drag queen drama. But in a gay piano bar, no one requests to sing “If I Only Had a Brain.” It’s “Over the Rainbow” with its pathos and emotion that gets requested. The movie is popular, but the diva-song is way, way more popular.
The same with “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” or “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy. Or the only song people remember from Follies, “Losing My Mind.”
Not too mention the appreciation of someone’s musical talents in that they can go out on a stage in front of hundreds of people and belt out an artistic work of beauty with technical virtuosity.
If it doesn’t make you have tears of sadness or joy, it’s crap.
I have to call my mom and tell her that I must be a gay man and jewish. (I love musicals AND bagels!) You know, my mom would say "oh my god…so you want to be man now? Now…I’m not judging…) Oh hell, I am jewish*
I think what the op was talking about is more this:
Chorus Line
*Stolen line–‘I’m only Jew-ish. Not the whole hog.’
The one at the end of Blazing Saddles.
Ok, guys, here’s MY list. Others will disagree with me on a lot of them.
Avenue Q
The Boy Friend
Cabaret
La Cage aux Folles
Chicago
Dames at Sea
Dreamgirls
Fame
Funny Girl
Gypsy
Hairspray
Hello, Dolly
Mame
Meet Me in St. Louis
Oliver!
Peter Pan
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The Producers
Rent
The Sound of Music
A Star is Born (Garland)
A Star is Born (Streisand)
Sunset Boulevard
Victor/Victoria
Wicked
The Wiz
The Wizard of Oz
Yentl
The French Mystique?
I grew up on broadway musicals and opera in the 50’s. It takes a mensch to sing the roles in those productions regardless of gender preference. (Revealing fact: My mother sang in an opera chorus, and used to take me backstage during rehearsals. I was once kissed on the cheek by a VERY famous tenor of the day. Afterwards, my mother told me matter of factly. “He likes men, dear.” Since I was 9 it took me a decade to figure out what she was talking about.)
What caused the change? The Stonewall Riots, June 28, 1969. The gay community, which until that time had been underground, found its political voice. With political activism came realization that US performance culture had a gay underpinning. Famous performers came ‘out’. Once they were out, that changed how mainstream culture looked at musical performance.
Was their gayness a secret inside the professional performance world? No. It’s just until the politics of the time changed, no one talked about it until after Stonewall.
OT:
However, there were and are plenty of straight performers. If you want to know about a straight broadway star who had an amazing, happy life read John Raitt’s bio. He’s a forgotten star of the 50’s. What a voice!
Agnesnitt: Yes, John Raitt remains one of my all-time favorite singers of musicals. But the rest of your post has nothing to do with “gay musicals.” Many of us are curious about the orientation of famous actors or singers, but beyond that curiosity, it’s of very little importance. With only a few exceptions, I really don’t know (or care) whether the musicals on my list had gay stars.
I’d agree that it didn’t happen until the 1970’s. Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” usually gets marked as the first piece to discuss the sensibility and musicals don’t rate a mention.
What does? Here’s the famous list:
I bet nobody on the Dope, even Sampiro, gets all the references. I sure don’t.
Yes, you’re right. I was thinking about RealityChuck’s post above. I should have quoted it.
I remember hearing an interview with Dan Savage where he mentioned that he was old enough that when he was growing up others didn’t assume that a boy who (like him) loved musicals was gay, they just thought he was a dork. Savage was born in 1964, so he must have been talking about the '70s or even early '80s.
I guess the thing is, the sense I always got from the trope was that it went beyond merely liking musicals, to actually liking either a particular type of, or particular set of them. Am I alone in that perception?
I don’t know if you’re alone in it, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like that. As astro said, there are particular performers who attracted a large gay audience, but not to my knowledge any particular shows – at least not until there started to be shows that were actually about gay characters.
The stereotype isn’t just that gay men like musicals though, it’s also that men who work in the theater and particularly in musical theater are gay. This stereotype definitely predates Stonewall. The Broadway director in The Producers (1968) is gay (not just “flamboyant”, there’s a minor character who’s pretty clearly his boyfriend), and there are more subtle “gay guy working in the theater” characters at least as far back as 42nd Street (1933). In real life then just off the top of my head I can think of several big name composers and lyricists who are/were gay or bi, including Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim.
I recently found an older book, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 by William J. Mann, an impressively deep look at gay creatives in Broadway and Hollywood, buttressed with as many personal interviews as possible with survivors. Although a minority, there were always gay actors and writers and directors, but perhaps as importantly, several fields like costume design and art direction had concentrations of them. Mann shows how they put their sensibilities on view, even though virtually all of them led closeted lives. Even in Hollywood they faced major discrimination and sometimes persecution. It’s a true “you won’t look at these films in the same way ever again” book. I also think that as older films began to become available again after videotape, the obvious code language in these films became an important touchstone for a public gay movement to share.
Walk into a crowded room.
Yell, “Chang! Chang! Chang!”
Word is, everyone who yells back, “…went the trolley!” is Gay.
It is no secret that many Gay men appreciate musical theater, and some like opera - but I have met a whole bunch who hate both and couldn’t tell you a single musical with either Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand, nor could they name a single opera.
It would be like saying every straight guy loves to watch football and drink beer…a hell of a lot do, but I have met many (including family members and relatives) who couldn’t care less about football and are not big beer drinkers…whereas in West Hollywood, the Gay mecca, there was/is a bar that would show all of the NFL games and the place would be packed with Gay guys who really were into football and drank beer and were jocks at heart. For that matter, probably 1/3 of all the Gay guys I ever met in Germany were huge soccer fans as well, and probably had never seen a musical.
However, if you are compiling a list of musicals that are indeed popular with Gay men, most of them have been mentioned above.
I would add that if you are ever in NYC, there is a great piano bar in Greenwich Village called Marie’s Crisis…usually populated by lots of Gay men who are current/wannabe performers in Broadway and off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows. You only have to sit there a couple of hours to listen to those guys belt out numbers from popular (and far less popular) musicals. 99% are REALLY good - and they know the lyrics to thousands of Broadway tunes, the vast majority I have never even heard of.
And everybody yells back, “I hate that character on Community!”
Is this some secret gay code or are you really not aware that it’s “Clang! Clang! Clang!”? Trolley bells clang. They don’t chang. Really. I don’t get it.
Yes, it is “clang.” And off the top of my head, from “Meet Me in St. Louis” in which Judy also sung and popularized the old Christmas chestnut, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” written by Mel Tourme, who, when he later appeared on Judy’s TV variety show got into a fight with Judy, who then purposely messed up the lyrics to antagonize Mel, which you know she did intentionally, because no matter how high or drunk she was at the time, there’s no way she’d mess up lyrics… what?
OK, I’ll find the clips for you…
Sticking it to Mel 1:30 and 1:45