I hear that the studio hired a female “companion” to seduce Judy Garland and keep her in line.
It seems to me that there was a lot of marrying gay men in that family. Judy and Liza both, seemingly. I don’t see how she wouldn’t be a gay icon.
It is well known. In Hollywood. And also in several books, none of which I can name at the moment.
A coincidence for me is that I first read about this connection last night in a SF story published in 2015, and then I see it again today in this thread (that I didn’t read the first time around). I think it was June 28th, by the way.
I’m another gay man going on record as not particularly interested in what passes for gay culture (an objectionable term anyway) and all the stereotypes about what “we” worship (I don’t). Gay men are just as individual as everyone else. Just thought I’d point that out for those who forget from time to time.
Was it Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore?
Nope, mine was called The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History by Sam J. Miller, originally published in Uncanny Magazine, Jan-Feb 2015, and anthologized in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016. When I said “story” I meant “short story.”
Ah. I just remembered that 2015 book to be the first place I ever heard the phrase “friend of Dorothy.” Looking at the eBook, I see that that phrase is mentioned 38 times, but Stonewall never is.
I just put the phrase “friend of Dorothy” into Google Ngram. The first appearance of it in a book or magazine in their database is in 1987. (I’m ignoring some random uses of the term where it refers to a person in a novel who happens to be a friend of someone named Dorothy.) The Wikipedia entry “friend of Dorothy” quotes a book from 1993 describing an attempt by the Naval Investigative Service in the early 1980s to figure out why some homosexuals that they investigated used the term. So the term was known within homosexual circles in the 1980s. The Wikipedia entry also quotes a 2003 book about gay slang that claims that the term goes back to World War II. This does not prove when or how the term originated, of course. It just gives a year by which the term must have already existed.
IANAFOD but…
From what I recall of the time, the term “gay” was promoted along with the Gay Lib movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s as a polite term for homosexual. “Queer” was considered offensive and “homosexual” to clinical. As mentioned, the term “gay old time” was used straight(1) and without irony in Fred Flintstone’s days, the early 60’s. We sang Christmas carols about “don we now our gay apparel” without sniggering. Even by IIRC around 1980, the Toronto Star was still defending its refusal to run ads about “gay dances” and other events with the excuse some of its older or more rural readers might misinterpret such “code words”.
As for Dorothy - when I was growing up, I remember that any strong distinctive actress or singer was fodder for drag queen impersonators - Mae West, Barbara Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Newmar, Ethel Merman… the bigger than life, the better. Not sure beyond the obvious what drag queens have to do with homosexuality, other that them being intersecting sets, but in popular culture, they were associated. But for all those “icons” I can’t think of too many who had a dominating role in a movie - typically they’d be second fiddle to a male lead and the romantic comedy plot was a straight couple one; so not something for the gay community to admire. TWoO is a musical (did I mention musical theatre and its associations?) has only bit parts for the male characters and no straight adult romance component, a lot of fantasy and fluff… After all, I couldn’t imagine “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” as a gay iconic theatre piece, despite its female leads.
I assume the phrase was adopted due to irony and cliche - I vaguely recall somewhere around 1990 a movie where someone (Sandra Bullock?) ends up accidentally joining a gay pride parade alongside a group of burley men dressed up in blue and white gingham dresses or something.
In 2004, “Arrested Development” used “Friend of Dorothy” for an elaborate joke-setup, clearly expecting it to be understood (I’m pretty sure that I recognized the term at the time).
Baum started a short-lived newspaper strip about his characters in 1904 titled The Queer Visitors from Oz. Dorothy wasn’t used. This was after she went home in the first book and Baum had no plans for her in a sequel.
Queer was used in its common sense of weird or odd. I’ve read some and I find it impossible to imagine any hidden sexual connotations.
The strip was yet another giant failure for Baum, as hardly any newspapers syndicated it. It was virtually unknown in its day and even though Oz enthusiasts have recovered and reprinted it, I doubt that one American in a thousand ever was aware of its existence. The public wanted endless numbers of Oz books and the stage play was very popular, but almost all the many other adaptations crashed and burned, sending Baum into the financial desperation that forced him to return to Oz over and over.
Judy was poster child for gays because she herself was bi-sexual (studio hired female companion to seduce her to keep her in line); Hollywood knew about her, and there are several books mentioning her
I have to ask; you’ve made only 16 posts since you joined five years ago, and three of them are in this thread in the last 2 days, all three of them saying essentially the same thing. What’s up with that?
If Quentin Crisp is to be believed in something he wrote about the “tragic diva” thing among gay men, the phrase “friend of Dorothy” came about in ?1947 when Judy Garland was fired from Annie Get Your Gun because of her erratic behaviour, in true “tragic diva” style. Maybe the Wizard of Oz thing is a retrospective transfer of interest and sympathy.
But if it is more British than US, then that might be a red herring, as we had our own tragic diva Dorothy in the 1950s, the singer Dorothy Squires, who was dumped by a much younger Roger Moore for a younger model, and whose performances became more and more over the top and erratic, evidently through over-refreshment - which was a gift for people who enjoy over-the-top drama queen performances.
I have to question if it’s even true. If fedman is talking about MGM, there’s nothing about that in the Wikipedia article about Judy Garland, and she left the studio in 1950. Even if it is true, how many gay people actually knew about it? Wikipedia represents, if nothing else, a pretty good summary of general popular knowledge.
So, fedman, how about some cites about a) the actual existence of this woman companion, b) that this was a sexual relationship, and c) that any significant number of gay people knew about it.
Claims for this are actually easy to find. Maybe even true.
I am a huge Judy fan (I’m not a man, though). I go with what Liza Minnelli said when she was asked why she and her mother had so many gay fans: “They have great taste!”
Although she said it with a laugh, I think this is the answer to the question. Judy wasn’t a perfectionist in her singing and acting except in one area: The feeling, the emotion, whether hope or despair or joy or silliness, had to be true as an arrow and go straight to the heart. No false notes or fakery accepted. It seemed to come straight from deep inside her and head directly to deep inside you.
She was an immense instinctive talent. She had “it”, that indefinable magnetism that can’t be taught. She was funny and vulnerable and charming. So if many gay men idolize her, I say it’s because she deserved it, and they made a great choice.
I first heard Friend of Dorothy as a term in 1985 or so from my then very closeted housemate. He first heard it no later than 1983 when he was in High School.
I learned “friend of Dorothy” (as well as “friend of Mary”) as a college freshman in 1989. It didn’t occur to me then to inquire into the history of the phrase, but given the age of the movie it seemed a little old-fashioned to me.