Get Used to It: Ep. 96, "Gay Biographies"

(animated typing sound) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to Get Used To It. I'm Sheila Kuehl, you're a host or hostess or whatever you like. Your, guide through the intricacies of our talk. And today we've got three wonderful guests. We're talking about biography. People who write them, people they write about. And as you'll see, there's a theme here in terms of the subject of the biographies, as well as our biographers. So, let me get right to the introductions. Here, directly to my left, Stuart Timmons. Who's an author, a historian and President of the board of the ONE Institute and Archives. And for purposes of our discussion today here invited because he's the author of The Trouble With Harry Hay. Which is a biography of one of our guiding lights in the community, Harry Hay, who recently passed away. Welcome Stuart. Glad you're here. - Thank you so much. - Our next guest, David Crittendon, is a writer, teacher, a musician and a board member of the ONE Institute who is at the moment and probably for a great deal of the past, working on a novel, a fictional biography based on the life of Bessie Smith. Welcome David. - Oh, thank you very much. - Happy you're here. And our third guest, Michele Kort. A writer, editor and reason for her invitation here today, the author of Soul Picnic, The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro. A biography that only recently came out but also as we know, was the co-writer of The End of Innocence, with Chastity Bono, welcome Michele. - Pleasure to be here, Sheila. - Thank you. Stuart, let's start with you. I'm interested in sort of the background of a person that leads them to write such a biography. What is your history of writing and activism? - Well, I had been, involved in writing first when I was a UCLA student, more than 20 years ago. And, at UCLA we started, what we didn't realize was the first GLBT college paper in the US. It was called Ten Percent. Whatever I was studying, which happened to be film held no such allure and excitement as being able to get in on the ground floor, covering things like the 1979, March on Washington, the first one, in a paper. At that point, there wasn't even a gay paper in LA Frontiers wasn't in publication yet. So when the chance came along about seven years later to write about Harry Hay in the growing but still very limited gay publishing world, it was just a chance I couldn't pass up. - Now, why would you choose biography? I mean, I understand journalism is sort of quasi accurate or factual. At least that's the claim. But it's about news and events mostly, not necessarily people. It's a very, different kind of writing for the community and the larger audience. Why biography? - Well, this project I'd have to say chose me. I had written enough about gay issues for, Ten Percent and then for a little paper in San Diego, called Update and a few pieces for the Advocate. The offer to write this biography of Harry Hay came through Sasha Allison of Allison Publications and Richard Labonté of the great Different Light bookstore. Who had been talking at at the gay booth of the American Bookseller Association convention, where a lot of big books are born and book deals are born and this was a little teeny deal. There was hardly any money involved in it but they were talking about what was needed in the emerging market for gay bookstores. And they were talking about the lack of biography for people who had been involved in the movement. Especially going back as far in time as Harry, who began organizing in 1948 and who was born in 1912. So, his life was a chance to tell the 20th Century story, through a gay viewpoint of a really pivotal figure. - Why don't you tell us a little more or a lot more about Harry Hay, 'cause who knows? I mean, this show is seen across the country and people may not be as familiar with Harry, even, here in California. - Well, yeah, it's amazing the reasons for that. Harry is known widely as the father of gay liberation. The subtitle of my book, The Trouble With Harry Hay as the founder of the modern gay movement. He took an oath of anonymity with his fellow co-founders to never reveal who started an organization called the Mattachine Society. Which became, widespread, starting in 1951. Forming chapters first in LA, then up to Berkeley, to Boulder and as far as Buffalo. Eventually the west side discussion group in New York City was, a gay group that had been meeting with political aspirations for 20 years, before the Stonewall Rebellion. But that oath of anonymity, which was done to protect the other Mattachine society founders, one of whom was a school teacher, another who was a fashion designer. Their livelihoods were threatened because in those days it wasn't just gay teachers who were vulnerable but really anybody. - But Harry also had his own political concerns. - [Stuart] Yes indeed. - Because I think one of the other very interesting things about Harry is that as a member of the Communist Party, the flack that he ran into kind of on both sides of his fence. - Right, right. And did for, till the end of his days and after his death. (laughs) Harry's communism has been heavily denounced by such gay community people as Andrew Sullivan and (laughs), anyone in the Right Wing. Harry, came from a privileged and affluent family. His father was a mining engineer who had worked for Cecil Rhodes, operating gold and diamond mines in South Africa. He operated a copper mine in Chile. Against a privilege of all of that young Harry Hay, who was extremely bright, found himself drawn to what he called, The Siren Song of Revolution, in the early 30s, after the stock market crash and the onset of The Great Depression, which wiped out his family's wealth, as well as many other people's. Communism and socialism made sense as a theory to change things. It had another very powerful pull for him in that it talked about organizing, it talked about strategizing. It actually taught these, as disciplines and whatever you're gonna say about communists, they were very well organized and perhaps more so in this country, than over in the USSR. So, those qualities and skills that he was learning, in the back of his mind, he was always applying to this group. At that point, he was only calling us, people like us, temperamental types. - [Sheila] Temperamental types. - Sensitive guys. - And so, organizing the Mattachine Society, did that reflect, in some way, what he had learned from his work with a Communist Party. I mean, there was an element, there were, cells that were not allowed to know another cell so that you couldn't turn in a fellow person. I mean, it's really interesting because there was such disapprobrium, for communism and such disapprobrium probably even worse, for people like us, as he put it. - Right. Well, certainly the structure, I'm sure was highly influenced by the way the CP USA, the Communist Party of the United States was set up for identical concerns. The State Department, as some historians have agreed, jokingly, the only thing the State Department and the Communist Party agreed on was that homosexuals were a security risk. (laughing) And there was a strategy that was similar to protect the Communist Party, which had a secret cell structure and the Mattachine Society, which had a similar one. Although Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland and some of the other late Mattachine Society founders told me that, actually the self structure was inspired by the Masons, the Masonic Order, which is much older than Communist Party and had a quality that was very important to all of those people in those days, which was the quality of being a brotherhood. An almost mystical brotherhood, looking at a gay person's nature. And what made them different in life was something that could pull them together as sort of a tribe with a purpose in life and with social roles, that had not yet been uncovered, let alone respected by the society. - There was also, the underpinning of the notion of a need for liberation, which is a very political concept. And I don't mean in the electoral sense but, the notion that came out of the idea of revolution. That it isn't just assimilation, it isn't just getting people to feel that we're okay but to organize for a civil rights kind of movement or. - Yes, well, to affirm the nature of an oppressed minority. To actually acknowledge, that gay people were oppressed was something many gay people did not agree on in 1948 and 1950. Probably the average homosexual thought, well, yes, I'm sick, I can't help it. It's a compulsion, It's a weakness, was one of the big terms Harry and many of the... 'Cause I interviewed hundreds of people who knew him and others from that time to make sure that I wasn't getting just one man's point of view. But the idea of this being a weakness that could be overcome, which is an old line Christian attitude about sex in general. You're not supposed to enjoy it, you're not supposed to feel it. (laughing) So, that understanding that this was an oppressed group and, that they had a potential to organize was really his key and probably his greatest historical influence in what we now call the GLBT Rights Movement. He gets credit, Harry Hay, more than anyone else where picking up the term minority, cultural minority and applying it to a group which had formerly been classed as, deviates, as people who are mentally ill or as people who just were weak. - Well, we'll of course come back to talking about Harry but I wanna talk to David for a minute about, it's a whole different genre, this fictional biography. Tell me a little though about your writing and, artistic background. I know you're a man of many talents. - Well, my main interest in arts probably started out in music. I've been following that most of my life. I was very influenced and affected by church music. I grew up in a church that was very southern. Southern Baptist Church. So my grandparents had a big effect on me and it's been a lifelong thing. And I think maybe another lifelong thing was my grandparents because they often talked about growing up in Tennessee and their experiences there. And since they were born like 1870s, my grandfather, late 1870s, they go way back in terms of history. And so, one of my interest in Bessie Smith kind of dovetailed, surprisingly with my childhood. Because in the back of my mind, I would often hear my grandparents' voices around the edges of the story as I got into Bessie Smith's life. Another profound link probably for me too, is being part of the Mississippi Voter Registration project in 1964. - [Sheila] Right. - 'Cause it threw me into this unbelievable emotional, political, historical drama, which, I dunno, gave me a piece of my own past that I didn't have. I remember as a child always asking my grandparents to take me to Tennessee or let's go down South. I wanted to see the scene of all these stories and they said, oh no, we're not taking you there. The subtext to that was as, since I grew up in Illinois as a Northern boy, maybe I wasn't safe to be there. And of course I grew up in the era of Emmett Till and all this. - [Sheila] Right. But, they carried this knowledge, which just absolutely entranced me. And when I got involved with a writing group through a friend, I did not really follow writing seriously except as a reader. I got hooked, Patricia Cohan's writing group in Santa Monica, probably, 20 years ago. And somewhere in that group, I found the biography of Bessie by Chris Albertson, which was written in the 60s. Which is the definitive biography of her. He was a European writer on jazz. Who's been living in this country most of his life. And it was just haunting to me. I read it and I couldn't seem to get out of it. And, for some reason after I finished it, I started reading it again. I almost never do that to a book and I couldn't figure that out. So I just stayed in this world. Somehow the world that was created there, just entranced me. I also should say that because of this early experience with my grandparents and just my growing up, I've always been interested in kind of the backstory, the story behind the story. And I've been very fascinated with the story of black musicians and general black American history as it's pulled into general American history, just as a... - [Sheila] Or not. - Or not. And Bessie Smith is kind of a, or not, because, although everybody knows her name, very few people actually listened to her music. Like me, I was not someone who listened to her music a great deal. I was influenced by a lot of other stuff, quote, modern stuff, more like jazz or rock and roll or soul or other stuff. But after I read her story, then I listened to her music I knew and I found a resonance there that never existed. - But your novel's not really just about her adult life. - No. What really interested me was the fact that in his biography as complete as it is, no one even really knows what her exact birth date was. I mean, that's still up for grabs. Was she born in 1894, was it 1896? There are precious, small amounts of information about her beginning years. Just anecdotal stories. She sang on the street, with her brother, Andrew. Okay. Her parents were dead by the time she was eight or 10, depending on what chronology you want. She had a number of brothers and sisters. They lived in great poverty in Chattanooga. Her life dovetails the beginning of her musical career and her life dovetails with, probably the scene. Not probably, the scene of the most active oppression of black Americans in America, after slavery. Which was the whole influence of segregation and Jim Crow Laws and of course, Lynch Law, which was rife in the United States from about 1910 on through probably not really ending until the 50s. And we still get echoes of it, even now. Circa, the terrible dragging death in Texas. It's locked into, America's story. It's a bad piece of America's story. - Since part of the theme of this show goes around sexuality and either, blended sexuality or questionable or clear or whatever. Is that an aspect of your thoughts about Bessie as well? - Oh yeah. Bessie is quite well known for being a person who would we call bi. She had many relationships with other women. She seems to have had, I guess you one might say the most continuing relationships with men. She was married to a man, Jack Gee. She also had a very long relationship with a man named Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle. That was in the last, maybe eight or nine years of her life. But all during this period, she had many relationships with women. People she knew in show business and without. Of course, there's also the story, which I also write about in my book, relationship with Ma Rainey. Which I also believe was a romantic and sexual relationship. And I further believe that because Bessie was so interested in personal freedom. I mean, her story is very compelling on many levels but I think maybe most compelling because she seemed to be someone who just couldn't stand to be kind of controlled or held back. It didn't matter to her that she was poor, that she was too dark skinned that she was behind. Everybody else would feel, she had nothing going for her. She seemed to always believe, hey, I have it happening. I'm gonna do this. And seemed to follow her, more than her heart, also her own spirit and her own feelings. So if that led her to same sex liaison's relationship, then she was gonna have them. It was gonna be her business, how she was gonna take care of it. And she didn't seem to care much who knew. I mean, she tried to keep her affairs away from her husband but, it was well known at the time these affairs were well known, certainly in (indistinct). And I think also in the larger black community, because of gossip columns, not of course, not nearly as complete as the kind of stuff we have. - And did you have a sense that it cost her anything except for sort of, personally needing to hide something or not wanting to hide it or, just in terms of career or? - I don't think it cost her in terms of her career. I think, in terms of black American, American in general, people's sexuality was much more private, more of their own business. - [Sheila] Right. - And I think there's a big strain of that in black community. Still, it is kind of my business, not yours. Some people might take that as, somewhat of a hiding but I think, in terms of communities of color, it may not be seen primarily as a political act that the political and the personal kind of diverge but they also coalesce in individual lives that are lived as people, see best for them. Yeah. - Well, Michele, there's a theme of music going on here too. (laughing) Your biography of Laura Nyro has been out for a while and, people are very excited. Obviously, because they love Laura Nyro. And because they want to always know more about a person that they admire or, for whom their fans. But tell us a little bit about your writing background. I mentioned just one of your credits, that sort of brought you up to the writing of this book. - Well, I sort of fell into journalism in the late 70s. I'd studied art history and arts management. I thought I'd be administering an art museum but decided I didn't really like that as much as when I got a job at a magazine and I just loved it. And one of the first things I was interested in writing about actually, was music. And my second editing job was with a magazine called Songwriter. So it all kind of, fits in from my early experience. But then I also was very interested in women's sports and just women's issues in general and wrote a lot for Ms. Magazine in the 80s. In the 90s I had some editing jobs but continued to freelance and started writing for the Advocate. So, I was writing more about gay artists. And so I guess it all comes together when Lauren Nyro dies, five years ago. And, I was a huge fan of hers from... I always say from day one. (laughing) October of 1966, when I heard Wedding Bell Blues on AM Radio, in LA. And I'm talking about Laura Nyro's version of it, not 5th Dimension. - [Sheila] Right. - And, I was heartbroken when she died. And a week later, a friend said, we should write a book about her. And I thought, oh, I was gonna read that book, not write it. And so I had to wrap my mind around that concept and I'd always wanted to write a biography. I was really... Especially in the 70s, was very into reading biographies of women because, it's the beginning of the women's movement and that inspiration and women, artists and writers. Virginia Wolf and Romaine Brooks, Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles. Those are the biographies that really stand out to me from that time. I was telling you this story, it brings me back 'cause I leaped on the Laura Nyro idea and contacted an agent and wrote a proposal and got in on the ground floor on this story. And I remembered years ago, reading something about Jane Bowles and I thought, wow! Someone should write a biography about her. And I just kind of had it in my mind. And then like, within the year, this book came out. There was a biography in her. I thought, oh, if you have this idea, you have to act on it. - [Sheila] Right. - And fortunately I was there and acted on it and got a contract and I was supposed to have it done in a year and it took me three. And it was a total labor of love. - Well, tell us something about Laura Nyro. - Well, if you don't know of Lauren Nyro you should. Let's start by saying that. Because she was one of the greats in pop music in the last, half century, really. And as I said, in 1966, that was when she made her debut. She was from New York and she, combined a lot of influences in her music in ways that people hadn't combined them before. Whether it was classical, jazz, the doop and soul music that she'd grown up with, rock and roll. And she just saw no limits and just combined it all in a very unique style, that became very influential for other people. And at first, I mean, she had her own little hit, at least in certain regions of the country with Wedding Bell Blues. But she made her real success, financially at least, with other people recording her songs. And at one point in 1969, November of 1969, 3 songs that she wrote were in the National Top 10 in one week. - [Sheila] Wow! - And it was, And When I Die by Blood, Sweat & Tears, Wedding Bell Blues by 5th Dimension and Eli's Coming by Three Dog Night. And the other song that people have heard a lot about was well, Stones Soul Picnic was a hit for 5th Dimension and Stoney End for Barbra Streisand. But she was recorded by... There was just, oh, dozens of cover songs. Cover versions of her songs. But she also had a tremendous sort of cult following of people who loved hearing her voice. She was very dramatic. As a performer, going to see her was like going to church. It was or temple in my case. (laughing) But it was a spiritual experience. And no one who saw her back then forgets it. And she had these kind of five really great albums going into the early 70s and then kind of disappeared for a few years. She'd gotten married. She came back in the mid 70s. Then she got pregnant and then she disappeared for really another 10 years. Just doing one album in that time. Well, so she lost a couple of generations of fans by disappearing. And when she came back, really starting in the mid 70s, her music went from being very intense to mellower and mellower. And she became sort of a, I always think of her as an ecofeminist. Very attached to the earth and trees and gone from living in New York and writing this very urban music to writing literally songs about trees. The spirits she felt around her. And a lot of people kind of didn't get it or... I felt I was on the journey with her all the way. The other thing that I learned in the late 80s, excuse me, when she started performing again, was that she was now with a woman. Which was kind of, stunning, at the time. She always had tremendous amount of lesbian and and gay male fans. And she had a famous song called Emily, that a lot of people wondered if it was a love song to a woman. Although you could take it in different ways. So, maybe it shouldn't have been surprising that she was with a woman. But meanwhile, she had written all these very intense romantic songs about men. She had been married, she'd had a child. She never formally came out but she did remove gender from her lyrics, (laughs), from the late 80s on. So she was a little coy about it. And she was a tremendous influence on other songwriters and performers. And I keep finding over and over just, people that say, oh yeah, Laura Nyro, even in surprising places like the guitarist from R.E.M. or the drummer for Los Lobos. Besides the women singer songwriters. I feel that there's a sort of crusade aspect to my book of, you youngsters today, whether you're performers or songwriters or just fans should know, where this music, this singer songwriter music comes from. It comes from Laura Nyro. You know it comes from Joni Mitchell, you know it comes from Carol King but you should know also, that it comes from Laura Nyro. - Well, it's interesting to me 'cause I really want to ask all three of you and, it again, kind of why biography? I may be asking an obvious question but there's a lot of ways to tell stories and I'm assuming that you think about the audience. Whether or not you're gonna sell books, that's not what I mean but what's the experience of the reader? What is it you want a reader to get? I mean, why is one person's story, the key to something for a reader? - Well, I really picked up on what Michele has said about the biography she read during her formative years. Biography was a compelling and fascinating genre for me before I understood my sexuality and became an activist. I was always searching for, how do you do it? How do people live a life at all? Let alone with a certain kind of underlying nature that might, be a needing to be expressed. When I had the opportunity to write about a gay man in his 70s who had been in many ways, the founder of this huge movement, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up in terms of, providing that for myself as well as for other readers. And, at the time of publication, then recently since his death, many people have expressed an appreciation for just being able to get a sense of what life was like during that period for gay people. So biography has a very special place in terms of being able to figure out sort of a model for life. - Well, it's a story of the time too. I mean, biography gives you an opportunity. I assume. I mean, I think looking at what you're looking at in Bessie's life, even in a fictionalized version must be a lot about sort of the surroundings of it. Always felt to me like it's what do I relate to in this person? How is this person better than me? So it gives me something to aspire to. What is the meilleur of this person? So I get some history but also maybe familiarity or maybe not, I mean. - Yeah, the history is... Well, I mean, history, if you say the word sounds a little dull but when you realize everybody lives in, I mean, we're living in our historical time too. I mean, it's always fluid. So when talking about somebody like Bessie for me, to go back and look at photographs, read articles, read about other people that time, it's just incredibly eye opening, because I have to think about, well, I couldn't do X, Y and Z in that time what would be the parameters of my life? And I think realizing what real parameters are. What would it be like if I walk out of my house today and it's really Lynch Law. The kind of things that she was up against. What if I walk out of my house today and all of a sudden, there's signs up on Wilshire Boulevard instituting, the new Jim Crow regime. These were the billboards of her childhood. - Well, in the context of her music too, I mean, Strange Fruit is about, seeing people hanging on trees. - [David] Exactly. - That Billy's sang. - And there's, since she's commenting in the early 40s or late 30s, when she made that recording. About a situation that'd been coming forward since Bessie Smith's childhood. And ironically too, Bessie Smith had been a big influence on Billy Holiday, although might not be apparent. But if you listen to them, you really see how much one influence the other. - Well, I saw a play, not long ago called Imaginary Friends. Which I think is in New York now and Cherry Jones and Swoosie Kurtz played, Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman and who had a great (indistinct). Well publicized in the time. Though I think it was mostly Mary McCarthy's, doing against, Lillian Hellman. But the interesting way the play was that Nora Ephron drew the play, was that Mary McCarthy accused Lillian Hellman of stating that something was true when she had fictionalized it. And Lillian Hellman retorts in the play. Well, you are writing something that you say is fiction but it's completely taken from the lives of, red flip sisters. And they were totally upset with you because you didn't even thinly disguise it. And so, this is really sort of the elemental tension, in the play as they've drawn it. And I have to wonder, I mean, how do you choose what to tell about this person? How do you know what you've chosen, it's supposed to be true, yours is not supposed to be true? And yet, people are going to think, boy, there's a lot behind that. Yours are supposed to be true and yet I don't... Obviously I trust that everything is, how do you choose what you write about to show this picture of a person? - Well, I think it's artistic choices that David's talking about parameters. And I think that, we probably, Stuart and I set ourselves the parameter that it had to be historically accurate. And David's parameter is sort of emotional accuracy. I would think as a fiction writer and a kind of historical truth. And so I think that that's an artistic choice but the fact is is that, when you write a biography, even though it's truth, it has to be a good story. And you have to make all these choices. You have to choose the story, the like the through line and do that, because you could start a biography with the moment of someone's birth and them being weighed by the nurses. (laughing) And then every day of their life, the alarm goes off, they wake up, they go brush their teeth. What they ate for breakfast. There's a zillion moments in a person's life. So you choose the ones, that tell like a sort of a thematic story. And I said at the end of my book, this is a story of Lauren Nyro's life, it's not the story. Someone else could have written it completely differently. - Yeah. I agree. You have to find that story that has drama and has tension. And another thing that I found that was really amazing, the quality that people talk about in novels where it takes on its own life and its writing and you're not necessarily writing, it's the story getting told. I wound up finding characters in Harry Hay's life that were so fascinating. His mother was an incredibly strong force in his life. Following the stereotype of gay men and their mothers. And, there it is and it was true and why not go with that? His, lover after the Mattachine Society fell apart, was a not very pleasant guy. He was really sort of a villain and sort of a very controlling uptight. Very 1950s, homosexual. Harry Hay was the liberated visionary but he hooked up with someone who was very, very straight laced and uptight and closeted. And when I did the interview with this guy, it was, whatever the day is, the third Sunday or second Sunday in June, it was Gay Pride Day. He had no idea and I was thinking what an irony. So, finding these characters and finding how they drive the story and, how these characters who are all real people can describe things and tell on the person you're writing about, especially if they're still alive, which was my situation, which can be sensitive. You're able to really give a full portrait without having to denounce or psychologize. Michele and I were talking about this earlier. It's very sensitive. Even after someone's dead, dealing with how you give a full picture of them without being unnecessarily nasty and leaving a negative record instead of a more honest and full one. - Well, the people at his Memorial, several of them said, they didn't think he should be deified because he had, warts and besides he was annoyingly, revolutionary in a way. To start the radical fairies. - [Stuart] Oh yeah. - And to be insistent on, gender bending and a number of things that were somewhat annoying to the more conventional gay community, if such a word can be used for gay community. - Then and now and it's one of the interesting things I actually learned about the generation of what they called the homophile activist, so the mid 20th Century. All of them were larger than life and all of them were kind of annoying. (laughing) They had a toughness and an abrasiveness even, that was the only thing that allowed them to break through all of this approbation. The laws in the 50s in California prevented more than three homosexuals from congregating in public, advocating homosexuality, which would just be having a discussion group, could get you, in trouble with a law and certainly fired. Being seen in a gay bar could get you fired. Could get your picture in the paper. So having that kind of, tough personality was a necessity and a necessity that had to be illustrated in context to show actually what the story proved its use was. - Are there things that you decide not to put in the book? Not because they weren't good stories but for the same thing? It's sort of like, you don't wanna go overly so that someone walks away with a negative image but you don't want to deify this person. You all are nodding (laughs). - I made some choices of some people that I thought it would hurt if I, said maybe a little more truth that I knew about. But the other thing I was thinking was that I decided to take Laura Nyro on her own terms rather than to be the critic saying, well, gosh, you really should have had different producers later in your career. I might have thought that personally but I thought, I'm not writing... I wrote some criticism in a sense of, looking at her albums. But I really tried to look at, was she satisfied with what she was doing in her life? So I'd be curious to ask you, because David in his book is writing at first person. - [Sheila] Right. - So he's certainly taking Bessie Smith (laughs) on her own terms. - Yeah. It's gotten really kind of scary because, I wrote pretty much what I thought was gonna be at and I just kinda lost faith in it and stopped for a while. Luckily, I had Stuart and other friends around saying, you've got to keep going on this, gotta keep going. And I now writing with teacher in play school over at UCLA. And he, after looking at my work said, the way you really ought to go with this, I think is go first person, go right from her point of view. So you don't have to have the distance with third. And it makes it much more immediate. But it just scared me to death. Because then I said, well, I have to really take on her, full weight, her full emotional weight. And I found that a huge stretch, to write as a man about a woman, write about a famous woman. And then I start thinking, well... I still worry about it. Well, am I doing justice to her? Via the liberties that I have to take as a novelist, how can I be sure that I'm being true? And I think what Stuart was talking about a certain point the writing does take over. At a certain point, I just kind of lose thought about whether I'm doing it right. I seem to just be channeling or pulling it out of somewhere, that this is the way I think it is. And, it's quite a bit flying without a net. I have the story, I have these sign posts of her story to lift me up but if I'm writing, things that are said between her and a girlfriend or writing things that are said between her and her husband or her boyfriend in the last days of her life. I'm clearly inventing everything. - But I think what ties it all together is that biography is an art and the artist in one, that needs to shape the story with the drama that comes to some sort of resolution and has some sort of message and resonance for a reader, that can be what pulls it together. It can help you make those decisions or help reinforce your instincts about when to hold back a bit of truth. When you have a duty to tell the truth. How to show something to really reveal character without being judgemental and pretentious. It's a very intimate thing, I found. I will always have to admit that Harry Hay was one of the major relationships in my life. It took forever to write the book. And then I knew him forever. I started this when he was in his late 70s and he died only recently after age 90 but we became extremely close. I know all of his family history and I had that sensitivity about what can he take and what can he not take? And during the process, he was an explosive personality. He had a great big temper. Very often I worried, am I gonna get shut out if I ask, not necessarily a certain question but ask it in a certain way or at a certain time. So, that aspect of following your ability to artfully pull it together, I think was indispensable. I think every biographer runs into it. - Well, I had a different experience 'cause I wrote about someone who had passed away and someone I didn't know. And yet over the course of doing the research I got to know, almost everybody, major person in her life, it's really odd. Then you start feeling like you knew the person. 'Cause, you become friends with her family and her dear friends. It's so strange. - And did you find that some people at first didn't trust you and then they-- - More than that. - Didn't want to be left out, then they all of a sudden had-- - That's exactly what happened. That's exactly... No. At the very beginning I got a proposal to her widow, essentially Maria and she considered it. In fact, it was the only one she was considering. And then she participated in an in interview for the New York times, not with me. And then they didn't like the article. And so then they said, no, don't wanna do it. And I was told, which was not true, that not only she wasn't gonna do it but all these other people really close to Laura. So I thought to myself, I'm gonna let it be for a while. I won't contact these people but I'll contact all the other people that worked with Laura. There's one friend of hers that would talk to me and then I'll come back to them because they'll hear from the other people that I'm okay, I'm really harmless. And that's what happened. And her father was sort of the first one to kind of break the ice and talk to me. And by the end of the project, not one person held out except that her lover had died. (gasps) Yeah, so I never got to talk to her. But it's true at the very end people were jumping in, oh, oh, if I don't talk, my voice won't be in it. - Right. - Well, let me ask you sort of the next step. You were talking, you used the word message Stuart and I understand shaping a story historically and I understand shaping it, for the dramatic effect in shaping the story. But again and I'm, fascinated by the issue of choosing to write about one person in order to illustrate something, one would think. It's not just about the person when you get down to it. It's about more than that. So I guess, what is it, in sort of, even if it's a fantasy, that you think the reader gains from each of your books or what you hope they gain or what you think happens to them reading it, what are they... Why do they wanna read about a person and what do they wanna read about this person? - Well, I think that there is a motive for any gay person who's interested in their past and how we got to where we are. To read a biography of a person who was a pivotal organizer. And I also think that it's like when I read biographies about, film directors before I went to film school or, about, writers before I became a writer. You're curious what happens along the way? What are the choices that people make? What's fate what's determination? To read a biography is a sort of a fascinating privilege of being able to see how you might live your own life and how life works to some degree, it's a life tool. So, that's what I felt, was something people would get. And one of the things that I found personally after I finished this because I was the first person who read this Biography of Harry Hay that I wrote. (laughing) I found myself so, comforted, really is the best word, by having written about a gay man who had fallen in love after age 50. Who had lived to age 90. Who never had cosmetic surgery. Who took a great photograph and always knew how to dress. He lived with real style and enthusiasm for 90 years. And the myth that I grew up with as a kid born in 1957 is, they all commit suicide. All the gay men commit suicide. They become alcoholics or suicides or both. And that was a very strong myth for me growing up. So finding someone who had absolutely countered that was, a huge, huge, ribbon on the package. - That's a good one. David? - That's great. Yeah. - What do you hope that people will get from this and why? I mean, why Bessie Smith? - Well, that's a good question. - Yeah, I don't want you to overthink the book. You're still writing it. - Well, for me, I mean, it has so many levels with Bessie. I'm thinking, as her as a black woman, me as a black man, as a gay person, her as a certainly a bi person, there's something about our history in terms of being black people, I think we internalize a certain form of oppression because we know that, we're being judged all the time by the larger society. And I think, I certainly internalized a lot of homophobia as a kid growing up, 'cause I certainly realized I was different. I wasn't completely sure why I was different but I knew that I was. I certainly certainly saw things as off from how other people saw them and felt. And I learned from Bessie, that you truly can just go from your heart, go from your feeling and get where you want to go. And in doing so, you create something in yourself that other people relate to. I mean, the thing that's very striking is, all these years after her death, I mean she died in 37, is people remembering her effect on audiences. People would be transfixed. People would walk out of the audience. They would kind of sleepwalk to the stage. And she became a symbol of power and strength. And yet she's this extremely bohemian and kind of a wild woman doing what she wants to do with kind of a messy life. But yet at the core, there's something about her which is utterly kind of indomitable and heroic. And I have to think that that's because she really followed this through line of her own desires and spirit all the way down. And it's a real lesson to everybody that about, what you have to do to succeed or win or be. she's just saying, well, be yourself. - Well maybe one of the elements really of sort of modernity doesn't really allow us to even use the word hero very much about people. And yet one of the things I really resonate to that 'cause when I read biography, I think about sort of everyday people in a sense, who may have a great talent or a lot of courage or just go with what they have, which is courage. And they do attain heroic proportions without necessarily being worshiped, as a hero. I think that's the, if I may, since it's current the residents of the Lord of the Rings story, which is that this Hobbit, I mean, what could be more ordinary upon whom greatness is thrust and says, okay, I'll do it because nobody else can do it. Which is a great turning point in the book when they're all arguing about who should take on this great quest. And he says, well, I guess it has to be me. It's really about people that we connect with who are extraordinary but not so far out of our reach that we can't somehow be extraordinary as well. Sitting here and listening to Laura's music, today, before the show, it's an extraordinary talent, extraordinary voice and yet, I don't know whether that's... That's just not the it of the story. - Well, it's interesting 'cause I was a little afraid at the beginning of the project that learning about her life would ruin the music for me. (scoffs) Because, her appeal was so much, seemed connected to her mystery 'cause she was very private about her life. She was just on another planet and it didn't happen fortunately. And I think that people who are fans who read the book, they like getting the 360 portrait of her and finding that they still like her beyond just what she meant to them. And that she made all these choices in her life that were... Her art just was, (animated sound) it's not about commerce, it's about the art. And it's so weird to hear that these days. I think that's a real inspiration to people who just see what's called art in pop culture that is just all commerce. And not seeing someone who remained true to her muse, to her vision, throughout her life and compromise less and less and less and less. - Well, I think that the issue of kind of what, people, hopefully get out of this really goes a lot to what we are kind of searching for. I think when people look, browsing through a bookstore and we look at the, back cover or whatever and think about what we wanna buy, it's always about what will touch us and the combination I think of this feeling of, it's real, it's true. This is a real person, nobody made them up. So, if they did it, maybe I can do it too. Coupled with they are larger than life. Harry Hay, I mean all three of these people are larger than life. But in a sense, biography says they're not larger than life. Here's their life. And therefore, you can understand them. I guess. So, as I said at the beginning to you there's only two minutes kind of remaining. (laughing) You should probably say, if there's anything you were thinking, oh! There's one more thing I wanted to add about it. - Well, I was just thinking about one of the questions you asked at the beginning. The fact is when we all grew up, we didn't know anything about gay people's lives or bisexual people's lives. It was a hidden thing. It was in cells. (laughing) Hidden in mysterious cells. So, to be able to write biography and tell the truth about gay people's lives or bisexual people's lives is just a gift. - [Sheila] You mentioned-- - Yeah, it's been an amazing opportunity to do that because when I was at UCLA, right around the time I met Harry Hay, there was an art history teacher who was furious during a lecture one day that people were saying things about Caravaggio and Michael Anglo and how dare they. And, and that was the kind of controversy. Your friends, the LA Times, would cover up someone being gay or lesbian because-- - [Sheila] Right, as a supposed favor. - Right, as a favor. And in some ways it was at the time because there were so many laws that could get gay people in trouble. There's been an aspect of the Civil Rights Movement to the writing an honest truth about someone's personal and emotional life. Showing the emotional development of a gay person, was a profound part of, I think all of our work. And certainly with Harry, seeing how one person really can change the world it does have that inspirational quality to anyone who reads it. - Well, thank you all very much. Just a perfect wrap up Stuart. And you've all been very good to be here. Stuart and David and Michele. And thank you for joining us as well. We hope that you will be interested obviously in these books and even beyond, because looks like the truth about gay lesbian people's lives is told in biographies and all the rest is here to stay. So, get used to it. (upbeat music)