Martin Greif’s Got a Little List

[AC Benus]

If you’re humming an Arthur Sullivan number right about now, you’re getting the gist of this posting. For Greif’s “Gay Book of Days” is a must-have for any budding Queer library. Written with great aplomb, and a devilish sense of humor, the author lists each of the 365 days of the year with info on who from the LGBTI2S+ Community was born on that day. Typical entries run to 4 or 5 revealing biographies per day.

Flaunting legal threats to sue, the author also provides a concluding list of those who cannot be named.

He initialed them instead, lol, giving profession and nationality as further clues. What balls! I love it so much.

I’ve had fun looking over the list and coming up with some names to go along with the bio information. So, let’s all play and post our answers here, preferably a few at a time to let everyone say what they think.

 

 

 

[AC Benus]

@Zombie I bet the first person on this list jumps right out at you, doesn't it  

[Krista]

So is this like a drinking game? First one to guess a person and agreed upon as correct causes everyone else to take a shot? If so, I'm not game.. because none of them are coming to mind and I cannot be this drunk on a Sunday evening. 

[wildone]

Is A.C. actually @AC Benus ?

You are a composer, are you not?
 

Okay Krista, take a shot  

[AC Benus]

2 hours ago, wildone said:

Is A.C. actually @AC Benus ?

You are a composer, are you not?
 

Okay Krista, take a shot  

Yes, that's me - Aaron Copland Benus, lol (surprised he was not out by 1982) 

Actually, the G. G. American composer on this list is a much more intriguing name, as his family has denied hundreds of Gay claims about him (which they still do to this day)

Edited June 26, 2023 by AC Benus

[Zombie]

9 hours ago, AC Benus said:

@Zombie I bet the first person on this list jumps right out at you, doesn't it  

Well, the dead can’t sue so I’m guessing these were all still alive when this book was written (in the 80s?) and I recently watched a doc on Cary Grant and his “best friend” and he died 1986…

Interestingly, Amazon’s listing includes this statement from Greif’s nephew:

I am the nephew of writer MARTIN GREIF. My uncle, who had a wonderful career and an exciting life, died of Aids near his home in Ireland in November 1996. The book many people will remember Martin for is Gay Book of Days, a personal favorite of his. Often asked to write an updated version, it was something he was giving considerable thought to during the 90s, but unfortunately he never got beyond the planning stages of an assualt on further research. Though a private person who never let on to even his closest family that he had the disease, it has been reasoned that, in death, others could benefit from knowledge of what took him from us...for indeed it has taken many of the people written about in Gay Book of Days. By the way: Gay Book of Days is a hilarious, irreverant and highly entertaining read for anyone.....Cheers, ERIC GREIF

[AC Benus]

7 hours ago, Zombie said:

Well, the dead can’t sue so I’m guessing these were all still alive when this book was written

Not so, like in the case of Thornton Wilder, whose sister got all the money and production income from his work. She had a team of vicious lawyers "protecting" her cash-cow's reputation as an assumed straight man. It was all about the money, as apparently it still today with the owner's of George Gershwin's incredibly lucrative artistic estate.

Won't you guess on any of them? The UK-born ones particularly might be less obscure to you than they are to me

   

[Zombie]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

Won't you guess on any of them? The UK-born ones particularly might be less obscure to you than they are to me

Ah, so it wasn’t Cary Grant? In which case I’m stumped 

Thornton Wilder’s sister (who sounds like a nice piece of work) might have engaged a whole pack of legal Rottweilers but I don’t think there’s anything they could have done about Greif  “naming” TW after his death because it’s a common law rule that dead people can’t sue (their estate can in some cases, but only if the coffin customer had already initiated legal action before making their one-way trip to the Pearly Gates).  Reading the Wiki page, it says that 6 years after TW’s death (which would be 1981-2) the writer/tattoo artist/pornographer Samuel Steward (wow, he led an interesting life! ) wrote in his autobiography that he had sex with TW so it seems there was more than just nods+winks (see Personal Life section), and this gay website describes him as a “discreet homosexual, his sexual proclivities were kept far out of the limelight”:

http://www.glbtqarchive.com/literature/wilder_t_L.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Wilder#Personal_life

Also worth reading the Samuel Steward page - ‘Life and career’ section 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Steward#Bibliography

Cleveland law firm webpage:

https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-defamation/can-dead-people-defamed/#:~:text=Likewise%2C the estate of a,been defamed by the statements.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Zombie

[Zombie]

Some “educated guesses” 

S. D. Salvador Dali 

L. B. Leonard Bernstein 

V. H. Vladimir Horowitz

R. McD. Roddy McDowell 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Zombie

[AC Benus]

Yes, the first one is Cary Grant. He's been known, along with the love of his life, Randolph Scott, among the Community since the 1930s. You can check with Scotty Bowers on that.

So, the list starts:

 

Cary Grant

Danny Kaye

Randolph Scott

Stephen Sondheim (not out in 1982?! Whaaaaat, lol. Shocking.)

Salvador Dalí (Lorca's partner in the 1920s)

and then "M. S. American children's writer"...has me totally stumpified. Any ideas...I guess I don't know many children's authors...person who write Stuart Little? No, that's E. B. White. So, I Don't know

 

 

   

Edited July 1, 2023 by AC Benus

[Dhpiet77]

M.S. - Maurice Sendak

[Dhpiet77]

M.S. - Maurice Sendak

L.T. - Lily Tomlin

Edited July 5, 2023 by Dhpiet77

[AC Benus]

1 hour ago, Dhpiet77 said:

M.S. - Maurice Sendak

L.T. - Lily Tomlin

The other American comedienne on the list is a real puzzler: K. B.

Any ideas? 

[Dhpiet77]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

The other American comedienne on the list is a real puzzler: K. B.

Any ideas? 

Nothing from my searches so far, and nothing comes to mind yet.

[Dhpiet77]

AL , American playwright - Arthur Laurents

 

[Dhpiet77]

B.S. American actress - Barbara Stanwyck

[Bill W]

On 6/25/2023 at 11:35 PM, AC Benus said:

Yes, that's me - Aaron Copland Benus, lol (surprised he was not out by 1982) 

Actually, the G. G. American composer on this list is a much more intriguing name, as his family has denied hundreds of Gay claims about him (which they still do to this day)

I'm late to  this thread, but is G.G. George Gershwin? 

[Bill W]

6 hours ago, AC Benus said:

The other American comedienne on the list is a real puzzler: K. B.

Any ideas? 

Did Kathy Bates ever do comedy? 

[Bill W]

6 hours ago, AC Benus said:

The other American comedienne on the list is a real puzzler: K. B.

Any ideas? 

Kendra Borgen, aka KB_comic ????

[LemonSoda]

JR, American choreographer - Jerome Robbins obviously
LF, American dancer-choreographer - guessing Larry Fuller?
HL, American dancer - first thought is Hugh Laing but I think Greif would have called him British-American in that case. unsure. 
A de S, American dancer - Andre de Shields
RH, English dancer - Robert Helpmann 

[AC Benus]

6 hours ago, Bill W said:

I'm late to  this thread, but is G.G. George Gershwin? 

Yes! Although the estate has kept anything from being published (as far as I know), people have spoken about G. G.'s queerness in other forms. I myself was ignorant of this topic until I heard Michael Feinstein on the radio. This was perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, and he was doing a San Francisco engagement. Naturally the live-broadcast conversation lingered on Fienstein's role as Ira Gershwin's professional assistant, which went on for about 10 years as he organized and catalogued all of the firsthand material on the Gebrüder Gershwin's careers to be handed over to the Smithsonian upon Ira's death.

Michael Feinstein spoke freely about George's orientation in this interview, and did so as a matter of fact. Later, I heard Michael Tilson Thomas (also on Greif's list as of 1982, OMG, so funny!!!!) speak about this subject freely on local TV.

At first I was a little puzzled, as I've read a lot about G. G., starting in college with Charles Schulz's highly detailed and well-cited biography, where needless to say, there is a total whitewashing of G. G. as a super ladies' man (the same whitewash applied to Walt Whitman and Volfie Goethe, by the way). However, with the knowledge of George as Gay, so many little episodes in his life come into total focus. Like the fact that Gershwin only ever associated with "safe" women; those who were already married. Gershwin had a string of these as his besties, and I always wondered why the husbands never broke them us: the answer, "But, honey, Georgie is a queer-bird. There's nothing to worry about." Yes, makes sense. 

There's another tale of the Gershwins' first trip to Paris, and his buddies taking him to a French "house of pleasure" to see his technique with women. They were in the room next door, watching through a peephole. What they saw, thy all admitted, opened their eyes, although they never said what they saw. If George did not have sex with her, but just sat down and chewed the fat, that would have been as shocking to his "buddies" as if he'd ripped her clothes off, he-man style. Yes, now this anecdote makes sense too. 

And, lol, if you're still reading, a much later story comes into focus as well. The one where Gershwin sat down at the piano, naked, and performed the entire score of "Pardon My English" because a "friend" had said the musical wasn't up to snuff. What the "friend" may have failed to mention is that he was naked too, and the chitchat leading up to this clothesless performance may have been in bed. Yes, total sense now. 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

5 hours ago, Bill W said:

Kendra Borgen, aka KB_comic ????

I couldn't find information about her. Do you know the approximate date of birth? It would have to be someone who'd "made it big" by the late 1970s for Martin Greif's readership to have known who was meant 

[AC Benus]

13 hours ago, Dhpiet77 said:

M.S. - Maurice Sendak

Very good! He's someone not on my radar, as I guess I missed the Where the Wild Things Are book when a kid. But now even wiki can't hide the fact that Sendak was with his partner from the early 1950s until the partner's death in 2017  

[AC Benus]

3 hours ago, LemonSoda said:

JR, American choreographer - Jerome Robbins obviously
LF, American dancer-choreographer - guessing Larry Fuller?
HL, American dancer - first thought is Hugh Laing but I think Greif would have called him British-American in that case. unsure. 
A de S, American dancer - Andre de Shields
RH, English dancer - Robert Helpmann 

Excellent insight! As for Hugh Laing's listing as an "American dancer", please note Cary Grant on the list is also mentioned as an "American actor." I think traditionally, one's citizenship was the determining factor of nationality and natal places only secondary to any consideration. If Bob Hope were on this list, Greif would have undoubtedly called him an "American comedian" too. 

Larry Fuller. Yes, what a sweetheart. I was lucky enough to have his life cross paths with mine for a while. I wish him the best! 

Edited July 5, 2023 by AC Benus

[Bill W]

23 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

I couldn't find information about her. Do you know the approximate date of birth? It would have to be someone who'd "made it big" by the late 1970s for Martin Greif's readership to have known who was meant 

I guess maybe she wouldn't qualify, because the closest I could come to finding out anything about her age was this:  aBorn into Reagan-era hunter-gatherer society in Alaska