The Pridelets Files for October 27

On this day in 1903, Sigmund Freud writes in the Viennese newspaper, "Die Zeit," that "I am . . . of the firm conviction that homosexuals must not be treated as sick people, for a perverse orientation is far from being a sickness. Would that not oblige us to characterize as sick many great thinkers and scholars of all times, whose perverse orientation we know for a fact and whom we admire precisely because of their mental health? Homosexual persons are not sick."

BIRTHGAYS (and the occasional straights)
* 1466 - Christian Humanist Desiderius Erasmus
* 1846 - English writer Katherine Harris Bradley, (co-holder of the pseudonym "Michael Field")
* 1926 - "Applesauce" author June Arnold

Q.UOTE
"You're grown up and you've made your own life and made your own family with your lover. Your parents are in the background. Don't make them the foreground. Let them be vaguely benevolent figures whom you maintain a sweet but distant connection to and let them think whatever they think and feel what they feel. Be grateful for what you have and don't worry about them until it's time to pick out a nursing home. And then find one that's staffed by gay guys." -- How to deal with homophobic parents, from Garrison Keillor

THE BEDSIDE TABLE
"Under The Rainbow: An Intimate Memoir Of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson & My Life In Old Hollywood" by John Carlyle

Actor John Carlyle got his big break in 1954. New to Hollywood, the twenty-three-year-old Carlyle was cast as the assistant director of the movie-within-a-movie in George Cukor's A Star Is Born. Although Carlyle's scene was later cut from the film--and his star status subsequently never materialized--the job brought him in touch with Judy Garland, who up until her death fifteen years later was Carlyle's friend and sometime lover. Under The Rainbow tells the story of this rocky but beloved relationship. No longer the great star who first enthralled Carlyle as an adolescent, Garland--like many former headliners in the 1960s--lived an often desperate, hand-to-mouth existence that was eased only by pills and liquor. She turned to Carlyle for support, even with the hope of marrying the openly gay actor. He politely declined the opportunity of matrimony, but remained constant in his adoration of the star for the rest of his life.
The author takes us on a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of gay Hollywood, with an intimate, often hilarious, star-studded memoir of the decline and end of old Hollywood.

This work is copyright 2006 Thomas Allen Heald, all rights reserved. Contact the author at tom@idontgetit.org and the latest column are always available at www.Pridelets.com.