Famous Photo Found!

From more than 60 years ago, I remember this fascinating photo of moving day in an American suburb that appeared in my World Book Encyclopedia, which my mom got me when I was 7.  (The World Book was an education in itself - thanks, Mom!)  I always did wonder how they got those all those big trucks in and out of that narrow street.

Now somebody has done the research to find out where this photo came from:  it was taken in 1953 for an article in Life magazine about the booming Lakewood suburb of Los Angeles.  The researcher uses Google Maps and his own video to show what the neighborhood looks like now.  A fine job of sleuthing.

May 1st was moving day up north; I never heard of such a thing down south.  This article from the Brooklyn Public Library gives the legal and historical background of the event, with some humorous period pieccs about the hustle and bustle.  See also this Wikipedia article.

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70 Years On: VJ Day in Color

Alfred Eisenstat's famous photo of the "Kissing Sailor" in Times Square on VJ Day, as originally published in black and white in Life, and as colorized by Swedish artist Sanna Dullaway in 2012.  Click to enlarge.

World War II ended 70 years ago yesterday.  Here are some scenes of jubilant crowds in America and England celebrating the victory in the warm August sunshine - and getting a little rowdy too.





Life magazine published some fascinating pictures taken that week around the United States, showing what life was like for ordinary folks, as well as some interesting commentary on what the end of the war meant for the world and its future. Worth a look here.

Homosexuals in Revolt

Gay Activists Alliance dance, New York City, 1971


A show of hands, please:  is there anyone else here who remembers hot pants?

Hmm. 

And is there anyone besides your graybearded Head Trucker who will admit to having owned a pair?

Uh-huh.

And actually wearing them in broad daylight, out in public?

Oh.  I see.

Goddamn, I had to have been born this way; didn't know another gay soul, it was just sheer instinct.  Years and years before I even thought about coming out, there I was bopping down the sidewalk one summer day in 1971, wearing my new tank top and hot pants (all color-coordinated, of course, in maroon and white), thinking I was just being mildly fashionable.

Until later my (straight) best friend carefully mentioned he'd seen me.  And asked what I was wearing out there.  "Oh, hot pants . . . is that what that was?" he asked, with a pained expression on his face.

Chagrined, I got the point and promptly consigned them to the lower depths of my closet.  As far as I know, they're still in there.

Meanwhile, I was only very, very vaguely aware that my gay brothers up north and out west (those awful, sinful homos I yearned for and feared at the same time) were hanging out of in hot pants and dancing their butts off, happy and fearless and free. 

My God - 40 years ago.  Already.  Where does the time go?  WTF?!

Take a little spin in the time machine with this Life article from 1971 on the militant homos who were finding their voices and gaining ground, inch by inch compared to today.  But it was a start.

Excerpt:

It was the most shocking, and to many Americans, the most surprising liberation movement yet.  Under the slogan, "Out of the closets and into the streets," thousands of homosexuals, male and female, were proudly confessing what they had long hidden.  They were, moreover, moving into direct confrontation with conventional society.  Their battle was far from won.  But in 1971, militant homosexuals showed that they were prepared to fight it . . . .  

Gay pride march, Christopher Street, 1971

BTW, the following, unrelated article, "Looking for Ourselves in the News of '71," gives a very accurate feel for the deflated, uncertain, lackluster mood of the time when the brilliant parade of the Sixties had passed and the stale twilight of the Nixon years had set in. Another good read by a thoughtful writer.

Homosexuality in America - 1964

Decoy officer and partner lead handcuffed homosexual away in Hollywood.  When arrested for soliciting, he burst into tears. 

--Life magazine, June 26, 1964


Found this over on Box Turtle Bulletin, a link to the 1964 Life magazine article "Homosexuality in America."  While we are celebrating Pride and enjoying the afterglow of victory for equal marriage in New York, it's important to remember just how far we've come. 

Do the homosexuals, like the Communists, intend to bury us?  Yes indeed, suggested a startling front-page story in the New York Times and other newspapers last month.  A committee of the highly respected New York Academy of Medicine had come to the conclusion that American homosexuals want far more than to be merely tolerated and even more than to be grudgingly accepted.  Their true goal, said an Academy report, is to convince the world that homosexuality is a "desirable, noble, preferable way of life" - the secret of the greatness of Ancient Greece and "a perfect answer to the problem of the population explosion."

To its credit, Life did try to dispel the outright hysteria:

The Academy committee was dead wrong.  Only a tiny minority of U.S. homosexuals would ever beat the drums so sensationally for their way of life.

But then, as was usual in that pre-Stonewall period, the article went on to dwell relentlessly on the hopelessness of those sick, pathetic, messed-up homos:

Far more of them regard their homosexuality as an affliction.  The lot of the homosexual, as the photographs and article on the preceding pages have shown, is often furtive, hazardous and lonely.  Many homosexuals have gone to psychiatrists begging desperately for help in escaping a life that they had decided was utterly intolerable.

Notice the effect of the subordinate clause here:  they had decided.  Like some confused, childish soul who tries this and tries that, and dislikes all the choices, for no good reason.

But hell, who wouldn't feel that life was intolerable, being labeled night and day not only insane, but also a criminal, and a literally god-damned, hellbound sinner?  Because that is exactly the way it was, living back then in the good old Mayberry days.  I know.  I was there.

So it's somewhat startling to be reminded by this article that notwithstanding all the hatred and hysteria, some big cities had very lively gay communities - with all the very same types of people we still have:  drag queens, leathermen, preppies, long-term couples, hustlers, activists, and so on.  Plus ca change . . . .

But sometimes things do change, for real.  In the context of the above committee report, it's ironic that 47 years later, the American Medical Association has come out for marriage equality.

Then again, some Barneys are stuck back in the kitchen with Aunt Bea:




Bonus: Joe.My.God. has posted the original 1969 report by the New York Daily News on the Stonewall riots. This long, thoroughly homophobic article, titled "HOMO NEST RAIDED - QUEEN BEES ARE STINGING MAD," drips with mockery and sneering condescension at the girly guys who made trouble for the police one hot night in the Village. The unwittingly ironic kicker comes at the very end, though:

The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

"They were throwing more than lace hankies," one inspector said. "I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn't miss, though, it hit me right above the temple." . . .

The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.

As Joe says, they sure fucking haven't.

All Life Now Googleable

I reckon all you guys who ever use Google Images know that the Life magazine photo archives are available thataway.  Today, I just happened to discover that the complete archive of every Life issue from the main run, 1936 to 1972, is also on Google.  Pretty cool.  Brings back memories of a time when the world in all its dizzying, glamorous, frightening, amusing complexity arrived at your house in the mailbox every week - in some ways more intriguing than television because you could sit and pore over the text and photographs, some of them quite large, for as long as you wanted, pondering the immensity of the world you were growing up into.

Below, three covers from May, August, and September 1970, respectively.  I remember that summer well, I was 15:  no longer quite a boy but not yet quite a man.  Already aware quite definitely that I was a homosexual - that word is starting to have a bit of an archaic ring, isn't it? - and beginning the long, dark journey through years of isolation, guilt and depression, while my contemporaries were loving life and finding their places in the world.

That was forty years ago - where did the time go?