Jelly donuts: the price of being black and gay in Hollywood

“Diets don't work. It's those jelly donuts. They call to me in the middle of the night. Hollywood, Hollywood, come and get me Hollywooood.” Meshach Taylor bemoaned operatically, hitting notes only Leontyne Price could hope for and looking an awful lot like her while doing it. So rose the sassy star employee of department store window dresser, Hollywood Montrose, in 1987’s movie Mannequin. Taylor’s gay black character was sissifying his way into stealing the movie right out from under star Andrew McCarthy with one-line zingers and sequined likability. Scorching and burning the scenery like a roided-out version of André Leon Talley with his big shoulder-padded, über-fashionable caricature and looking fabulous in radiant eyewear, Hollywood Montrose brought homosexuality to a national audience and made it palatable. Note, I said homosexuality and not homo sex—There is a difference. Though his boyfriend, Albert, was often mentioned (as in “Albert left me! That bitch!”), he was never seen making you wonder how much ‘wood’ Hollywood was actually getting.

If you haven’t seen the fantastic documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995) and had grown up in my generation—i.e., the pre-Will & Grace, pre-Queer Eye, pre-Equal Marriage-Prop 8, pre- flamboyant hair battles, pre-Birkin bag-toting gay best friend in 5-inch pumps generation—you probably would not have seen very many openly gay characters on television or on film. Of course, there were varying shades of purple stretching back to the beginnings of cinema: there ranged faint hues of pink like the sexually flirtatious relationship between would-be murderers Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Strangers on a Train (1951), to deeper, more saturated lavender as in the infamous (and once banned/ deleted) “snails and oysters” scene where an elder General Crassus (Sir Lawrence Olivier) tried to seduce the younger doe-eyed, pouty-lipped Antoninus (Tony Curtis) in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960). Not until movies like Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)—where Army major Marlon Brando falls in love with a recruit, and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)—the story of a mother wanting to lobotomize her niece for telling the truth about how her gay son was murdered trying to pick up men—did the notion of man-on-man sex materialize. This film, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve and Cleopatra), written for the screen by Gore Vidal, based on a play by Tennessee Williams, and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, was so queerly pedigreed it became a cathedral of gay iconography like no other movie in Hollywood history. Although films of that time that dealt with gays typically ended in the tragic death of said homosexual (suicide in the former Reflections; murder in the latter Summer), at least their stories were beginning to be told. But just as I challenged in my previous blog about black women’s sexuality in Hollywood, so too will I ask the question now: where were the black gay characters? And if they did appear were they just pretty asexual dolls to be played as camp effect or shame then summarily discarded?

“The Sissy made everyone feel more manly or more womanly by occupying the space in between. He didn't seemed to have a sexuality, so Hollywood allowed him to thrive.”—The Celluloid Closet.

Some may think thriving is a contradiction to the tragic endings I spoke about. But the characterization of the fem man was allowed to live on in film after film. As long as the gay man was a dandy and a fool, he could survive. But once he threatened the status quo of gender rules death was very near. So the sashaying, jelly donut-eating Hollywood Montrose, despite presumably pounding snails and licking oysters, was acceptable because he was a sissy.

Interestingly, a recent study by psychologists at the University of Toronto revealed that when compared side-by-side, men (both gay and straight, both black and white) were assessed for their likability by women and a small group of other men. It was determined that black gay men are the most ‘likable’ and, therefore, most approachable of them all. Read this great post by Prince-Toddy English as he deconstructs the shadows this survey casts. He suggests that straight black men sexuality conjures Birth of a Nation fears in the women participating in the survey. But because gay black men don’t want vagina they’re perceived safe to play with. So, if finding viable films with a fair and balanced account of black male sexuality is a challenge, finding one with queer-identified black men is like trying to get the cast members of Jersey Shore to believe Chekhov's The Seagull is not a bar on the strip in Seaside Heights, NJ.

The first time I saw a gay black man on television I was sixteen watching a Saturday afternoon movie. I had just come in from mowing the lawn and was waiting for Star Trek when I came across a rerun of the 1976 movie Norman, is That You? Based on the Broadway play (the characters were originally Jewish), I was both mesmerized and shocked at the two men—one black, one white—lying in bed together. It was a vehicle for Redd Foxx and Pearl Bailey about a divorcing couple dealing with their son (Michael Warren) who was not only coming out, but was also in love with a white man. Think Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? but with an extra side of sausage. I was slapped back to reality when my stepfather, the Good Deacon, decried when he looked up from his newspaper “They ain’t faggots is they?” Maybe he wouldn’t have been so harsh if, instead of leather harnesses, they were wearing feather boas.

Ironically, in 1989, just two short years after Mr. Taylor’s Hollywood's screaming Mimi propelled a mediocre movie into box office gold, the British director, Isaac Julien, released Looking for Langston, a 42-minute short film combining archival footage of the Harlem Renaissance and scripted scenes with black actors Ben Ellison and Matthew Baidoo. The visuals of two black men entwined in passionate heat was viscerally explosive to me, helping to make the Harlem Renaissance, with its seeds of sexual unrest and free thought, the most brilliantly actualized time period for African American culture ever. That same year Emmy award-winning director Marlon T. Riggs released his seminal work Tongues Untied. Then came the often lauded but later maligned (and always controversial) Paris is Burning. Though powerful pieces on the unique experiences of gay black culture, these were still semi-documentary in nature. Where was the fictional fire white gays had expressed on film for years as in such movies as Boys in the Band and Making Love? Hell, even Al Pacino had a piece, albeit trannified, of manflesh in Dog Day Afternoon.

Then came Punks in 2000. Patrik-Ian Polk’s groundbreaking and well-received debut film followed the lives of four friends navigating the harsh waters of the gay Los Angeles social scene. With one night stands gone wrong, hot boyfriends, cheeky dialogue and steamy boy-to-boy action, this movie unfurled the reality of gay black men as something other than comedic props. Now, some may have a problem digesting the notion of effeminate or soft men being submissive bottoms or the whole gay-man-in-love-with-a-straight-man thing, but at the very least there were naked black men on screen and no triple-X rating to be found anywhere. The Harlem Renaissance was revisited in 2004 in Rodney Evans’ film Brother to Brother (with early film work by Anthony Mackie and Daniel Sunjata). And in 2006, African filmmaker Adaora Nwandu brought the beautiful love story of Raymond and Tagbo (Daniel Parsons and Adedamola Adelaja) to the screen in her movie Rag Tag. This small poignant film built a powerful story of taboo love in the context of homophobic West Indian and Nigerian cultures in London while also including the complexities of modern day class warfare (one young man was rich, the other poor). The film presented a star-crossed love story of Shakespearean proportions.

Since those times, being young and gay has blossomed, to a certain extent, on the small screen, setting aside the apparent white washing of Queer as Folk (read my post on that here). For a few years now, cable television has begun to showcase stories of gay black sexuality, from the series Noah’s Arc to the DL Chronicles; the movie Ski Trip to characters Omar Little on The Wire and Omar on Single Ladies; and independent shorts like Slow by Darius Clark Monroe. Now there is always a need for more representation. In comparison to the more established white gay community there is tons more work needing to be offered but with the Internet there a greater opportunity such as the web series Drama Queenz to take hold. And, yes, Hollywood Montrose is still alive (but not eating jelly donuts; think of the all those carbs), in the form of Lafayette Reynolds on the hit HBO series True Blood. With Covergirl eyelashes and a tongue so sharp it can cut steel, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) cuts a mighty figure as Bon Temps local Satyr. He is in full command of his sexuality. Giving off a humidity that viewers can feel, he has become the show's most popular character and thank God he (nor the writers/ creators/ producers of the show) are afraid of sex. In season 4 of the series he even gets a loving boyfriend. And though Lafayette stabed poor Jesus to death while possessed by Harry Potter's demented aunt in the season 4 finale; we still have hope that there'll be another cute boy for Mr. Reynolds' enjoyment next season. Being a medium Lafayette can maybe channel the ghosts of Barca and Pietros—the gay gladiatorial beast and his companion who died in Spartcus: Blood and Sand. Thankfully this time around none of their deaths had anything to do with their life-styles. Which gives us some optimism that one day soon, black gay men will never have to hear another jelly donut call his name.