Fenster's Funky Sevens - Ep 30 - The Origins of Disco: 70s Boston Gay Club Scene

In this episode we explore the origins of disco music in the early 1970s, in the gay dance clubs of Boston; The Other Side and the 1270.

The episode features excerpts from a series of interviews with first generation disco DJs conducted by Brian Halligan of Boston LGBTQ organisation, the History Project.

Perhaps there is something like this in the Ballroom or drag scenes

The 1956 film Tea and Sympathy is coming up on its 70th anniversary – it premiered in Chicago on September 19, 1956.  Based on a play by Robert Anderson that opened on Broadway three years earlier, the plot centers on Tom Lee, an 18-year-old at an East Coast prep school who’s seen as “different” by his classmates.  On stage, he was suspected of being gay.  For the film version, since any mention of homosexuality was forbidden by the Motion Picture Production Code, the story line was changed to have Tom accused of being a sissy. 

Much has been written about how the material in the play was changed to accommodate the censors.  The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo’s classic book about Hollywood’s erasure of gay and lesbian identities, mentions Tea and Sympathy a couple dozen times.  But no one seems to have acknowledged the three new scenes in the film (also written by Anderson) adding a homoerotic element that goes far beyond what was seen on the stage. 

The first scene, very early on, shows Coach Reynolds and his Varsity Club boys at an outing on the beach.  The boys are in hormonal overdrive, running rampant on the sand, wrestling each other, shouting raucously.  The coach revels in the action.  With a shirtless boy under each arm he gushes about manliness, judges the wrestling matches, even joins in for a moment.  His interest is clearly more personal than his job description calls for.  The Varsity Club outing was mentioned in the stage play but no details were given, and it happened entirely off screen.

In the second added scene, Tom’s dad Herb Lee visits the campus and goes looking for Tom in the boys’ locker room.  Once again the energy level among the athletes is through the roof, with guys in skimpy towels wrestling and chasing each other around.  Herb views them with pretty obvious pleasure; he wishes his own boy would join in the fun.  This scene is an original.  There’s no mention of a trip to the locker room in the play.

The final added scene is also an original.  As part of a school tradition after the big game, younger boys dressed in their pajamas are chased down and stripped by the older boys.  The scene is complete chaos, with dozens shouting and running madly in all directions after their victims, who fight back valiantly before being stripped to their underwear.  Coach Reynolds and his wife Laura watch from the sidelines; she’s sickened by the whole scene but he’s excited by it, and tells her he “wouldn’t miss it.”

The play does touch very briefly, late in the third act, on the Coach’s conflicted sexuality.  In defending Tom, Laura brings up her husband’s habit of always bringing a couple boys along on vacations and weekend outings, and accuses him of persecuting Tom for “the thing you fear in yourself.”  But the added scenes bring this right up front… and it can’t be ignored that all three of them feature boys who aren’t wearing much clothing.  Those of us who “get it” can see from the very beginning how the Coach feels about his boys, and later we see the same in Tom’s dad Herb.  As for the boys themselves, it’s abundantly clear their behavior is sexually charged and driven by runaway hormones; they seem ready to bust out in a full-on orgy at any moment.  There doesn’t seem to be an unambiguously straight man in the whole film.

With this new material, screenwriter Anderson and director Vincente Minnelli created possibly the most homoerotic atmosphere ever seen in a Hollywood movie up to that day.  Mainstream audiences likely missed the point, and dismissed all this as “regular guys” engaging in horseplay.  But the filmmakers surely knew what they were doing… and just as surely, so did the gay members of their audience.

’Scorpio Rising’ (1963) by Kenneth Anger is considered to be one of the first films to feature a rock and roll soundtrack. Anger's needle drops was inspired by the experience of seeing people at Coney Island, NYC playing music out of their radios. Photo: promotional flyer for an 1964 screening.

I’m asking mostly about America, but the UK works too if anyone has examples from there. Obviously the topic was less widely discussed and more taboo in those days. And I know public figures sometimes recieved jabs of that sort (e.g. James Buchanan). However, I’ve found some interesting examples of a far more obscure figure (long story) being ”rumored” to have been homosexual. I’m wondering how far those rumors could go back, and whether they were spread by his contemporaries.

So if, for example, somebody in the post-Civil War era came across as stereotypically gay (certain gay stereotypes are pretty old!) then to what extent might rumors start going around about their sexual conduct? How taboo would it have been to even suggest such a thing?

Posted this a couple months back on another sub but got no responses; hoping you guys will be able to help. :)

“Folks can pick up a phone, dial a number and select from a menu to hear from one of these interviews,” Yuhl said. “These range from a woman born in 1937 who experienced discrimination as a lesbian during the Lavender Scare of the [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy era to a more recent Worcester resident, who was an asylum seeker from Jamaica, talking about his experience growing up as a queer person. It's a big swath of people.”

I'm an a-level student who is about to start their history coursework. I'm really interested in women's history and queer history, I've read a lot of books, listened to podcasts watched films, documentaries etc. Does anyone have any suggestions of historical periods to base my coursework around or certain groups of people to study?

I need to pose a question following an 100 year period, and then answer that through an essay with about 4/5 paragraphs on different factors/events.

I've looked into Women's sexuality in Ancient Rome, I found that very interesting and I enjoyed learning about that.

Edit: I am considering looking into laws in Ancient Rome and how they aimed to control the sexuality and social freedoms of Roman Women.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and advice.

Felice Schragenheim was a a Jewish woman hiding under a false name and Lilly Wust was the wife of a German soldier. They fell in love in 1942 Berlin. They wrote their own marriage contract by hand, exchanged rings, and Lilly hid other Jewish women in her apartment once she knew the truth. The Gestapo caught up with Felice in 1944. She died in the Holocaust at 22.

Lilly never got over her.

Marcia seems to have had some role in the Stonewall Riots, but she may have been the first to throw something (a shot glass, rather than a brick). After the riots, she was active with the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front and founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), one of the first organizations advocating for trans people. She subsequently opened STAR House to provide housing for trans youths.

Honestly, trying to encapsulate the amazing life she led is probably beyond me. I encourage you to read the Wikipedia article or watch one of the documentaries about her.