My religious conversion to the muscle-magazine mind-set occurred in the middle of an Albertsons supermarket 10 months ago.
I had usually ignored men’s magazines, but as I perused the magazine shelves, this one had an irresistible allure. Its cover featured a healthy, bright-faced youth, wearing nothing but a Speedo — and a nicely bulging Speedo at that. He was shown emerging from a pool with a look on his face of absolute joy. Water dripped down his glorious, muscular body. He seemed to me the most gorgeous specimen of masculinity I had ever seen. Sort of like a young Tom Cruise, but sexier and with a less prominent nose. I quickly looked to see if the magazine’s contents lived up to its cover. Indeed, they did. Page after page of male heat sizzled inside. Posing, sweating, getting physical. Men! Men! Men! I could feel my temperature rise.
Had I found the magazine Burn! Real Fitness for Real Men at a gay bookstore I wouldn’t have been surprised, but at the local grocery market? That bastion of homogenous, middle-class, suburban heterosexual culture? What would Dr. Laura say? Though Burn! was disguised as just another fitness magazine, I blushed as I handed it to the clerk at the checkout stand. I knew it was much more than a fitness magazine.
It was pornographic, and it turned me on.
Available at most any newsstand, muscle magazines are homoerotic pornography for the masses. Their appeal seems to cross sexual orientations. Straight, gay and bisexual men have been known to enjoy them. In their pages, they eroticize both the flesh and the culture of men. To read them is to be sexually seduced into a fraternity to which all men are invited. They unite their readers in a kind of sexually charged adulation of masculinity. To the cult of testosterone in America, they have an almost biblical authority. They give direction, in the most literal ways, on how to be the ideal man: “Do this exercise, take this supplement, play this sport and you will be just like the men in these pages.”
When Richard Perez-Feria founded Gym and Burn! magazines in 1998 he believed there was a void in the so-called men’s fitness market for publications dealing with the lifestyle of men who enjoy working out. His instinct proved correct. They became huge hits. This month, approximately 300,000 copies of each title were distributed to newsstands nationwide. While the Audit Bureau of Circulations has not released paid circulation numbers for the magazines, Perez-Feria says they have averaged a 35 percent sell-through on newsstands. And Muscle & Fitness boasts a paid circulation of almost 500,000.
Having sold the magazines to a publisher a few months ago, Perez-Feria will soon launch a similar one called Tough, fully expecting it to be a hit as well. He says he wasn’t surprised by the success. Instead, “I was surprised at the intensity and the quickness … and near fanaticism which I got.”
He received thousands of positive e-mails, letters and phone calls from readers. “There was such passion behind it. The readers were so excited about the magazine. The intensity … and devotion to the magazine was incredible.”
Several of these letters appeared in the magazines. The writers represented a wide spectrum of masculinity, from married men in the suburbs to college frat boys to guys who are openly gay. Someone wrote in to admit that the models were so hot that both he and his wife were turned on by them.
While at first I thought this to be a new trend — fitness magazines doubling as homoerotic porn — I soon discovered it’s an old practice that’s undergoing an intense revival.
The first muscle magazine was published in Germany in 1893, followed five years later by two similar English language publications titled Physical Culture and Physical Development. Over the past 100 years, muscle magazines have taken many forms, but a historical overview of the genre shows that, at least until the 1960s, they served mostly as alibis for men to be able to look at pictures of other men, either nude or semi-nude, with little risk of scandal.
In his book “Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film From Their Beginnings to Stonewall,” Thomas Waugh demonstrates that the poses of the models, the gay ghetto codes used in the captions and advertisements, and the letters readers sent to the editors all point to a deliberate but secretive homoeroticism in muscle magazines throughout the first half of the 20th century.
He even claims that, “In terms of impact as well as artistry, the current of physique eroticism that flourished in the postwar decades is one of the great achievements of gay culture.”
Is it true, then, that the typical muscle magazine on the market, read by men from all walks of life, including the most macho, hulking, heterosexual of figures, has its roots in gay culture? This may come as a surprise now, but the public started to catch on to it in the 1950s.
This new awareness was exemplified by the House of Representatives’ gathering committee on current pornographic materials, which, in 1952, railed against “Nudist magazines and those which pandered to homosexuals by depicting ‘the male body beautiful.’”
In 1958, a model writing in Iron Man magazine said he was disgusted by the realization that he and other bodybuilders were being ogled by men “with perverted sex interests.” Something had to be done about this, and it was. An intentional split occurred in the muscle magazine trade between those serving a straight readership and those of a gay readership (or closeted gay readership).
Magazines arose strictly for “real” bodybuilders, a category that still exists. In these, publishers bypass the homoerotic beefcake imagery, and feature articles on training, diet and competitions instead. The photography is dull and lifeless. The men, invariably pictured gripping some huge weight, always look very pained and not at all sexy. (Or rarely even human, for that matter. The physical ideal seems to be that of the Incredible Hulk without the green skin.) It’s easy to spot these magazines, as their covers usually feature some muscular version of Pamela Anderson Lee — further enticement, presumably, to a heterosexual male reader.
There are no women on the cover of Burn!, or anywhere inside. Nor will you find them in Gym, its sister publication. Other exclusively male magazines are Exercise for Men Only, and Men’s Workout. It seems that readers of these magazines aren’t interested in the female form. What are they interested in, then? For whom are these magazines intended?
This is an issue someone raised in a letter to Burn! last year. He wrote, “I’m not sure who your audience is, despite the tag line (‘Real Fitness for Real Men’). I would hate to see such a wonderful magazine get blacklisted by anally retentive, unaccepting individuals. It could happen to Tinky Winky, it could happen to Burn!”
Richard Perez-Feria estimates that when he was editing Gym and Burn!, which was when they were most erotically charged, the readership was evenly divided between gay and straight men, though the boundaries between gay and straight seem to be blurred in this case.
“It’s a very open secret among the magazines that are in the market that you’re basically creating a magazine for, we call it a ‘closet case reader,’” he explained. “A guy in St. Louis or Alabama who doesn’t get a chance to look at men openly, or enough men as he wants to look at. And so you wrap it around the fitness context. You put a hot guy, oiled down with a dumbbell, on the cover like Men’s Workout does, and they do all the phone sex ads in the back, and you have a magazine. It’s a healthy magazine that will have 100,000 or so readers that just can’t get that stuff anywhere else, so they’ll buy it. And so Suzy the girlfriend or wife or mother thinks it’s a fitness magazine, when in fact — wink, wink — they know it’s something else.”
There was a lot of winking going on in the Gym cover story about Baywatch hunk Michael Bergin. The August 1999 issue featured an interview with him and made playful references to his sexual preference. Was he straight? Was he bi? He claimed the former, but one had to wonder about the latter. Suggestive photos of a semi-nude Bergin surely aroused even the most jaded pornographic fan. The pepperoni on the nipple shot was my favorite.
In a few of the photos, Bergin seems to resemble the late John F. Kennedy Jr., which is interesting because Bergin claims to have proposed marriage to Carolyn Bessette twice before she married Kennedy.
Oh, if only Kennedy had graced the pages of these magazines! Especially as he appeared in his 20s, he would have been a marvelous model for either Burn! or Gym. To my mind, the young men of these pages, with their bodies so elegantly muscled, resemble the long, lean figures of Lysippus, the great pre-Hellenistic sculptor. They are living works of art. Neither bulky nor skinny, they are perfectly balanced, shown in a rare, privileged moment, right at the cusp of full adult masculinity. Posed always before male photographers, wearing the tightest of underwear and no shirt, they know men watch and worship them and seem to delight in being the focus of their gaze.
The photography is intended to be erotic to men, yet the accompanying text often points out that the model is straight, by making reference to his girlfriend or wife. A typical example is the profile of competitive diver Troy Dumais, a gorgeous 19-year-old Olympic hopeful. “The first time I had sex, I was 17,” he says. “It was with my girlfriend, Nicole. Man, it was so wonderful and so special in the sense that I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
Photographs show Dumais modeling four different pairs of shorts, all bursting with the most promising bulge, as he gives off a lusty stare. The message seems to be that although a guy is romantically committed to being with a woman, he can still share a little “erotic play” with men. It’s not sex, but it’s seduction, flirtation and just a mutual enjoyment in being male.
This is illustrated by the copy for “College Muscle Jocks,” a video that’s advertised in several muscle magazines. “It’s back to college as eight stunning, buffed-out centerfolds invite you to a skin-filled fraternity weekend of hazing, rowdiness and wild fun!” shouts the headline.
“After the secret initiation of the freshmen it’s a nonstop party with workouts at the gym, towel-snapping in the showers, stripper parties at the bar and pillow fights in the dorm. Then catch each frat stud alone in a private fantasy showing off his naked muscular body just for you. Once you see these great looking college boys, you’ll join the fraternity.”
Other video titles include “Wide Nude World of Sports,” “Naked Football League” and “Buff Bachelor Party,” where “seven hunky friends celebrate the groom’s last weekend of freedom with wild naked games and horseplay.”
If the advertising in a magazine is an indication of its readership, as surely it must be, then the fantasy of male community, of team sports and group male bonding is obviously a very popular one. For gay men, this has long been known. Tom of Finland, one of the gay icons of the 20th century, illustrated it quite frankly. His images show an obsession with the erotic charge of male culture.
But does the average reader of these magazines realize the attraction? Of course I have no way of getting into his head, and believe me, the last thing I’m going to do is approach some strapping baseball-cap-wearing dude who’s flipping through one of these things at the newsstand and ask him if the pictures make him horny, and why.
But I believe some of the readers are indeed clueless about the underlying eroticism of the publications. For instance, Perez-Feria says that his father read Gym and didn’t feel it was pornographic at all. “He thought it was a bunch of guys with great bodies. He had no clue for him that it was pornographic. So, it’s all how you respond to what you’re looking at.” I have noticed a variety of responses among heterosexual men.
Some have expressed discomfort about the semi-nudity of the models. In one issue, five young dudes (Mike, Mike, Jeff, Adam and Steve) complained about it, claiming in a jointly written letter that most guys don’t want to see others in such a state. They didn’t say they were canceling their subscriptions, though.
Some readers are shocked when the eroticism of muscle magazines is pointed out to them. Rob Schuh, a columnist for Testosterone, recounts that, “Conrad, a friend of mine, was over eating pizza and he started flipping through all of my bodybuilding magazines. Conrad is gay and thought that All Natural Muscular Development was geared for a gay audience. I put this question out there and received about 10 corroborating e-mails. I also gave Conrad all of my bodybuilding magazines to take home. He lives in an all-gay household. He said that all of the mags went into the garbage except for All Natural Muscular Development. His roommates stated that all the male models were in ‘homoerotic’ poses. They also said that the few photos of females were thrown in merely as ‘cover’ and that the real reason the mag was always next to the toilet with the pages stuck together had nothing to do with the women, if you catch my drift. OUCH!”
In another issue of Testosterone a reader comments, “I got a few laughs when I read the discussion sometime back about whether Muscular Development is a ‘gay mag.’ But take a look at Page 110 of the May 2000 issue — this guy is obviously gay: 1) His ass is hanging out of the back of his ‘hot pants.’ 2) He’s only squatting 135 pounds. 3) Why does he have a boner, and why is Muscular Development showing it to us?”
A spokesman for Testosterone told me, “Look, the point is, these mags simply aren’t published for bodybuilders and serious athletes. I mean, do we waste our time criticizing Modern Sewing or Ladies Home Journal? Nope, they aren’t made for us, so why bother. Same with some of the other ‘fitness’ mags out there. Just don’t buy them ‘em if they ain’t your cup o’ tea.”
But they are my cup of tea. I find them much more exciting than conventional gay pornography, most of which is nothing but mindless humping and sucking. Very one-dimensional. The best muscle magazines depict men in a fraternal fashion, as “buddies,” as guys you want to hang out with to watch sports on TV after a sweaty workout. But the holding back of actual sex makes for a steeping, spicy brew.
As a teen, I never fit in with male athletic culture. Like many sissy-boys in high school, I feigned illness to avoid going to the gym and the dreaded locker room. I wish I had discovered these magazines when I was a young man grappling with my attraction to and fear of men. I think Gym would have helped me work out my sexual thoughts and feelings, as others might have done on the sporting field or in the locker room.
Bruce Benderson wrote of such a person in his 1970 sex novel, “Meet Me at the Baths.” His 15-year-old character, Paul, has sexual fantasies of the kind of men he had seen in muscle magazines: “Sometimes it would be a short, stocky blonde; at other times a mammoth brunette. He would speak harshly to me, telling me to get down on my knees and pay homage to the glory of his muscular body.”
“The depth of reaction that people have to bodybuilders is very significant,” says David Plummer, who writes about male sexuality from the University of New England, Australia. “People seem to be either gripped with desire or they are revolted. The point is that it is rare to see anybody who is simply disinterested.”
Plummer speculates that narcissism is an important factor in determining why some men are “gripped with desire” when reading muscle magazines. “Narcissim tells us a lot. It is a deeply homoerotic phenomenon. It implies that, deep down, men really do know how to appreciate men.” In this case it seems that narcissism is a love not only for oneself but for one’s ideal self as pictured in the pages of the magazines.
Paul eventually meets up with one of these guys in real life, a “straight” jock who forces oral sex on him after gym class. Although this was rape, Paul mysteriously described the experience later as a kind of epiphany, as “the image of his powerful body in the shower, and the halo of water which bounced off his white shoulders as I knelt before him, was impossible to erase from my mind.” After long immersion in the “monthly bibles” of masculinity, it was as if the young man had encountered a god.
Perhaps, then, the greatest allure muscle magazines have to men — one that crosses boundaries of sexual identity, that goes beyond the titillation of pornography or the usefulness of fitness information — is that they glorify masculinity. They make men feel good about being men. And the pages say to them, “You, too, can be a god.”
When Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, she left an estate valued at $92,781. In her will, she bequeathed her money to her half-sister, her mother and a few of her friends. Her will also stated that her personal effects and clothing were to go to Lee Strasberg, the acting coach, “it being my desire that he distribute these among my friends, colleagues and those to whom I am devoted.” Their value at the time was $3,200.
Recently, Christie’s New York auctioned off those same belongings for an astonishing $13.4 million. Of that sum, $612,600 went to the Literacy Partners, $441,650 to the World Wildlife Fund and the rest — $12.3 million — to one Anna Mizrahi Strasberg, widow of Lee Strasberg, a woman whom Marilyn Monroe had never even met. She is said to be thrilled.
The only other beneficiary of Monroe’s estate is the Anna Freud Centre in England, an institute dedicated to researching the effects of long-term psychoanalysis and psychotherapy on emotionally disturbed children.
While Marilyn displayed some degree of dependence on her analysts and her acting mentor throughout her lifetime, her biographers suggest that, toward the end of her life, her relationship to both had cooled significantly. Did Marilyn intend for her legacy to end up where it did?
Since her death, international licensing deals have generated more money than Marilyn earned during all her years in Hollywood. Since 1992, licensing and royalties have resulted in more than $1 million a year in revenue to the estate. With companies such as the Franklin Mint now rushing to cash in on the public interest fueled by the auction, that amount is sure to increase in 1999.
A recent visit to the estate’s Web site reveals that 122 companies are licensed to sell products bearing Marilyn’s image, while 52 companies have permission to use her image in advertisements or promotions. In addition to the ubiquitous posters and T-shirts, there are Marilyn checkbook covers, Venetian blinds, cookie jars, Christmas ornaments, shoulder pads, camera straps, stockings, stocking hangers, billiard cues and cue cases.
The serpentine story that culminated in the Christie’s auction began long before Monroe had become merely an image for sale.
In the fall of 1956, Marilyn was in London filming “The Prince and the Showgirl” with Laurence Olivier. With her were her husband, Arthur Miller, and her psychotherapist, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg. As Hohenberg could not remain with Marilyn during the entire four-month shoot, she referred her famous patient to another analyst in London.
Donald Spoto, author of the definitive “Marilyn Monroe: The Biography,” writes that Hohenberg “whisked [Monroe] off to meet her old friend Anna Freud” and that the star subsequently had “several therapy sessions” with her. Spoto provides no evidence of this, but his assertion is supported by Peter Swales, a historian who has researched the subject for his own as-yet-unpublished book.
Swales claims that he was told by two sources (Paula Fichtel, the Freud family’s maid since the 1920s; and Hohenberg herself), that these sessions took place. In correspondence with Swales, however, Miller “cast all kinds of doubt” upon the likelihood of these meetings.
“To further complicate matters, Fichtel may not be an entirely reliable source. According to Anna Freud’s biographer, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Fichtel was “a paranoid, and ancient by the time Peter Swales came on the scene.”
“Paula Fichtel told all kinds of things to all kinds of people which then made their way into the literature and were taken as fact,” says Young-Bruehl. She also claims that Fichtel “has contributed a huge amount of falsehood to the history of psychoanalysis.”
Was Marilyn treated by Anna Freud? The answer remains unclear, though there is evidence to suggest that Freud played an important role in Marilyn’s life later on. Whether or not a meeting between the world’s most celebrated sex symbol and the daughter of the world’s most famous sex theorist actually took place, Anna Freud may have been better qualified to treat Marilyn than the actress’s own doctors. According to both Spoto and Swales, Marilyn’s analysts were worse than unhelpful.
“Marilyn wasn’t killed by Hollywood,” John Huston said upon learning of her death. “It was the goddam doctors who killed her. If she was a pill addict, they made her so.”
Huston had personally witnessed the hold that Monroe’s therapists had on her life. In 1960, she expressed an interest in starring in his film about Sigmund Freud, and Huston was keen on casting her in it. Anna Freud, however, was adamantly opposed to the project. According to Young-Bruehl’s book “Anna Freud: A Biography” Freud’s (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to stop the film’s production were bolstered by the efforts of an influential friend in Los Angeles, Dr. Ralph Greenson.
A psychotherapist with a thriving practice in Beverly Hills, Greenson counted Marilyn as one of his patients. According to Spoto, only a few days after Marilyn agreed to be in Huston’s film, she changed her mind. “I can’t do it,” Marilyn told the director, “because Anna Freud doesn’t want a picture made. My analyst told me this.”
Young-Bruehl scoffs at the idea of Freud exerting pressure on Monroe through her colleague.
“Absolutely not. I mean, no analyst of principal — and she was certainly a very rigorous person — would instruct another analyst to be the courier of a message,” she said. “That would be a violation of the kind of consulting relationship that Anna Freud had established with Greenson.”
But, according to Spoto, Greenson’s sense of ethics were a different matter. Marilyn had been referred to Greenson by yet another one of her therapists, a woman named Marianne Kris. Kris, in turn, had come to know Marilyn through Freud, and she also shared a Manhattan address with Lee Strasberg. While Kris treated Marilyn in New York, Greenson treated her in California. Marilyn was to have access to a psychoanalyst at all times.
In his book, Spoto devotes a great deal of space to Greenson and his bizarre influence on Marilyn. Spoto points out that the doctor, initially merely the actress’s therapist, went on to become her behind-the-scenes business manager and agent; and involved himself in her professional and personal life to a degree that appears to have been obsessive.
Spoto alleges that on the night of Aug. 5, 1962, Greenson instructed Marilyn’s housekeeper to administer a chloral hydrate enema to help her sleep. According to Spoto, Greenson had observed earlier that evening that Marilyn was “somewhat drugged,” the result of her having taken Nembutal (another sedative), which had been prescribed by her physician.
“In his haste that evening,” says Spoto, “Greenson perhaps overlooked one crucial factor: the adverse interaction of the two drugs.”
While Greenson may not have been criminal in his actions, Spoto contends that, at the very least, he was irresponsible.
As for Marianne Kris — who as a child was practically a member of the Freud family (Sigmund called her his “adopted daughter” and Anna remained a lifetime friend) — she too appears to have had a lapse in judgement in her treatment of Marilyn.
In February 1961, Marilyn had become very depressed. She had just divorced Arthur Miller; her film “The Misfits” was getting panned by critics; and her career prospects were looking dim. According to Spoto, “she stayed at home in her darkened bedroom, playing sentimental records, subsisting on sleeping pills and rapidly loosing weight.” Alarmed by her condition, Kris had Marilyn committed to a New York psychiatric institution on Feb. 5.
By all accounts, this was a nightmare for Marilyn. Not only had she not given her informed consent, but she was placed in a locked, padded cell with a group of the hospital’s most mentally disturbed patients. She may have been depressed and even suicidal at the time, but was she deranged? She seems to have been treated as if she were.
The hospital granted her one phone call, and Marilyn tried, unsuccessfully, to reach a friend. Finally, she got through to her first husband, Joe DiMaggio. She hadn’t spoken to him for almost six years.
“Joe Dimaggio is her savior in the hour of need,” says historian Swales. The very night Marilyn called, DiMaggio flew to New York from his home in Florida and demanded that she be released from the clinic. She was released four days later, and then spent nearly a month in rehabilitation at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital (where, as was revealed in a letter she wrote during her stay, she read a volume of Sigmund Freud’s letters to pass the time).
Although Marilyn never saw Marianne Kris again, Kris remained in her will. Kris continued to correspond with Greenson and Freud regarding Marilyn, and is said to have regretted her decision to commit her. In Susan Strasberg’s book, “Marilyn and Me,” Kris is quoted as saying, “I did a terrible thing, a terrible, terrible thing. Oh, God, I didn’t mean to, but I did.”
“What follows for Marilyn are several months of being really — you could almost say down-and-out. Really at her lowest,” says Swales. “And Marilyn now decides she’s going to go to California and start life all over again. So, out she goes.”
In January 1962, Marilyn purchased the home in which she was to die just seven months later. The contract was drawn up by her new attorney, Milton Rudin, who also represented his brother-in-law, Dr. Ralph Greenson.
On July 30, Marilyn went to see Rudin with the intention of drafting a new will. Rudin refused to comply with her wishes, claiming he could not certify she was of “sound and disposing mind.” This was clearly not an opinion shared by DiMaggio. Marilyn and DiMaggio had set a date to remarry on Aug. 8.
“Marilyn insistently says, ‘I want to change my will,’” says Swales, “And so she makes an appointment with the brother-in-law [Rudin], and that appointment was set for the Monday following the Saturday-Sunday during which she died. Do you get it?”
Given her recent experiences, it seems likely that Marilyn would have taken Kris out of her will and put DiMaggio in. But the will was never changed, and Kris eventually left her portion of the estate to the Anna Freud Centre. Had Rudin complied with Marilyn’s request, says Swales, “There would have been no bequest to the Anna Freud children’s clinic, guaranteed.”
Swales also believes that Lee Strasberg would have been cut out of the will. “The whole relationship had cooled and she had begun to see him as, well, to put it cruelly, a bit of a predator. She still was in awe of the man and all of that, but she was certainly ambivalent by then.”
The sentiment was seconded by Marilyn’s half-sister, Berniece Miracle. As Miracle told Life magazine in 1994, “They did help her, but she wondered if they were taking advantage.”
Miracle inherited $10,000 when Marilyn died. Swales believes she would have inherited more had Marilyn been allowed access to her will. The sisters “had reestablished communication in that last year or so of Marilyn’s life,” he says.
Other logical heirs would have been her future husband, DiMaggio; the so-called Brooklyn poet Norman Rosten; Rosten’s wife and their child. “I knew Norman Rosten personally,” Swales says. “We hung out a bit when I was doing the basic research on Marilyn. And there’s no question about it, he was perhaps her most loyal and closest friend in the world.”
The Anna Freud Centre receives 25 percent of the proceeds of the Monroe estate. As an odd footnote, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis also donated $10,000 to the Anna Freud Centre in the late-’60s. Her psychoanalyst at the time was Marianne Kris.
Some have remarked that Strasberg’s sale of Marilyn’s intimate possessions at Christie’s last week, televised before millions, was in questionable taste. Maureen Dowd called it “creepy.” And there is something creepy about such a blatant dismissal of Marilyn’s wishes.
When Marilyn entrusted Lee Strasberg with the task of distributing her belongings “among my friends, colleagues and those to whom I am devoted,” an auction at Christie’s was probably not what she had in mind.
It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to figure that one out.
The telephone just rang. It was my friend Valerie, spurred on by some new observation she just had to share. It’s nearly 2 in the morning, but does she care?
“Freak out, baby,” she said, not even waiting for a hello. “Audrey Hepburn kicks Kate Hepburn’s bony white ass. Her style soars! She’s a Skyblazer! A Thunderbird! She Is My Queen!” And with those words she hung up.
She’d been watching “Funny Face” (1957), which I’d insisted she rent after learning she had never seen it. (Imagine that! A drag queen who had never seen “Funny Face”!) While I’m delighted by her enthusiasm for Audrey, her spiteful comment about Katharine, to whom I am eternally devoted, upsets me greatly. To take a jab at my most beloved heroine is to skewer my very heart.
Why did she do it? Revenge, probably. I think I touched a sore spot with her when I described the role Katharine Hepburn has played in my life. As I have explained to Valerie, it was when I discovered Katharine’s films that I started to grow out of my Audrey phase. Katharine’s fearless, quick-witted manner was a revelation to me. Her strength strengthened me and I became more self-reliant and courageous.
Katharine Hepburn made a man out of me.
Like Valerie, I too was once a young drag queen in love with Audrey Hepburn. I was drawn to her more than to any other figure in Hollywood. “Funny Face,” where she plays a drab, boyish creature who’s transformed into a supermodel, was the only film for me. The scene where she glides down the stairs before the Nike of Samothrace in a stunning red dress, chiffon “wings” trailing behind her, is masterful, uniting in just a matter of seconds 2,000 years of art, fashion and all the glory of feminine glamour. When I saw it, I knew my life would be forever changed, and it was.
Audrey played a pivotal role in my life. As a fashion student, trophy boy and sometime “escort” in San Francisco, I spent time between classes flitting through the department stores and chic boutiques of Union Square. Making it a point to peruse Tiffany’s weekly, I thought of myself as a kind of male Holly Golightly. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. I acted like a princess and was treated like one. After about eight months of this, however, I was sick of acting coy to get what I wanted. I no longer wanted to be someone’s prize, no matter how “golden.” So I gave it up. I packed my Louis Vuitton bags, left my Nob Hill lover and set out on my own.
Audrey is a joy to look at, but watching Katharine’s powerful physical presence on-screen is an invigorating experience. While Audrey pranced through Paris en pointe, a ’50s Cinderella in Givenchy haute couture, Katharine Hepburn was an athlete who tramped around the globe like a fire horse in khakis and clogs. She was a force majeure, definite and swift in her movement. She never studied ballet, but she did move with a dancer’s intelligence. She had, as one biographer remarked, an “oddity of gesture,” performing the simplest of actions, such as picking up a glass, in unexpected, visually enticing, ways.
I’ve been talking with all sorts of people about Katharine and Audrey Hepburn these days. Writers. My mother. Even my masseur. I’ve been trying to understand why they are so popular. In recent months, two beautiful books celebrating the women and their individual styles have been published. In May it was “Audreystyle,” by Pamela Clarke Keogh; it was followed this month by “Katharine Hepburn: A Stylish Life” by Joal Ryan. A movie about Audrey’s life has just been made for ABC television. And in a Zogby/Reuter poll conducted this year, Americans selected Katharine as the greatest film actress of the century. Related through a distant ancestor, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell (the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots) Katharine and Audrey were kissing cousins in style who, in their own ways, helped create the look and feel of 20th century womanhood.
Of the two women, however, Audrey is the more widely copied. After the Second World War, Americans wanted nothing to do with exotic foreign creatures such as the dangerous Marlene Dietrich, whose dark, heavy wardrobe, all feathered and furred, harked back to an unfriendly time. Young Audrey in “Sabrina” (1954), wearing a white flower-embroidered organdy gown designed for her by Hubert de Givenchy, was fresh and light and totally pristine — a springtime goddess. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) cemented the iconic Audrey look: the simple black dress, the big black sunglasses, the head scarf and the Tiffany jewels. Adopted by legions of women, including such fashion divas as Jackie O. and Sharon Stone, it’s the style of the most sophisticated kind of woman. In the last 40 years, no other film has influenced fashion as much as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
Born and raised in Belgium, Audrey’s father was a banker and her mother a baroness descended from a long line of aristocrats connected to the royal court of Holland. Audrey’s parents nicknamed her “Princess,” as if they knew she would be Hollywood royalty someday. In what must surely be a record, she wears a tiara in four films: “Roman Holiday” (1953), “War and Peace” (1956), “My Fair Lady” (1964) and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Audrey personified the idea of “everygirl” as princess.
My masseur, Jon, who also serves as my romantic advisor, spiritual guide and No. 1 gossip source, took this idea even further. “I have never met a woman without a princess fantasy,” he said. “Some are engulfed by them.”
Some men are too, I thought, but there’s more to life than being a princess. For proof, just look at Katharine.
In films such as “Woman of the Year” (1942), “Adam’s Rib” (1949) and “Desk Set” (1957), Katharine Hepburn is a lesson in leadership. She’s commanding, competent and concise. When she announces at one point in “Woman of the Year” that she is quitting her job, Spencer Tracy cracks, “Oh, are you running for president?”
The first female president of the United States will be a Katharine Hepburn fan. Born at the outset of the 20th century, when women didn’t even have the right to vote, Katharine was to become a role model for women everywhere, showing them how to take charge in a professional environment, and do so with style. Her mother, a leading suffragette who co-founded both Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters, was disappointed that her daughter chose a career as an actress, but her disapproval was poorly directed. Katharine’s work made a lasting contribution to feminist ideals on an international scale.
Her clothing was not as chic as Audrey’s, but she wore it well and always looked “smart” (a term which means little to people today). There doesn’t seem to be an easily defined Katharine “look,” as is made clear by perusing Ryan’s new book, which lays out her entire life through photographs. She had the rare knack of being able to wear anything. She could put on a seductress gown or gardening gear and appear at ease in both.
There was even an element of transvestism in Katharine’s work throughout her career, evident in films like “Christopher Strong” (1933), “Sylvia Scarlett” (1936) and “The Iron Petticoat” (1956). It’s not surprising that when she decided to do Shakespeare, she took the cross-dressing role of Rosalind in “As You Like It.” She acted in five Shakespearean plays, but it’s of great regret to me that she was never cast as Julius Caesar. It would have been her greatest part.
If Audrey were to have done Shakespeare, it’s doubtful she would have played a major role. Not Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra for her, but always the princess, always the good daughter. Even the lovesick Juliet may have been too dark for her. She simply lacked the gravity needed for an important dramatic role. A springtime figure, she would have been out of place in the bleak settings of tragedy.
In “The African Queen” (1951), Katharine fascinates us with her stoic resolve, her unyielding countenance and her determination — but she also shows us her vulnerabilities, and we see that her strength is built upon pain.
When she was 13, Katharine discovered her beloved older brother, Tom, hanging dead from a rafter. Following his death, she took on his role as the eldest child in the family. “I sort of became two people instead of one,” she once said, “a boy and a girl.” In “The African Queen” she is again the woman forced to take on great responsibility following the death of an older brother.
Her English period costume of the 1910s becomes progressively ripped and soiled, and the more ragged her dress becomes, the more glorious she looks. She takes on a kind of rugged femininity that a city princess like Audrey would never be able to pull off. She is manlier than any man as a result.
Freak out, baby.
Simon Doonan is the creative talent behind the avant-garde, sometimes bizarre window displays at Barneys New York. His work has been described as “terrific street theater” by David Bowie, and received adulation from people such as Bette Midler, John Waters and Joan Rivers. His book, “Confessions of a Window
Dresser,” which chronicles the fashion trends and pop
culture of the last two decades, is soon to be made into
a motion picture by New Line Cinema and Mad Guy
films, Madonna’s production company. (It’s rumored
that Rupert Everett may star.) Doonan, who writes a
column about celebrity style in Talk magazine,
recently spoke to Salon People about his appreciation of the
Audrey style.
If you could be either Audrey Hepburn or Katharine Hepburn, who would you be?
Audrey. She was thinner.
Why not Katharine?
I think Katharine Hepburn’s style was totally unique, but ultimately, that persona, that calla lily persona, became a bit irritating. Whereas Audrey was just always very inginue — and she had more of a skip in her walk.
Which Audrey movie is your favorite?
I guess “Funny Face.” Actually, none of her movies are that great. I think stills of Audrey are really magical. Film stills are better than the movies themselves.
That’s kind of true of most of the old movies, I think.
Yeah, all that pain to wade through. And there’s nothing more painful than that fucking Mrs. Higgins movie. What’s that? Where she gets the make-over and she’s all common. Eliza Doolittle.
“My Fair Lady.”
That’s agony!
Is it?
Yeah. Her blathering on in that stupid cockney voice and then going all posh. Audrey’s much better in film stills, because she is exceptional and her style is very extreme. The dykey, severe hair and those huge tar covered eyebrows. It was a pretty great look. And the same with Katharine Hepburn, because I think the one thing they have in common is neither of them have that much irony, you know. Bette Davis slogged away with the same old style, but she was always a pleasure to watch because everything was just dripping with irony. And these other two, they kind of found their niche and flogged it to death a little bit.
I was talking to Sandy Schreier, author of “Hollywood Dressed and Undressed,” and she pointed out that Audrey Hepburn was kind of like a princess.
I don’t think of her that way. I saw her once in public and she was having a scotch and a cigarette, and she saw people looking at her, and she stubbed out the cigarette and the scotch and put it away. I also think of her as being extremely malnourished. She was malnourished as a child. You know, the Red Cross came and pulled her out of Holland. That was her whole thing. That’s why she got involved in UNICEF.
There’s some controversy about if she had an eating disorder. Do you think she did later in life?
I’m sure she had an eating disorder. Everybody has an eating disorder if they’re in the performing arts, you know. If they’re not bulimic they’re overeating. If they’re not Chris Farley they’re bulimic. It’s a rough profession for eating disorders. But so what?
I’m sorry?
People say things like that as if it’s some terrible indictment. “Oh, she had an eating disorder.” So what? She had a good life and she did a lot of incredible things and she was smart enough to bail on the career and focus on the philanthropic stuff. She has a pretty flawless image.
I think that’s kind of the interesting aspect of her, it shows a kind of darker side. She wasn’t perfect.
Yeah, absolutely. I think the best thing about her was — well, there’s two things. One is her look, which was very unique and completely chic and really great. And the other is the fact that she was obviously very kind and she really did give a shit.
Are there any young actresses who you think equal her?
I think now as all these models like Carolyn Murphy and Michelle Hicks are going into movies, you’re going to see some girls with that kind of poise in movies. But whether they’ll make good movies or not, who knows. Carolyn Murphy is incredibly poised and very ladylike. She has an innate grace.
That’s kind of the princess element of Audrey I was talking about. Knowing how to stand. How to be composed.
Like Gong Li. Gong Li has that. The Chinese actress.
I don’t know who she is.
Oh, she’s the biggest actress in China. She’s in “Farewell, My Concubine” and “The Red Lantern.” She’s made a lot of movies. She has that innate poise and grace which Audrey Hepburn had. But there’s something sickening about people cooing on about Audrey Hepburn. Her adulation almost eclipses what’s really great about her. The originality of her look.
