Gay men 1950s
Exhibition dates: 14th May – 11th October, 2021
Curators: Brian Clark, Susan Kravitz, and Parker Sargent for the Cherry Grove Archives Collection and coordinated at New-York Historical by Rebecca Klassen, associate curator of material culture
Weekend Guest at Hot House
1958
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Present of Harold Seeley
During the 1950s, Cherry Grove provided lgbtq+ individuals a much-needed escape from the homophobia and the legal and social persecution that many experienced in the era of McCarthyism following World War II. Homosexuals faced physical assault, verbal attacks, family rejection, loss of employment, imprisonment, and even involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation. In the Grove, they could openly socialise and life a joyful and rare freedom of sexual expression.
I appear to be on a roll at the moment with a series of exhibitions that this archive loves to highlight: human beings who picture, capture, depict, image, or photograph the subversive, marginalised, disenfranchised, concealed ‘Other’ in culture – as an act of resistance against living lives of conformity, against the prejudices of p
The BBC's First Homosexual: How we made 1950s work into a play
The documentary was later lost but, obeying the efforts of a Leicestershire academic and an award-winning writer, a act named The BBC's First Homosexual has been created about it which is having its first performance on Thursday. The people behind it explain the challenges they faced along the way.
'It provoked so much reaction'
Seven years ago Dr Marcus Collins was standing in the BBC Written Archives Centre in Reading feeling bored.
Marcus, an veteran in social transform in post-war Britain at Loughborough University, had grown drained of the plan he was productive on when his eye chanced upon something completely other - a massive file, containing paperwork relating to a controversy in the 1950s.
Intrigued, he interpret on to uncover the lost script of one of the BBC's first attempts to study the lives of gay men - a documentary named The Homosexual Condition, which had been broadcast on the Home Service.
It had been recorded on 24 May 1954 but was considered so taboo that it had not been publish unt
Gay Men's Dress in the 1950s
For most gay men, the 1950s were characterised by the very real fear of exposure, blackmail and arrest. The police were conducting a virtual witch-hunt of gay men, exemplified by cases such as the Montagu trials. The legal position was such that dressing to announce one’s sexual preference could lead to the loss of job or home, and could even guide to imprisonment. Therefore, most queer men followed the accepted dress rules of the day wearing "dark suits, three pieces, very quiet shirts." To the majority of gay men it was important to remain invisible. Clothes were conventional and only little signals were given to indicated sexuality, for example the wearing of a pinkie (little finger) ring or suede shoes (143).
Dudley Cave remembers the clothes he was wearing when he met his partner in 1952: "I was wearing grey flannels, a sport coat and an extremely butch belt, an ex-army belt, a tie. I wouldn’t contain dreamt of going into town in those days without wearing a tie and usually a sports jacket. Bernard was wearing a suit. Generally speaking we kept our heads down and tried to avoid being seen as what we were." John Ha
Government Persecution of the LGBTQ Community is Widespread
The 1950s were perilous times for individuals who fell outside of society’s legally allowed norms relating to gender or sexuality. There were many names for these individuals, including the clinical “homosexual,” a term popularized by pioneering German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In the U.S., professionals often used the term “invert.” In the mid-19th Century, many cities formed “vice squads” and police often labeled the people they arrested “sexual perverts.” The government’s preferred term was “deviant,” which came with legal consequences for anyone seeking a career in public service or the military. “Homophile” was the term preferred by some early activists, small networks of women and men who yearned for group and found creative ways to resist legal and societal persecution.
With draft eligibility officially lowered from 21 to 18 in 1942, World War II brought together millions of people from around the country–many of whom were vanishing their home states for the first time–to load the ranks of the military and the federal workforce. Among them were gays and lesbians, who quietly formed kinships on m