Advent 3: Christmas is a Bit of a Drag

Modern drag has advanced little since the start of this century (if at all). Much of it is lingering in the style of the 1980s, desperately trying to appear relevant and significant in today’s world, and failing, due to drag’s outdated gay stereotypes. However, it is far advanced from the drag and female impersonations of a hundred years ago.

If we go back further to look at what influenced modern drag we find the British pantomime dame and, even earlier, the character of the Italian commedia dell’arte. And even further back than that, we have comic female characters played by men in medieval mystery plays based on stories in the Bible.

It has to be admitted that these very early drag-like performances were purely for entertainment purposes and no gender identity was assigned to the performer. It is well-known that at one time women were not allowed, or discouraged, to be actors. That meant that any female character, including the Virgin Mary in Christmas nativity plays, were played by men or boys.

One development of the medieval mystery play is one I wrote about in 2019, the French Société Mattachine. In that article I explained how the early gay rights organisation in the USA, the Mattachine Society, was named after these medieval performers.

The Mattachines were not confined to France. The name seems to derive from the Italian “mattaccino”, which comes from “matto” meaning “mad”. From this we understand how the comic characters found in various mattachine groups throughout medieval Europe act in over-the-top performances, as if mad.

If we skip across to Spain we find the matachines who were popular in the 17th century, quite some time after other European variations had begun to die away. Because of this, the Spanish matachines is the form which has survived today – but not in Spain.

The Spanish matachines had developed into a more musical and dance form rather than drama. It still had the stock characters familiar in all its forms in Europe – a hero, a young woman, an old man, a villain, and more pertinent for our purposes today, an old woman played in drag. A particularly Spanish addition to the cast was a bull.

But what have the matachines got to do with Christmas? Bear with me while I digress. We have to look at how the matachines dances evolved after the Spanish colonised Central America. There’s a debate which is pertinent to the matachines, and Christmas in general. It concerns what I believe is a common misconception constantly repeated at this time of year that Christmas traditions are actually pagan. No matter how much research in many academic papers and books I can find no actual proof of this, only a lot of unsupported opinion based on coincidence from the 18th century onwards (not to mention modern crap about Santa and Coca Cola). Thankfully, an increasing number of qualified historians have debunked many of these pagan lies. Just because two things sound or behave the same it doesn’t prove they’re connected.

Usually, the Christian Church is presented as adopting pagan practices to encourage indigenous communities to convert to Christianity. I believe the opposite. I’m not alone in this. This 2021 article on the history of matachines in Mexico from the Universad Nacional Autómona de México comes to the same conclusion. It is becoming clear through modern research that it was newly converted indigenous communities who looked at what Christian practices were similar to their own and then adapted them without losing their own cultural identity. The Christian Church authorities, in their turn, saw no reason to object and, as long as Christian doctrine was followed, accepted the new ethnic take on their practices (except a handful of puritan extremists, like those today who want to ban “Harry Potter” because it “promotes witchcraft”).

The Spanish Conquistadors spread their matachine dances across Central America. In Mexico the Aztecs in particular merged it with their own dance rituals and produced a variation which they still use today, a variation that actually includes a king character based on Moctezuma (Montezuma). This is performed on special occasions, though not often at Christmas as with their US Pueblo counterparts. It also has a slightly different name – matlachine.

The two female characters of the Pueblo matachine are called Malinche and Perejundia (or Abuela). The Perejundia is always played by a man in drag, and the Malinche is now usually played by a girl. They represent opposites. Malinche is a beautiful, young, innocent girl, while Perejundia is an ugly, bawdy and coarse old woman. The video above shows one of the few clear visual representations on YouTube of the bawdy Perejundia.

Usually, matachine dances are performed during Advent, most often on December 12th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrating the conception of the Virgin Mary (often referred to as Our Lady of Guadelupe). This is also the date which is generally considered as the start of Christmas in the Pueblo communities. In fact, several matachine performances have taken place this week. Because the celebration is religious and often performed inside churches, the Perejundia character is sometimes omitted. The video below is the matachine from two days ago in Laredo, Texas. You can see the Malinche played by a very young girl, and the old man character, but no Perejundia.

Prof. Brenda Romero of the University of Colorado, an expert on hispano-indigenous music, has noted that matachines among Pueblo communities have become quite inclusive. She says that gay men (and women, as can be seen in the video below) are actively involved. I may be assuming too much, and this is only my theory, but are some Pueblo gay men specifically drawn to playing the Perjundia in the same way that some gay men in the USA become drag performers? I have absolutely no evidence or proof of this, but it’s an interesting thought.

Whatever the gender identity of the person playing the Perejundia in the Christmas matachines, it is clear that there is a direct line of descent from medieval mystery plays to the commedia dell’arte, the Perejundia, the British pantomime dame and modern drag queens.

Next week we look at a Hellenic Christmas gift-giver and his association with a reluctant priest.

Day Of The Dead: Out Of His Hollywood Tree

We’re halfway through what the Christian Church calls Hallowtide. This is the 3-day period of remembrance and devotion to our ancestors. It began with All Hallow’s Eve (corrupted into Hallowe’en), followed by All Hallow’s Day (or All Saint’s Day), and tomorrow is All Soul’s Day. We don’t need to go into the history of Hallowtide, except to say that historians day there’s no evidence that there was any similar festival in pagan of pre-Christian times. No, the Celts didn’t have a festival called Samhain. As far the evidence suggests, Samhain was the name of a month or time of year, not a festival.

Mexico is the country that is most widely recognised as celebrating Hallowtide in a unique way in the festival which translates into English as the Day of the Dead. It was the Spanish colonists are recorded as taking Hallowtide to the Americas, and perhaps the ancestors of today’s subject was among them. The person whose ancestors I have chosen to delve into was the early Hollywood sex symbol Ramon Novarro (1859-1968).

There another reason why I have chosen him. Two days ago, the day before Hallowe’en, was the 55th anniversary of Ramon Novarro’s murder. You can read a bit about Ramon in this “80 Gays” article.

Ramon was not the only member of his family to make it big in the early days of cinema. His first cousin (daughter of his mother’s sister) was Andrea Palma (1903-1987), who became a big star in their native Mexico, though she did make a memorable supporting role in an American gilm, “Tarzan and the Mermaids” (1948) starring Johnny Weismuller.

A more distant cousin, Dolores del Rio (1904-1983), had bigger success in the US. She is particularly remembered as a lead character in “Flying Down to Rio” (1933), though people usually only remember two supporting actors, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the legendary dancing partnership first brought together for this film. Dolores and Ramon were third cousins, both being great-great-grandchildren of Leandro Sanchez Manzanera and his wife. Dolores was also famous for an affair she had with Orson Welles.

There are several other acting cousins of Ramon Novarro, including some alive today, but his ancestry shows no indication of where the acting bug came from. So, what is his ancestry?

Ramon Novarros’ real name was José Ramón Gal Samaniego. His parents were Dr. Mariano Sameniego (1871-1940) and Leonor Pérez-Gavilán (1872-1949). Both came from well-connected and prominent families with long lineages. Ultimately, as you might guess, the majority of Ramon’s ancestry came from Spain.

There is a tantalising rumour that Ramon has Aztec ancestry through his mother, to no less a person than Moctezuma (or Montezuma), probably the most famous Aztec “emperor”, but I am unable to find any information to verify this. However, that doesn’t stop Ramon from having family connections to other Mexican emperors. His grandfather’s great-uncle was married to the sister of Agustin I Yturbide (1783-1924), the first Emperor of Mexico after independence from Spain. He wasn’t in office long. There was a lot of opposition to Mexico becoming a monarchy, most strongly in the Mexican Congress. Agustin dismissed Congress and appointed his own. Very soon almost everyone else turned against him and he was ousted.

A feature of European colonialism is that quite a lot of the first colonists came from wealthy, landed families and minor aristocracy (most of the US Founding Fathers were from the upper classes). Because of this Agustin Yturbide can be put on the list of Ramon Novarro’s famous distant blood relatives in addition to his connection though marriage. Ramon and Agustin are descended from a Spanish noble called Fernán Yañez de Saavedra (d.1370). In turn, Fernán is descended from an illegitimate daughter of King Sancho IV of Castile (1221-1284). Going back further, and one of King Sancho’s ancestors was King Henry II of England, meaning I am a very distant cousin of Ramon Novarro also.

That opens up a huge catalogue of blood relatives that Ramon Novarro can claim. For this particular article, however, let’s just concentrate of some Hispanic cousins.

I haven’t done a massive amount of research into the ancestries of many Latin American or Spanish celebrities and famous people, though I have done some into those of national leaders. Through the same small group of Conquistadors in Ramon’s ancestry he is distantly related to at least two Presidents of El Salvador, six Presidents of Nicaragua, several dozen from Costa Rica, a couple from Colombia, and a couple from Argentina.

Among the Colombian Presidents in Virgilio Barco Vargas (1921-1997). One of my previous “Out of His Tree” articles featured President Barco’s gay son, the activist Virgilio Barco Isakson.

As far as Mexico is concerned, Ramon has at least four Mexican Presidents as distant cousins. One in particular is of interest, the fourth president Anastasio Bustamente (1780-1853). We enter Abraham Lincoln territory here. That is to say, there is clear evidence that the president shared a bed with another man, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate homosexuality. Both Lincoln and Bustamente shared a bed with another man. That was common in pre-20th century times. We have no evidence that any physical or sexual intimacy occurred. However, even though I still have reservations about the sexuality attributed to Abraham Lincoln I a have fewer regarding Anastasio Bustamente. It is widely reported that he preferred the company of young men, and he never married. So perhaps, he could have been gay.

Which other well-known Latin Americans are related to Ramon Novarro though his Conquistador ancestors? Well, there’s Che Guevara, Simon Bolivar, Eva Peron, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Going back and looking at Ramon’s non-Hispanic cousins, you can get a good idea from the articles I wrote about descendants of King Edward II of England, beginning here.

So, that’s Ramon Novarro’s family tree. It is dominated by the bloodlines and legacy of the Spanish Conquistadors. His immediate ancestry centres on the Durango province of Mexico, but most of his earliest colonial ancestors settled in the northern part of Spanish Mexico, the area which is now the US state of New Mexico.

Extraordinary Life: A Queer Action Hero - Part 1

In the 1920s and 1930s names like Scott of the Antarctic, Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh were familiar names because of their daring deeds and adventures. Another name which was equally well-known – Richard Halliburton (1900-1939) - but few recognise his name today.

Richard Halliburton

Two specific adventures dominate Richard Halliburton’s story. The first is his swimming the Panama Canal. The other is his mysterious disappearance along with his lover in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So much adventure was packed into just a short life that I’ve split Richard’s story into two. Today I’ll look at his 1920s adventures. In July I’ll look at his 1930s adventures.

It was 100 years ago when Richard Halliburton got the travelling bug during a break in his studies at Princeton University. He joined a cargo freighter as a crewman which took him across to England. Richard toured around for a while before returning to Princeton.

In 1921 Richard began his life of travel in earnest. To support himself he wrote travel articles for magazines, and his father also gave him a modest monthly allowance. Quite often, though, Richard’s impulse buying made funds very low.

The first adventure was to climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland. He had never climbed before but he had a travelling companion and a local guide with him. His travels then took him to France, Spain and Gibraltar, where he was arrested for taking photographs of British installations. After using his charm on the authorities he was let off with a fine of £10, which he had to borrow. His travel articles weren’t selling so Richard probably realised that he should keep an eye on his spending.

Richard made his way via Egypt (spending a night at the top of the Great Pyramid) to India. The lure of the famous Taj Mahal was strong and after hiding in the shadows as the site was cleared of visitors for the night Richard took a midnight swim in the pools in front of the famous building.

More adventures followed as he travelled eastwards. In Macao he encountered pirates, and on his 23rd birthday he climbed Mount Fujiyama in Japan solo. He arrived back in the US in March 1923.

Despite having written dozens of articles only three had been published. However, he thought of another way to earn money by going on the lecture circuit and talking about his travels. This was a great success, so successful that he didn’t have time to turn his writings into a book as he hoped.

Even though Richard pushed his body to the limit many times he suffered from a rapid heartbeat and hyperthyroidism. He checked himself into Dr. Kellogg’s Sanatorium for a while (I hope he enjoyed his corn flakes!) and the rest gave him time to finish his first book, “The Royal Road to Romance”. Before it was published in 1925 Richard was off on his next adventure - to follow the voyages of Odysseus, the hero of the ancient Greek legend.

Richard’s Odyssey began on Mount Olympus. He reached the summit to be greeted with an almighty thunderstorm that trapped him and his two climbing companions there overnight. Perhaps Zeus himself was punishing them for ignoring their guides’ warnings not to go up until the next day. After visiting Delphi and climbing Mount Parnassus Richard headed to Athens where he sneaked into the Acropolis at night after it had closed. This was followed by running the original marathon route (the last 14 miles by taxi cab in order to get to his own birthday party at his hotel).

Crossing to the site of Troy in Turkey he continued on to the Hellespont. There Richard emulated the achievement of one of his heroes, Lord Byron, by swimming across it. After various other adventures Richard arrived at the volcanic island of Stromboli a few weeks later. He couldn’t resist clambering up to the mouth of the volcano itself. (There seems to be some recurring themes in his adventures – climbing up mountains and volcanos, sneaking into heritage sites, and diving into water!)

While retracing Ulysses’ voyages Richard inserted a detour to the top of yet another volcano, Vesuvius, before attempting to swim across the Strait of Messina. Strong currents forced him to finish it in the accompanying boat. Richard also visited Taormina in Sicily, where Robert Hawthorn Kitson had his villa. Although not mentioned by name in his book of his Odyssey, “The Glorious Adventure” (published May 1927), Richard mentions meeting “all the Englishmen”. And yes, Richard climbed to the top of Etna, where he almost succumbed to the sulphur fumes. But he needed to finish his Odyssey before the end of the year, and eventually reached Ithaca, home of Odysseus, in December 1926.

By now his first book was rapidly becoming a best-seller and this helped to make his 1927 lecture tour hugely successful – and profitable. In 1928 Richard accepted an offer from “Ladies Home Journal” to write articles on Latin America and he was off on a new set of adventures.

He began by tracing the steps of Cortes who conquered Mexico. Yet another volcano, Popocatapetl was ticked of his list of climbs and then came the ominously named Well of Death at Chichen-Itza. Richard dived down the well into the water 70 feet below. Climbing out he realised people might not believe he’d done it, so the next day he got a camera and did it again.

The most famous exploit on this adventure was his swimming the whole length of the Panama Canal. He wasn’t the first to do it, but he was the first to go through all the locks, which meant he had to pay the toll, the lowest in the canal’s history, of 36 cents.

Other exploits on this American adventure included being held prisoner on Devil’s Island, and spending two weeks living as Robinson Crusoe on Tobago. All the time he was writing his articles for “Ladies Home Journal”. They were so popular that the magazine paid him a bonus.

Back home and back on the lecture circuit Richard finished his book of his latest exploits as “New Worlds to Conquer” which was published in time for Christmas 1929.

As the 1930s began the Great Crash and Great Depression hit the family finances. A bright light for Richard was his meeting with Paul Mooney, who became his life partner.

In July I’ll continue Richard Halliburton’s story and his final mysterious adventure with his partner.

High Pride

In a past article I’ve written about the oldest Pride events on each continent, the most northerly and southerly, and the biggest and smallest. What I haven’t done is look at which Pride event has taken place at the highest altitude. That’s not to be confused with the highest places the Rainbow Pride flag has flown. It may surprise you to learn that a dozen Pride marches have taken place at altitudes that are above the highest point in Australia.

Most Prides that take place in major cities do so at, or close to, sea level. The reason is simple – the original settlements of these cities, most of them current capital cities, were established on the coast or next to major rivers. So you won’t see New York, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro or San Francisco in the list below.

When deciding what constitutes a Pride event, whether it uses that name or not, is largely subjective. This is my personal definition. A Pride event should be an open public event organised by a designated committee. It should be aimed at (but not restricted to) the lgbt community to celebrate and commemorate sexual and gender diversity and to highlight lgbt rights. It takes place on a specific date in a specific public location. Any profits should go primarily to lgbt projects or charities. Pride events named or publicised to highlight specific groups within the community (e.g. Bisexual Pride, Black Pride, Transgender Pride, Internet Pride) are not included (I’ll try to cover them next year). Protest marches, political rallies and gatherings arranged in response to an event (e.g. equal marriage rallies, Orlando shootings vigils, protests outside government buildings, embassies and commercial businesses) are not included. Pride events I considered for this list had a central lgbt rights element to them, a parade or march, speeches from activists, and community celebrations of diversity, or at least two of these criteria. Finally, events such as Gay Ski Week, Disney Gay Days, gay cruises, etc. are not included because of their more commercial origins, despite fulfilling several of the listed criteria (again, I’ll try to look at these events in more detail next year).

So, where is the highest Pride? The most obvious place to look is in the Himalayan nations, but because most of the mountain towns and settlements are located in homophobic nations there’s little chance of finding any public Pride events there. However, if we look at the second highest mountain range, the Andes, we hit the jackpot.

To give you an idea of how high these cities are the International Society for Mountain Medicine defines “high altitude” as any location between 1,500 and 3,500 meters (about 5,000 and 11,500 feet) above sea level. They call any location between 3,500 and 5,000 meters (11,500 and 18,000 feet) as “very high altitude”. The top 4 cities that host an annual Pride are all within the “very high altitude” levels and are all in Bolivia.

One thing Bolivia is famous for is for having the highest capital city in the world, La Paz, at an elevation of 3,650 metres (11,980 feet) above sea level. But La Paz is actually the lowest of the top 4 High Pride cities.

Below is an illustration showing the Top 20 Pride Cities that I have been able to identify. Follow the city name down, or up, to the first triangle in that column. The triangle represents the general altitude of the city. As it happens the Top 20 all take place over 2,000 metres above sea level (and so is No. 21 – Flagstaff Pride, USA, not on the chart or list below). For exact details see the table underneath.

Below is the list of the top 20 highest Pride cities with altitudes, and the name and date (that I can find online) of the most recent or future Pride held there. The heights are approximate because various cities have varying altitudes from place to place, even my local Pride march in Nottingham ends about 30 metres higher than the start. As more research and more Prides are held in the coming years the list will undoubtedly change.

Even though I said above that I wouldn’t include any Gay Ski Weeks you may be interested to know which of them is the highest, so you can get some idea of how they might fit into the High Pride table. The highest Gay Ski Week identified so far is Breck Pride in Breckenridge, Colorado, USA, at an altitude of 2,926 meters above sea level. This would place it between Cusco, Peru, and Toluca, Mexico, in the above list. This may seem unusual, but snow levels are governed by geography and environment as well as altitude. Aspen, the most famous Gay Ski Week, takes place at an altitude of 2,438 meters, putting it between 8th and 9th place.

I cannot leave the subject of Pride in South America without mentioning Cusco again. Because Cusco is a very popular tourist destination with the iconic Machu Picchu fortress as its star attraction a few miles away visitors are often confused by the local city flag (below). As you can see it is a rainbow flag, and many visitors have assumed it is the Rainbow Pride flag first adopted by the San Francisco gay community in 1979 (based on Gilbert Baker’s original 8-stripe flag of 1978). This is not the case. The Cusco flag predates Baker’s rainbow flag by several years. It had been used unofficially as a symbol of the local Inca culture and was formally adopted in 1978.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 20) The 41

Previously : 39) Ivor Novello (1893-1951) failed to become a Hollywood sex symbol, unlike 40) Ramon Novarro (1899-1968) who had escaped Mexico City after 41) Amelio Robles Avila (1889-1984) and the Zapatistas took it over in the Mexican Revolution, one of whose origins was in a scandal involving 42) The Dance of The 41 (1901).

Unlike the Sacred Band ofThebes in January I can’t represent 42) The Dance of The 41 with a single representative because their names have not been revealed. Only one name has been linked to The 41, that of Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, the son-in-law of Mexican President Diaz. Some of the allegations of Diaz’s corruption centred round the cover-up and conspiracy of silence that surrounded this homosexual scandal in 1901.

A contemporary satirical leaflet about the Dance of The 41.

The identities of The 41 was suppressed and removed from Mexican history, though the significance of their number as a derogatory term for homosexual men continues in the public consciousness today. There is no conclusive proof that Ignacio de la Torre y Mier was one of The 41 (or The 42), only rumours of his participation after the media began to report the incident.

Lgbt history is full of anonymous victims of persecution and the Dance of The 41 is a perfect example. All we know about them is that police raided a private address in Mexico City in the early hours of 17th November 1901. There the police found 41 men, 19 of them dressed as women, having a dance party. This was enough for them all to be arrested.

Most of those present at the party were probably members of the highest social levels in Mexico City, so there was enough pressure on President Diaz from powerful families to keep the names of those present secret.

No-one is sure what happened to The 41. It is said that half of them were released without charge through the influence of their wealthy families. The others were said to have been sentenced to hard labour in prison. Ever since then the number 41 has been stigmatised and associated with homosexuality. Even some hotels in Mexico have no Room 41. Over a century later the number 41 was reclaimed as a mark of honour by the lgbt community in much the same way as the Nazi pink triangle was in the 1970s.

43) Alberto B. Mendoza (b.1971), an activist living in the USA, was bullied at school in his native Mexico because of his sexuality. He was called “41” but didn’t realise the true origin of this insult until his 41st birthday when he decided to find out why. This led him to discover the story of the Dance of The 41 and to create a charity named after them which campaigns to combat homophobia in the Latin American and Hispanic communities.

Alberto’s charity, Honor41, produces an annual list of 41 lgbt Latin American pioneers and heroes from all walks of life. The first list was published in 2013. With over 200 names from which to continue my 80 Gays I took one at random. The name I chose was 44) Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba (b.1958).

Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba appeared on the 2016 Honor41 list. She is an academic at the University of California Los Angeles which she joined in 1994 and specialises in Hispanic studies and is a prolific writer on the subject.

Dr. Alicia was born in El Paso in Texas near the Mexican border. One incident near El Paso in the 1990s inspired her to write a mystery novel. The incident concerned the very real unsolved murders of over 500 Mexican women. Alicia spent several years researching their deaths. With so many questions and few answers Alicia decided to write a novel based on the murders. The novel, “Desert Blood” (published 2005), featured the murder of Mexican women and the problems of immigration and treatment of female immigrants by the authorities.

For “Desert Blood” Alicia received the Lambda Literary Award for the Best Lesbian Mystery. Murder and mystery is genre in which women have always been prominent. Writers like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, among others, have produced some of the most popular mystery novels. Leading the lgbt contingent of female mystery writers are Val McDermid and Patricia Cornwell.

The person generally credited with starting the modern lesbian mystery genre is 45) Katherine V. Forrest (b.1939). Katherine’s 1984 novel “Amateur City” featured a lesbian homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department by the name of Kate Delafield, the first lesbian detective to feature in her own series of novels. Of the nine published books in the series Katherine Forrest has won 7 Lambda Literary Awards.

Katherine was also the fiction editor of Naiad Press for ten years. Naiad Press was one of the first publishing houses which concentrated on books by lesbian writers founded in 1973. In 2003 the founders retired and sold their stock and titles to another publisher specialising in lesbian literature, Bella Books.

Bella Books also produces foreign translations of their books. These include into French, German and Spanish. Some translations of Bella Books became the first novels published by LePress. Despite sounding French, this publishing company is based in the Czech Republic. The founder of LePress is 46) Markéta Navrátilová (b.1975).

Next time : Czech Pride takes to the air.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 19) Tarzan Speaks and Mexico Revolts

Previously : 31) Clive Aspin is active in the promotion of pride among traditional Maori sexualities, an example of which appears in the legend of 38) Tutanekia which is commemorated in a popular World War I song, similar in sentiment to another popular war-time song by 39) Ivor Novello (1893-1951).

39) Ivor Novello’s original name was David Ivor Davies, and you can’t get a more Welsh name than that. He was born in the Welsh capital of Cardiff. His mother, Clara Novello Davies, was a renowned singing teacher and founder of a women’s choir and it was her musical connections that got Ivor his start in music. Ivor would change his name to Novello legally later in life.

Ivor’s first significant contribution to music was during World War I when he wrote the music to a poem written by an American writer. This song was “Keep the Homes Fires Burning”. It was published shortly after war was declared. The sentiment of the words made the song a success, and after the British public adopted it as a patriotic message to their brave boys fighting in France it became as popular as the Maori song “Pokarekare Ana” was in New Zealand during World War II.

After the war Ivor wrote many songs and musical comedies. As his fame spread so did publicity shots, and it was one of these that put him on the road to the silver screen. Film-makers thought he had the perfect looks for a romantic lead in silent films. He starred in two early Alfred Hitchcock films, “The Lodger” and “Downhill” (which Ivor also wrote). By 1930 Ivor Novello was the UK’s top male film star.

He was soon given a contract as a writer and actor by MGM in Hollywood. It was for MGM that Ivor wrote what can easily be his most famous line. It doesn’t come from a song, but from a film. Even more than 80 years after the film was released in 1932 they have been repeated many, many times. Ivor’s words are “Me Tarzan, you Jane” from the film “Tarzan the Ape Man”. Ivor later said, “I never wrote such rubbish in my life”.

His acting career was equally disappointing. He only appeared in one film for MGM and his position as a rising Hollywood leading man and sex symbol came to nothing. He came back to the UK and carried on with his musical career to greater success.

Perhaps the problem was with Hollywood. The silent film industry was relatively small and there was very little room for more than one handsome hero. The death of Hollywood’s first sex symbol, Rudolf Valentino (himself surrounded by a whole network of lgbt connections, including one which I’ll mention later), in 1926 left a void that was hard to fill. Even though Ivor Novello was of heart-throb of British cinema and more than capable of filling Valentino’s romantic shoes he was not really a swash-buckling action hero. Besides, MGM had another actor they were also grooming as a “New Valentino”, a young gay immigrant from Mexico called Jose Sarmeniego. MGM turned him into the sex symbol who became known as 40) Ramon Novarro (1899-1968).

40) Ramon Novarro had been acting in silent films since 1916. When Ivor Novello was being the star of British films Ramon gained stardom as Ben Hur in 1925. MGM were already billing him as a “Latin Lover” and he quickly became the frontrunner to fill the shoes of Valentino which Ivor Novello couldn’t.

Unlike Ivor Novello, Ramon Novarro struggled with his sexuality. As with other gay men in early Hollywood he was “encouraged” to marry just for the sake of the studio’s reputation. He refused. When his MGM contract finished he found work hard to find, although he didn’t need to work because his salary from 20 years with MGM was enough for him to live on for the rest of his life.

By the 1960s Ramon was virtually forgotten. He appeared in a handful of American tv series as guest star, but the manner of his death in 1968 brought him back into the spotlight – for the wrong reasons.

Ramon often hired male prostitutes to come to his Hollywood mansion. Two brothers got hold of his address and posed as rent-boys. They believed Ramon must have lots of money at his home. When Ramon refused to give them any he was tied up, tortured and beaten. Ramon died in agony, chocking on his own blood. The brothers got away with only 20 dollars. Over the years various sensational “details” of his death were published, including the unfounded claim that Ramon’s body was found with a sex toy which Rudolf Valentino had given him.

Ramon Novarro was born in Mexico into a highly respected family. By the time he was a teenager Mexico was in turmoil. Mexican President Diaz lost the support of his people. There was corruption, inflation and unemployment, and eventually revolution broke out. Ramon and his family were living in Durango at the time. In 1913 Durango was besieged by rebels and counter-rebels and the family escaped to Mexico City.

In Mexico City inter-rebel fighting led to the arrival in the city of an individual whose story I told in more detail in “A Revolutionary Colonel”, 51) Amelio Robles Avila (1889-1984). While Robles Avila continued to fight for the Zapatista forces Ramon Novarro and his family returned to Durango which had become relatively safe. In 1916 they decided to escape the revolution by entering the USA. Almost immediately Ramon entered the film industry with uncredited bit parts in several films before becoming a star after his role in the title character in the 1925 film “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”.

Among the other reasons why the Mexican Revolution occurred was a scandal implicating President Diaz’s son-in-law. Some 42 men were arrested in a police raid on an all-male party. Only 41 of them were arrested, which is why the incident is (quite appropriately in this sequence of 80 Gays) called 42) The Dance of the 41 (1901).

Next time : The nameless 41 lead us to murder in the Czech Republic.