I was talking to _____ a film director who was visiting C.I. and we got around to discussing biographies and autobiographies and what was the point of them? Barbra Streisand, for example, has an upcoming autobiography due out in November. Why? Does anyone think she's going to be honest? Or original? Her cover? There are already two books about her that use the same cover. She can't even come up with an original cover but we're supposed to think they'll be originality in the book? The man who does her unofficial website? She had to contact him to refresh her memory and she's writing an autobiography?
______ and I both agreed that biographies are better than autobiographies because the writer should have some distance and be able to write with some detachment. But then we made a list of bad biography writers. He came up with Anne Edwards who I did not know.
She was a screenwriter -- not very successful -- who moved over to TV. Still not very successful. Eventually, she tried to be a Jacqueline Susan and wasn't good at it but sold some trashy books. She went on to write 16 or so biographies all of which ____ termed "garbage." The one that bothered him the most was her garbage on Katharine Hepburn.
That's the book I read (then read) and am reviewing. A REMARKABLE WOMAN: A BIOGRAPHY OF KATHARINE HEPBURN.
It's with this book, that the now 97-year-old Anne Edwards defines the term "hack." She wins and retires the title forever more.
The worst of the nonsense? She goes on and on about the 'love' affair between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Tracy was actually a gay man -- his alcoholic rages prompted by his refusal/inability to deal with being gay. There were women he sometimes slept with -- Loretta Young, Ingrid Bergman, Nancy Davis Reagan, etc -- but he primarily had sex with men. Which is why he could remain married to Louise Tracy for so many years without 'hardship.' He never divorced her. He didn't live with her. He rented a cottage on George Cukor's estate and George sent me rent-boys his way. Including John Derek who would later be married to Bo Derek.
Did they sleep together? Probably. Most who knew them believe that they did for about three to six months. After that, they were bearding. Decades later, when he died, Katharine played the widow even though she wasn't. She created a myth to make herself look better and to hide her non-stop affairs with women. She claimed -- and the press went along with it -- that they had to hide out for years and years without the public ever knowing when in fact the 'romance' was fed to reporters as far back as the forties.
Scotty Bowers wrote the reality in his book -- about pimping to the stars. Gore Vidal also talked about Hepburn and Tracy using each other to hide behind. So we all need to let go of the fantasy that they had a long love affair. They had a friendship, they worked together.
Ruth Gordon's gay husband Garson Kanin wrote the book TRACY & HEPBURN which is creative fiction.
Let me note this from Blase DiStefano's interview with author William Mann for OUTSMART back in 2008:
For OutSmart ‘s Valentine’s Day issue, I spoke with William Mann about his biography of Katharine Hepburn, whose legendary love affair with Spencer Tracy was as essential to her mystique as her appealing androgyny. In its review of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn,Publishers Weekly describes Mann as “a skilled chronicler of gay Hollywood.” The reference is to Mann’s earlier books, one of which is Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, a biography of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Haines’ historical significance may be his refusal to hide his homosexuality, which caused his studio to drop him, but launched a successful career as an interior designer. Mann also penned Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger, a 2006 biography of the out director. (The photo of Mann shown below was taken by Michael Childers, widower of Schlesinger.)
[. . .]
Blase DiStefano: How about if we start with how you became aware of the elephant in the room, so to speak—Hepburn’s sexuality.
William Mann: I had previously done quite a bit of research in Hollywood working with and getting to know a number of the survivors of the studio era and, in particular, some very close friends and associates of George Cukor, who had been Hepburn’s mentor and her good friend. And so I knew there was another side to her. There were stories that had never been told, because, of course, these were men and women who knew her privately. I was just struck at her death how there was such an outpouring of affection for her, and I thought, This is a woman who really made herself into a symbol of the American character in so many ways. It was a fascinating life, because she was able to create such a legend around herself, and I thought maybe the full story might prove to be even more fascinating.
About her visits to her aunts in Greenwich Village…how might those visits have colored her life?
I think they were very important. Hepburn grew up in a very unorthodox, bohemian family. Her mother was a separatist who later championed legalized birth control. Her father was a radical physician working on treating venereal disease. So she grew up in a family where they were always challenging each other politically, intellectually, socially, culturally. So going into New York with her mother, going to those feminist meetings in Greenwich Village truly must have imprinted upon her an idea that one defined one’s self and one’s life based on what was right for them rather than trying to fit into conventional norms. And that’s certainly what she did with her own life.
Who was Jimmy, and how did he come about?
Jimmy was the name that Kate gave to her child alter ego. She really felt more comfortable living as a boy, as many girls do as part of the tomboy tradition. But in so many ways she would refer to Jimmy all her life, which told me that he never really left. One of her friends from The Oxford School back in Hartford said to me, “We all were like that, but we grew out of it. She never did.” I think she often thought of herself as a man. She often used male pronouns when she was describing herself. She might say, “I’m the best guy to do the job” or “I’m the man who takes care of things.” She referred to herself as a man and thought and really interacted in the world like a man would. I think that’s so important to understand about her—that this inner self of hers was Jimmy. Jimmy really lasted all her life. And I think Jimmy was the most real personification of Katharine Hepburn.
What was going on when she said she didn’t believe in male homosexuality?
That’s completely disingenuous. She knew there was such a thing. She’d always known gay men. But I think in that situation, she may have been playing a little bit with the notion of “If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” Of course, remember who she said it to was Garson Kanin, who was a deeply closeted gay man. They were sitting with Spencer Tracy, who wrestled with his own sexual conflicts. I think if she was able to say in their presence, “I don’t know about it. I’ve never heard of it,” it was her way of pushing it away from her.
On the other hand, the remark came from Garson Kanin, who put it out there at a time when the gay movement was just coming into the national headlines, and I think he had his own reasons for making sure that any of that kind of sexual ambiguity was distanced from Hepburn. He was removing her from that, because he was going to write a book that celebrated the great love of Kate and Spence. So there was a lot of disingenuousness around that comment.
[. . .]
In 1930, Hepburn fell in love with Laura Harding. Can you tell me a little bit about that relationship?
Some people said she was the great love of her life, that she was the one who was always there when Kate needed her. She was the one that Kate seemed to turn to in times of crisis. And who always came through, who never, never let her down.
I think in the beginning Laura and Kate assumed that they could live a rather unorthodox sophisticated relationship in Hollywood, because that’s the way they had been living in New York. Hollywood was very open and tolerant of same-sex couples at that time. But when the time came when it looked like Laura perhaps was standing in Kate’s way of really making it in Hollywood—the rumors were just a little bit too frequent—Laura was sent back to the east coast. It broke Laura’s heart. I read her letters, and it’s very obvious that she was heartbroken to have to leave Kate. She also understood and didn’t hold it against her.
Let me note this from Amy Fine Collins' 2001 VANITY FAIR piece on Richard Gully:
"There were a few others besides Elsa who were just out-and-out,” Gully said. “And then there were some who were bisexual. Spencer Tracy was. Homosexuality for many stars was an opportunistic thing, a passing phase to get their careers off the launching pad. Errol Flynn, for example, wasn’t homosexual. Mitch Leisen, an important director, was always ‘adopting’ young boys at the start of their careers. Marlene Dietrich was not much of a lesbian. She had a real passion for Jean Gabin. When Jean Howard didn’t have Jock Whitney courting her, then she might have a woman. Glamorous women never could hold on to their men.”
Cary Grant had a fleeting “crush on me. Soon after my arrival, he and Randolph Scott invited me up to their beach house,” Gully said. “When Cary realized I wasn’t interested, he never made any moves, and he and Scott simply didn’t invite me back. They took pains not to embarrass me. They were gentlemen.
“Cary was bisexual,” he explained. “Dorothy di Frasso set up the match between Cary and Barbara Hutton. That one was doomed to fail. They were thrilled with each other at first because each saw in the other something that didn’t exist. He thought she was a great society type, and she thought he was this fabulous, sophisticated dream—not a boy from the backstreets of Bristol.
“Spencer Tracy was never sober. I don’t think he functioned as a man. He and Katharine Hepburn had chemistry only on-screen.
“Danny Kaye was mean, a horror. He mistreated his wife, Sylvia Fine, who wrote his material. His love affair with Olivier, the coldest man I ever met, was so tacky.”
There's no way that Anne Edwards, a failed actress, writer of films and TV shows didn't now the reality. So she elected to lie. Got away with it in the 80s but that was a lifetime ago.
Her entire book is a joke and a laugh. When not lying about Hepburn's sexuality, she just makes up other s**t. Worst of all, she decides to include quotes from other interviews without fact checking them. Katharine was a notorious liar who repeatedly rewrote her own history.
From page 344 of the book, as Katharine is preparing to film -- one after the other -- THE LION IN THE WINTER and THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT, released in 1968 and 1969 -- Edwards writes:
Before she and Phyllis left for Europe to begin the two-picture schedule, Kate's old friend Irene Selznick discussed with her the possibility of playing the role of the ageless Parisian couturiere Coco Chanel in a musical written by Alan Jay Lerner and planned for a year hence. Kate laughed at this suggestion; the only publicly singing she had ever done was one chorus of "Onward Christian Soldiers" in THE AFRICAN QUEEN.
By 1968, THE AFRICAN QUEEN contained her only publicly singing?
Really?
I'm sorry, who was the actress in 1957's DESK SET? Was that not Katharine Hepburn opposite Spencer Tracy? Because that actress sings "Night And Day."
I can't find it on YOUTUBE but click here for TUMBLR -- no sound -- and you can see two clips with Spencer Tracy playing bongos while Katharine sings.
The IMDB page for the soundtrack of DESK SET notes Katharine Hepburn sings Cole Porter's "Night And Day."
By the way, if you think I'm being harsh, you don't know all the details about 'author' Anne Edwards that I've left out.
A REMARKABLE WOMAN: A BIOGRAPHY OF KATHARINE HEPBURN is a superficial book with one error after another -- apparently all that a 'writer' like Anne Edwards can produce.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
On the day the ruling was issued, the conservative Family Research Council called it “the latest in a trend of victories for free speech and religious liberty,” while the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression hailed “a resounding victory for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience.”
But contrary to these claims, the Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. On issues where the Christian right’s First Amendment claims directly threaten the equal citizenship of sexual minorities, for example, the court left no question about which side it was on.
The ADF has for many years represented conservative clients who claim anti-discrimination laws violate their religious rights, and scored a major victory in 303 Creative v. Elenis this summer when the Supreme Court ruled that a web designer could not be compelled to create a wedding site for a gay couple, even if they provided the same service for straight couples. In their arguments to the Court, ADF attorneys cited several of their previous victories on behalf of wedding vendors like Masterpiece Cakeshop who demanded the right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers. But in its investigation, Post reporters found that not only did many of those clients leave the wedding industry entirely after their lawsuits were over, some of them did not even have such a business until the ADF established one on their behalf.
According to the Post’s report, ADF lawyers signed off on incorporation documents and drafted policy frameworks for several new companies, which in turn were used as justification to bring lawsuits challenging local nondiscrimination statutes. To promote some of the lawsuits, the ADF distributed “videos and images of plaintiffs photographing women in bridal gowns,” reporters found, which were fabricated at “staged events featuring ADF employees.”
One such client was Chelsey Nelson, a Louisville woman who claimed she had always wanted to be a wedding photographer. The Post reported that ADF lawyers approached Nelson in 2018 and founded a business in her name a month before filing suit against the city. Nelson has since moved to Florida, leading city attorneys to ask to have the case thrown out; although the ADF claimed in a court filing earlier this year that Nelson was still somehow open to bookings in Louisville and had photographed two weddings this summer, reporters noted that one of those events was for a family member and neither took place in Louisville.
Another ADF case concerned two Minnesota videographers who said they refused to film same-sex weddings. Although the ADF cited the case in their eventual 303 Creative petitions, Minnesota officials claim that the group withdrew the case to avoid handing over evidence that would have revealed the videographers did not actually have a viable business, according to the Post. The judge overseeing the case agreed to throw it out, writing that the ADF had “conjured up” the case as a “smoke and mirrors case or controversy from the beginning.”
As Dulak rejects being part of a religious flock, he has plenty of company. He is a “none” — no, not that kind of nun. The kind that checks “none” when pollsters ask “What’s your religion?”
The decades-long rise of the nones — a diverse, hard-to-summarize group — is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America's religious landscape as we know it.
In U.S. religion today, “the most important story without a shadow of a doubt is the unbelievable rise in the share of Americans who are nonreligious,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” a book on the phenomenon.
I exercise my parenting rights directly with my children daily by sharing my thoughts, inquiring with questions, and supplementing those classroom and life lessons in my own way. The parents of my children’s peers do or don’t do the same to their own degree.
However, those actions on my part don’t come from storming school board meetings, trashing or threatening school and classroom leaders, or trying to impose my worldview on the school and community at large.
The “parents' rights” movement is not new, although it has seen a boost in visibility in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The topics falling under this umbrella over the decades have covered what books are in schools (and libraries), what material is taught in lessons, homeschooling, charter schools, dress code, sexual content, bathroom usage, sports participation and even the censoring of history lessons.
Parents should be involved in the education and upbringing of their children. We have that right.
While it may be my right to direct the education and upbringing of my children, it is not my right to impose my views on parenting on my child’s entire classroom, school or community.
That, sadly, is precisely what the culture warriors of the current parents' “rights” movement are trying to do.
Instead of this polarizing tactic, a collaborative approach that includes a professional methodology, supplemented at home by the individual desires and experiences of parents, provides a solid balance for the educational outcomes of our students. This has been and continues to be happening in school communities nationwide.
The leaders of the parents' rights movement and self-serving political actors are jeopardizing every child’s educational opportunities and experiences to serve their selfish, short-term political goals.
Billy Porter has voiced frustration with education systems that ignore the contributions of queer artists to American culture.
The Pose star appeared on Live With Kelly and Mark on Thursday to promote his new musical, Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For, currently playing in his and the legendary jazz musician's hometown of Pittsburgh.
"Everybody knows Duke Ellington, but very few people know one of the mastermind behind Duke Ellington, and his name was Billy Strayhorn," Porter explained to cohosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. "He's one of he greatest jazz musicians, writers, and arrangers of all time."
Recent legislation signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week includes a number of bills that bolster support for LGBTQ youth in schools. Advocates and researchers say that continued protections are necessary in the face of increasing policies and legislation that specifically target students to exclude them from participating in sports, from classroom discussions and lessons that include representation of diverse families, from feeling safe in their identities and expressions of those identities at school.
"And it's troubling, but we have a reality here in California where some people say, 'Gosh, do we even need to do LGBTQ inclusion work? We live in a blue state,'" said Vincent Pompei, an assistant professor in the doctoral program for educational leadership at San Diego State University, and a member of a state advisory committee to create online training courses for school faculty to support LGBTQ students who are experiencing bullying, harassment, discrimination, or rejection at school or at home. "Well, advocates like myself, who are entrenched in this work, have always known that not to be true, but it's becoming more and more clear what our current state is of LGBTQ young people living and trying to survive and thrive in California," he said, citing survey statistics on the mental and emotional health and well-being of LGBTQ kids compared to their heterosexual, cisgender peers.
To discuss about some of these new bills, the arguments around notifying parents if a child prefers to identify at school in ways that don't align with their assigned gender at birth, and what may shift a collective understanding of the experiences of LGBTQ students to one of greater support and inclusivity, Pompei is joined in conversation by Emily Fisher, a professor in the school psychology program at Loyola Marymount University where her work is focused on increasing school support and creating safe and supportive learning environments for LGBTQ-plus students. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: California is among a group of states rated by the Human Rights Campaign to have a broad range of equality protections for LGBTQ people; what are your thoughts on these recent bills and why they're necessary?
Fisher:There's been a lot of attempts to try to deny the existence and the basic humanness of LGBTQ individuals. What schools have done, and districts that have tried to put policies in place, is that they don't even acknowledge that LGBTQ youth exist. I think that the bills that the governor signed [last] weekend really say that there are basic human rights that are afforded to all young people and that your sexual orientation or gender identity should not determine your right to exist. You should be able to be yourself, you should feel supported, and you should be able to access the academic and social curriculum that your peers do.
Pompei:My wish is that we wouldn't need legislation to protect the human and civil rights of another human being. Unfortunately, because of bias and stigma and misinformation, we have to pass policies that provide further protection to prevent harm, but also to send a message to vulnerable populations — in this case, LGBTQ young people — that even in light of these attacks that they're experiencing, the state of California and their government have their back. They are listening to the voices of LGBTQ young people, to the research about what these students need in order to learn, in order to engage in their education, and in order to thrive in school and beyond. Part of me wishes that this was not necessary; that we were just decent human beings and said, 'Hey, you know, everyone's treated with dignity and respect.' That's, unfortunately, not the world that we live in today.
Any time I hear a school board passing anti-LGBTQ policies or proposing anti-LGBTQ policies, they're never discussing the disparities that we continue to see, and the data as it relates to LGBTQ students compared to their non-LGBTQ peers. That relates to feeling connected, feeling safe, feeling cared for, experiencing mental health challenges, and even suicide. They're passing policies without talking about what the school district is going to do to address them. From the California Healthy Kids Survey, the latest public data that they have available on their dashboard for San Diego County, shows that 68 percent of LGB students and 79 percent of trans students indicated chronic sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared to 25 percent of straight students and 30 percent of cisgender students. Forty-four percent of LGB students and 57 percent of trans students in our county seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, compared to 9 percent of straight students and 12 percent of cisgender students. So, it's troubling to me that we're passing policies rooted in transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, rather than actually looking at what the research says about what will help all students, including LGBTQ students, learn and engage and thrive in school. It's hard to answer that question without painting a larger picture, but I can say that yes, I'm excited, I'm celebrating, but I'm also sad that we have to pass laws to protect students from our elected officials who have made an oath to serve all children in public school. It's troubling to me.
Policymakers typically push these bills under the guise of “protecting women and children” or “defending fairness in sports.” In reality, this year’s deluge of legislation is the latest in a series of ongoing, coordinated political attacks against the trans community. It’s been mounting since 2016, when GOP lawmakers in North Carolina advanced the nation’s first anti-trans “bathroom bill.” And with the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, advocates expect to see right-wing politicians double down on anti-trans attacks as a means of galvanizing voters.
Every child deserves the freedom to be their authentic self without persecution. And although transphobia may seem like a niche issue, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Attacks on trans kids hurt all children, including those who are cisgender by jeopardizing their rights, safety, and education. This is how.
First and foremost, every form of systemic oppression — from transphobia, to sexism, to racism — is interconnected. It’s no mistake that this wave of transphobic bills has cropped up alongside anti-abortion laws and book bans. The conservative politicians who back these harmful policies are one and the same.
A political attack on one marginalized group invariably affects others. To grasp this, it’s helpful to understand intersectionality, a term coined by feminist scholar KimberlĂ© Crenshaw to describe the ways Black women experience intersecting dimensions of gender- and race-based oppression. If we examine systemic transphobia through an intersectional lens, we see that Black and Brown folks experience the brunt of transphobic violence, and anti-trans sports bans, for example, disproportionately impact girls and young women, cis and trans.
So, anti-trans laws don’t just harm trans kids; they create an overarching climate of fear and prejudice that endangers cis girls, queer kids, and children of color, too.
West said Thursday he would seek the presidency as an independent candidate, choosing to forgo a run with the Green Party. The decision complicates his ability to get on the ballot—if he had won the Green nomination, it would have ensured ballot access in nearly 20 states with the potential for close to all 50 states.
West dismisses talk that he could serve as a spoiler in the race and says he is in the campaign with a message tailored to disaffected voters. And even though he has raised minimal funds, Democrats are fretting about him for two reasons: he has the ability to appeal to elements of the Democratic Party that are central to President Biden’s re-election campaign. And in an election that may again be decided by thousands of votes in a handful of states, every vote for West could aid the public intellectual’s larger target: Donald Trump.
In his speech on Monday, Mr. Kennedy will lay out a path to the White House that involves a major shift in American politics. We invite you to witness history in the making, at the very spot where our founding fathers launched this nation in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. On Monday, we come together again to reset the course of our nation.
This is an event you won’t want to miss. We hope you will join us. Please RSVP to be there in person.
If you can’t make the event in-person in Philadelphia, we will be livestreaming the event as well. If you would like to register for the livestream event, you can register for that as well.
[. . .] Washington has been pressing Iraq to slow the flow of dollars through the foreign currency auction run by the CBI to countries under US sanctions, including Iran, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon, where some people and groups have been sanctioned by the US Treasury.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has applied strict measures on requests for international transactions from Iraq, rejecting many and delaying others.
It has also blacklisted several Iraqi banks suspected of money laundering and carrying out suspicious transactions. The latest restrictions were put in force in July, when 14 private Iraqi banks were barred from conducting dollar transactions.
This has led to an increase in demand for US dollars on the black market in Iraq.
The government has taken several measures to protect the dinar, including a currency revaluation, banning dealing with the greenback in the market, and offering a specific amount of hard currency for traders and travellers at the official rate.
Iraq is seeking a special shipment of $1 billion in cash from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but U.S. officials have withheld approval, saying the request runs counter to their efforts to rein in Baghdad’s use of dollars and halt illicit cash flows to Iran.
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq two decades ago, the U.S. has supplied $10 billion or more a year to Baghdad on semimonthly cargo flights carrying massive pallets of cash, drawn from Iraqi oil sales proceeds deposited at the Fed. In Iraqi hands, the bank notes have become a lucrative source of illicit dollars for powerful militias and corrupt politicians, as well as for Iran, U.S. officials say.
In making a request for an extra shipment of $1 billion, Iraq says it needs the cash to help prop up its stumbling currency. After the U.S. denied Iraq’s initial appeal last month, the Central Bank of Iraq last week submitted a formal request, which the Treasury is still considering, a senior Iraqi official said.
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