(Because I am attending my 30th reunion at Yale this weekend, I’ve not had time to finish the piece I planned to post for the blog. Therefore I hope you will indulge me as I revive an article I wrote about Carl Van Vechten whose papers are in the Beinecke Library in New Haven.

Van Vechten was an American Renaissance Man who epitomized the witty and rambunctious cultural scene of the Roaring Twenties. Sadly, today, he is less celebrated than he deserves, and his clever novels of sophisticates and bohemians, as well as his critical essays, are rarely mentioned. Yet he was a profound influence on his and future generations of artists, writers and photographers. The following is an article I wrote in 1994 for the Village Voice about the secret scrapbooks of Carl Van Vechten that I had the pleasure of reading through at the Yale Beinecke Library. At the time, such revelatory books as Gay New York and The Gay Metropolis had not yet appeared, and the eye-opening insights into the early homosexual underground in New York provided by Van Vechten’s private scrapbooks were a total surprise and a source of endless fascination. Recently a new book, The Homoerotic Photography of Carl Van Vechten, came out, which delves into the “Public Face; Private Thoughts” of this overlooked genius. As far as I know no new full-scale biography of this wonderful writer exists and perhaps it is time that his contributions to the world of arts and letters be more fully recognized.

Carl Van Vechten’s Secret Life

“Come on in, Sucker!” “Recall the Gay Old Days!”

Thus begin Carl Van Vechten’s 18 volumes of homoerotic scrapbooks that were locked away for 25 years after his death, following his strict orders, in the bowels of the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Filled with elaborate collages assembled from newspaper clippings, arty male nudes, racy letters, sketches and gay erotica from the ’20s, ’30s ’40s and ’50s, these secret diaries provide a rare and insightful glimpse into New York’s early “subterranean set.”

Opened in 1989 with little fanfare, Van Vechten’s scrapbooks are a treasure trove of historical documentation. An incorrigible packrat, Van Vechten kept every scrap of paper from the most ridiculous to the least sublime. Nothing escaped his eye: coat check stubs, movie tickets, matchbooks, even an extra-large condom, as well as engraved invitations to a party on the Ile de France hosted by “Herr Ibiter Tittoff and General Kutscha Kokoft.” Only someone with Van Vechten’s mischievous sense of fun (Dorothy Parker, who didn’t care for him, put it best when she said he always had “his tongue in somebody else’s cheek”) could have compiled these monuments to bad taste. Cataloging was his trademark. Like Jean Cocteau, he considered art to be the rehabilitation of the commonplace. These scrapbooks, while scurrilous and at times downright sophomoric, attest to that lifelong creed.

Whether these tomes were meant to be a time bomb or simply a time capsule isn’t clear. Until the boxes containing them were unwrapped, no one had a clue they existed, not even Van Vechten’s close friends. “For years, we had all been sitting around taking bets on what would be in them when we opened them,” says Bruce Kellner, Van Vechten’s biographer. “We had all planned to have a big party and an unveiling and break out the champagne. But Donald Gallup, who was Carl’s literary trustee, said, ‘No, I will open these myself and see if a party is justified.’” When the seals were broken, the gift proved to be “a surprise and a disappointment,” says Kellner. Instead of written material (Kellner had hoped for some additions to Van Vechten’s daybooks), what Van Vechten had enveloped in so much suspense appears to be a practical joke. Or was it?

Originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Carl Van Vechten first made a name for himself as a music critic at The New York Times, where he helped popularize Stravinsky, Strauss, and jazz. Moving on to dance criticism (he introduced New York to Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky) Van Vechten later contributed to Vanity Fair and H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set. As a literary critic, he almost single-handedly rekindled interest in the work of Herman Melville and championed Gertrude Stein.

Van Vechten also found time to write seven stylish novels, including The Tattooed Countess, Spider Boy and Parties, as well as essays. In the 30s, he abandoned fiction to pursue photography. His celebrity models included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tallulah Bankhead, George Gershwin and Leontyne Price.

An early champion of black culture (his own novel about Harlem, Nigger Heaven, was a controversial bestseller), Van Vechten set up the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale University. The many nude photographs of young black men in the scrapbooks suggest that Van Vechten’s interest in African-Americans went beyond mere sociology. Next to one photograph of a nude black boy, Van Vechten pasted a caption from a butcher’s ad: “When Identifying Meat, Color is Our Best Guide.”

Though he married twice and spent time in jail for failing to pay his first wife’s alimony, Van Vechten’s homosexuality was a well-known secret. One collage proclaims: “I’ve been leading a double life and I don’t intend to stop.” Van Vechten spent much of that double life in Harlem, where sexual liberation was an intrinsic part of the jazz revolution. In one essay, gay historian Eric Garber relates Van Vechten’s frequent visits to “Niggerati Manor,” a center of New Negro creativity where leaders of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman rented rooms. Occasionally the manor’s guests would engage in what one observer called “tuft hunting and the diversions of the cities of the plains.” The scrapbooks provide compelling evidence that similar escapades frequently occurred south of 125th Street. The scrapbooks give a glimpse of a world in which races overlapped, providing a rich resource for historians and scholars of racial studies.

A Freudian could have a field day with these scrapbooks, too. Throughout them, Van Vechten displays a morbid obsession with penis size and an overwhelming castration anxiety, clipping hundreds of headlines that exclaim such comments as “Well of all the meatless wonders!”, “IND Queens Lines Cut Off!”, “Big Ones Don’t Get Away From Carl.” Occasionally, the juxtaposition of images alone is amusing, as when Van Vechten places a snapshot of a man performing auto-fellatio next to a clipping from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not of an actor playing Popeye, who could put the tip of his nose in his mouth. Other inscriptions are uncannily prescient, such as the pre-AIDS admonition to “Play Safe!” or the picture of a “black god” with the appended title: “Long Dong Silver.” And this was several decades before the Anita Hill scandal.

Many of the nude photographs are typical of Van Vechten’s signature style — the subject is posed against a sensual, exotically textured background, perhaps cellophane or tiger skin, and lit severely among shadows. In Volume 17, there are nude shots of Dame Judith Anderson (you can tell by the famous mole on her chin) and dancer Hugh Laing, who recreates many of Nijinsky’s notorious poses. Not all the pictures are by Van Vechten. Many are simply period porn, which is of historical interest in itself. The most erotically charged nudes, set against a Venetian backdrop, were done by Van Vechten’s close friend Max Ewing, author of Going Somewhere. A provocative ass shot was submitted with “best wishes” by Man Ray. Baron von Gloeden’s kitschy nudes grace many a page, as do beefcake stills of Marlon Brando and Joe Dallesandro.

Whole volumes are dedicated to erotic drawings — many of them vividly X-rated — by Van Vechten’s pen pals George George (a sculptor and soldier he met at the Stage Door Canteen), Dick Sharpe, Thomas Handforth and Roi. A Tchelitchew sketch of Charles Henri Ford appears in the collection in 1940. Many of the most appealing images remind one of Cocteau. They might even be by Cocteau — it’s hard to tell — since few are signed. Later entries could be by Andy Warhol. The sheer number of the drawings is staggering. Van Vechten himself gave up trying to sort them all out. The last volume, which is not bound, contains dozens more slipcased in envelopes.

There are also play programs, including one from May (sic) West’s Pleasure Man, on September 24, 1928; and ads for Blair Niles’s pioneering 1931 gay novel, Strange Brother. Strewn across the pages are rare copies of Weimar Republic gay magazines, schedules of “For Bachelors Only” cruises to Europe, and souvenirs from early queer bars such as Finocchio’s in San Francisco. Van Vechten pasted in promotional material for a 30s flick called Chained, a “forceful picture of the Third Sex,” shown at the Acme Theatre on Union Square. The producers warned parents to protect their “children against the vicious morals of the world’s worst influence… the super curse of civilization.” Drag figures prominently, too. Van Vechten documents a Carnegie Hall recital by Francis Renault, “the Last of the Red Hot Papas,” performances by Julian Eltinge in The Fascinating Widow, and a revue by Karyl Norman, “the Creole Fashion Plate,” at the Pansy Club at 48th and Broadway.

A 20s article in Rosener’s Pan proves an invaluable source for the lingo of the times, listing terms like “she-rake” for lesbian, “he-hussy” for drag queen. The editors warned would be partiers not to join in the fey festivities: “We pray you, do not listen to this insidious propaganda, but hie you to the nearest Greek restaurant, see there what a nation has come to because allowed such shenanigans.”

Van Vechten also assembled dozens of articles about early transsexuals such as Christine Jorgensen and John Breckenridge, the inspiration for Gore Vidal’s satire Myra Breckinridge. Van Vechten’s scrapbooks reveal the homophobia rampant in pre-Stonewall New York. While the gay world made inroads in society, the straight media openly mocked them. A tabloid called Brevities published an article in 1932 entitled: “Fag Balls Exposed: The Third Sex is Flooding America.” That same year, the New York Amsterdam News decried the popularity of the Hamilton Lodge drag parties at Rockland Palace in which 7,000 cross-dressers jammed the ballroom. Things deteriorated into a “revolting revel” when the “impersonators started making promiscuous passes at the spectators.” By the ’50s the media’s tone had turned even harsher. A clipping in 1953 stated that along the “Bird Circuit,” a strip on the East 50s, “it’s Old Homo Week all year long.” A similar diatribe by Robert Sylvester in the Daily News two years later had this to say about gay bashing: “Let us agree, for the sake of argument, that a homosexual silly enough to pick up a stranger deserves his lumps… it probably isn’t important if a homosexual is roughed up by a hoodlum. But… when there are no available homosexuals any unprotected citizen makes a satisfactory substitute.”

As the scrapbooks continue, their tone becomes more pointed. Perhaps Van Vechten beame more politically aware. Or perhaps a desire for thoroughness compelled him to document the rise in gay-related crimes. The garish headlines say as much as any memoir can about the era’s double standards, a time when blackmail and murder were a constant threat and suicide seemed the only dignified way out: “Man Found Hanging in Girl’s Lingerie,” “Male Model Admits Killing Art Salesman,” “Theatrical Set Designer Murdered, Bound to Couch Flaming as Pyre,” “Chorus Boy’s Pal’s Death in Bathtub Ends Queer Romance.” But even amid the litany of horrors, Van Vechten never lost his sense of humor. On one particularly gruesome clipping, “Architect beaten on head with a statuette he was making of his roommate,” Van Vechten scribbled: “Art Criticism?”

Van Vechten’s last laugh appears in the front of the final scrapbook, where he announces: “This book could cause a lot of trouble… But it’s worth it!” Then he appends a cartoon of a ghost sporting the caption: “A Warning to the Curious,” as if Van Vechten, like some pharaoh of yore, were putting a curse on his buried treasure. Labeling his scrapbooks “One of the most significant contributions to American reference work we have had in English,” Van Vechten poked fun at his own efforts. Yet despite the bawdy jokes and glib tomfoolery that’s evident throughout, Van Vechten had the foresight to realize that 25 years after his death, scholars would have evolved far enough along to accept, and perhaps even cherish, his erotic obsessions.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave! Having ordered several episodes of Bonanza via Netflix to placate my growing infatuation with Michael Landon in his prime (I’ve got a thing for werewolves in sheepskin), I couldn’t help but notice the preponderance of toupees in that long-lived series. Lorne Greene looks as if he’s got a muskrat clinging to his scalp. And poor Pernell Roberts cuts a rug each time he appears, looking peaked and sweaty under his. I liked him better in Trapper John, M.D. when he could let his hair down. The result is that I spent more time scrutinizing the ingenuity of the Ponderosa stylists than the insipid scripts.

Toupees had their apogee in the Golden Age of Television. Watch any old episode of Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Burke’s Law or Surfside 6 (all of which I’ve been devouring on DVD or Hulu) and one is astounded by the parade of bad rugs, plugs, divots and weave jobs on the heads of guest stars, character actors and extras. The glare and heat of the intense lights of early TV did not shine kindly on these poseurs. In time, advances were made in filming and the wigwork became less obvious.

How else can one explain the legendary legerdemain of the toupees worn by such TV stalwarts as Jack Klugman, Marv Albert and, of course, Howard Cosell? No one would ever have guessed at their stylists’ handiwork. Remember when Muhammed Ali so unkindly poked fun at Cosell’s? Granted, Cosell lacked the self-effacing (and scalp-slapping) humor of Charles Nelson Reilly who made light of his predicament often on Hollywood Squares. Speaking of squares, can you imagine Sam Donaldson without his shellacked helmet hair? In the words of a classic ad line, “Does he or doesn’t he?” Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

Of course, “hair replacements” — which is how various companies that sell toupees market them — are nothing new. They’ve been around since Roman times, and no doubt earlier. Narcissus probably owned one. But it is their presence in entertainment that I find most amusing. The other day I was watching a John Wayne flick, one of his later horse operas, during which he threw himself into a fistfight. Thanks to the marvels of the pause button, one can see his head get knocked back by a fake punch. The lid he was wearing flips back like a waffle iron above his skull, then lands back down perfectly in the exact same spot.

I remember, as a wide-eyed teen obsessed with That’s Entertainment!, being mesmerized by the wigs worn by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly when they appeared to introduce their earlier star turns. Both of these terpsichorean talents must have made fortunes in their careers, but they could not afford a good hair stylist. Perhaps they should have hired Dick Smith to do their makeup. He might have come up with something more realistic than the plastic Halloween plugs they sported.

It makes you wonder why people bother to wear them at all? Clearly no one is going to fire Fred Astaire merely because he lost his hair. And Gene Kelly could dance with a bag over his head and people still would only notice his legs. So why the naive vanity? The descent into deceit, the fool’s feint? Was it peer pressure? Could be. In time, even Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, and Frank Sinatra, above, succumbed.

Sean Connery, I guess, had good reason to wear a toupee. He was bald from the get-go, or at least had thinning hair. One can’t really see James Bond with a comb-over. But Connery was also one of the first superstars to doff his top. And today he vacillates between total bald pates and stylish perruques. Likewise Ray Milland, that dashing leading man of yore who later became the king of a number of outlandish and quite campy horror films. When he was asked to make a comeback in Love Story, he opted to do it sans wig, and the result was universal acclaim. He got some of the best reviews of his career.

That’s one of the reasons I love Joseph Biden. Sure his hair looks a bit funny at times, and he’s obviously had some help, but it’s real. He has not kow-towed to the media groomers who might have coaxed him into going all the way with the Hair Club for Men. Which reminds me. I was startled to discover that there are actually clubs devoted to the Hair Club for Men, and even special-interest porn films for like-minded souls who share a fetish for fake hair.

Elton John’s career seems, very subtly, to have improved after he donned his new locks. (In his case, the word toupee seems inadequate, since he is sporting much more than just a piece.) But look at Ron Howard (another symbol of 60s youth) who proudly has never resorted to covering up his Bozoesque bean.

If an award could be given out for the best show topper of all time, it would have to go to Andy Warhol. To his credit, he never attempted to hide the fact that his hair was unnatural. He flaunted it. Perhaps toupee is not the operative word when discussing his silvery adornment. It was more like an objet d’art — the ultimate trophy of “fop art” and belongs in a museum — which I believe is where it sits today.

Today the art of hiding one’s age under a male merkin is in no danger of disappearing. One could even argue that this is the dawn of a new era of scientific enhancement. How else can one explain the uncanny hair styles worn by the likes of Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, Brendan Fraser, Nicolas Cage, and John Travolta?

No doubt it’s because I wake up each morning with a few of my own hairs loosely clinging to my pillow that I care enough about this subject to broach it here. I suppose I could weave my own periwig out of the thousands of strands I’ve recovered over the last few years. But so long as I still have one of my own hairs left, I’m not going to give in to temptation. Toupees are tops when you’re paid $20 million to wear one. No amount of humility can overcome that steep a bribe. Until someone does offer me that kind of incentive, I’m going to continue to show off my “distinguished” receding hairline and saintly burgeoning tonsure.

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Recently a friend asked me what I’ve been reading. I’m always a bit shy about answering such questions, because invariably I am reading something so esoteric or strange, or something so banal that I am embarrassed to mention it. I rarely read contemporary works, whether fiction or non. I like to joke that it takes me at least five years to read anything new. One reason, obviously, is that there is so much wonderful stuff out there that I’ve yet to read. Despite being a Literature major in college, I never got around to reading some of the classics, including the works of Chaucer and Eliot (both George and T. S.) and the Brontes. So I’ve devoted my many post-graduate years to catching up on whole shelves of books collecting dust. Somehow Updike, Cheever, Roth and a dozen or so trendy new authors have had to wait. I’m much more inclined to pick up a copy of a novel by John P. Marquand or Julian Green than something by David Sedaris.

So there was a hint of trepidation when I told my friend I was reading The Welcome, a completely forgotten novel written in 1948 by Hubert Creekmore (1907-1966). My friend, oddly enough, had heard of Creekmore, but few others I know have. A writer, editor, agent, critic, translator and poet, Creekmore came from a small town in Mississippi called Water Valley in Yalobusha County. His father, Hiram Creekmore, was the town lawyer with roots that went way back into Southern history. (His house, below, from Mississippi Home-Places by Elmo Howell)

Tall, good-looking, with a taste for bourbon and boldface names, Creekmore felt claustrophobic in his hometown and ventured out into the world after graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1927. He studied drama at the University of Colorado and playwriting at Yale University with George Pierce Baker. He worked with the WPA during the Depression. Then, in 1940 (according to Wikipedia), “he was awarded a Masters in American literature from Columbia University. After finishing his education, he was sent to serve in the Navy during World War II.” He served three years in the Pacific.

Although his entire artistic persona was saturated with his upbringing in the Deep South, Creekmore felt that he would be stifled there –despite a close friendship with the author Eudora Welty. He was a founding member of her famous literary group, The Night-Blooming Cereus Club. Creekmore returned to New York, where he traveled in tony circles, worked for New Directions, and won acclaim for his powerful, touching novels. He also edited volumes of poetry, reviewed books for the Times, wrote libretti, and played the piano. He even, according to an article I found on the web, hosted drag parties with Clifford Wright in his room at Yaddo. He was in every way, shape and form, a man of letters.

Creekmore’s first novel appeared in 1940, Personal Sun, followed by The Stone Ants; The Long Reprieve; The Chain in the Heart; Daffodils Are Dangerous, The Fingers of the Night (later reissued as a pulp, Cotton Country, above), and of course, The Welcome, which is perhaps only known at all today because of its early homosexual theme. In 1966, Creekmore died in a car accident while on his way to the airport to fly to Spain. The freakish nature of his demise was immortalized in a famous poem by William Jay Smith in 1967.

The Welcome is subtitled “A Novel of Modern Marriage.” That’s certainly a wry way of putting it since the story quite obviously revolves around two men struggling to come to grips with a passionate affair they had as young friends. It just might be the first full-blown account of what is now referred to as “bromance”. One of the boys, Don, left to explore his “creative” side in New York; the other, Jim, married the local beauty who is a clothes horse and an airhead. Perhaps Creekmore was hinting that it was the boys’ relationship which was “modern” — a kind of male marriage. If so, he was 60 years ahead of his time!

What makes The Welcome such a curious novel, however, is the fact that Creekmore never utters the word “homosexual” or “queer” to describe the love that dare not speak its name percolating between the two protagonists. Wikipedia says Creekmore was a “closeted homosexual” and perhaps that is why the book is so drastically circumspect in discussing the topic. But there is no denying, reading it today, that homosexuality is the central theme. These two boys moon over each other, fight, take long walks in the woods, swim in the old swimming hole, coo in an abandoned chapel, and do everything that lovers do except touch each other. There’s even a deftly drawn sardonic old bachelor, the local newspaper editor, who takes Don under his wing and tries to mentor him with bitchy barbs and campy self-loathing. It is not until the penultimate page when Jim has become a nasty drunk and nearly abandons his wife out of a sense of lost opportunity and suicidal despair that he utters the unutterable, calling Don “a damned little fairy.”

Yet, despite its tone of caution, or because of it, The Welcome is a tightly written, painstakingly composed tale. Some of the language that Creekmore uncorks is haunting and sensuous, almost hypnotic. When Don, who is clearly based on Creekmore, comes home reluctantly to take care of his sick mother, he revisits his childhood bedroom. He crawls in the dark towards the window sill.

“…he sat down with the deliberation of a man drinking poison, and leaned his arms on it and looked out into the night. The treetops at each side of the roof furled up around his view like dark, restless lace framing the perspective of dim, unpeopled shapes opposite. The lawn stretched flat and unbroken to the black street where two round, clipped lygustrum bushes guarded the walk. On the pavement, at the left, a wriggling mottle of shadows fell through the branches of a tree crowding around a streetlight. Nothing had life but these shadows and the reminiscent wind that gave them life. The houses across the way were vacant shells, solidly impenetrable in their heavy obscurity, an occasional column, banister rail, iron fence or cornice touched pallidly by their distant light. This was the development of the childhood dream-vision he had stared into, waiting and wondering; and it had all darkened and deadened, and in its barrenness and hunger had dragged him back to stare in its scornful face the rest of his days.”

Luckily for Don, he finds new life, after Jim’s rejection, with Isabel, a less-adequately drawn character, perhaps based on someone Creekmore did know and love. She is the local artist, a bohemian ill-at-ease in the small town, and someone who understands, albeit painfully, Don’s secret life. She gives him permission to be who he really is yet strikes an accord that seems to point to a happy future for the two of them. Jim, by contrast, is left with his selfish and childish wife, nursing a newborn baby, and the prospect of unrequited love for the rest of his life. It’s a miracle that Creekmore resisted the temptation to have either Don or Jim commit suicide or be murdered. Gore Vidal’s classic gay novel, The City and The Pillar, also published in 1948, did end with a violent tragedy, although he revised it later out of shame for its cheap melodrama. Creekmore instead leaves us guessing.

The Welcome may not be a “gay novel” in the traditional sense. But it is far more truthful and real than many of the so-called liberated works that came after. And something, to my nostalgic mind at least, far more rewarding than the latest buzz in the bestseller bin.