Interview with Brett Abrams
Introduction
Born to a Catholic mother and Jewish father, Brett Abrams began life in New Jersey amid a diverse melange of ethnic and racial cultures.
Before settling in Washington, D.C. to earn his doctorate in U.S. History, he lived in Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Boston. Always a ravenous devourer of movies, plays and books, he focused his studies on gender, sexuality and culture in the media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which eventually led to the publication of his first book, Hollywood Bohemians.
The author also writes about sports. His 2009 release is Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, D.C.
See his tour dates at http://www.bla2222.wordpress.com
Who were the Hollywood Bohemians?
The bohemians were stars and other movie people who appeared as adulterers, gays and lesbians and cross-dressers in Hollywood movies and gossip. The movie industry used these figures to titillate audiences and make Hollywood appear unique and special during the 1920s and 1930s.
Audiences recognized these images?
Absolutely. People wrote letters to gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper telling them how beautiful Marlene Dietrich looked in pants. A letter from “Simon Pure” teased that William Randolph Hearst led such a pure life that he could contribute to the Legion of Decency’s clean up the movies campaign by making a movie about his life that would star his mistress Marion Davies.
Weren’t most movie images and newspaper articles about adulterers and homosexuals back then highly negative?
Yeah, or movies made fun of homosexual males as sissies. But we are talking about Hollywood--gays and lesbians were in the industry and a lot of them had high paying rewarding jobs and careers. So the novels and movies about Hollywood included them and usually showed them living positive lives.
This made Hollywood different from every place else?
Yes.
Hollywood Bohemians put Hollywood on the far edge of what audiences could see in the pop culture of the day?
Exactly. You couldn’t see happy and successful gays, lesbians and adulterers anywhere but Hollywood—in novels, movies and the gossip columns. Mass media always wants to show what is cool and on the cutting edge. It attracts an audience and builds their reputation, both of which the movie business wanted. The film industry still wants these things.
The bohemians pushed the envelope of what the culture would accept then?
Yes, they are the forerunners of today’s highly sexualized celebrity images. The Hollywood Bohemians were at the beginning of the media linking a star and their sexual interests and behaviors. Their sexual behaviors were certainly on the edge, just like showing a married couple in bed was a breakthrough in the late 1960s.
How did you find a publisher?
I pitched this book to 20 publishers over eight years before I received conditional acceptance from McFarland. My editor wanted me to find more bohemians.
You must have succeeded?
I did. It improved the book a lot and I learned some surprising facts. For instance, I didn’t know that the gossip columns mentioned Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young being an item. Tracy was married and this was before he started his long affair with Katharine Hepburn.
Did anything you find really surprise you?
The material I found on Cary Grant and Randolph Scott floored me. A newspaper article after Grant divorced his first wife and Grant and Scott moved back into their Malibu Beach house was entitled “A Woman is only a Woman.”
I’d seen the homoerotic photographs of the two sitting on a diving board in Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Bohemians when I went to the Academy of Motion Pictures Library in Beverly Hills and viewed their photograph collection. Paramount Studios owned the copyright to these homoerotic photographs. The last photograph of them is in the book. The two are on their patio with the Pacific Ocean rolling in the background. Grant has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and Scott takes the tip of his cigarette and touches it against the edge of Grant’s. A librarian was really skeptical about my project until I showed her that photograph and a Life magazine shot of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard where the caption said they were a delightful couple despite the fact that Gable was still married.