Marilyn was a noted figure on the British club scene and in the 1980’s like so many of their contemporaries launched a pop career.
In the mid-80’s Marilyn found success on the charts with hits including Calling Your Name and Baby U Left Me (In the Cold).
As a teenager he idolised Marilyn Monroe and when he was bullied at school for appearing too feminine they would taunt him with the name Marilyn. He decided to adopt it as his own name and used to go out to clubs dressed as his idol.
In the late 1970’s he was a regular at the Blitz nightclub in London which was run by Steve Strange who formed the band Visage, the members of Spandau Ballet were also regulars, and Boy George worked in the club’s coat check.
In Boy George’s first autobiography Take It Like a Man he details that he and Marilyn and many others lived in a London squat. The book also revealed that Marilyn had a long term relationship with future Bush singer Gavin Rossdale at the time.
In 1979 Marilyn appeared in a Lyndall Hobbs documentary about the London club scene, and also appeared in a Derek Jarman short.
Following the success of Boy George’s band Culture Club in the early 1980’s record companies were eager to sign similar artists and Marilyn landed a record deal. His 1983 debut single Calling Your Name was a huge success in the UK, Japan and Australia.
Marilyn also appeared on the Band Aid charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas. Marilyn recorded more music with American producer Don Was for his album Despite Straight Lines.
The single Baby U Left Me was a hit only in Australia, and saw Marilyn adopting a new image chopping off his long blonde locks for a short crew cut and more masculine image.
Marilyn then disappeared from the music scene for many years. He tried to relaunch his career on many occasions but none of the plans came to fruition. In 2015 he worked with Boy George and shared the single Love or Money, it had been thirty years since his last release.
In a 2014 interview Marilyn shared that he had struggled with heroin addiction from the mid 1980’s until the mid 2000s. While he didn’t have a career as big as some of the other people who hung out at the Blitz club, Marilyn made his mark and delivered some pop brilliance.
Photographer and author Tee Corinne was born in 1943
Tee Corinne came to prominence as an artist in the 1970s. She realised that through her art education she’d been taught how to draw male genitalia, she knew little about female genitalia, including her own.
She decided to pursue this imbalance and created a colouring book of female anatomy. In 1980 she was one of 10 artists selected to participate in the Great American Lesbian Art Show. Her work explored female sexuality and depictions of women free of the male gaze.
One of her best known works is a photograph used on the cover of English rock group Suede’s 1993 debut album. The photograph had appeared in the 1991 book Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs.
The image features two naked women kissing, one of them is a wheel-chair user. The band had wanted to feature the entire image, but the artist would only give them permission to use a cropped image of the women’s heads and shoulders. In its cropped form the gender of the two people is ambiguous, making the cover a talking point amongst fans.
Corinne died in 2006 at the age of 62 after a long battle with liver cancer, she is remembered as one of the most important lesbian artists.
Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Commissioners
In 1977 Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Commissioners, making him one of the most prominent politicians who were gay.
After three unsuccessful campaigns, he was elected to the board, after the city changed from city wide based elections to a neighbourhood system. Milk had become known as the Mayor of Castro Street’ due to his popularity the gay neighbourhood.
His time in politics would be short lived.
During his eleven months in office Milk helped pass a string of ordinances that helped the LGBT community in San Francisco. In November 1978 he was assassinated by Dan White, another supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. White also shot and killed the city’s Mayor George Moscone.
In 2009 Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sean Penn won the Academy Award for his portrayal of the politician in the biopic ‘Milk’. The film’s screenwriter Dustin Lance Black also picked up an Oscar.
Harvey Milk’s former camera shop on Castro Street is now the home of the Human Rights Campaign that fights for LGBTIQ+ rights in the USA.
“Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.” is one of many quotes attributed to Milk. He also advocated for all LGBTIQ+ people to come out and be proud of their sexuality.
Prior to his assassination Milk had been receiving a lot of death threats. He recorded his thoughts on tape recording his ‘political will’ saying; “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door”.
Playwright Terrance McNally was born in 1938
McNally was a five-time Tony award winner. His plays Love! Valor! Compassion! and Masterclass won the Tony Award for Best Play, while he was also recognised for writing the book of two musicals Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Ragtime. In 2019 he received the Tony Award for lifetime achievement.
His career spanned six decades, and his plays, musicals and operas are regularly performed around the world.
McNally’s career got a head start when he was hired by the novelist John Steinbeck to tutor Steinbeck’s two teenage sons while the family took a cruise around the world. While on the journey he began writing the opening act of what would become And Things That Go Bump in the Night. Steinbeck also asked him to write the libretto from a musical version of his acclaimed novel East of Eden.
His first play explored homosexual relationships and society’s attitudes; it was not a success.
The next works he wrote found more acclaim and audiences engaged with his work. Next, Botticelli, Cuba Si!, Sweet Eros, Let It Bleed, Witness, Bringing It All Home, Whiskey, Noon, Bad Habits, It’s Only a Play are some of the works he created in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
In 1975 he wrote The Ritz, a farce where a straight man inadvertently finds refuge in a gay sauna. The following year it was turned into a film.
As the AIDS crisis dominated gay life in New York in the 1980’s McNally, like many artists, reflected the world around him in his work.
His career grew from strength to strength. In 1987 he wrote Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. The Broadway production starred F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates, when it was adapted to a film Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer were cast in the lead roles.
In 1988 he authored Andre’s Mother, a play about a woman who cannot come to terms with her son’s death from HIV or share her grief with her son’s lover. The Lisbon Traviata starred frequent collaborator Nathan Lane and explored opera fans, gay relationships and their love of Maria Callas.
1991’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart focused on two married couples sharing a house on New York’s Fire Island surrounded by the LGBTIQA+ community. The original cast included Christine Baranski, Swoosie Kurtz, Nathan Lane and Anthony Heald.
McNally collaborated with Kander and Ebb on the musical The Rink, but their great success came with Kiss of the Spiderwoman, a musical adaptation of the Manuel Puig novel. It explores the complex relationship between two men sharing a prison cell.
More success came with 1994’s Love! Valor! Compassion! which explores the relationships between eight gay men. The following year he scored another massive hit with Masterclass, a character study of the opera singer Maria Callas. Protesters gathered outside the Broadway production of Corpus Christi, the controversial play explores the life of Jesus, but all his disciples are portrayed as being homosexual.
Over his career the prolific McNally created almost 40 plays, 10 musicals, 4 operas, adapted three of his works for the big screen, and had four television projects.
Terrence McNally died in 2020 aged 81. His death was attributed to the Covid-19 virus.
Bella Abzug was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1970
Bella Abzug is remembered in US politics as a trailblazing feminist and huge ally of the LGBTIQA+ communities.
She would become the first person to introduce a gay rights law into the US Congress. In 1971 she joined Gloria Steinham, Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan to form the National Women’s Political Caucus.
Abzug was known for her colourful hats and colourful language, although neither were allowed on the floor of the US Congress.
She was re-elected by her New York constituents several times but in 1976 her time in public office came to an end with an unsuccessful run for the US Senate. She would however remain politically active holding many positions on different boards and commissions, running for office several more times and writing several books.
She died in 1998 following complications from open heart surgery. She was 77 years old.
In 2019 Harvey Fierstein created a one-man cabaret show where he portrayed Abzug. In 2020 she was portrayed by Margo Martindale in the TV series Mrs. America. In 2023 the documentary Bella! explored her groundbreaking achievements.
