Judy and the Yellow Brick Road to Icon Status
By Joel Dossi
"What's more boring than a queen doing a Judy Garland
impersonation?" ponders a character in the play, Boys In The Band. With that line,
playwright Mart Crowley demonstrates the powerful role gay icons play in our lives.
An icon distills difficult and hard-to-understand qualities into handy
little snippets for easy use. Many straight, 10-year old girls define themselves with the
symbols of femininity: Barbie, Britney Spears, and whoever is Aaron Carter's latest
"catch." Straight boys imagine themselves as sports stars. But for gays, icons are
different.
Our icons embrace a bundle of contradictions. Usually female, they're
never traditionally feminine. They're either vulnerable or hard-as-nails. Not conventionally
pretty, they possess an inner beauty that transcends good looks. They're eccentric, which puts
them at odds with society. They battle the social order for the ability to be themselves in an
intolerant world.
Gay icons encapsulate our lives. We adore them, misfortunes, foibles and all, and devotedly
accept them into our fold.
Judy Garland in a Star Is Born.
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Judy Garland is universally renowned as the elder statesperson of gay
icons. When Judy came on stage, tortured by misery and drug abuse, we felt for her. When she
sang, "Forget your troubles come on, get happy. Ya better chase all your cares
away," she sang for us.
For Judy Queens, The Wizard of Oz is an allegory of our lives. When
coming out, we leave our drab, black and white world behind to live in the Technicolor
environment of our community. Its no wonder that the line, "I'm a friend of Dorothy"
became universal code for I'm homosexual. Or that lines like "Surrender Dorothy!"
and "we're not in Kansas, anymore" have become often quoted lines in our lexicon of
camp.
Judy's television variety show became legendary. Writer Charles Busch
(Psycho Beach Party, OZ) once said, "I remember thinking, wouldn't it be great to have a
mom like that. She was so affectionate and fun, and she sang."
Then she turned to the concert stage with vibrato. Film director Stanley
Kramer observed Judy's performances permeated the emotions of, "Here is my heart, break
it."
Judy's influence over us seems ironic, since her own life was heavily
influenced by gay men. Biographer Gerald Clarke surmises in Get Happy that Judy's family was
forced to leave their hometown of Grand Rapids, MN, because of her father's trysts with a high
school basketball star. She had two gay husbands, Vincent Minnelli and Mark Herron. (Herron
reportedly had sexual encounters with Liza Minnelli's husband, Peter Allen.) Late in Judy's
career, with drugs and alcohol ruling her life, she surrounded herself with an array of gay
men who supplied her with the love and acceptance she sought some to the point of
pseudo-romantic involvement.
Judy's daughter, Lorna Luft, remembers "the screaming accusations
that filled our house in the middle of the night when she encountered one of her lovers'
'indiscretions.' I didn't hear the word 'fag' from the kids at school. I heard it from my
mother."
Nevertheless, Judy accepted our community in a time of fierce
homophobia. More importantly, however, she openly acknowledged us. The
press reported Judy attending parties where "she was the only woman present." Clarke
also adds she sang in gay piano bars nearing the end of her career.
Perhaps Judy's most unabashed acknowledgment came in the movie, I Could
Go On Singing, when she says with a wink, "I've already drunk enough coffee to float Fire
Island."
According to Michael Joseph Gross in the Atlantic Monthly, Judy once
confided, "When I die, I have visions of fags singing Over the Rainbow."
Judy's acceptance of us and our love for her were noted in the
mainstream press. "A disproportionate part of her nightly claque seems to be
homosexual," reported Time Magazine regarding Judy's final engagement at New York's
Palace Theatre. "The boys in tight trousers roll their eyes, tear at their hair and
practically levitate from their seats."
Today, many believe Judy idolization presents an outdated stereotype of
gay men - limp-wristed, self-indulgent queens idolizing the melodramatic. They fail to see the
powerful message of Judy and her most famous role: Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. Ignored
and discounted by her family and friends, Dorothy seeks acceptance. But she ultimately learns
that acceptance cannot be found; it must be discovered within.
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