Tag Archives: obituary

Bob Green and Anita Bryant

Bob Green, Anita Bryant’s Ex-Husband Died Full Of Hatred, Bigotry, and Blaming the Gays Till The Bitter End

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Bob Green, was a one time radio DJ who married Miss Oklahoma and orange juice spokesman Anita Bryant and managed her career and then followed her into anti-gay activism, which ultimately destroyed their careers — and marriage in 1980. For more than 30 years Green lived alone full of hate and resentment blaming gays for all of his problems.  Green was found dead Jan. 26, 2012 at his home in Miami Beach. He was 80.

From the Washington Post:

In 1977, Mr. Green and Bryant led a successful effort to repeal Miami-Dade County’s newly passed gay rights ordinance, Bryant out front and the tall, handsome Green behind the scenes, as he had been when he managed her singing career……

Flush with victory in Miami-Dade, the couple founded Anita Bryant Ministries, which offered “deprogramming” and halfway houses for gays and a lecture series called “Design for Successful Living,” aimed at battling divorce……

In 1980, Bryant filed for divorce, a scandal in the Christian circles where she’d been revered. Mr. Green begged her to reconcile in an open letter: “Let us both put aside all other earthly considerations and reunite in Christian love.”Bryant wasn’t interested. She told People magazine: “Divorce is against everything I believe in. I wanted to save my marriage, but I decided that was not the route to go.”

The following year, she told a woman’s magazine that the marriage “was never much good to begin with” and hinted that both had been unfaithful. 

In 2007, Mr. Green told the Miami Herald that he blamed gay people for the turmoil in his life because “their stated goal was to put [Bryant] out of business and destroy her career. And that’s what they did. It’s unfair.”

No one should ever celebrate the death of another but in Bob Greene’s case  it’s a very hard thing not to do. 

So many forget that Bryant and Green obsessed when Miami-Dade County added an amendment to its human rights ordinance, making it illegal to discriminate in housing, employment, loans, and public accommodations based on “affectional or sexual preference.” And that the Bryants’ are the “originator” of the lie that children would be molested or converted by gay perverts. “As a mother,” Anita shamelessly explained, “I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.”

Bryant and Greene fanned the flames of anti-gay bigotry with speaking tours that made her a national spokesperson against “homosexual rights.” She was the star attraction at rallies that led to the repeal of gay rights in numerous cities, and she came to California to support the Briggs Initiative in 1978, which failed, but would have banned homosexuals or anyone advocating the “gay lifestyle” from teaching in public schools. “I don’t hate the homosexuals,” she wrote in a fundraising letter. “But as a mother, I must protect my children from their evil influence.” and promised she would “seek help and change for homosexuals, whose sick and sad values belie the word ‘gay’ which they pathetically use to cover their unhappy lives.”

Well you do reap what you sow.  Anita Bryant and Bob Green sowed hate. And for that they lost their fortune, their OJ gig, and their marriage. And in the end Bob Green died alone, bitter and filled with hate..

80's Heartthrob Jan-Michael Vincent Dies at 74

80’s Heartthrob Jan-Michael Vincent Dies at 74

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Jan-Michael Vincent — the ’80s heartthrob best known for his role on TV’s “Airwolf” – and the low budget Sy-Fy classic Damnation Ally has passed away at the age of 74.

Vincent passed away on February 10th. after suffering cardiac arrest while a patient at a North Carolina hospital … according to the death certificate.

The document states he was an inpatient at the hospital in North Carolina and is survived by his third wife, Patricia Ann Christ.

Vincent’s career waned after his Airwolf heyday and he retired from acting in 2009.

During the 1990s, he was involved in three severe automobile collisions, which he barely survived. In an accident in August 1996 Vincent broke three vertebrae in his neck. He also sustained a permanent injury to his vocal cords from an emergency medical procedure, leaving him with a permanently raspy voice. The first near fatal accident occurred in February 1992 and the third happened in September 1997. [

In 2012 a leg infection required him to have the lower half of his right leg amputated.

No autopsy was performed and he was cremated. His memorial location is unknown. 

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Patricia Nell Warren Author of The Front Runner Passes Away at 82

Patricia Nell Warren Author of The Front Runner Passes Away at 82

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New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Nell Warren whose 1974 iconic novel The Front Runner, which became the first work of contemporary gay fiction to make the New York Times Best Seller list passed away on February 9th. She was 82.

Patricia Nell Warren was born in Helena, Montana on June 15, 1936 and grew up in southwest Montana on the Grant-Kohrs Ranch.

In 1959 Warren went to work for Reader’s Digest and worked there for 21 years; she became an editor for both the magazine and the Condensed Book Club .

In 1974 Warren wrote and published, The Front Runner.[ Told from the point of view of a gay track coach, the story chronicled his struggle to get a talented openly gay runner on the U.S. Olympic team, and to quash his own growing love for his protegé. The book doesn’t treat  the characters merely as “gay”, it treats them as human, which allowed readers of all genders and orientations to engage in and relate to them.

The then controversial book was the first contemporary gay fiction to make The New York Times Best Seller list. The book sold 10 million copies and was translated in to 10 different languages.Two decades later, Warren added two sequels, Harlan’s Race (1994) and Billy’s Boy (1996).

Warren also came out as a lesbian in 1974.

Soon after its publication, The Front Runner became a subject of interest for adaptation as a motion picture. The subsequent decades saw a series of producers and directors involved in adapting the film; most notably Paul Newman, as well as Frank Perry, Arthur Allan Seidelman, and Jeremy Larner. Because of the books content and Hollywood’s skittishness none of these efforts resulted in a motion picture.

In 1976, Warren published her third novel, The Fancy Dancer. The story was set in her native Montana, tracking the struggle with sexual orientation issues of a young Catholic parish priest in a small cow-country town.[c

In 1978 came Warren’s fourth novel, The Beauty Queen. Also published by Morrow, this book was set in the New York City world where she’d spent many years. The story focused on a socially prominent Manhattan businessman, a closeted gay father trying to get up the courage to come out to his daughter, who had become a fiercely anti-gay born-again Christian politician

Patricia Nell Warren wasn’t just an amazing contemporary gay author. She was an inspiration to an generation of gay men and lesbians who at the time were venturing out of the closet, and her books were both inspirational and a comfort to us all.

Legendary Actress Carol Channing Passes Away at 97

Legendary Actress Carol Channing Passes Away at 97

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The legendary Carol Channingdied at 12:31am on Tuesday, January 15th, 2019, at home in Rancho Mirage, CA of natural causes.

B Harlan Boll, Channing’s publicist, released the following statement:

It is with extreme heartache, that I have to announce the passing of an original Industry Pioneer, Legend and Icon – Miss Carol Channing. I admired her before I met her, and have loved her since the day she stepped … or fell rather … into my life. It is so very hard to see the final curtain lower on a woman who has been a daily part of my life for more than a third of it. We supported each other, cried with each other, argued with each other, but always ended up laughing with each other. Saying good-bye is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but I know that when I feel those uncontrollable urges to laugh at everything and/or nothing at all, it will be because she is with me, tickling my funny bone. 

Ms Channing was born Jan 31, 1921 in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a prominent newspaper editor, who was very active in the Christian Science movement

A recipient of the 1995 Lifetime Achievement Tony Award, Ms. Channing has been a star of international acclaim since a Time magazine cover story hailed her performance as Lorelei Lee in “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” writing; “Perhaps once in a decade a nova explodes above the Great White Way with enough brilliance to re-illumine the whole gaudy legend of show business.” Since her 1948 Broadway debut in Blitzstein’s “No For An Answer,” her Broadway appearances have included “So Proudly We Hail,” “Let’s Face It,” “Lend An Ear,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “Show Girl,” “Pygmalion,” “The Millionairess,” “The Vamp,” “Four On A Garden,” and “Wonderful Town.” In addition to receiving a special Tony Award in 1968, she won the Tony Award in 1964 for her legendary portrayal of Dolly Levi in Jerry Herman‘s “Hello, Dolly!”

Ms Channing is survived by her son, Channing Lowe and close family member, Sylvia Long. Services have not yet been determined.

Screen Legend and Male Sex Symbol Burt Reynolds, Dies at 82

Screen Legend and Male Sex Symbol Burt Reynolds, Dies at 82

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Burt Reynolds, the charismatic star of such films as Deliverance, The Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit and Cosmopolitan magazine’s first naked male centerfold who set out to have as much fun as possible on and off the screen —  has died. He was 82.

Reynolds, who received an Oscar nomination when he portrayed porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) and was the No. 1 box-office attraction for a five-year stretch starting in the late 1970s, died Thursday morning at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida, his manager, Erik Kritzer, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Reynolds had been battling health issues the past years. In 2013, the actor’s rep said he was in intensive care in a Florida hospital for treatment of flu symptoms, including dehydration.

Reynolds in his elder years blamed his limited mobility on doing his own stunts over the course of his career.  Speaking on the Jonathan Ross Show on ITV, he said in 2015: “I did all my own stunts, which is why I can’t walk now.”

Reynolds appeared often on NBC’s The Tonight Show, and in 1972 he became the first non-comedian to sit in for Johnny Carson as guest host (Reynolds’ first guest that night was his ex-wife, Carne; they hadn’t spoken in six years, and she made a crack about his older girlfriend Shore). He and Carson once engaged in a wild and improvised whipped-cream fight during a taping, and he got to show a side of him the public never knew.

“Before I met Johnny, I’d played a bunch of angry guys in a series of forgettable action movies, and people didn’t know I had a sense of humor,” he wrote. “My appearances on The Tonight Show changed that. My public image went from a constipated actor who never took a chance to a cocky, wisecracking character.”

Reynolds shined in many action films and in such romantic comedies as Starting Over (1979) opposite Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen; The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) with Dolly Parton; Best Friends (1982) with Goldie Hawn; and, quite aptly, The Man Who Loved Women (1983) with Julie Andrews.

Though beloved by audiences for his brand of good-ol’-boy fare, the Reynolds rarely was embraced by the critics. The first time he saw himself in Boogie Nights, he was so unhappy he fired his agent. (He went on to win a Golden Globe but lost out in the Oscar supporting actor race to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, a bitter disappointment for him.)

“I didn’t open myself to new writers or risky parts because I wasn’t interested in challenging myself as an actor. I was interested in having a good time,” Reynolds recalled in his 2015 memoir, But Enough About Me. “As a result, I missed a lot of opportunities to show I could play serious roles. By the time I finally woke up and tried to get it right, nobody would give me a chance.”

Despite the ups and downs of a Hollywood life, Reynolds seemed to have no regrets.

“I always wanted to experience everything and go down swinging,” he wrote in the final paragraph of his memoir. “Well, so far, so good. I know I’m old, but I feel young. And there’s one thing they can never take away: Nobody had more fun than I did.”

 

Pioneering Chicago Gay Activist and Leather Community Leader Chuck Renslow Passes Away At 87

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Pioneering Chicago Gay Activist and Leather Community Leader Chuck Renslow Passes Away At 87

 

It’s with a sad heart that we must report that Chuck Renslow, the pioneering  gay activist who opened the first gay leather bar in the country, the Gold Coast in 1958, has passed away at the age of 87.

Mr. Renslow was the founder and  photographer of Kris Studios, one of the earliest and most durable of the physique houses ( and one where leather always had a place ) He was the publisher of Triumph, Mars and Rawhide Male magazines. He was a founder of Second City Motorcycle Club, the first club  in the midwest in 1965.

He was among the earliest members, often among the founders, of many gay liberation organizations and movements. He was the publisher of GayLife Newspaper and has sat on the Board of fourteen different GLBT organizations. He was also the founder of many gay bars and sex clubs including Man’s Country, which has survived for more than 30 years.

He is the founder, in of the International Mr. Leather, which meets yearly in Chicago and was inducted into  Chicago’s Lesbian and Gay Hall of Fame in 1991.

At the Leather Archives & Museum’s September 2016 Board of Directors meeting Chuck was elected “Chairperson of the Board” of the world famous museum that he himself founded.

Specific details of his passing have not been released as of yet.

 

Openly Lesbian Pop Icon Lesley Gore Dies At Age 68

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Leslie Gore

 

Via the Associated Press:

A singer-songwriter who topped the charts in 1963 with her epic song of teenage angst “It’s My Party” and followed it up with the hits “Judy’s Turn to Cry” and “You Don’t Own Me” has died. Lesley Gore was 68. According to her partner of 33 years, Gore died Monday of cancer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Brooklyn-born and New Jersey-raised, Gore was discovered by Quincy Jones as a teenager and signed to Mercury Records. Gore’s other hits include “She’s A Fool,” “That’s the Way Boys Are” and “Maybe I Know.”

Leslie Gore also composed songs for the soundtrack of the 1980 film Fame, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for “Out Here on My Own”, written with her brother Michael. Michael won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the theme song of the same film.

In 2005, Gore recorded Ever Since (her first album of new material since Love Me By Name in 1976), with producer/songwriter Blake Morgan, for the small independent label Engine Company Records. In addition to extensive national radio coverage and critical acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard Magazine, and other national press, three songs from Ever Since have been used in television shows and films: “Better Angels”, in CSI: Miami’s fourth season premiere episode; “Words We Don’t Say”, in an episode of The L Word; and “It’s Gone”, in the Jeff Lipsky-directed film Flannel Pajamas.

Beginning in 2004, Leslie Gore hosted the PBS television series In the Life, which focused on LGBT issues and in a 2005 interview abnnounced that she was a lesbian. Gore had been living with her partner for more than 23 years.

Leslie Gore passed away today Monday, February 16, 2015 at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, New York City of cancer

 

Lesley Gore- “You Don’t Own Me” Live (1964)

Legendary Porn Actor Harry Reems of Deep Throat Fame, Dead at 65 – Video

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Harry Reems, a former adult film star who is best remembered for tickling the tonsils of Linda Lovelace in the 1972 classic porn film Deep Throat passed away yesterday at the George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center in Salt Lake City, UT  at the age of 65 from pancreatic cancer.

Reems, born Herbert Streicher,  appeared in more than 100 pornographic films, in the 70’s and 80’s  including “Forced Entry” and “The Devil in Miss Jones.”

But the “controversy” of Deep Throat  led the FBI to indict Reems for conspiracy to distribute obscene material across state lines, a charge he was initially convicted of before a higher court overruled the decision and also ruined his acting career.  Reems’s defense claimed that he was the first American actor to be prosecuted by the federal government merely for appearing in a film, and he received considerable support from established Hollywood and New York celebrities during his trial  His successful appeal was handled by attorney Alan Dershowitz who was also Larry Flynts lawyer.

Reems aspired to be an actor in non-pornographic films, and in the late 1970s was cast in his first studio movie, “Grease,” as Coach Calhoun, the Rydell High track coach but was kicked off the project because of his “scandalous past.”

“Acting was my true love, and I buried that possibility by going into adult films,” Reems told Dave Itzkoff for a 2005 New York magazine piece. “The writing was on the wall. There was no place for me in conventional entertainment.”

During the second half of his career, upset by his inability to break through to more traditional acting and low on funds, he turned to alcohol drug abuse and panhandling and began his recovery in 1989. He married and converted to Christianity and  not only got sober but had a second act as a successful real estate broker.

Gay Media History - Lou Maletta and NYC's Gay Cable Network: (1984 - 2000)

Remembering Lou Maletta Pioneering LGBT Journalist and Founder of the Gay Cable Network

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As I sit here at the 2013 LGBT Media Journalist Covening in Philadelphia I can’t help think of one of the first LGBT media pioneers Lou Maletta, who founded the Gay Cable Network in NYC in 1982.  The first television station entirely dedicated to and created for LGBT community.
Maletta started small with “Men in Films,” which showed  edited gay pornography but soon evolved to covering events important in the community. He was inspired to  expand his programming on Gay Cable Network after seeing the effects AIDS had on a friend  “No one had seen a KS lesion on TV until we put it on cable,” Manetta once said and he went on to develop news programming that gave virtually the only television attention to the nascent AIDS crisis and the ongoing fight for LGBT rights.

Maletta went out and covered everything he could in the community with a sense of mission, passion and the conviction that  to educate people was with the greatest tool of all time — television.

Some of Manetta’s most notable interviews celebrity interviews included Quentin Crisp, writer Vito Russo,  Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Harvey Fierstein, Tony Kushner, director Derek Jarman, Sara Jessica Parker, and Barbara Walters, and also eclectic mix of countless others..

From 1984 to 2000, the Gay Cable Network provided team coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, with reporters on the floor interviewing political leaders from Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, and George W. Bush to Jesse Jackson and Ann Richards. The network also covered LGBT and AIDS demonstrations outside the conventions, as well as countless local and national protests including the 1987 and 1993 national marches on Washington along with covering the rise of ACT UP and providing heartbreaking and moving coverage of the AIDS quilt

Lou Maletta shut down operations in 2001, and sadly passed away at the age 74 of liver cancer in 2011 but thankfully the entire archives of the Gay Cable Network were acquired by New York University’s Fales Library for restoration, and preservation. The footage is a priceless piece of LGBT history and important for the education of future LGBT generations to come.

Lou Maletta was true LGBT Media Pioneer and should always be remembered and hailed as such. I wish he could be with us here today.  But while he’s not in body, I am sure that he is here with us in spirit.

Click HERE To watch a Gay Cable Network Archive Library Promotional Spot w/a ton of clips on YouTube.

Former Sen. Arlen Specter Dead At 82 From Cancer, Ann Coulter Takes Despicable Potshot

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Former longtime Democrat, then Republican, and then Democratic again Sen. Arlen Specter has died at the age of 82 after a longtime bout with cancer.

One of the few remaining Republican moderates on Capitol Hill at a time when the party had turned sharply to the right, Mr. Specter confounded fellow Republicans at every turn. He unabashedly supported Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, and championed biomedical and embryonic stem cell research long before he received his cancer diagnosis. When he made a bid for the White House in 1995, he denounced the Christian right as an extremist “fringe” — an unorthodox tactic for a candidate trying to win votes in a Republican primary. The campaign was short-lived; Mr. Specter ended it when he ran out of cash. Years later, he said wryly of the other candidates, “I was the only one of nine people in New Hampshire who wanted to keep the Department of Education.”

In October 2009, Specter called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and his support for both the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and passage of the Matthew Shepard hate crimes law was crucial to their passages.

Following his death on Sunday frequent Fox News guest and propaganda mistress Ann Coulter tweeted, “Arlen Specter has just switched to the Dead Party.”

Coulter’s comment, the latest in her long history of inflammatory and evil comments, was an apparent reference to Specter switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in 2009.

Ann Coulter, keeping it Klassy with a KKK!

Note:  Of course Michele Malkin’s Twitter CON-servative propaganda site TWITCHY is making Coulter out to be the victim.