Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933) was an American archaeologist, art historian, and medievalist. He was chair of Harvard University's Art History Department among other major achievements.

As of February 15, 2024, his Wikipedia entry does NOT report or cite the following published information about his death from a reliable informant.

Death

Psychiatrist Joseph Wortis reported in an interview:

"Porter was a homosexual, in the closet, who in the 1930s could not afford to come out with his homosexuality. He fell in love with a young man, whom I knew, Alan Campbell, and the young man spurned him and [Porter] went into a deep depression. He had a summer home in Ireland and threw himself off the cliffs; his body was never recovered. The bereaved widow, Mrs. Porter went to Havelock Ellis, who was a friend of Kingsley Porter, saying she wanted to use her wealth to do something for the cause of homosexuality. Ellis, with whom I was in touch at this time, suggested that the best investment would be in a person, not an institution. In turn, he proposed me and I received the fellowship."[1]

Jonathan Ned Katz comments:

The important report about Porter's homosexuality and the reason for his suicide has been published since 2007. The fact that no reference appears in his Wikipedia entry in 2024 is sad testimony to the long history of the suppression of LGBTQ history on that major international encyclopedia. That history and the LGBTQ resistance against it is worth preserving on OutHistory.

I once met Joseph Wortis on Shelter Island and he seemed a most reliable witness, a psychiatrist who was deeply concerned with social justice issues.

I hope that in the future OutHistory can record the date on which a full reference is made on Wikipedia to the testimony about Porter's suicide.

Alan Campbell

The Campbell referred to by Wortis was Alan K. Campbell (February 21, 1904 – June 14, 1963), an American writer, stage actor, and screenwriter, married to Dorothy Parker, a popular screenwriting team in Hollywood from 1934 to 1963.

After their marriage, Parker learned that he was bisexual and she accused Campbell of being “as queer as a billy goat.” Dale Olson, who later to be one of Hollywood’s legendary press agents, was at the time the young nightclub reviewer for Daily Variety. He recalls that whenever he would visit the pair at their bungalow on Norma Place in West Hollywood, Campbell “would chase me around the sofa” whenever Dorothy left the room.[2]

Parker and Campbell divorced in 1947 but remarried in 1950; although they had other brief separations, they remained married until his
suicide.[3]

NOTE

1  See Chapter 1, “'The Man Who Was Analyzed by Freud': Joseph Wortis on Freud, Freudians, and Social Justice, Interviewed by Todd Dufresne," in Defresne, ed., Against Freud: Critics Talk Back (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007), 14-15. See also Lucy Costigan, Glenveagh Mystery: The Life, Work and Disappearance of Arthur Kingsley Porter (Merrion Press, 2013).

2  David Wallace, Capital of the World: Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2011), 184.

3  Amanda Prahl, "Biography of Dorothy Porter, American Poet and Humorist," 2020, ThoughtCo.