Arts, Culture, Politics, and the Cockettes

Allen Ginsburg and the Cockettes in 1971, published with “Unisexual Angels Bringing the Light of Divide Decadence,” Phoenix, 25 Apr. 1974, 11. Photograph by James T. Harris. Courtesy of SFSU University Archives.

Rebecca Valrajean (middle), creator of Lavender Troubadour. Photograph published with Jan Merrill, “‘Lavender Troubador’ Delivers Message of Gay Oppression,” Phoenix, 17 Oct. 1974, 10. Photograph by Wayne Jacobsen. Courtesy of SFSU University Archives.

In addition to publishing articles on faculty and student research projects on LGBTQ topics, SF State student newspapers reported on an expanding universe of LGBTQ artistic performances and cultural representations in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Daily Gater and the Phoenix advertised, announced, and reviewed a significant number of off-campus films and plays with LGBTQ actors, characters, directors, performers, plotlines, and themes. The films included The Queen; Justine; Midnight Cowboy; Satyricon; Noviciat; Zachariah; Some of My Best Friends Are…; Sunday, Bloody Sunday; El Topo; and Johnny Minotaur.[1] The plays included Little Murders; The Staircase; Geese; The Boys in the Band; Hair; Sugar; and Beach Blanket Babylon.[2] In 1971, the Phoenix reported on the Polk Street Spring Festival, which included a “tiny stage jammed with drag queens, half-naked girls, and men mimicking Broadway productions.” According to the Phoenix, the “permissive atmosphere” was exemplified by the presence of “bright-eyed gay lovers” who “openly caressed and kissed.”[3]

SF State student newspapers also reviewed several LGBTQ-themed books, including Fellini’s Satyricon; Changing Homosexuality in the Male; Behold I Am A Woman (Once I Was A Man); and Color Photos of the Atrocities.[4]Together, these advertisements, announcements, and reviews provide revealing clues about student perspectives on LGBTQ topics.

There also was an expanding array of LGBTQ-oriented literary events, film screenings, and theatrical performances on campus. In 1972, a popular film series organized by three students included Women in Love and Midnight Cowboy.[5] Around the same time, a series of “Encounter Theatre” performances addressed LGBTQ issues, including the question of “how does a guy tell his male roommate that he has suddenly become sexually attracted to him?”[6] Later that year, the Phoenix published a feature on Cuban American David DeAlba, a Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli impersonator who performed “Life Is A Cabaret” on campus. According to the article, DeAlba spoke in “an effeminate Cuban accent,” did not like “campy drag,” and identified as a “female impersonator,” not a “transvestite” or “drag queen.” DeAlba explained, “I don’t get any physical satisfaction out of dressing like a woman. I like to create attention when I’m doing a show. I want people to say ‘I can’t believe this is a guy’ when they see me. I want to feel the tension, the excitement of the audience. That’s the pleasure I get…. I don’t like the idea of dressing in drag for fun…. It would be immoral to dress as Judy (Garland) in the street.”[7]

Portrait of David DeAlba, published with Eric Berg, “The Story of an Actor Actress,” Phoenix, 7 Dec. 1972, 8. Photograph by Jim McVay. Courtesy of SFSU University Archives.

Glide Church celebration, published with Paul Snodgrass, “Glide Memorial Isn’t A Church, It’s A Movement,” Phoenix, 26 Sept. 1974, 2. Photograph by John Rice. Courtesy of SFSU University Archives.

More events, screenings, and performances followed in 1973 and 1974. In 1973, Tennessee Williams’s play Camino Real was staged at one of SF State’s theaters.[8] In 1974, gay poet Allen Ginsberg and lesbian novelist Rita Mae Brown spoke on campus.[9] Around the same time, at a Broadcast Industry Conference held at SF State, local station KPIX won a broadcast media award for “Gay Power,” a television documentary on the local LGBTQ community.[10] Later that year, Rebecca Valrejean presented her one-woman improvisational “Lavender Troubadour” show at SF State. The event was sponsored by the Associated Students Performing Arts Program, the Women’s Center, and the Gay Students Coalition, a new regional group. Valrejean described the play, which focused on two college women, one of whom dies in a New Orleans bar fire, as “an attempt to explain to the non-homosexual community what it is like ‘to live in a cage without visible bars.’” The performance won a rave review by local businessman (and later Board of Supervisors member and assassinated martyr) Harvey Milk, who wrote in the Bay Area Reporter, “For those of you who are looking for gay theatre that says something, this says it and says it strongly…. It was a one woman performance that did it all. It was total theatre. The audience was young. The audience was women and men who were into their gayness, who were into theatre. They got to see a performance…. They saw gay theatre at its best.”[11]

In the early 1970s, SF State’s student newspapers published multiple items about the Cockettes, a radically queer performance group founded in Haight-Ashbury in 1969. In 1970, this meant advertisements for Cockettes performances at the Palace Theatre in San Francisco and Berkeley Community Theater in Berkeley.[12] In 1971, the Phoenix reported that the student director of Performing Arts and Activities was “hoping to get the Cockettes for Gay Information Day,” noting that “the campus reaction should be interesting.”[13] A few months later, the Phoenix reported critically on the Video Trailer at the Spring Faire, which screened the film Tod Texler Gallery Event Featuring the Cockettes.” According to the reporter, before the film started, “one person (male dressed as female) came strutting in, adorned with more tinsel than a Christmas tree could hold.” Having described this person as a “he (she),” the reviewer referred to one performer in the film as a “she (he)” and a group of audience members as “she-hes.” Making his hostile opinions clear, the reviewer ended by explaining that one of the event organizers had asked him about the film as he left, “but he got mad when I told him.”[14]

Three years later, the Cockettes, the Rainbow Gypsies, and the Angels of Light (the queer performance group discussed in a previous section) continued to command attention at SF State. In 1974, Phoenix fine arts editor Mark Thompson, founder of the regional Gay Studies Coalition and future editor of the Advocate, published a feature story on both groups, tracing their emergence in the late 1960s and their evolution over the next several years. According to Thompson, the Cockettes had performed “the radical drag of ‘gender-fuck’” at North Beach’s Palace Theater from 1968 to 1972. After extensive national publicity led the Cockettes to move to New York City, the Rainbow Gypsies and Angels of Light emerged as similar local performers, specializing in “living theater,” serving “the Dionysian principles of pure hedonism,” embodying “the unisexual-bisexual androgynous culture,” and representing a “cultural mutation of genderlessness.” In response to a claim that they were “homosexual,” one Rainbow Gypsy explained that they were “all sexes, all encompassing, neither homosexual or heterosexual.”[15]

In this period, SF State student newspapers also began to report on and share more information about Bay Area LGBTQ news, a topic that campus newspapers had rarely covered in previous years. An early example was a letter to the editor of the Gater about a gay liberation protest at the San Francisco Examiner in 1969; there were two further reports about LGBTQ movement protests in 1974.[16] Beginning in 1970, there were multiple references to State Assemblyman Willie Brown’s ultimately successful efforts to decriminalize private sexual acts by consenting adults in California.[17] Beginning in 1971, there were multiple reports on political candidates and their views on gay rights and sexual freedom; examples included mayoral candidate Scott Newhall in 1971 and gubernatorial candidate Edmund Brown in 1974, both of whom seemed to believe that they could gain student votes by supporting gay rights and sexual freedom.[18] Beginning in 1972, SF State’s student newspapers began to report more regularly on Bay Area LGBTQ life, with stories addressing prison experiences, religious congregations, youth suicide, gay neighborhoods, police harassment, gay pornography, and sex work.[19] As all of these examples suggest, SF State’s student newspapers served vital roles in educating their readers about LGBTQ arts, culture, and politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s.