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World of Wonder

World of Wonder also manages the global rights for all international versions of RuPaul’s Drag Race and consults on Drag Race Canada (BBC Three).

World of Wonder is the pioneering international entertainment creator of groundbreaking Emmy Award-winning feature and television programming, films, and unparalleled documentaries and series that give a voice to outsiders and marginalized communities. The world’s foremost LGBTQ+ and drag entertainment brand, World of Wonder is the multi-award-winning LA based media company that has been bringing

the best q***r talent, stories and counterculture to mainstream audiences for almost two decades. Founded in the UK in 1991 by executive producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, World of Wonder produced pioneering and headline-grabbing programmes such as The Adam and Joe Show (CH4), Power Le****ns (Sky One) and Housebusters (CH5). Expanding state-side in 1994, the team went on to produce award-winning factual entertainment, reality television and documentary content to critical and commercial success; as well as launching a specialist SVoD service and producing popular live conventions, podcasts and merchandising. Television highlights include: Emmy® Award winning RuPaul’s Drag Race (VH1/Logo), RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (VH1), RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (BBC3), Million Dollar Listing LA & NY (Bravo), Dancing Queen (Netflix), Werq the World (WOW Presents Plus) and Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric (National Geographic). Nine of World of Wonder’s documentary films have premiered at the Sundance Film festival including Becoming Chaz, Party Monster and Whirlybird - which took home 2020's Sundance Institute | Amazon Studios Producers Award for Documentary Features. Other award-winning films and documentaries include, Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, Monica in Black and White, and Emmy Award-winning documentaries, The Last Beekeeper and Out of Iraq (all currently available to watch on WOW Presents Plus). Expanding its digital footprint, World of Wonder launched its specialist subscription on demand (SVoD) service, WOW Presents Plus. Landing in the UK in 2017, the SVoD is also available in America and 160 other countries and features World of Wonder content; including various titles across the Drag Race brand, digital series such as UNHhhh and Morning T&T and many of its documentary and film content. World of Wonder also produces RuPaul's DragCon, the world’s largest drag culture convention. Welcoming more than 100,000 attendees across LA and NYC in 2019 (with Vegas scheduled for January 2021), the company expanded internationally in 2020 with RuPaul’s DragCon UK taking place in London to a sold-out crowd. World of Wonder also co-produces the official RuPaul's Drag Race: Werq the World Tour, and the official RuPaul's Drag Race UK Tour. Co-founders Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey authored The World According to Wonder, celebrating decades of production and have been honoured with the IDA Pioneer Award, named on Variety's Reality Leaders List, and chosen for the OUT100 list for their trailblazing work in the LGBTQ+ community. World of Wonder was also selected for Realscreen's Global 100 list, which recognises the top international non-fiction and unscripted production companies working in the industry today. World of Wonder creates out of a historic building/gallery space in the heart of Hollywood.

03/05/2025

"I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief. "
Pier Paolo Pasolini
– March 5, 1922

Pier Paolo Pasolini has the dubious distinction of being the only great filmmaker who was murdered, most probably by the Mafia, at the request of Italian Right-Wing politicians who loathed the popular openly gay, Marxist, atheist, artist, poet, actor, writer, cinematographer, composer, political theorist, and filmmaker with 25 films to his credit. In the in the late 1940s and 1950s, Pasolini was a dedicated Communist, but he was kicked out of the party for being openly gay.

In November 1975, he picked up a teenager hustler and was murdered by being run over by his own car. The hustler later recanted his confession and claimed that three men with Southern Italian accents killed Pasolini. Details of the crime make it impossible to have been the work of just one person.

I saw Pasolini's final film at the Film Forum in New York City in 1976. Do not see it on a full stomach. It is the most nauseating work of art I have ever seen. THE 120 DAYS OF S***M is an updated version of the Marquis de Sade's 1780s novel set in the final days of Mussolini's depraved inner circle. It was shortly after its release that Pasolini was murdered.
I was mesmerized by his 1968 film TEOREMA, where an angelic, too handsome Terence Stamp seduces everyone in a bourgeois Milanese household: the religious maid, the icy mother, the homely daughter, the closeted son, even the powerful father. Amid the emotional fireworks, each one comes to a new understanding of their life.

If you are brave (remember that his films are designed for outrage), also check out THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT MATTHEW (1966), THE HAWKS ANDS SPARROWS (1966), OEDIPUS REX (1967), MEDEA (1969), with Maria Callas in her only film role, albeit non-singing, THE DECAMERON (1971), THE CANTERBURY TALES (1972), or A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (1974).

03/05/2025

Dear Viv, a documentary celebrating the life and legacy of James Lee Williams aka The Vivienne, is now in production by ❤️

“We want to celebrate The Vivienne's extraordinary life and work so everyone can experience her incredible talent, sass and enormous heart. Although her stay here on Earth was far too brief it is with tremendous admiration and affection that we share her legacy in 'Dear Viv'.” - &

Dear Viv will premiere exclusively on later this year.

Read more now on : https://hubs.la/Q039npRW0

03/04/2025

"I wanted to show America a different kind of man. If there was someone like me when I was growing up, my whole life would have been different."
Chaz Salvatore Bono
– March 4, 1969

Chastity Sun Bono was named for the film CHASTITY (1969) produced by his father, and where his mother Cher, in her first film role, plays a bis*xual.

In 1995, Chastity Bono came out as a le***an. Bono says that his famous mother, a Gay Icon and an LGBTQ ally, was very uncomfortable with the news, but finally came to a place of acceptance. His relationship with his father was tense after Sonny Bono became a Republican Congressman from California. Their political differences were so huge that they had not spoken for more than a year at the time of his father died in a skiing accident in 1998.

During the le***an era, Bono worked as a writer for THE ADVOCATE. He campaigned against the Defense of Marriage Act and served as Entertainment Media Director for the Gay and Le***an Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and published the excellent FAMILY OUTING (1999).

In 2010, California granted his request for a gender and name change, and he became Chaz. He made the documentary BECOMING CHAZ (2010) about his transition. But what he really wanted was to go into the family business. Bono: "Acting is a job where you have to be comfortable in your skin to be able to do it. I'm a fairly hetero-normative guy. I was like that when I was in a female body, and therefore to play a woman — I couldn't do it."

Bono has been busy as an actor, with regular guy roles on a daytime soap, plus AMERICAN HORROR STORY: CULT (2017), where he plays a rabid Ultra-MAGA. In 2011, he competed on DANCING WITH THE STARS, the first time an openly transgender man was on a major network television show for something that had nothing to do with being transgender.

A friend of World of Wonder, Bono has appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race.

Screen-grab via NBC, THE TODAY SHOW

03/03/2025

"No one ever expects a great lay to pay all the bills"
Jean Harlow
– March 3, 1911

Hollywood insiders and film fans were shocked when she suddenly, tragically died of acute kidney failure in 1937, at the very height of her fame.

She got her big break when Howard Hughes cast her in the sound version of his silent WW I flick, HELL'S ANGELS (1930), where Harlow really wowed audiences with her white-blond hair and the naughty line of dialogue: "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable? "

Harlow appeared in a string of films in 1931: THE SECRET SIX, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, GOLDIE, and PLATINUM BLOND. Her work was less about her acting and more about her alluring appearance. MGM bought Harlow's contract from Hughes in 1932, and she had her biggest hit yet with RED-HEADED WOMAN (1932), playing a role written especially for her by screenwriter Anita Loos. The film was the first time she really shows her comic acting chops along with those bombshell looks.

Harlow was popular with fans and critics. She became an even bigger star with smash hits like RED DUST (1932), one of her several pairings with Clark Gable; DINNER AT EIGHT (1933); and BOMBSHELL (1933), while Harlow's private life was filled with tragedy.

She started 1937 with a bad sunburn, throat infection, and flu. She had scarlet fever and meningitis as a teenager, which had compromised her immune system. Doctors diagnosed Uremic Poisoning the weekend before and Harlow responded well to treatment, and it seemed that she was recovering when she suddenly lapsed into a coma and she was gone 36 hours later. Powell was with her. She was 26 years old.

There were plenty of rumors about her death. Some said that her Christian Scientist mother had refused to let her see a doctor, or that she died of alcoholism, maybe a botched abortion, or over-dieting, poisoning from platinum hair dye, or various venereal diseases. But in the 1930s, there was no treatment for kidney disease.

Photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull

03/02/2025

"Sexuality is a spectrum, and we all fall somewhere upon it. Being q***r isn't weird or 'other' – it's perfectly ordinary. My hope is that we're moving towards a place where more people feel able to come out and live authentically, without having to explain or justify themselves."
Daniel Craig
– March 2, 1968

Daniel Craig told an interviewer that he could never play his role in Q***R (2024) while he was still playing James Bond because it would seem as if he was trying to "prove" himself too much. Craig is the sixth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in five films from 2006 to 2021.

Noted for playing spies, soldiers, and outlaws, Craig didn't really purposely try to go against type in taking the part in Q***R. He says that he just wanted to work with director Luca Guadagnino, and the role of an American writer with a big drug problem who gets intimately involved with a young male sailor (Drew Starkey) while running from a drug bust was what Guadagnino offered. Craig says he was all in, explicit s*x scenes and all. The film, set in the 1950s is based on a 1985 William S. Burroughs story of the same name.

His gay writer character in Q***R isn't the only gay role on Craig's resume. There's the detective Benoit Blanc from the KNIVES OUT films as well: KNIVES OUT (2019), GLASS ONION (2022), and the upcoming WAKE UP DEAD MANM and the third installment overall in the series.

Craig played Joe Pitt in the 1993 Royal National Theatre production of ANGELS IN AMERICA by Tony Kushner, his professional stage debut.

Photo: screen-grab from Belvedere vodka commercial

03/01/2025

"I can get any woman from any man."
Mercedes de Acosta
– March 1, 1883

Alice B. Toklas wrote: "Say what you will about Mercedes de Acosta, she's had the most important women of the twentieth century." Her many s*xual conquests included Isadora Duncan, Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, Eleonora Duse, Katherine Cornell, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Marlene Dietrich, and Alla Nazimova.

She moved around New York City wearing men's suits with her face powdered white, kohled eyes, blood red lips, and cropped black brilliantined hair. Bankhead dubbed her "the Countess Dracula".

De Acosta possessed an aesthetic attention that was thoroughly modern, and her q***rness was no secret. She openly blurred the lines of her gender identity. When she was a teenager, she wrote: "I am not a boy, and I am not a girl, or maybe I am both — I don't know. And because I don't know, I will never fit in anywhere and I will be lonely all my life."

Sexually, she really got around. One of the most intense affairs was with stage star Eva Le Gallienne, who she first met just three days before her wedding to noted portrait painter Abram Poole, whose family was in the New York Social Register. When Poole proposed, De Acosta wrote in her memoir: "I couldn't make up my mind. As a matter of fact, I was in a strange turmoil about world affairs, my own writing, suffrage, s*x, and my inner spiritual development."

In 1931, de Acosta dropped Le Gallienne to be with Nazimova in Hollywood where she met Garbo. For the next 15 years, de Acosta and Garbo had an unpredictable, tumultuous time, living together, traveling together, and n**e sunbathed n**e together. Garbo was afraid that their relationship would be revealed while de Acosta became more demonstrative in public. When a screenplay de Acosta had written for Garbo was nixed by young MGM exec, Irving Thalberg, the relationship began to unravel. Thalberg didn't take kindly to de Acosta's idea of having Garbo spend an entire film dressed as a boy.

02/28/2025

"You have to understand AIDS is part of my life. It's my reality. It's who I am."
Pedro Zamora
– February 29, 1972

THE REAL WORLD, the longest-running program in MTV history, was about seven young people chosen to temporarily live in a house together in a new city while being filmed non-stop. In the early 1990s, it was riveting viewing. Pedro Zamora of THE REAL WORLD: SAN FRANCISCO 1994, its third season had Zamora and his six cast-mates: Mohammed Bilal, Rachel Campos, Pam Ling, Cory Murphy, Puck Rainey, and Judd Winick moving into the house at 953 Lombard Street where filming commenced.

Zamora was a Cuban American gay guy who died from complications from HIV the day after his season aired. He was diagnosed with HIV in high school, and by the time he was 19 years old, he was an HIV/AIDS educator and activist. When he auditioned for THE REAL WORLD, Zamora thought it would further his message of HIV/AIDS awareness.

He schooled his castmates on HIV transmission and took them along on his speaking engagements. He and his boyfriend, Sean Sasser, had a tear-jerking wedding at the REAL WORLD loft, the first wedding for a same-s*x couple in television history.

Zamora had no medical insurance, but MTV set up a fund to pay for his medical bills. Pre-Obamacare, Zamora received Medicaid, but because of his AIDS diagnosis, he didn't qualify for health insurance.

President Bill Clinton thanked him for his work and facilitated a reunion of Zamora's brothers and sisters who were allowed to leave Cuba to join the family in Miami to be with Zamora in the hospital.

The Zamora family didn't accept Sasse, and Zamora was too sick to tell them the importance of Sasser in his life. The family told Sasser: "Pedro does not need to have a lover anymore". Sasser was not allowed to see Zamora during his final days.

I don't know how Leap Year babies celebrate. No matter how you count it, Zamora made this a better world.

02/27/2025

"The problem with people who have no vices is that you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues."
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky
– February 27, 1932

Taylor was always a trusted friend to LGBTQ people and LGBTQ people loved her right back. She was a very close friend and confidant of several gay men: Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson, George Cukor, Noël Coward, James Dean, and most significantly, Montgomery Clift. She was even known to hang out at gay bars.

During the Reagan presidency, Taylor was the first and most prominent movie star to lend her money, energy, time, and name to HIV/AIDS fundraising. Her considerable star wattage turned Taylor from someone who empathized with both the fragility and duality of gay men's political place in the USA to a commanding force for change. In 1985, Taylor, along with Dr. Mathilde Krim, plus a small group of physicians and scientists, formed the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). In 1991, she started her own organization, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

In 1991, she said of Bush the First: "I'm not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS." Taylor public pronouncements on the subject were passionate, profound, and poignant. She raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Taylor: "I hope with all of my heart that in some way I have made a difference in the lives of people with AIDS. I want that to be my legacy. Better that than for the mole on my cheek."

Taylor's relationship with gay men provided a more modern template for the status of Gay Icon. G**s used to embrace the kind of strung-out glamorous tragedy that Judy Garland epitomized. Taylor had that, for sure, but she also made herself useful. Taylor's embrace of q***r people was not an affectation or marketing thing, but something innate and intuitive. Aside from the husbands, the booze, and the diamonds, she had a heart that gay men adored and with plenty of reason.

1956 photo by Richard Avedon.

02/26/2025

"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation."

Levi Strauss (born Löb Strauß)
– February 26, 1829

The term "jeans" first appears in 1795 when French soldiers wore blue uniforms called "Bleu de Genes".

The Strauss family and other Jews in Bavaria were subjected to anti-Semitic restrictions under "Judenedikt" (Jew Decree). The restrictions included how many Jews could live in a village and limited their movements and the possibility of starting a family, since a marriage had to be approved by the authorities.

In 1851, Levi Strauss traveled from his village to New York City, joining his older brothers who ran a mercantile store. In 1853, he moved to San Francisco to open his own dry goods business. Jacob Davis was a Jewish tailor in Reno who bought bolts of fabric from the new Levi Strauss & Co. In 1872, Davis wrote to Strauss asking to partner with him to patent and sell clothing reinforced with rivets. These copper rivets were to reinforce the points of stress, such as pocket corners and at the bottom of the button fly. Strauss accepted the offer, and they received US patent No. 139,121 for an "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings" in 1873. Davis and Strauss experimented with different fabrics. First, they tried brown cotton duck, but they found denim better for work pants, and they began using it to manufacture their new riveted pants.

The Levi jean became a symbol of American ruggedness, grit, and freedom.

Strauss was active in the cultural life of San Francisco and actively supported the Jewish community. There is a denim Torah Ark cover at Struass' synagogue, Congregation Sha'ar Zahav. Despite his importance as a businessman, he insisted that his employees call him Levi, and not Mr. Strauss.

He was very possibly q***r. He never married. He wasn't known to have any sort of relationship with a woman ever. When he died in 1902, Strauss left his company to his four nephews. His estate was worth about $125 million ($4.5 billion in 2025 bucks).

02/25/2025

"Words, even the most ephemeral ones are facts, as heavy as fetters, they leave deep marks."
Aldo Busi
– February 25, 1948

Busi was transgressive figure who as a writer and translator for his translations into Italian from English, German, and Latin of the works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Lewis Carroll, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Although he grew up in extreme poverty near Lake Garda. At 14, he quit school to take a job as a waiter. When he was 20, he sought an exemption from military service because he was gay.

As a young man, he worked as a waiter in Paris, London, Berlin, Barcelona, and New York City, giving him the opportunity to learn French, English, German, and Spanish, and to write his first novel, IL MONOCLINO (1984, English title- SEMINAR ON YOUTH), about the troubled life of a hustler.

Back in Italy, Busi made a living as an interpreter and translator of works from English and German. In 1981 he graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures at Università di Verona, with a thesis on the gay American poet John Ashbery, becoming the official translator of Ashbery's work.

Busi wrote his own poetry, and he published seven novels, including the delightfully titled THE STANDARD LIFE OF A TEMPORARY PANTYHOSE SALESMAN (1989), the sprawling story of s*xual shenanigans whose two main characters are a sort of 20th century Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

A militant Leftist, Feminist, and pro-Gay Rights in life and art, he published 11 collections of essays, magazine and newspaper articles, seven travel books, a collection of short stories, a play, a screenplay, two songbooks and two memoirs.

Busi's 1998 novel, S***MIE IN CORPO 11 (Sodomies in Elevenpoint), about gay misadventures in Morocco, was decried by the Catholic church as immoral, and charged by the Italian government as obscene.

Busi's exceptionally daring, inventive works subvert assumptions of masculinity. His life was scandalous; he je**ed off in front of an audience in Milan, he walked the streets of Rome in drag, he performed a n**e solo stage show. He had an uncanny ability to tell the truth in any circumstance and to make his private life public.

Photo by Bianchi Rino

02/24/2025

"I got my first dramatic training under the guise of elocution, a term which covered a multitude of sinful things in my youth."
Marjorie Main
– February 24, 1890

Her career began in the late 1920s. She moved easily between plays, theatre, and films. Her matronly persona, and distinctive, raspy voice (used well in voiceovers), made her an in-demand actor, and she worked constantly for decades. She was cast as rich dowagers in those early years, but she was especially talented at playing bad-tempered maids and landladies, and because of her folksy accent, she excelled at portraying frontier women in musicals and westerns, almost always comical ones.

Main appeared in both the stage and film versions of DEAD END (1935,1937) and THE WOMEN (1936,1939). You can catch her doing her thing in STELLA DALLAS (1937), MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944), THE HARVEY GIRLS (1946), and SUMMER STOCK (1950). She made five films with Wallace Beery starting with BARNACLE BILL (1941), and of course, they were paired in the series of MA AND PA KETTLE (1947-1957) flicks.

In 1921, she married Stanley Krebs, a 57-year-old psychologist. The couple had an unconventional marriage, living apart and going their own ways when it came to romance. Main later admitted in an interview to having had several affairs with women, including with fellow actor Spring Byington.

Her biggest break came in 1947 when at 57 years old she played a chicken farmer named Ma Kettle in the hit comedy THE EGG AND I produced by Universal Studios. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.

Smart about investments, Main retired and then lived a quiet life in Los Angeles where she owned three homes. Her final public appearance was at the premier of THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT and the MGM 50th Anniversary gala in 1974. She and Byington remained devoted to each other until 1971 when Byington took that final bow. Main was taken by lung cancer in 1975 at 85 years old.

02/23/2025

"I understand being in a place where people's idea of you is a little limiting and narrow."
Niecy Nash Betts
– February 23, 1970

Nash has become slowly ubiquitous in television projects in the past decade, but the TNT series Claws brought her the role she had always deserved: the lead.

Nash has been stealing scenes since I first spotted her on Comedy Central's RENO 911! (2003–2009). She had been working steadily since her debut in the le***an-themed film BOYS ON THE SIDE (1995) starring Whoopi Goldberg. She has guest-starred or been a seried regular on many television series and she grabbed attention in films. Nash played Civil Rights activist Richie Jean Jackson in the film SELMA directed by Ava DuVernay.

She has had a career that would be the envy of any actor, but for a Black woman in her 50s, it's been extraordinary. According to The Center Women in Television and Film only 5% of television female characters were Asian, 5% are Latinas, and 5% identify as some other ethnicity.

Nash had to push against an industry that traditionally doesn't trust a woman like her to deliver the goods. As a Black woman, she had to fight against the showbiz notions of the kind of characters she might play. Nash: "They want you to be the sassy neighbor, the sassy friend, the sassy mother, and it’s like, can I play some other things?"

Nash was born in Compton. She is an advocate for safety in schools. In 1993, her younger brother was shot in a California high school, which led their mother to form M.A.V.I.S. (Mothers Against Violence In Schools).

When Nash was 5 years old, she saw entertainer Lola Falana on television and turned to her grandmother and said: "I want to be Black, fabulous and on television."

When she was nine, she spotted a man while visiting the Hollywood Walk of Fame with her father and walked right up and introduced herself. That man was Ed Asner, and Nash told him to remember her name, because one day it would be etched on one of the stars on the sidewalk they stood on. In 2018, Nash received that star.

In 2020 Nash announced that she had married singer Jessica Betts while coming out as bis*xual.

02/22/2025

"My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light!"
Edna St. Vincent Millay
– February 22, 1892

Millay, "Vincent" to her friends, was the first female to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her poetry has scandalous depictions of female s*xuality and feminism, putting forward the idea that a woman has a right to s*xual pleasure with no obligation to fidelity.

Millay was open about her bis*xuality and flaunted her affairs with both men and women. Her first male lover was writer Floyd Dell who felt it was his duty to rescue her from her q***rness. He was upset that she was getting it on with other chicks. Millay turned down his marriage proposal. He was so astute; telling an interviewer: "It was impossible to understand Millay. I've often thought she may have been fonder of women than of men."

In 1923, Millay married Eugen Jan Boissevain. It was an open marriage and she said that they "lived like two bachelors". A self-proclaimed Feminist, Boissevain took on all the domestic responsibilities, freeing her up to write. They each had other lovers throughout their 26-year marriage.

Millay was a dedicated pacifist during World War I. Starting in 1940, Millay supported the fight against Fascism in Europe, writing in celebration of the war effort and later working with Writers' War Board to create American propaganda. Her reputation in poetry circles was damaged by her work in support of the war. She caught more flak for supporting Democracy than poet Ezra Pound did for championing Fascism.

In his memoir, GREAT COMPANIONS (1942), writer Max Eastman tells a story about being at a cocktail party where he overheard Millay discussing her recurrent headaches with a psychologist. The shrink asked her: "I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that you might perhaps, although you are hardly conscious of it, have an occasional impulse toward a person of your own s*x?" Millay responded: "Oh, you mean I'm homos*xual! Of course, I am. And heteros*xual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?"

02/22/2025

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02/21/2025

"You've got to learn to leave the table when love is no longer served."
Nina Simone
– February 21, 1933

Her repertoire was standard supper club stuff: Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Dylan; yet whatever she sang ended up sounding like a Nina Simone tune. She didn't just interpret songs, she owned them. Simone is one of the most influential musicians of 20th-century jazz, cabaret, and R&B.

Simone was bis*xual, though her best-known relationships were with men. In her diary, she wrote: "However, some things have come quite clear to me—for instance that I am stuck between desire for both s*xes…".

The sixth of eight children born into a poor family in North Carolina, as a kid, Simone wanted to be a concert pianist. She applied for a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where, despite a well-received audition, she was denied admission, which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Curtis Institute gave her an honorary degree.

When she was a teenager Simone played piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name from Eunice Waymon to "Nina Simone" to distinguish herself from family members who were upset that she chose to play "the devil's music". The nightclub management told that she would have to sing to her own piano accompaniment, which started her career as a vocalist. She released more than 40 albums. She released her first and biggest hit single, I LOVES YOU, PORGY, in 1959, and her final album, A SINGLE WOMAN was released in 1993. Her music embraced classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop. Her piano playing was very influenced by Baroque music.

Simone gave time and energy to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, but she left the USA for France following the assassination of her friend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. She lived and performed abroad throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. She published a 1992 memoir, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU (taking the title from her 1965 album), and she continued to perform until her death.

02/21/2025

"We believe in equality for all, and privileges for none."
Barbara Jordan
– February 21, 1936

It's Black History Month; it's not necessarily Black Le****ns Month, but possibly, it should be. Black Gay Women made history too.

Barbara Jordan was the first woman from Texas to serve in Congress, and the first Black female to be elected to Congress from a southern state. She was an outstanding orator and first-class Constitutional scholar. If she had lived, she may have served on the Supreme Court, as William Jefferson Clinton intended.

In 1976, Jordan was much discussed by those that make such decisions as a possible running mate for Jimmy Carter ( ). Instead, she became the first Black woman to deliver the keynote address at a national political party convention. Her speech in New York City that summer is in the Top 10 of the Top 100 American Speeches Of The 20th Century by the Association Of University Professors.

Jordan was also a gay woman with what used to be called a "longtime companion". She spent more than 25 years with Nancy Earl. Jordan never publicly acknowledged her gayness, but her Houston Chronicle obituary mentions her relationship with Earl. Jordan's political advisers had warned her to be discreet.

At Jordan's funeral in 1996, Bill Clinton stated: "Whenever she stood to speak, she jolted the nation's attention with her artful and articulate defense of the Constitution, the American Dream, and the common heritage and destiny we share, whether we like it or not."

In 2011, the USPS chose Jordan foe a "forever" stamp as the 34th honoree in the popular Black Heritage series. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the nation's highest civilian honor) in 1994. Jordan was elected to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame, and she was named one of the most influential 20th century women by the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

Bayard Rustin was Jordan's good friend. Remember, Rustin was the gay man who was a leader in the fight for Civil Rights and Gay Rights.

Jordan was diagnosed with MS in 1973 and then with Leukemia in the 1980s. She gave her final speech in 1996.

1976 photo via AP

02/21/2025

There is no real me - only a relentless commitment to productivity even in sickness 🤧🤒 Feel better, Ryan!

🏙️ Owning Manhattan Season 2 starting is coming soon, watch Season 1 on worldwide!

02/20/2025

"Sometimes when you're surrounded by dirt, you're a better witness for what's beautiful."
Terri de la Peña
– February 20, 1947

Born in Santa Monica, her father was a direct descendant of a family, who, in the early 1880s, were some of the first settlers in Southern California. Her mother's family immigrated from Mexico in the 1920s. De la Peña’s is from a working-class Mexican American Catholic family; her father was an auto mechanic, and her mother ran a beauty parlor in their home.

Her parents wanted her to learn a trade, then get a job, get married, and have a bunch of kids. Even as a child, de la Peña knew that she liked girls, but she was also aware that it was forbidden in her Latin culture. She had never heard of a le***an and had no role models.

To make her parents happy, she did go to a trade school after high school. She studied Commercial Art and then was hired by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center as an administrator. Her parents fretted over why she didn't get married. She joined several feminist and le***an groups in Los Angeles and hung out at the Sisterhood Bookstore, joining their Latina writers' group. Her first published short story, A SATURDAY NIGHT IN AUGUST, about a closeted Chicana attending an Equal Rights Amendment protest and meeting an out and proud le***an, won a literary contest.

MARGINS (1992) is her first published novel. She was 45 years old when it was published. It's about an affair between a Mexican American woman and a white woman, probably the first published Chicana le***an coming out novel. It also served as de la Peña's own coming out; her colleagues at UCLA and her friends bought the book without knowing what it was about. She started to do readings where women came up to her after and told her that the novel saved their lives.

Her next novel, LATIN SATINS (1994), follows a singing group who live together in a group house. Next came FAULTS (2000), a novel about the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994. Her short story, BEYOND EL CAMINO REAL, is about a road trip she took with a girlfriend across the USA, and the reactions of the white conservative rural Americans to their presence.

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Contact The Business

Videos

Slay the house down boots, make sense? 💅 Throwback to @rupaulofficial hosting @nbcsnl’s during Season 45 ahead of tonight’s herstoric celebration of SNL50: The Anniversary Special, watch on @nbc and @peacock!

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La catégorie est… All Stars! 🇫🇷⭐️ Meet the iconic judges panel of #DragRaceFrance All Stars joining Host @thenickydoll: @daphneburki, @loicprigent, and @instashym! #AllStarsFrance @dragrace_france All Stars is coming soon: https://hubs.la/Q03

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