World of Wonder

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.

"I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don't pretend an...
11/05/2025

"I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don't pretend and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions."
Vivien Leigh
– November 5, 1913

Does Vivien Leigh have a spot in the pantheon of Gay Icons? She certainly brought the talent and the melodrama. She was more beautiful, had more gay friends, was just as much a bitch, and was as high strung and promiscuous as Joan Crawford or Bette Davis.

Crawford and Davis had the attributes of many gay guys of their era: scrappy, ambitious, lack of self-pity, high standards in how to live and dress. They struggled with finding respect despite talent and drive. They had family problems, and nothing close to a traditional love life or home life. They were not afraid or apologetic about using their wit and their smarts. They didn't suffer fools gladly. They possessed vulnerability and strength. They remain perfect Gay Icons. Poor Leigh was just a tiny, lovely, fragile woman with severe mental illness.

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) brought Leigh fame and an Oscar; but she told the press: "I'm not a film star; I'm an actress. Being a film star – just a film star – is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity. Actresses go on for years and years."

In 1967, Leigh was struck with a recurrence of tuberculosis, an illness that had plagued her for 25 years. Her final credits rolled a few months later, just before MGM was launching the sixth national release of GONE WITH THE WIND, by then, the most popular and biggest money-making film of all time. Leigh received $20,000 ($450,000 in 2025 dollars) for her work in GWTW. She later ruefully said: "I wouldn't have objected to just a little bit of the percentage of the film's income."

Maybe Leigh is not a top Gay Icon because she didn't invent a public personality the same way Garland, Davis and Crawford did. Plus, Leigh wasn't naturally funny. Davis, Crawford and Garland could be funny.

1941 portrait by Cecil Beaton

11/05/2025

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"I want to see the devil in us all. That's my real turn on."Robert Mapplethorpe – November 4, 1946MAPPLETHORPE: LOOK AT...
11/04/2025

"I want to see the devil in us all. That's my real turn on."
Robert Mapplethorpe
– November 4, 1946

MAPPLETHORPE: LOOK AT THE PICTURES (2016), directed by World Of Wonder founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, is an intriguing, insightful work that shows Mapplethorpe in the context of his life and artistic vision. He dared people to turn away from his explicit photographs and Bailey and Barbato's film does that too, forcing on his most controversial pictures, proving that he still has the power to provoke, persuade and perturb.

Mapplethorpe's photographs range from graphic depictions of gay s*x to exquisite portraits of flowers; his work is all over the artistic map, magnificent, still frequently shocking, and ultimately beautiful. Even his more extreme S/M photographs have a tenderness, and the seemingly harmless botanical photographs have an edginess that's difficult to dismiss. With a strict sense of formalism and composition and bringing a new iconography to q***rness, Mapplethorpe provoked much controversy in his era.

Mapplethorpe has now become the essential "Gay Photographer", even as his ho******ic pictures continue to be disturbing to many viewers.

At the apex of his career in 1987, he was diagnosed with HIV. Mapplethorpe became a symbol of bravery and defiance to the plague. He didn't hide his illness, which did a lot to help focus attention on HIV/AIDS when much of the world was ignoring this plague. Never shy of celebrity, as an art world icon infected with the virus he changed how the people looked at his photographs. His death in 1989, at just 42 years old, gave his short life a special symbolic significance.

Considered too dirty just three decades ago, you can now Google "Mapplethorpe" and view any of the photographs that caused conservatives to lose their s**t back in the day. Right-wingers know nothing and care nothing about art, but they somehow need to tell us what's morally fit to see. They've successfully ended much of the public funding for the arts and now that they have power, they continue their outrage over the photographs by Mapplethorpe. Spend time looking, really looking, at Mapplethorpe's work.

"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not h...
11/03/2025

"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long."
Walker Evans
– November 3, 1903

Walker Evans is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. His elegant, clear photographs more or less invented the documentary tradition in American photography. From the late 1920s into the early 1970s, Evans recorded the nation's scene with nuance and precision. Yet Evans the man is as dauntingly elusive as his work is sparingly direct.

Starting in the early 1930s, Evans enjoyed very close romantic relationships with many men, including the arts impresario Lincoln Kirstein and writer John Cheever.

In 1928, he worked as a clerk on Wall Street where he met and had an affair with the tragic poet Hart Crane, a pivotal, prophetic figure in American literature. Evans' first published work was three photos that served as illustrations for Crane's epic poem THE BRIDGE (1930), inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge.

In the summer of 1936, Evans traveled to the American South with handsome journalist-poet-novelist James Agee, who had been assigned to write an article on tenant farmers for a magazine, with Evans assigned as the photographer. That collaboration became LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN (1941), a book with 500 pages of words and photographs that are stunningly honest look at the faces of farm families living in Alabama, epitomizing the entire terrible tragedy of the Great Depression. Each photograph is intimate, transcendent, and enigmatic.

His s*x life was right out of a 1980s nighttime television soap opera. He enjoyed a special arrangement involving Agee and Agee's wife. Evans attributed the s*xual shenanigans among his friends to be just part of their times, later writing: "Everybody by rote went to bed with everybody else, and the result was confusion."

His photographs are in the permanent collections of museums around our pretty planet. His works for the New Deal Farm Security Administration belong to the citizens of the USA and they live at the Library of Congress. Please, don't let POTUS get his fat stubby fingers on them!

1936 self-portrait

11/03/2025

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"I like melodrama because it is situated just at the meeting point between life and theatre."Luchino Visconti – Novembe...
11/02/2025

"I like melodrama because it is situated just at the meeting point between life and theatre."
Luchino Visconti
– November 2, 1906

Luchino Visconti was one of the greatest film directors of the 20th century, but he was also an ultimate conundrum: an aristocrat (a Milanese Count descended from Charlemagne) and he was also a committed lifelong Communist. He owned several opulent palazzos decorated with the exquisite taste that he exhibited his entire life as one of the most elegant men of his era. He was openly as a gay man most of his life even as he declared: "I am a Catholic. I was born a Catholic, I was baptized a Catholic. I cannot change what I am, I cannot easily become a Protestant. My ideas may be unorthodox, but I am still a Catholic." His wealth and position allowed him to be gay and a communist, even as his enemies mocked him, telling the press: "He votes left but lives right."

His first serious relationship was with photographer Horst P. Horst starting in 1939 and lasted three years. In the early 1930s, he had a brief fling with Umberto II, who would become the last King of Italy (Umberto was "outed" by the Fascist press in 1943). Visconti may have been open about his gayness, but he remained discreet, yet in the 1970s, he started openly showing up for events with his lovers, including filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli and the actors Helmut Berger, and Udo Kier.

Visconti's own funeral in 1976 was a dignified affair, attended by his family, the Italian President Giovanni Leone, and Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Laura Antonelli, Vittorio Gassman, Berger, and members of the Italian Communist Party. He had smoked several packs of ci******es a day beginning as a young teenager. He suffered a serious stroke in 1972, but he continued to smoke. As an epitaph, he chose a poem by W.H. Auden that is quoted in his film CONVERSATION PIECE:
"When you see a fair form
Chase it
And if possible, embrace it
Be it a girl or a boy
Don't be bashful, be brash, be fresh…"

1967 portrait by Alfonso Avila

"Now, girls, I want you all to do your best and tell the boys I haven't time. Tell them to dance like Nijinsky! "Max Adr...
11/01/2025

"Now, girls, I want you all to do your best and tell the boys I haven't time. Tell them to dance like Nijinsky! "
Max Adrian as "Max" in THE BOYFRIEND (1971)
– November 1, 1903

Max Adrian was an acclaimed, eccentric, nimble comic actor and singer born in Northern Ireland as simply Guy Thornton Bor. When he was still a youth, he changed his name to the more theatrical sounding "Max Cavendish".

Adrian began his career as a chorus boy. He first worked at a theatre showing silent films as part of the ensemble of live entertainment that did their act while the reels of film were being changed. He moved to London and found work in plays and musicals on the West End.

He also appeared in films, starting in 1934 with the romantic THE PRIMROSE PATH, but most notably in Ken Russell's THE BOY FRIEND (1971), THE DEVILS (1971), THE MUSIC LOVERS (1970).

Adrian's voice was quite distinctive, and his style of acting was highly theatrical, bordering on camp, something rare in the early days of film and television. He was also known to appear in drag at London and Paris clubs at a time when that sort of thing could get you arrested. Indeed, it did. In 1940 Adrian was arrested for soliciting at a Victoria Station loo and sentenced to three months in prison. Few of his gay friends visited him; not surprising for an era when even the whisper of being gay could ruin a career. Michael Redgrave was the only person who stood by him through it all.

Adrian's partner, or as they would have written it in his day, his "longtime companion", was theatre producer/director Laurier Lister, famous for his series of clever intimate musical revues in the 1940s and 1950s, often starring Adrian. They were a couple for more than 30 years.

Adrian took his final bow in 1973 at 69 years old. At his memorial service, the greatest figures of the British theatre paid tribute to Adrian's singular style and professionalism, with tributes read by notable bis*xuals Alec Guinness and Laurence Olivier.

"Only those who are being burned know what fire is like."Ethel Waters – October 31, 1896Ethel Waters became a star afte...
10/31/2025

"Only those who are being burned know what fire is like."
Ethel Waters
– October 31, 1896

Ethel Waters became a star after an obscure beginning, living a shack off an alley in Philadelphia with her mother and grandmother. She faced unspeakable racism. She was born as a result of a r**e when her mother was 13 years old. She grew up poor in a violent environment, never staying in the same place for more than a year. Waters: "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family."

Waters worked as a singer, dancer, actor, and an evangelist, never letting herself be confined to a single identity. As a singer, she played around with styles, performing what was then called "race music", while also singing standards and showtunes.

In the 1920s, Waters was so popular that she was booked in the better paying white vaudeville theatres, becoming one of the most celebrated and best paid entertainers of the era.

Irving Berlin caught her act at The Cotton Club and wrote SUPPER TIME, a song about a lynching, for Waters who introduced it in the 1933 Broadway show AS THOUSANDS CHEER, the first time that a Black woman had starred in a Broadway musical.

She starred on the stage and in screen versions of THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING (1950), adapted from a novel by gay writer Carson McCullers herself, where Waters portrays her traditional "mammy" role with real edge and depth.

Waters was a conundrum: a devout Catholic unafraid to use swear words, a le***an whose loud fights with her lovers made proper le***ans like singer Alberta Hunter label her a disgrace to their tribe. She was a gentle soul with a terrible temper.

For her performance in PINKY (1949), directed by Elia Kazan, Waters became only the second Black actor to be nominated for an Oscar. She was the first Black star to have a national radio show and the first to star on a television show, THE ETHEL WATERS SHOW in 1939. She was the first Black woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award (in 1962!) for a guest role on ROUTE 66.

1934 portrait by Carl Van Vechten

10/31/2025

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"To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. A little money helps, but what really gets it right ...
10/30/2025

"To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. A little money helps, but what really gets it right is to never face the facts."
Ruth Gordon
– October 30, 1896

She was 72 years old when Ruth Gordon won an Academy Award for portraying of "Minnie Castevet", the friendly busybody Satanist next door neighbor who controls poor Rosemary using homemade elixirs and sweets in ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968). Gordon had yet to realize of her biggest film success, a career-defining performance in HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971) when she won her Oscar. It was presented to her by Tony Curtis, and I hope that when I finally win my Oscar that I will be as witty as Gordon during her acceptance speech, when she said: "I can't tell you how encouragin' a thing like this is. Followed by: "The first film that I ever was in was in 1915 and here we are and it's 1969. Actually, I don't know why it took me so long; though I don't think, you know, that I'm backward. Anyway, thank all of you who voted for me. And all of you who didn't, please excuse me."

In 1915, she made her Broadway debut in PETER PAN. Influential, acerbic, gay critic Alexander Woollcott, who became a valued and powerful friend to Gordon, wrote: "Ruth Gordon was ever so gay as Nibs."

She played Dolly Levi in gay writer Thornton Wilder's comedy THE MATCHMAKER (1956), a role written for her, and the basis of the musical HELLO, DOLLY!. Theatre people debate who was the greatest Dolly Levi: Carol Channing, Shirley Booth, Barbra Streisand, Mary Martin, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler; but Gordon created the character.

Here is a weird little anecdote: now canceled director Roman Polanski wrote how that while walking on to the set of ROSEMARY'S BABY for the first time, he noticed a short girl in a miniskirt with an amazing ass and hot legs. Polanski: "The girl turned around, and it was Ruth Gordon!" It makes sense; Gordon's greatest gift was her ability to be both young and old, or homely and beautiful at the same time.

1929 portrait by Cecil Beaton

"We've all got trashy friends, but we should choose our trashy friends with more care."Dominick Dunne – October 29, 192...
10/29/2025

"We've all got trashy friends, but we should choose our trashy friends with more care."
Dominick Dunne
– October 29, 1925

Dominick Dunne is like a character from one of his books: young gentleman from a wealthy family, he has success as a screenwriter and producer in Hollywood, knows all the best people and throws the best parties, until something goes tragically wrong.

Early in his career, Dunne was the executive producer of the film version of Mart Crowley's classic gay-themed play THE BOYS ON THE BAND (1970). Maybe the bitter queens in that script drove him deeper into the closet. His nonfiction pieces make it clear that Dunne cared deeply about his children and his ex-wife, but many gay people in the 1950s and 1960s got married as a way to hide gayness. Dunne used his final novel, TOO MUCH MONEY (2009) to finally come out of the closet by proxy when his main character reveals that he is gay.

Griffin Dunne describes his father as bis*xual. Near the end of his life, Dunne claimed: "I am a celibate closeted bis*xual."

In the 1970s, Dunne had an affair with Frederick Combs, a handsome actor who had been in the original cast of THE BOYS IN THE BAND, and the film version. Combs was known to be a genuine, charming, sweet guy and a positive influence in Dunne's life. They were a popular couple in certain circles on both coasts in the 1970s. Combs was taken by the plague in 1992.

Dunne's beautiful daughter Dominique Dunne was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in the driveway of her home in the Hollywood Hills in October 1982. He dedicated the rest of his life to being a strong advocate for crime victims and their grieving families.

Even at the end of his life, Dunne never lost his sense of humor. He wrote with great wit about having cancer in VANITY FAIR. Capote was finally taken by his demons; he never owned them the way that Dunne was able to do. One writer's life was trashy and the other wrote trashy books.

Dunne is portrayed by Robert Morse in THE PEOPLE V. O. J. SIMPSON: AMERICAN CRIME STORY (2016) and Nathan Lane in MONSTERS: THE LYLE AND ERIK MENEDEZ STORY (2024).

Photo by Christopher Pillitz

10/29/2025

UNSEEN FOOTAGE from Owning Manhattan S1! 👀👃 Rewatch the iconic first season NOW STREAMING worldwide on

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Address

6650 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
90028

Opening Hours

Tuesday 12pm - 4pm
Wednesday 12pm - 4pm
Thursday 12pm - 4pm
Friday 9am - 4pm
Saturday 9am - 4pm

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+14706646527

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