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.

🏆 Not a Very Good Murder, the wild genre-bending podcast by Pulitzer Pride-winning journalist and guest judge alumni R...
10/09/2025

🏆 Not a Very Good Murder, the wild genre-bending podcast by Pulitzer Pride-winning journalist and guest judge alumni Ronan Farrow, is nominated at the 4th Annual Signal Awards, for Best Host and Best True Crime! 🎙️


🗳️ Vote now: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting #/2025/individual-episodes/craft/best-host

10/08/2025

🏆 Not a Very Good Murder, the wild genre-bending podcast by Pulitzer Pride-winning journalist and guest judge alumni , is nominated at the 4th Annual Signal Awards, for Best Host and Best True Crime! 🎙️


🗳️ Vote now at the link in our story before voting ends THURSDAY!

"By aspiring to join the mainstream rather than figuring out the ways we need to change it, we risk losing our gay and l...
10/08/2025

"By aspiring to join the mainstream rather than figuring out the ways we need to change it, we risk losing our gay and le***an souls in order to gain the world."
Urvashi Vaid
– October 8, 1958

In her essential book, EQUALITY (1995), Vaid emphatically stated that fighting for LGBTQ Rights needs to be seen as a fight for all Human Rights. The book is a memoir, a political manifesto, and a call to action, not just the conditional equality that comes with tolerance. She insisted that LGBTQ activists work with those who working for racial and gender equality. She fought cancer three times, but kept working.

Born in New Delhi, when she was eight years old, her family moved to the USA. She embraced activism when she was just 11 years old by marching against the Vietnam War. She was 14 years old at the time of the Stonewall Riots, and she took note.

At Northeastern University School of Law, she joined the Boston Le***an/Gay Political Alliance, served on the board of GLAAD (Gay Legal Advocates and Defenders), and wrote for Boston's GAY COMMUNITY NEWS. GLAAD started in 1978, the era of that orange juice queen Anita Bryant started her all-American anti-gay crusade. It was a time when it was revolutionary for any organization to use the words "gay and le***an" in its name.

Vaid worked for the ACLU's National Prison Project, where she started the organization's work telling the world about HIV/AIDS in prisons.

From 1989 to 1992, she was the executive director of the National Gay and Le***an Task Force, the oldest national advocacy group for the LGBTQ community, leading the organization through the worst of the new plague. This was an era when Marriage Equality seemed impossible, and q***r citizens could still be arrested under still enforceable anti-gay laws.

In 1990, during George H.W. Bush's first ever speech about AIDS/HIV, she was taken away by guards after she fearlessly held up a sign saying: "Talk is cheap, AIDS funding is not!". She was direct and confrontational in her activism, yet there was always just a pinch of kindness and a dash generosity in her message.

Her partner was comic, Kate Clinton. Vaid was taken by cancer in 2022.

"The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the w...
10/07/2025

"The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens."
Daniel Savage
– October 7, 1964

In 1991, Dan Savage was working at a video store when his friend, newspaper publisher and co-founder of THE ONION, Tim Keck, told Savage that he was moving to Seattle to start an alternative newspaper, THE STRANGER. Savage advised Keck "Make sure your paper has an advice column – everybody claims to hate them, but everybody reads them." He composed a sample column, and much to his surprise, Keck offered him a job doing just that.

That column, SAVAGE LOVE, is now syndicated in dozens of newspapers in the USA and around the globe.

Until 1999, the format began with an advice seeker saying, "Hey fa**ot", then asking their question. Savage wanted to reappropriate that word into a positive thing. Using it worked when most of his readers were LGBTQ, but the column became very popular with straights too, so Savage dropped the salutation.

He has written six books, plus op-ed pieces, made many television appearances, and produced a popular podcast.

Savage advocates for progressive politics and the rights of LGBTQ youth. He founded the "It Gets Better Project" with his husband Terry Miller, whom he married in 2005 (he and Miller were one of couples to receive Washington state marriage licenses). The couple have a son whose adoption is chronicled in Savage's book THE KID: WHAT HAPPENED AFTER MY BOYFRIEND AND I DECIDED TO GO GET PREGNANT, which won a PEN West Award, and was adapted to an Off-Broadway musical.

Here are some savage Savage quotes:
"Today's unspeakable perversion is tomorrow's kink, is next week's good clean fun."
"Outing is brutal and it should be reserved for brutes."
"The Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it."

Since 2002, Savage has written the column at Ann Lander's desk, which he purchased at auction.

"I have no kicks at all. The fact is I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. I enjoy this country. I like the parks and ...
10/06/2025

"I have no kicks at all. The fact is I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. I enjoy this country. I like the parks and the highways and the good schools and everything that this Government does."
Carole Lombard
– October 6, 1908

Blythe, brilliant, carefree, and famously foul-mouthed, Carole Lombard had a stunning career that was cut short by an airplane crash while she was returning home to Hollywood from a War Bond tour in January 1942. Lombard and her mother, plus fifteen servicemen were killed. She was gone at just 33 years old. Lombard had raised over $2 million ($38.5 million in 2025 bucks) in war bonds that evening.

She had been married to handsome, debonair, sophisticated William Powell for just 26 months in the early 1930s, but they divorced while still remaining very close. Powell was devastated by her death, and Lombard's husband Clark Gable never really recovered from the loss. Inconsolable and devastated, he joined the U.S. Air Force a few days after her funeral. Although Gable married twice after Lombard was gone, he chose to be interred beside her at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale after his final credits rolled in 1960.

Gable and Lombard only made one film together, NO MAN OF HER OWN (1932), and they were not romantically involved while shooting it. She was married to Powell at the time and Gable was married to Rhea Langham (not in showbiz) while enjoying an affair with Joan Crawford.

Before she left this world, Lombard had been set to star in THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE opposite Melvyn Douglas. She was replaced by Crawford, always noted for her light touch in screwball comedy. Crawford donated her salary from the film to the Red Cross.

In the 1930s, Lombard was one of Hollywood' most popular and highest-paid stars. Her deal with Paramount brought her $450,000 a year ($10 million+ in today's dollars), more than five times what the President of the United States was paid. Lombard stated that 80% of her earnings went in taxes, but that she was happy to help her country. The comments brought her positive publicity, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her a personal letter of thanking her.

💖🌈 From Burning Man to Samoa, David Bronner () journeys through belonging, healing, and transformation, weaving together...
10/06/2025

💖🌈 From Burning Man to Samoa, David Bronner () journeys through belonging, healing, and transformation, weaving together how cultures around the world honor the full gender spectrum and reflecting on the care and community that shaped this year’s Burn. 🫧

👓 Read the full post now on the blog: https://info.drbronner.com/all-one-blog/2025/10/2025-fall-equinox-report/

10/05/2025

SO EMOTIONAL over the launch of our new Lip Sync Hub! 🤩 NOW STREAMING - watch iconic Drag Race lip sync performances in the Lip Sync Hub on !

👠🎶 From most Iconic Moments to Q***r Anthems and so much more, the Lip Sync Hub is the best way to watch back-to-back Drag Race lip syncs!

➡️ Start watching by clicking “Lip Syncs” in the top navigation bar on WOW Presents Plus!

Lip Sync availability varies by territory, and matches the availability of the series in your region.

"I was born with the ambition to lend my body, my movements, my voice, and the most intimate of my being to the characte...
10/05/2025

"I was born with the ambition to lend my body, my movements, my voice, and the most intimate of my being to the characters of theatre."
Ida Rubenstein
– October 5, 1883

Born into a fabulously family in Ukraine, in her teens, she met and began working closely with theatre designer and artist Léon Bakst.

Bakst introduced Rubenstein to the major artistic figures of the era, including impresario Serge Diaghilev and the choreographer Mikhail Fokine. In 1908, Fokine choreographed the DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS from Oscar Wilde's play SALOME for her. Banned in St. Petersburg, but she continued to perform it anyway, unveiling herself down to a tiny bra and tinier beaded skirt. This outraged her relatives who had her declared insane and committed her to an asylum.

In 1907, Rubinstein married her gay cousin, gaining control of her inheritance and her independence. In 1909, she joined Diaghilev's Ballets Russes for its first Paris season. Her performances thrilled audiences, especially her notorious nearly n**e dances.

In 1911, Rubenstein fell hard for painter Romaine Brooks who appreciated her androgynous beauty and did n**e paintings of Rubenstein which were extremely controversial, especially because they were done by a female artist. In 1914, Brooks fell in love with writer Natalie Clifford Barney, and that was that.

During the war, Rubinstein volunteered for the war effort, but in a tailored nurse's uniform designed by Bakst.

Rubenstein formed own ballet company, but critics were tough on he for dancing on pointe at 45 years old and taking the lead in every production.

In 1936, Rubinstein converted to Catholicism, but for the N***s, of course, she was still a Jew. As Paris fell to the N***s, she fled London, where Rubinstein cared for wounded French troops, as she had done in World War I, while residing at the fashionable Ritz Hotel.

When Rubinstein died in 1960, it took a month for it to be reported in the Paris newspapers. An outsider for being Russian, bisexual, Jewish, and artistically defiant, Rubenstein embodies modern q***rness.

Portrait by Brooks

10/04/2025

“It was very gay, but I was very much allowed to like it.” 👠 Linus O’Brien throws back to ’s interview in , OUT NOW in USA and UK theaters!

💋 Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror is produced and directed by .obrien (the son of original Rocky Horror writer Richard O’Brien) and executive produced by and

with   and  premieres Fridays at 5PM PT:
📡 on
🎥 YouTube
🎙️ All podcast platforms

Read more on this week’s topics at worldofwonder.com/wowreport

"Each of us must take into account the raw material which heredity dealt us at birth and then work out for ourselves a s...
10/04/2025

"Each of us must take into account the raw material which heredity dealt us at birth and then work out for ourselves a sensible evaluation of our personalities and accomplishments."
Dr. Alan L. Hart
– October 4, 1890

A trailblazing physician who saved many lives, he was also one of the first female-to-male transgender people to surgically transition in the USA.

Born Alberta Lucille Hart in Kansas. After his father died in the 1892 Typhoid epidemic, he and his mother moved to Oregon. He was masculine child who identified as a boy.

He was a pre-med major at Stanford University starting in 1910, and began wearing men's clothing and adopting a more masculine demeanor.

In 1913, Hart enrolled at the University of Oregon Medical School, and graduated in 1917 as the first woman to receive a medal for achieving all "A"s.

Hart understood that his attraction to women was considered abnormal by society. A brilliant student, Hart was the only female in the class. He dressed often in a very mannish style. After graduation, he sought psychiatric help from one of his professors, J. Allen Gilbert, who tried analysis and hypnosis to change Hart into a conventional woman. That failed. Hart realized that if he would no longer think, feel, or act like a man, that he would be miserable.

Hart asked Gilbert to perform a full hysterectomy on him. With that transformation, Alberta Lucille Hart became Alan L. Hart.

In 1918 he received a medical license, married a woman, and started a practice in San Francisco. A former classmate recognized him and told people that he had once been female. The SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER ran the headline: "Girl Poses as Male Doctor in Hospital".

He abandoned his practice, and the couple moved seven times across the West. They left town whenever there were questions about Hart's gender. In 1923 they divorce.

In 1928, Hart received a doctorate degree in Radiology and became an expert on using chest x-rays to detect Tuberculosis and dedicated the rest of his life to Tuberculosis research.

When synthetic male hormones became available after World War II, Hart used them to grow facial hair and deepen his voice.

Hart died in 1962.

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot." – October 4, 1895Buster Keaton stood only 5 foot 5 inches and his charact...
10/04/2025

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
– October 4, 1895

Buster Keaton stood only 5 foot 5 inches and his characters were often bullied by bigger, more masculine men. His defense was to keep his physicality and emotions protected under the persona of a sad sack. It's not that difficult to think of his characters as something close to gay guys before they come out, keeping their feelings and true selves hidden from the peril of a society willing to hurt them. Straight, but having grown up in Vaudeville, he knew all types of people, and he did drag in many performances.

Best known for his silent films made during the 1920s, he performed inventive physical comedy and stunts. He maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".

He insisted on performing his own stunts, most memorably hanging onto the front of a locomotive THE GENERAL (1926) and narrowly avoiding killed by a falling house wall in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (1928). His films were wildly popular for a while, but when they struggled at the box office, Keaton was forced to relinquish his full creative control and he spent several demoralizing years starring in various projects for MGM, who banned him from any stunt work.

In 1959, Keaton was presented with an honorary Academy Award. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for films and one for television. Six of his films have been included in the National Film Registry, making him one of the most honored filmmakers on that list.

Keaton made 19 silent short films and 10 silent features between 1920 and 1928, and 40 sound films. His final project was Richard Lester's A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1966), where Keaton amazed the cast and crew by doing his own stunts, but his increasingly ill health compelled Lester to save Keaton's strength for the major stunts and use a double for shots of him running.

A heavy smoker, Keaton died of lung cancer in 1966. Now, he is at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.

"Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter."

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