Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal born 5 October 1925 (d. 2012)

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal is a prolific and versatile American writer of novels, stage plays, screenplays, and essays.

As a novelist, playwright, essayist, mystery writer (under the pseudonym Edgar Box), screenwriter, social critic, literary critic, congressional candidate, political activist, and actor, he has been a public and often controversial figure on both the American literary and political scenes for nearly sixty years.

He is important for the gay literary heritage because of the straightforwardness with which he has pursued gay themes and included gay characters in his work, beginning in his teens when he wrote his first novel, Williwaw (1946).

He has also steadily upped the ante about what sorts of gay material could be included in his mainstream works and as a result has made it easier for a wide range of other writers to find public acknowledgement of their material.

Although the grandson of a United States Senator, Vidal felt uncomfortable in America because of his sexuality and lived mostly in Italy from the mid-1960s, sharing his life with his partner Howard Austen. He decided to sell his villa in Ravello for health reasons in 2003. He spent most of his later living in Los Angeles. In November 2003, Howard Austen died. In February 2005, Vidal buried Austen's remains in a tomb maintained for the two of them at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Vidal died of complications from pneumonia on July 31, 2012.

The City and the Pillar (1948), Vidal's third novel, is the story of professional tennis player Jim Willard, a man who never outgrows a boyhood crush on his best friend Bob Ford. The idea that men who enjoy sex with other men circulate among ordinary people undetected is implicit everywhere in this novel and outraged some original readers.

Although Vidal argues here and in many places in his non-fiction that there is no homosexual identity and everyone is bisexual, the plot of the book proves the contrary. For The City and the Pillar is, despite itself, the first mainstream coming-out novel.

At the insistence of the publisher, the original book ended with a violent death. In 1968, in light of changed social values, Vidal was able to publish The City and the Pillar Revised, a substantially altered version of the book with a different, and possibly more shocking, ending.

Most of Vidal's works have more or less prominent gay characters, and he is important for the consistency with which he has continually expanded gay visibility in mainstream fiction and, to some extent, drama. He is , for example, largely responsible for the gay subtext in the film epic Ben-Hur (1959).

In addition to fiction and drama, Vidal has written a large number of essays, often disputatious ones. He has a broad range of insightful but usually not very comforting comments to make about American politics and the American character in general, but is always entertaining and provocative.

Gore Vidal

Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein born 6 June 1952

Harvey Fierstein is a Tony Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated American actor, playwright, and screenwriter.

Born Harvey Forbes Fierstein in Brooklyn, New York, the gravelly-voiced actor perhaps is known best for the play and film Torch Song Trilogy, which he wrote and in which he starred. The 1982 Broadway production won him two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play, two Drama Desk Awards, for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Actor in a Play, and the Theatre World Award, and the film earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Male Lead.

Fierstein also wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles (1983), winning another Tony Award, this time for Best Book of a Musical, and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Book. Legs Diamond, his 1988 collaboration with Peter Allen, was a critical and commercial failure, closing after 72 previews and 64 performances. His other playwriting credits include Safe Sex, Spookhouse, and Forget Him.

Fierstein made his acting debut in Andy Warhol's only play, Pork's. In addition to Torch Song Trilogy, Fierstein's Broadway acting credits include Edna Turnblad in Hairspray (2003) [left], for which he won another Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (joining Tommy Tune as the only people to win the award in four different categories), and Tevye in the 2005 revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

Fierstein's film roles include Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, Robin Williams' maskmaker brother in Mrs Doubtfire, a Parade of Hope spokesman in Death to Smoochy, Garbo Talks, Duplex, and the blockbuster hit Independence Day. He also narrated the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk and voiced the role of Yao in Walt Disney's Mulan (1998), a role he later reprised for the video game Kingdom Hearts II.

On television, Fierstein was featured as the voice of Karl, Homer's assistant, in the Simpson and Delilah episode of The Simpsons, and the voice of Elmer in the 1999 HBO special based on his children's book The Sissy Duckling, which won the Humanitas Prize for Children's Animation.

Additional credits include Miami Vice, Murder, She Wrote, the Showtime TV movie Common Ground (which he also wrote), and Cheers, which earned him an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Fierstein is an occasional columnist writing about gay issues. His careers as a stand-up comic and female impersonator are mostly behind him.

Greg Berlanti

Greg Berlanti born 24 May 1972

Greg Berlanti is an American television writer and producer.

Born in New York, Berlanti studied writing at Northwestern University. He was a writer and producer on Dawson's Creek and its short-lived spin-off Young Americans. He became known as the creator, show runner and executive producer of Everwood. He also co-created the short-lived series Jack & Bobby.

Berlanti also wrote and directed the film Broken Hearts Club, about young gay friends in West Hollywood which he based on his own circle of friends at the time.

In August 2006, Berlanti announced a new deal with Touchstone Television and ABC to create new pilots. At the same time, news surfaced that Berlanti was acting as a consultant for the new ABC series Brothers & Sisters. The previous executive producer, Marti Noxon, had left the show after conflict with creator Jon Robin Baitz. Berlanti now serves as an executive producer for the series.

Berlanti was also executive producer of Dirty Sexy Money which debuted on ABC in late 2007.

Berlanti has been involved as a writer and was at one time mentioned as director for the upcoming 2011 film, Green Lantern.

Robin Maugham

Robin Maugham born 17 May 1916 (d. 1981)

Robin Maugham was an author of short stories, novels, non-fiction, plays, and screenplays; an officer in World War II; a barrister-at-law; and 2nd Viscount Maugham of Hartfield. His success was not without struggle. In the preface to his first autobiography Escape from the Shadows Maugham describes the three shadows of his life: his uncle William Somerset Maugham, his father Viscount Frederic Herbert Maugham, and the guilt he experienced due to the 'strict upper-middle class moral convictions' that declared his homosexual desires to be perverse.

Robin Maugham was born Robert Cecil Romer Maugham. Maugham described his childhood as lonely, with the exception of an imaginary friend, Tommy. Throughout his autobiographical works, Maugham speaks frankly about the troubles he experienced because of his attraction to men.

He spent most of his youth in boarding schools, beginning with Highfield School, Eton, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Both sides of his family practiced law, and Maugham was urged to follow the family tradition. His interest in law was less than enthusiastic; he found writing, painting, and music more pleasurable. He left Cambridge in 1937, signed up for the Inns of Court Regiment and became a judge's marshal. In April 1939, Maugham became the private secretary to the Director of the National Service Campaign. As part of this assignment, Maugham worked with Winston Churchill, creating a relationship that lasted until just before Churchill's death. When war was declared in September 1939, Maugham entered as a trooper in the Inns of Court Regiment.

Maugham served in World War 2 from 1939 to 1945, first with the 8th Army in North Africa and later with the Middle East Intelligence Centre. During a 1942 battle he was hit in the head with a shell fragment. This caused him to have blackouts, but the severity was never enough to have the shrapnel removed. However, due to this injury he was released from duty in 1945 and was unable to resume his law practice.

Maugham's short story, The 1946 Ms, had been published by the War Facts Press in 1943 and was his first published work. Convoy, a journal bridging the gap between military and civilian life during World War II, was created by and edited by Maugham for seven issues beginning in 1944. When his father died in 1958, Maugham became the 2nd Viscount Maugham of Hartfield. In 1960 he gained a seat in the House of Lords.

After his first published work in 1943, Maugham wrote novels, short stories, plays, travel books, dramatic works, a biography of his family, two autobiographies, and film scripts. His writing has been compared to that of his uncle in their use of 'exotic locales', though Robin is much more frank in his writing regarding sexuality and sexual guilt, particularly in his first autobiography. Writer, editor, and journalist Peter Burton met Maugham in 1968 and helped with the revision and rewriting of several novels, as well as several articles and reviews. Burton worked as a writer and editor for Gay News from 1972 to 1982. During this time, he also worked with Maugham on many projects and compiled Maugham's bibliography. Burton discusses the many aspects of their relationship in Parallel Lives.

Maugham was also assisted in his writing by his partner William Lawrence, who worked as his personal assistant for the last 11 years of his life, and is the copyright holder of Robin Maugham's estate.

Maugham's best known work is probably The Servant, which was notably adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter and directed by Joseph Losey in 1963. The film starred James Fox, Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig.

By 1981, Maugham's health had deteriorated. Diabetes and his abuse of alcohol, in addition to other physical problems, ended his life two months shy of his 65th birthday, on March 13, 1981.

Alan Ball

Alan Ball born 13 May 1957

Alan Ball - born in Atlanta, Georgia - is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director, producer and occasional actor, who is best known for writing the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film American Beauty (1999), and for creating the HBO original drama series Six Feet Under. His most recent creation is the acclaimed TV vampire drama True Blood.

Alan Ball was an undergraduate student of the Florida State University School of Theatre. He did not receive a diploma; however he informed reporters, after winning an Emmy for directing at the 54th Emmy Awards, that he did start writing and producing his own work at FSU and has been doing so since.

Ball started out by writing for the TV show Cybill, starring Cybill Shepherd, and he stated that he based the horrific suburban wife character played by Annette Bening in American Beauty on Shepherd, who has a (possibly unfair) reputation for being extremely difficult to work with, from both male and female co-workers. Ball has also written scripts for several stage plays.

He is openly gay and his work frequently includes gay themes and characters.

In 2011 Ball was sued by his California neighbour Quentin Tarantino over the 'obnoxious pterodactyl-like screams' of his collection of Macaw parrots.

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett born 9 May 1934

Alan Bennett is an English author and actor noted for his work, his boyish appearance and his sonorous Yorkshire accent.

Alan Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds, Yorkshire. The son of a butcher, Bennett attended Leeds Modern School (a former state grammar school), learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his National Service, and gained a place at Cambridge University. However, having spent time in Cambridge during national service, and partly wishing to follow the object of his unrequited love, he decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford University and went on to take a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of future successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at Oxford for several years researching and teaching Medieval History before deciding he was not cut out to be an academic.

He claims that as an adolescent he assumed he would grow up to be a Church of England clergyman, for no better reason than that he looked like one.

In August 1960, Bennett, along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Peter Cook, achieved instant fame by appearing at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. After the Festival, the show continued in London and New York. He also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor.

Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a strong and distinctive Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.

Many of Bennett's characters are unfortunate and downtrodden, or meek and overlooked. Life has brought them to an impasse, or else passed them by altogether. In many cases they have met with disappointment in the realm of sex and intimate relationships, largely through tentativeness and a failure to connect with others.

Bennett is both unsparing and compassionate in laying bare his characters' frailties. This can be seen in his television plays for LWT in the late 1970s and the BBC in the early 1980s, and in the 1987 Talking Heads series of monologues for television which were later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992. This was a sextet of poignantly comic pieces, each of which depicted several stages in the character's decline from an initial state of denial or ignorance of their predicament, through a slow realisation of the hopelessness of their situation, and progressing to a bleak or ambiguous conclusion. A second set of six Talking Heads pieces followed a decade later.

In his 2005 prose collection Untold Stories Bennett has written candidly and movingly of the mental illness that afflicted his mother and other family members. Much of his work draws on his Leeds background and while he is celebrated for his acute observations of a particular type of northern speech ("It'll take more than Dairy Box to banish memories of Pearl Harbour"), the range and daring of his work is often undervalued – his television play The Old Crowd, for example, includes shots of the director and technical crew, while his stage play The Lady in the Van includes two characters named Alan Bennett. The Lady in the Van was based on his experiences with a tramp called Miss Shepherd who lived on Bennett's driveway in a dilapidated van for fifteen years.

In 1994 Bennett adapted his popular and much-praised 1991 play The Madness of George III for the cinema as The Madness of King George. The film received four Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Bennett's writing and the performances of Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren. It won the award for best art direction.

Bennett's critically-acclaimed The History Boys won three Olivier Awards in February 2005, for Best New Play, Best Actor (Richard Griffiths), and Best Direction (Nicholas Hytner), having previously won Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actor and Best Play. Bennett himself received an Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.

The History Boys also went on to win six Tony Awards on Broadway, including best play, best performance by a leading actor in a play (Richard Griffiths), best performance by a featured actress in a play (Frances de la Tour), and best direction of a play (Nicholas Hytner).

A film version of The History Boys, with most of the original West End and Broadway cast was released in the UK in 2006.

Bennett refused an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1998, in protest of its accepting funding for a named chair in honour of press baron Rupert Murdoch. He also declined a CBE in 1988 and a knighthood in 1996. Despite refusing an honorary doctorate from his old university, Bennett was made an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford in 1987. He was also awarded a D.Lit by the University of Leeds in 1990.

In September 2005, Bennett revealed that, in 1997, he had undergone treatment for cancer, and described the illness as a 'bore'. His chances of survival were given as being 'much less' than 50%. He began Untold Stories (published 2005) thinking it would be published posthumously. In the event his cancer went into remission. In the autobiographical sketches which form a large part of the book Bennett writes openly for the first time about his homosexuality (Bennett has had relationships with women as well, although this is only touched upon in Untold Stories). Previously Bennett had referred to questions about his sexuality as being like asking a man dying of thirst to choose between Perrier or Malvern mineral water.

Bennett has lived in London's Camden Town for thirty years, and shares his house with his partner of fifteen years, Rupert Thomas.

Julian Mitchell

Julian Mitchell born 1 May 1935

Julian Mitchell is an English screenwriter and occasional novelist.

Mitchell is best known as a playwright and screenwriter for TV, producing many original plays and series episodes, including at least ten for Inspector Morse. He has written nine produced plays, including Another Country, which won the SWET (now Oliviers) award for best play of the year (1981). He has also written the screenplay for five movies, starting by co-writing Arabesque (1966), and including the 1984 film adaptation of Another Country, Wilde and Vincent & Theo.

After leaving school, Mitchell performed national service in submarines 1953-55. He then went to St Antony's College, Oxford, where he received a BA with first class honours. This was followed by a period as a Harkness Fellow in the USA (1959-61). Since 1962 has been a freelance writer.

In the late 1960s, Mitchell co-wrote the teleplay Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) with Ray Davies of The Kinks. It was never produced, though it gave rise to the band's concept album. Originally intended to be a full 'rock opera', the project got to final planning stages before collapsing through lack of proper financing.

In 2007 he wrote for BBC4 the drama Consenting Adults about Sir John Wolfenden and his celebrated 1957 report.

Julian Mitchell has lived with philosopher Richard Rowson since the late 1960s.

Julian Mitchell in The Guardian on 50 years of gay liberation in Britain.

Leslie Jordan

Leslie Jordan born 29 April 1955

Leslie Allen Jordan is an Emmy Award-winning American actor.

Hailing from Chattanooga, Tennessee and at a height of just 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m), Jordan has become an instantly recognisable face in film and television. He is most well known for his television work - including guest appearances on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Star Trek: Voyager and Boston Legal.

He is best known for his memorable appearances as Karen's pretentious rival, Beverley Leslie on the hit series Will & Grace. For that role he received an Emmy Award for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (2006).

He is also an accomplished stage actor and playwright.

In 2007 Jordan toured the States performing his one-man stage comedy Like a Dog on Linoleum to rave reviews. In the show, Jordan tells stories of the high and low points of his life; from his father's death in a plane crash when he was just 11 years old, to his battles with substance abuse and weakness for street hustlers.

Leslie Jordan, who is openly gay, has recently starred in the pilot episode of Laugh Out. Laugh Out is the world's first interactive, gay-themed comedy show.

Russell T Davies

Russell T Davies born 27 April 1963

Russell T Davies is an award-winning British television producer and writer. He is best known for writing ground-breaking and sometimes controversial drama serials such as Queer as Folk and The Second Coming, and for spearheading the revival of the popular science-fiction television series Doctor Who.

Davies is 6' 6" tall. He divides his time between his home in Manchester, England and a flat in Cardiff Bay, where he stays while Doctor Who is filming. He has been with partner Andrew Smith, a customs officer, for several years.

He is also a Patron of the Cardiff-Wales Mardi Gras.

In May 2007, the Independent on Sunday Pink List named him the most influential gay person in Britain from the 18th position the previous year.

Davies was included in the Independent on Sunday's 2010 'Happy List' for giving pleasure to many by re-establishing Doctor Who.

Russell T Davies - official website

Charles R. Jackson

Charles R. Jackson born 6 April 1903 (d. 1968)

Relatively little seems to be known about Charles R. Jackson considering he is the author of a well-known novel which is still in print, upon which a multi Oscar-winning film was based - The Lost Weekend.

Born in Summit, New Jersey, he graduated from Newark High School in 1921. As a young man he worked as an editor for local newspapers and in various bookstores in New Jersey, Chicago and New York prior to falling ill with tuberculosis. Jackson spent the years 1927-1931 in sanatoriums and eventually recovered in Switzerland. His successful battle cost him a lung and served as a catalyst for his alcoholism. He returned to New York at the height of the Great Depression and his difficulty in finding work spurred on his binge drinking. His battle to stop drinking started in late 1936 and was largely won by 1938, the year in which he married. During this time he was a free-lance writer and wrote radio scripts.

Jackson is best known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend. Made into a critically acclaimed film by Billy Wilder starring Ray Milland in 1945, The Lost Weekend is a seemingly semi-autobiographical novel detailing a struggling writer's five-day alcohol binge.

But it is Jackson's second novel that is interesting. In 1946, he published The Fall of Valor, a novel exploring a married man's growing awareness of his homosexuality and his love for a young Marine captain. Jackson was married and appears to have had two daughters, but this novel, which pre-dates Gore Vidal's explosive and significant The City & the Pillar (1948), has an emotional centre which 'seems unlikely to be the work of an outsider' - Joseph Cady. The novel ends with violence, but that is typical of gay fiction at that time. Long out of print, I bought a 1974 edition sometime in the early 1980s. This is a significant 'lost' gay novel of the 20th century, although it appears to have been a critical and financial success at the time.

Jackson wrote at least three further novels and a book of short stories, but never equalled the success or critical acclaim of The Lost Weekend.

He was a binge drinker who recovered sufficiently to speak to others in large groups, sharing his experience, strength and hope. He was the first speaker in AA to openly address drug dependence (barbiturates and paraldehyde) as part of his story.

Jackson appears to have spent much of his life battling the twin demons of alcohol dependency and a homosexual nature he struggled to accept, and his intense, compelling description of homoeroticism and sexual obsession in The Fall of Valor has the authenticity of a first person narrative.

He died in New York in 1968 after committing suicide, never having managed to defeat his alcoholism.

Biography of Charles R. Jackson - IMDb

Marc Cherry

Marc Cherry born 23 March 1962

Marc Cherry is an American writer and producer. He is best known for being the creator of the show Desperate Housewives.

After graduating from high School, Cherry attended California State University, to study theatre and initially considered a career in performance. He decided to move to Hollywood and pursue writing work. His move came at a bad time; the 1988 writer's strike hit as soon as Cherry arrived. Cherry broke into the industry by working as Designing Women star Dixie Carter's personal assistant.

In 1990, he became a writer and producer for the long-running hit sitcom The Golden Girls. Cherry wrote for the show, and its short lived spinoff The Golden Palace.

When those shows concluded, Cherry co-created The Five Mrs Buchanans. The concept of the show centred around a matriarch and the wives of her four sons. The show had a brief run on CBS during the 1994-1995 season.

Cherry also co-created The Crew (1995). On his own, he later created Some of My Best Friends a 2001 sitcom that was based in part on the film Kiss Me, Guido.

In 2002, a conversation with his mother inspired him to develop a show about the fractured lives of four upper middle class suburban women. After HBO, FOX, CBS, NBC, Showtime, and Lifetime Television all passed on the show, Cherry got his big break when his agent was arrested and went to jail for embezzlement. His new agents brought the show to ABC, which decided to pick it up. The series, Desperate Housewives, was an immediate ratings smash and generated enormous national (and subsequently, international) debate. Cherry received several lucrative offers from various parties, but chose to sign a long-term deal with Touchstone, since their network had shown faith in Desperate Housewives when no one else would.


The show was a phenomenon for much of its first season, but was criticised by TV critics who said the second season was not as creative or as good as the first. Viewers seemed to agree, since the ratings dropped as the season progressed. Cherry, the Head Writer, who had been working part-time on the show in season two, took a larger role in developing and producing season three. The show is a multiple Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award winner. Now having completed seven seasons Desperate Housewives continues to be popular (if less phenomenal) and Cherry has taken again taken more of a back seat while promising that the show has enough life in it for a few more seasons.

Cherry has been described as a 'somewhat conservative gay Republican and was the recipient of the Log Cabin Republicans American Visibility Award in 2006.

Edmund Goulding

Edmund Goulding born 20 March 1891 (d. 1959)

Edmund Goulding was a film director. He was born in Feltham, Middlesex, England.

The son of a butcher, Goulding began acting in amateur theatricals and by 1909 began appearing on the West End in productions such as Gentlemen, The King (1909), Alice in Wonderland (1909), and a notorious presentation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1913), adapted for the stage by G Constant Lounsbery.

Goulding served in World War I, then immigrated to the United States to become a singer. He was a fine ideas man, and could crank out a silent screen scenario very quickly. His writing talents were in demand by producers at Paramount and Famous Players Lasky, and so his singing aspirations were shelved. He wrote for several early film stars, and met his greatest success as co-author of Henry King's Tol'able David, a 1921 silent masterpiece.

Goulding directed Joan Crawford in her first substantial role, in Sally, Irene and Mary (1925), and Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in the smash hit Love (1927), before writing the script for Broadway Melody (1929), the first film musical.

Goulding directed Gloria Swanson in her first talkie, The Trespasser (1929). However, his greatest triumph came as director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Grand Hotel, winner of the 1932 Academy Award as Best Picture and granddaddy of the all-star ensemble story format.

Goulding moved to Warner Brothers in 1937, where he directed some of his best movies: Dawn Patrol (1938), White Banners (1938), and four outstanding melodramas with Bette Davis: That Certain Woman (1937), Dark Victory [pictured](1939), The Old Maid (1939), and The Great Lie (1941).

The Constant Nymph (1943) with Joan Fontaine, Claudia (1943) with Dorothy McGuire, and Of Human Bondage (1946) with Eleanor Parker were further testimonies to Goulding's adept direction of actresses.

After World War II, Goulding was hired at Twentieth Century Fox and made two excellent movies of starkly contrasting themes: The Razor's Edge (1946), based on a novel by Somerset Maugham, and the noir thriller Nightmare Alley (1947), both featuring Tyrone Power at his best.

Goulding's output after that was uneven. His last movie was Mardi Gras (1958), a dismissable musical starring Pat Boone.

By then, the man who directed the great stars of early moviedom was old, tired, and alcoholic.

Goulding's style as a director is distinguished by brisk pacing and an ability to elicit honest emotion from his players. He mastered a number of genres - comedy, romance, musicals, noir, and the war picture - and he adapted well to the personnel and conditions of each studio for which he worked.

There is a paradox to Goulding. His sensitivity to women's emotions brought him enduring success, as witnessed by his swooning melodramas, but his private life tells a different story. Goulding was bisexual, with a decided taste for promiscuity and voyeurism. His sex parties and casting couch were notorious.

A 2004 biography of Goulding, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory by Matthew Kennedy says that it was widely known in Hollywood that Goulding was bisexual, and hosted wild parties for all persuasions.

But he cannot be dismissed simply as a sex addict or sexual exploiter. For every excoriation of his morals, there are accounts of his loyalty to friends, generosity to family, gentlemanly manner on the set, and preternatural ability to bring out the best in his actors.

He never had a long lasting romance. A marriage to dancer Marjorie Moss ended quickly with her premature death from tuberculosis. He maintained brief love affairs with younger men and women throughout his life, but either did not want or proved unable to sustain a long term relationship.

The real romance in Edmund Goulding's life is found in his movies.

He died following surgery at Cedars of Lebanon Medical Center in Los Angeles, California in 1959, although there are sources that say he committed suicide.

[Matthew Kennedy]
Edmund Goulding: Q&A with biographer Matthew Kennedy

Sir Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole born 13 March 1884 (d. 1941)

Sir Hugh Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand but raised and educated in England in Canterbury and at Cambridge University. He was a teacher turned novelist, writing successfully and profitably in many genres - novels, short stories, school novels, gothic horror and biography. He also wrote plays & screenplays, including the 1935 MGM George Cukor-directed David Copperfield.

Walpole's first novel was The Wooden Horse (1909) and Fortitude (1913) his first great novelistic success. He worked for the Red Cross in Russia during World War I, an experience that fed his The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City (1919). The latter won the inaugural James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Walpole lived in the Lake District from 1924 to his death. There he wrote many of his best known works, including the family saga The Herries Chronicle (1930-1933); this four-novel family saga is probably his best known work.

Walpole was a prominent member of 1930s London gay literary society along with Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.

His greatest loves were the celebrated Danish tenor, Lauritz Melchior (probably) and in 1929 he met a handsome London police constable named Harold Cheever, often described as his 'chauffeur and companion', with whom he spent the rest of his life.

He was knighted in 1938.

He died from a heart attack in 1941 while doing volunteer war work in Keswick in Cumbria where he lived and based many of his most enduring stories.

James Bridges

James Bridges born 3 February 1936 (d. 1993)

James Bridges was an American screenwriter and film director.

Bridges was born in Paris, Arkansas. He got his start as a writer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one of his episodes, 'An Unlocked Window', earned him a 1966 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Episode in a TV Series. He went on to write and direct a number of notable films, including The Baby Maker (1970), The Paper Chase (1973), The China Syndrome (1979), Urban Cowboy (1980), Perfect (1985), and Bright Lights, Big City (1988).

His life partner was actor Jack Larson. Bridges died in Los Angeles, California of cancer. The James Bridges Theater at University of California, Los Angeles was named in his honour in November 1999. Bridges was a faculty member there early in his career.

Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar born 24 September 1951

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. He is the most successful and internationally known Spanish film maker of his generation, having won numerous Academy Awards, BAFTAS, Golden Globes and many more both as writer and director.

His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humour, strong colours and glossy décor. Almodóvar never judges his characters actions, whatever they do, but he presents them as they are in all their complexity. Desire, passion, family and identity are the director's favourite themes. Almodóvar’s films enjoy a worldwide following and he has become a major figure on the stage of world cinema. The success of his movies has brought awareness to the cause of equal rights.

Against his parents' wishes, Pedro Almodóvar moved to Madrid in 1967. After completing the compulsory military service, the young man from rural Spain found in Madrid of the late 60s the city, the culture and the freedom. His goal was to be a film director, but he lacked the economic means to do it and besides, Franco had just closed the National School of Cinema so he would be completely self-taught. To support himself, Almodóvar worked a number of odd jobs, including a stint selling used items in the famous Madrid flea market El Rastro. He eventually found full-time employment with Spain's national phone company, where he worked for twelve years as an administrative assistant. Since he worked only until three in the afternoon, he had the rest of the day to pursue his own interests.

In the early seventies, Almodóvar grew interested in experimental cinema and theatre. He collaborated with the vanguard theatrical group, Los Goliardos, where he played his first professional roles and met Carmen Maura. He was also writing comics and contributing articles and stories to a number of counter-culture magazines.

Madrid’s flourishing alternative cultural scene became the perfect scenario for Almodóvar social talents. He was a crucial figure in La Movida Madrileña (Madriliene Movement), a cultural renaissance that followed the fall of the Franco regime.

Around 1974, Almodóvar began making his first short films on a Super-8 camera. By the end of the 1970s they were shown in Madrid's night circuit. These shorts had overtly sexual narratives and no soundtrack.

After four years of working with shorts in Super-8 format, in 1978 Almodóvar made his first Super-8, full-length film. In addition, he made his first 16 mm short, Salome. This was his first contact with the professional world of cinema. The film's stars, Carmen Maura and Felix Rotaeta, encouraged him to make his first feature film in 16 mm and helped him raise the money to finance what would be Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón.

Since then he has made 16 cinematic films including Matador (1986), his first major international success Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), All About My Mother (1999), Talk To Her (2002), Bad Education (2004) and Volver (2006).

He can also be credited with bringing two Spanish stars to an international audience - Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz.

A theatrical version of All About My Mother was staged in the West End in 2007.

His next film, Broken Hugs, will star his most recent muse, Penelope Cruz.

Bryan Singer

Bryan Singer born 17 September 1965

Bryan Singer is an American film director. Singer won critical acclaim for his work on The Usual Suspects, and is especially popular among fans of the sci-fi and comic book genres, for his work on the first two X-Men films and Superman Returns.

Singer was born in New York City. He was adopted by Norbert and Grace Singer and grew up in a Jewish household in New Jersey. He attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, then studied film making at New York's School of Visual Arts and later the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. Actors Lori and Marc Singer are his cousins. He is Jewish and openly gay, and has said that his life experiences of growing up as a minority influenced his movies.

Singer is also executive producer and directed the pilot and first episode of highly regarded TV medical drama House.

Singer is said (or rumoured) to be involved in a number of possible or 'in development' projects at present including: a Superman Returns sequel; a remake of Logan's Run; a Warner Bros. film called U Want Me 2 Kill Him? about a 14-year old British boy who was charged with inciting his own murder, a reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, and a film of Augusten Burroughs' Sellevsion.

Michael Patrick King

Michael Patrick King born 14 September 1954

Michael Patrick King is an Emmy winning director, writer and producer for television shows. He started out doing stand-up and sketch comedy comedy but eventually moved into writing for television.

His most famous work has been for Sex and the City where he wrote all the season finales and premieres since the second season. King has also recently directed the show's film adaptation.

He has also written for another HBO show, Lisa Kudrow's post-Friends project The Comeback, and as well as for broadcast shows Will & Grace, Cybill, and Murphy Brown.

He is openly gay.

Mart Crowley

Mart Crowley born 21 August 1935

Mart Crowley is an American playwright.

Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. in 1967, Crowley headed west to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting Natalie Wood on the set of her film Inside Daisy Clover. Wood hired him as her assistant, primarily to give him ample free time to work on his gay-themed play The Boys in the Band, which opened off-Broadway to ecstatic reviews on April 14, 1968 and enjoyed a run of 1002 performances.

Crowley's second work, Remote Asylum, was mounted with great expectations at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in 1970, but it failed to garner the raves his debut had. In that same year, he enjoyed greater success with the motion picture adaptation of Boys in the Band. With his next play, the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf, he regained cachet with the critics and earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination for Best Play.

In 1979 and 1980, Crowley served first as the executive script editor and then producer of the ABC series Hart to Hart, starring Wood's husband Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers. Other credits include the teleplays for There Must Be a Pony (1986), Bluegrass (1988), People Like Us (1990), and a Hart to Hart reunion special in 1996.

Crowley appeared in The Celluloid Closet, a documentary about homosexuality and its depiction on screen throughout the years, in 1995.

The Boys in the Band was a ground-breaking work that used both humour and melodrama to offer a look at the lives of a group of openly gay men. Gay audiences welcomed it when it appeared, but over the years it became controversial. Objections centered on traits of various characters that critics felt perpetuated negative stereotypes - self-loathing, flamboyance, and promiscuity. Rather than offering an upbeat, positive look at the gay subculture, it presented a depressing snapshot of individuals tormented by internalised homophobia. The post-AIDS perspective is not kind either; however, the play, and the film, should be taken as snapshots of the era that produced them. And the play is still revived, even if time has not been kind.

David Crane

David Crane born 13 August 1957

David Crane is an American writer and producer, born in Philadelphia. He was one of the creators of the hugely successful TV sitcom Friends in 1994, along with his longtime friend Marta Kauffman. In 1996 he created and executive produced the sitcom Veronica's Closet, which starred Kirstie Alley.

He is primarily known for his comedic writing. Crane lives with his partner, Jeffrey Klarik. Together, they have created a new Friends-like sitcom, The Class.

Disappointingly, unlike several of his gay TV writer/producer contemporaries, Crane failed to introduce any significant gay characters in ten years' of Friends.

Gus Van Sant

Gus Van Sant born 23 July 1952

Gus Van Sant Jr. (Louisville, Kentucky) is an American Academy Award-nominated film director, photographer, musician, and author. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. Openly gay, he has dealt unflinchingly with homosexual and other marginalised subcultures without being particularly concerned about providing positive role models.

His filmography as writer and director includes an adaptation of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), which features a diverse cast (Keanu Reeves, Roseanne Barr, Uma Thurman, and k.d. lang, with cameos by William S. Burroughs and Heather Graham, among others); and My Own Private Idaho (1991), also starring Reeves as well as the late River Phoenix.

He is perhaps best known for directing Good Will Hunting (1997).

The unprecedented success of Good Will Hunting allowed Van Sant to pursue whatever project his heart desired, which ended up being an unusually faithful remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho. As opposed to reinterpreting the 1960 film, however, Van Sant opted to recreate the film shot-for-shot, in colour, with a cast of young Hollywood A-listers. His decision was met with equal parts curiosity, skepticism, and derision from industry insiders and outsiders alike, and the finished result met with a similar reception. If not exactly a failure, it wasn't much of a triumph, either.

Van Sant fared somewhat better with 2000's Finding Forrester, a drama about a high-school student from the Bronx who becomes unlikely friends with a crusty, reclusive author (Sean Connery).

In any event, Van Sant—longing to return to more-intimate production methods—decided to leave behind big-budget studio filmmaking for his next two features Gerry (2002) and the Columbine-themed Elephant (2003), which unexpectedly won the Palme d'Or and a Best Director award for Van Sant at Cannes.

In 2005, Van Sant released Last Days, the final component of what he refers to as his 'Death Trilogy', (the other parts being Gerry and Elephant). It is a fictionalised account of what happened to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in the days leading up to his death.

Van Sant's most recent film is something of a return to the mainstream. Released in 2008, the feature film Milk is a biopic of openly gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978, played by Sean Penn. The film was released to much acclaim and earned numerous accolades from film critics and guilds. Ultimately, it received eight Oscar nominations at the 81st Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning two for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Penn and Best Original Screenplay for writer Dustin Lance Black. Van Sant was nominated for Best Director.

As an actor, Van Sant has appeared in a cameo on screen in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back playing himself. In the movie, he is counting wads of money which was made during Good Will Hunting. As an added joke, they were filming a fake sequel to the movie, called 'Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season'.

He has written the screenplays for most of his early movies, and has written one novel, Pink. A book of his photography has also been published called 108 Portraits. He also makes the occasional music video and has released two albums in his own right.