Ronnie and Reggie Kray had a secret incestuous relationship with each other so criminal rivals would not discover they were gay according to author John Pearson who interviewed them both
Kray Twins
Vicious gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray had an incestuous sexual relationship with each other as they were growing up.
The pair, who ran a cruel and violent criminal empire in London’s East End in the 1960s, were terrified of their secret coming out.
They were worried that rivals would see their sexuality – Ronnie was a homosexual and Reggie was bisexual – as a sign of weakness so only had sex with each other in order to keep the secret.
Author John Pearson who extensively interviewed the brothers and their associates has made the revelation as a new film comes out on the twins.
John said: “Homosexuality was nothing to be proud of in the East End.
“But as they became more notorious, Ronniebecame quite shameless about it.
“According to Ron in the early days they had sex with each other because they were terrified about people finding out.”
Smart: Twin brothers and organised crime bosses Ronnie and Reggie Kray (Image: Getty)
It has long been known that Ronnie was a homosexual and Reggie was bisexual but the news they had a sexual relationship with each other gives a telling insight into their close connection.
Actor Tom Hardy stars as both brothers in a new film , Legend, based on the lives of the murderous pair as told in a book by John.
Actor: Tom Hardy in his latest roles as Ronnie (left) and Reggie Kray in the film, Legend (Image: PA)
John has written three books on the brothers and says Ronnie told him the twins dark secret during one of their chats.
He says while he knew about the the incest he waited until the brothers were both dead before revealing it for fear of retribution.
Ronnie died in Broadmoor secure hospital of a heart attack in 1995 and Reggie died of cancer in 2000 having been released from prison on compassionate grounds.
In his book Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins , John said the pair were spoilt by their mother Violet, Grandma Lee and their two aunties, May and Rose, while their father was soon dominated by the increasingly violent brothers.
Brotherly love: Amateur boxers Reggie (left) and Ronnie Kray with their mother Violet Kray (Image: Getty)
John wrote: “All of which conformed, of course, to a classic pattern; and with their warm, indulgent mother, their ineffectual father, and their surrounding cast of loving women, it was not surprising that, with adolescence, the Twins discovered that they were gay.
Given their identical genetic make-up, it was virtually inevitable that if one twin was, the other would be too.”
Tome: Author John Pearson’s book on the Kray Twins
However there was a problem for the twins as back in the macho world of 1950s East End it was seen as a weakness to be gay.
John wrote: “So it was hardly surprising that, for the time being, both the twins kept their sexual preferences to themselves.
Claims: Author John Pearson says the brothers had an incestuous relationship(Image: Twitter)
The brothers ran a notorious criminal network in the 1960s building up an empire of nightclubs though hijacking, armed robbery and arson.
Fighters: Ronnie and Reggie during their amateur boxing days in their youth
As they moved from the East End to the West End their became big names rubbing shoulders with Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland and being photographed by David Bailey.
Eventually the police got them and the Krays went to prison for murdering fellow gangsters George Cornell and Jack McVitie.
Grand old pubs dot the corners of many an Australian main street. Many are still buzzing with activity, but the abandoned Broadway Hotel, in the Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba, had stood proudly since it was built in 1889 until fire gutted it in 2010, leaving it derelict. There have been plans to redevelop the site, but the hotel has been listed on the Queensland Heritage Register since 1992 and cannot be demolished.
This former textile factory was discovered by an urban exploration group back in 2012, somewhere in the industrial suburbs of Brisbane. They uncovered a warehouse full of machines, with fabric still in the feeds and rolls of material lining the timber floors, looking as though everyone had just up and left — not even having finished the day’s work. Still today the exact location has been kept a secret and the former business name of the factory also remains unknown.
Some buildings become derelict and abandoned due to hard times, development deals gone wrong, or even government intervention. And that is the story behind the Balmain Leagues Clubs site in Sydney’s inner city. The club was forced out in 2010 when the site was earmarked for a metro station, which in the end never eventuated. The site has since been proposed for redevelopment with developers, council, and residents’ groups at an impasse over what is to be built.
Atlantis Marine Park — Two Rocks, WA
Photo: WAToday
What was supposed to be Western Australia’s answer to the Gold Coast theme parks – Atlantis Marine Park – opened in 1981, on the back of Perth’s economic boom. However, just nine years after its opening, the park shut its gates and the business magnate responsible for the nautical-themed park, Alan Bond, was soon after declared bankrupt, and later imprisoned for fraud. Today the amusement park still lies empty, although in 2015 the famous King Neptune statue was cleaned up by local developers and the owner of the land, after being vandalised in the intervening years.
This factory was an important part of the mid-north coast of NSW for more than 50 years. It was built in 1939 and served the once-booming dairy industry around Taree, originally producing condensed milk for the manufacture of ice cream. The factory ceased operation in the 1990s, but still holds a significant place in the hearts of local residents, with a “Dairy Factory Reunion” held there in 2016, as part of the National Trust Heritage Festival.
A single abandoned building can be intriguing, but there’s something about almost a whole town that is much more eerie. Several ghost towns dot the southern Flinders Ranges region of South Australia, yet Hammond stands out, due to the large number of buildings that still remain intact. The town began in 1879 and existed to service the rail line and surrounding farming community, but saw its decline in population start from as early as the 1930s, leaving just several houses with full-time residents today.
Wangi Power Station — Wangi Wangi, NSW
Photo: Lost Collective
The Wangi Power Station came into operation in 1958, and at one point was the largest power station in NSW. At the time of construction, 1000-odd workers camped onsite during its entire ten years it took to build. The station was eventually deemed surplus to requirements and decommissioned in 1986 with all power generation & associated equipment removed, save for a few heavy gears and skid mounts. Since then, there has been a heritage listing placed over part of the site and there have been numerous proposals for redevelopment, though none have come to fruition.
This article has been updated to show a more recent image of the restored King Neptune, and the item about the Wangi Power Station replaces one about a former zoo in western Sydney.
(Above, right, powerful and closeted gay lawyer Roy Cohn was instrumental in creating anti-Communist fervor.)
Filmmaker Josh Howard discusses his forthcoming documentary on dark days in American history.
Tomorrow’s a lamentable anniversary for the United States: it was 60 years ago, on April 27, 1953, that President Eisenhower put his John Hancock an executive order demanding all gay and lesbian government employees be fired. Not really something you want to celebrate, right? But it is something you should know about, which is why director Josh Howard began production on The Lavender Scare, a documentary based on Dr. David Johnson’s book of the same name. It’s also the first cinematic account of how our government tracked down gays and lesbians in the mid-20th Century.
This project began in 2009, when Howard, a former Emmy-winning producer for CBS’ 60 Minutes and later CNBC, stumbled across Johnson’s book. He hadn’t intended on turning it into anything, and certainly didn’t intend on leaving his job to direct a documentary, but as he read on, and researched on his own, the subject gripped him.
Unable to shake the feeling that there was more story to tell, Howard approached Johnson, now a professor at the University of South Florida, about optioning the book. Johnson agreed, and for the past two years Howard has tracked down as many sources as possible to fill in the gaps, including Frank Kameny, a government astronomer fired who was fired for being gay in 1957 and went on to lead the first public protests against the anti-American policy.
Howard also managed to find a few of the government agents tasked with spearheading the anti-gay witch hunt. One remains particularly unrepentant. “The people that I got rid of, they were faggots,” he says, under the cloak of darkness, inthe film’s trailer, included below. “I didn’t give a hoot; get rid of the son of a bitch. Put him in the bread line.”
As far away as this may all seem, keep in mind that lawmakers and activists are still fighting for Employment Non-Discrimination, policies that would finally create federal laws making illegal to fire LGBT people. (As you know, it’s legal in 29 states to fire gay and lesbian employees and legally acceptable in 34 to do the same for transgender people as well.) And this isn’t simply about homophobia or jobs. It’s about the nagging, tenacious ability of Americans to participate in or turn a blind eye to injustice, a trait foreign observer EM Forster saw right away. Whether it’s scapegoating gays during then Lavender Scare or Muslims after 9/11 or Japanese-Americans during World War II, this a completely unattractive and persistent quality, and it’s one that Howard hopes this film can help eradicate.
To get to that point, though, Howard and his team need to finish editing and licensing the bundle of archival materials they hope to include, and that requires money. Supporters can give them a little greenback love at Kickstarter. They’re shooting for $50,000 and donations end on May 21, which would have been Kameny’s 88th birthday.
Here, Howard offers us the basics on The Lavender Scare, the policies it spawned, what happened to those policies and why this son of a bitch story still matters.
(Left: Frank Kameny can be seen toward the left in this picture from a 1965 White House picket he helped organized. Right: an older Kameny poses with one of those signs.)
1. WHAT IS THE LAVENDER SCARE? It’s the first feature-length film documentary to tell the story of the U.S. government’s decades-long campaign to fire every federal employee found to be gay or lesbian. In what became the most successful witch hunt in American history, thousands and thousands of federal workers lost their jobs. More than a few, with their careers in ruins and unable to find work, committed suicide.
2. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN, AND WHY? In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy ignited the Red Scare with his allegations that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. He then added the claim that gay men and lesbians were even more dangerous than Reds, because they were susceptible to blackmail by foreign enemy agents and would give up government secrets in order to keep their sexual orientation from being exposed. The fear of this supposed homosexual menace became known as the Lavender Scare.
3. HOW MANY HOMOSEXUALS ACTUALLY GAVE UP SECRETS IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING EXPOSED? After several investigations over many years, not a single case was ever found.
4. WERE LGBT PEOPLE ALWAYS FEARED IN WASHINGTON? No! In fact, in the 1930s and 40s, there was a vibrant and very open gay community in Washington. A large number of new government jobs were created after the Great Depression, and many of the people who came to Washington to fill those jobs were gay men and lesbians. They were eager to make a new life in the growing city, and the government was eager to hire them. Same sex couples could be seen holding hands on the trolley or even kissing on the grounds of the Washington Monument. They enjoyed a comfortable work environment and a lively social life. No one could have anticipated the devastating events that were to come.
5. WAIT, WHY IS THE DATE APRIL 27, 1953 IMPORTANT? That is the day President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which made it official government policy that gay and lesbian employees were to be hunted down and fired. More than a thousand federal agents – a couple of whom are interviewed in our film -were assigned to the task of determining who was a homosexual. People were subjected to grueling interrogation: “Who do you live with? Who are your friends? What bars do you frequent? Would you like us to call your family back home and ask these questions?” People were ordered to give up the names of their gay and lesbian friends. Most chose to resign immediately, rather than face continued pressure or further scrutiny.
6. DID ANY GOOD COME OF THIS? Yes! In 1957, Dr. Franklin Kameny, a Harvard PhD who had been working for the U.S. Army Map Service, was fired from his job when the government found out he was gay. But unlike the thousands who had been fired before him, he fought back! The purges created a sense of anger and militancy in the gay community that sowed the seeds of the gay rights movement. In 1965, years before Stonewall, Kameny and a small band of brave men and women staged a picket in front of the White House, in what is believed to be the first gay rights demonstration in the country. Kameny went on to devote his entire life to the fight for LGBT rights, and just before his death saw his achievements honored by President Obama.
7. HOW LONG DID THE BAN ON GAY AND LESBIAN WORKERS REMAIN IN EFFECT? People continued to lose their jobs simply through the 1950s, ‘60s, 70s, and 80s. In 1995, President Clinton officially rescinded the policy that had been put in place by President Eisenhower in 1953, and for the first time in four decades, LGBT people could freely work for the civilian agencies of the federal government. Of course, the ban on service in the military continued for many years beyond that.
8. DOES THIS STORY HAVE ANY PRESENT DAY RELEVANCE? Oh, definitely. There are still 29 states in the country in which it is perfectly legal to fire people simply because they are LGBT – a direct result of our government’s homophobic policies that were put in place in the 1950s. We think the story of The Lavender Scare will help educate people about the need for laws on both the state and national level to protect LGBT people from employment discrimination. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would extend job protection to LGBT people nationwide, has just been re-introduced in Congress – ironically enough. just as we’re marking the 60th anniversary of the start of the government’s anti-gay witch hunts.
9. WHY DO SO FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS? This is a classic example of the way in which the struggles and contributions of gay men and lesbians are ignored in the telling of American history. It is shocking that with all the books and films about the Cold War and the Red Scare, the story of the Lavender Scare is almost completely ignored. The Lavender Scare will be the first film to shine a light on this important subject – if we can raise the funds to finish production. As philanthropist and activist Jim Hormel has said, “If LGBT people don’t take the lead in preserving our history, who will?”
Boys Beware was a short PSA film produced by Sid Davis productions in 1959 on the suggestion of the Inglewood Police Department in Southern California. It was ostensibly was made to warn young boys of the danger of predatory men on purpose.
What Jimmy didn’t know was the Ralph was sick. A sickness not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious- a sickness of the mind. You see Ralph was a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate relationship with members of their own sex.”
At one point in time Boys Beware was required viewing for males in many school districts across the country.
The book “Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship,” details the extraordinary relationship between two unlikely friends.
JFK, or ‘Jack’ as he was known by his close friends and family, had a gay best friend named Lem Billings, who he met in prep school when Kennedy was 15 and Lem was 16.
The pair became the best of friends who wrote letters to each other when they were apart, traveled to Europe together and were so close that Joseph Kennedy Sr. thought of Billings as another son, according to GregInHollywood.
The book details JFK’s angry reaction to Lem after he made a sexual advance towards him, saying: “I’m not that kind of boy.” But this misunderstanding did not end the duo’s relationship.
From the time he and Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings met at Choate, until the President’s assassination thirty years later, they remained best friends.
Lem was a virtual fixture in the Kennedy family who even had his own room at the White House.
The book about their friendship draws on hundreds of letters and telegrams between the two, Billings’s oral history and interviews with family and friends like Ben Bradlee, Gore Vidal, and Ted Sorensen.
It was a friendship that endured despite an era of rampant homophobia.
Billings was a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School and was an advertising executive at the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell. He put his business career on hold to work on Kennedy’s campaign for president.
Bradlee says in the book: “I suppose it’s known that Lem was gay….It impressed me that Jack had gay friends.”
Billings obviously never came out but did once say: “Jack made a big difference in my life. Because of him, I was never lonely. He may have been the reason I never got married.”
Kenneth Hill of WoolfAndWilde, conducted a fascinating interview with David Pitts, the author of ‘Jack and Lem’, to uncover some more details about the extraordinary relationship between the two unlikely friends: Kenneth Hill: How would you characterize the friendship between JFK and Lem Billings?
David Pitts: The way I would characterize it is that is was a very close, deep, friendship across sexual orientation lines.
KH: You said that this was the story of a friendship that crossed sexual orientation lines, which I think is really an interesting element of it, but talk a little bit about the depth of this friendship. The fact that it started when they were very young and, from what I read in the book, they were basically inseparable for the rest of their lives except when circumstances had them in distant cities.
DP: Yes, indeed. I think there were a number of elements to it. First of all, there were a series of bonding events early on. One was the fact that they both hated that school [Choate] in which they met. And were engaged in all kinds of pranks which almost got them expelled twice. That was obviously a bonding phenomenon. Secondly, they roomed together for part of the time at the school.
Thirdly, and I think this is really important, John Kennedy was so sick most of his life, far earlier than when most people think, including when he was at Choate, and Lem was the person at boarding school — his mother and father did not come to the school when he was ill; Lem was there. Lem was the person who was always there for him and took care of him. And then fourthly, there was the two month trip to Europe that they took, just before WWII in 1937, just the two Americans at that pivotal time, I think that was obviously a very strong bonding event.
And then over and above these issues, I would say this — and this is kind of a complicated thought because we really don’t have language to express these kinds of relationships — and that is, I’m firmly convinced after working on this book that John Kennedy’s sexual interests were in women. We don’t need much evidence of that, the evidence is all over the place. But his strongest emotional attachments were to men — and principally, to Lem. We don’t have a word for that, right? Somebody who prefers the opposite gender for sexuality, and the same gender for deep, emotional attachments.
KH: We don’t really have a word for that. I guess “man’s man” used to sort of mean that, but JFK took it so much further in a way because he loved being around men, he knew some men were attracted to him and even seemed to enjoy it. He liked the stimulation of those relationships, there was nothing sexual about it, but there was something about that male-male dynamic that fed him.
DP: I think that’s exactly right. There was one reviewer who wrote, “What’s the big deal here? This guy’s writing that JFK was comfortable with gay men, so big deal, we all knew that.” But of course it’s not the fact that he had a friend named Lem Billings who was gay. This was the closest person in all the world to him outside of his family for 30 years. He wasn’t just “a gay friend” on the side.
KH: One of the very surprising facts that comes out in this book is that Lem had his own room at the White House? DP: Yes, that’s one of the revelations in the book that’s really surprising. And actually some of the people who were working in the White House very close to JFK didn’t know it. For example, Ted Sorensen whom I interviewed for the book, perhaps the closest aide to JFK, saw Lem around the White House all the time, but he told me he didn’t know that he’d had his own room there and was staying there so much of the time. But yeah, that’s another indication of the depth of the attachment.
One thing I was intent on doing when I wrote this book, because I thought it would be open to various forms of attack, is that I never went beyond what the documents said. The book is a lot of quotes from documents, or that interviewees said. This friendship might have contained a lot of things that I wasn’t able to find out because I didn’t want to enter the area of speculation. KH: It seems without a doubt that Lem was in love with JFK. But it’s never stated explicitly because you don’t have any record of his ever saying that. DP: No, I think the closest … I mean, these were more sedate times, especially where homosexuality is concerned. Even in the various documents, Lem is never overt in his statements. But there was one statement from one of the documents, and I have it in front of me here, that I think is just expresses his feelings. Here’s the quote: “Jack made a big difference in my life. Because of him, I was never lonely. He may have been the reason I never got married.”
This is somewhat of a difficult thought as well, but I think gay people had a way back then of telegraphing to future generations what their feelings were that they could not express candidly at the time. And anybody who reads some of these words today would have no doubt what Lem’s feelings were, but in the context of that time it was not obviously understood.
There was no royal or parliamentary law against homosexual activity in England until 1533, but a number of medieval legal sources do discuss “sodomy:.
Fleta, xxxviii.3: Those who have dealings with Jews or Jewesses, those who commit bestiality, and sodomists, are to be buried alive after legal proof that they were atken in the act, and public conviction”
[Fleta, seu Commentarius Juris Anglicani, (London: 1735), as trans in Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, (London: Longmans, Green, 1955), 145]
Bailey notes that it is improbable that the penalty or burial alive was ever inflicted in medieval times [although Tacitus refers to it among ancient Germans in Germania 12].
Britton, i.10: “Let enquiry also be made of those who feloniously in time of peace have burnt other’s corn or houses, and those who are attainted thereof shall be burnt, so that they might be punished in like manner as they have offended. The same sentence shall be passed upon sorcerers, sorceresses, renegades, sodomists, and heretics publicly convicted”
Bailey notes that this implies a process in which ecclesiastical courts made the charges and convictions and the state put them into effect. There do not seem, however, to have been serious efforts made to put theory into practice. The preamble to the 1533 Law seems to make this clear.
25 Henry VIII. C6
Le Roy le veult “Forasmuch as there is not yet sufficient and condign punishment appointed and limited by the due course of the Laws of this Realm for the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind of beast: It may therefore please the King’s Highness with the assent of the Lords Spiritual and the Commons of this present parliament assembled, that it may be enacted by the authority of the same, that the same offence be from henceforth ajudged Felony and that such an order and form of process therein to be used against the offenders as in cases of felony at the Common law. And that the offenders being herof convict by verdict confession or outlawry shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their good chattels debts lands tenements and hereditaments as felons do according to the Common Laws of this Realme. And that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his Clergy, And that Justices of the Peace shall have power and authority within the limits of their commissions and Jurisdictions to hear and determine the said offence, as they do in the cases of other felonies. This Act to endure till the last day. of the next Parliament”
[Bailey, 147-148, and H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name: A Candid History of Homosexuality in Britain, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970) [British title: The Other Love]
Note that the law only ran until the end of the next Parliament. The law was reenacted three times, and then in 1541 it was enacted to continue in force for ever. In 1547, Edward VI’s first Parliament repealed all felonies created in the last reign [I Edw. VI. C.12]. In 1548 the provisions of the 1533 Act were given new force, with minor amendments – the penalty remained death, but goods and lands were not forfeit, and the rights of wives and heirs were safeguarded. Mary’s accession brought about the repeal of all Edward’s acts in 1548 [1 Mar c.1]. It was not until 1563, that Elizabeth I’s second Parliament reenacted the law [5 Eliz I. C.17] and the law of 1533 (not 1548) were given permanent force.
In 1828, the statute of 1563 was revoked by a consolidating act, but the death penalty was retained. In 1861 life imprisonment, or a jail time of at least ten years, was substituted for the death penalty. All these laws were against buggery, and indeed the law of 1828 had discussed matters of proof in terms of penetration. Note that other sexual activities were not specifically criminalised.
In 1885 Mr. Labouchere introduced an amendment to the Criminal Amendment Act of 1885. It read:-
48&49 Vict. c.69, 11: “Any male person who, in public or private, commits or is party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour”
So for the first time private acts were brought under the scope of the law, as were acts other than anal penetration. This became the famous blackmailer’s charter, and was the law used to convict Oscar Wilde.
[for all the above see Bailey 145-152]
It was the Act of 1533, then, which first made buggery an offense under English criminal law. This law survived in various forms England until 1967, although it was amended in 1861 to substitute life imprisonment for the penalties of death and forfeiture of property.
But the direct effects of this law were not restricted to England. Because of England’s success as a colonial power, and its tendency to impose its entire legal structure on the ruled areas, legal prohibitions against homosexual activity derived from this law extended well outside England. In Scotland, for instance, (which has a separate legal system) the law was not changed until 1979. In many American states “sodomy” laws are still on the books, as also in former British colonies in the Caribbean.
The original document of 1533 survives – select the link for a a jpg image
. [ref. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name: A Candid History of Homosexuality in Britain, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970)
Disco vinyl smolders in center field at Comiskey Park. (Fred Jewell/AP)
On July 12, 1979, 48,000 fans packed Chicago’s Comiskey Park for Disco Demolition Night. Some spectators went out of control.
“They got really, I would say, violent,” says Darlene Jackson, who was 10 years old when the White Sox held Disco Demolition Night. “It was so primal and tribal.”
Jackson was jolted as she watched the postgame news reports.
Darlene Jackson (left) and her mother at WBEZ in 1978. Jackson had won 2nd place in a radio writing competition. (Courtesy Darlene Jackson)
“I remember sitting in our living room — we had green carpeting — and sitting on the floor,” Jackson says. “And my dad in the background saying, ‘These people have lost their minds.’ ”
In recent years, some have said Disco Demolition Night had a dark side, a side many didn’t see — or didn’t want to see – 40 years ago.
Veeck’s Big Idea
In the late ’70s, the Chicago White Sox were owned by Bill Veeck. Veeck was famous for his creative promotions, including a pyrotechnic scoreboard and a shower near Comiskey’s center field bleachers. But in 1979, neither fireworks nor personal hygiene drew hordes of fans.
“We were not doing well,” says Bill’s son, Mike Veeck .
In 1979, Mike Veeck was the White Sox’s assistant business manager and promotion director. At the season midpoint, the White Sox were 35–45. The team was drawing fewer than 10,000 fans per game. The poor attendance called for more creatively extreme measures.
While the Sox struggled, disco was at the peak of its popularity. It was everywhere — in movies, nightclubs, clothing shops and on the radio. The genre had grown far beyond its more obscure beginnings in the mid-’70s as a dance club phenomenon especially popular with African Americans, Latinos and the gay community. But in 1979, there was a growing backlash against disco, particularly at one Chicago radio station.
“I caught wind of a guy named Steve Dahl blowing up disco records,” Mike Veeck says.
Steve Dahl had lost his job spinning rock records when the radio station he worked for changed to an all-disco format. He quickly found another job at another rock station. But he was still angry.
“And every morning, I would play a disco record,” Dahl says. “I’d run the needle across the record. And then I would have an explosion — like, blowing up the record.”
(Just to be clear, Dahl’s talking about explosion sound effects. The real explosions would come later.)
Dahl started holding “Death to Disco” rallies at nightclubs. He even hit the airwaves with his own 45 single, a parody of Rod Stewart’s disco mega-hit “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
“Rod Stewart, The Stones, a lot of mainstream rock ‘n’ roll acts were putting out disco records,” Dahl says. “I think that there was a feeling of disenfranchisement by the kids wearing the blue jeans and the rock ‘n’ roll T-shirts.”
Dahl’s appeal to his growing fan base was too much for Veeck to resist.
“Steve was doing his 6:00 to 10:00 [a.m.] shift, and at 10:05, I’m standing at the door of the studio going, ‘Let me in. I got an idea,’ ” Veeck says, knocking on the table.
Veeck presented his idea for a Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park. It would take place between games of a twi-night doubleheader against the Tigers on July 12. Admission would be just 98 cents for customers who brought in a disco record. Dahl agreed to give it a spin. Veeck had no idea what the promotion would turn into.
The First Game
Early on the morning of July 12, Mike Veeck met with a group of off-duty Chicago police who would be working security.
“And I told them in the morning meeting what we thought the estimated attendance would be,” Veeck says. “I told ’em we were gonna have 35,000 people. They thought that was hilarious.”
But by 4 o’clock that afternoon, about that many had lined up outside Comiskey.
Andrew Brown was one of them. He was there on an outing with his Cub Scout den.
“I was 10 and a massive baseball fan,” Andrew says. “This is my first double header. This was a big deal.”
Andrew and his fellow Cub Scouts entered Comiskey Park. He says he paid little mind to banners hanging from the upper deck that read “Disco sucks!” He was too excited about the baseball and the hot dogs he’d soon be eating in the outfield picnic area. It was a 10-year-old’s dream.
But when he made his way to his seat along the first base side, Andrew noticed that something was very different.
“The place was really crowded,” Andrew says. “I mean, really crowded. There were no empty seats.”
“And clearly a lot of people who were not there for the baseball,” says David Brown, Andrew’s older brother. He was there, too. “A lot of young guys in concert T-shirts.”
“… when Steve rode in on his Jeep, the electricity picked up several volts.”
MIKE VEECK
“When the game actually started, I was working the seats,” says Dave Gaborek, who was a teenager selling soda pop that night. As the first game began, he noticed that not all of the paying customers had left their disco records in boxes at the gates, as they were supposed to do.
“They were just throwing records periodically on the field,” Gaborek says. “Kids were whipping them out of the upper deck. So it was starting to become a little mayhem-ish.”
But Dave Gaborek and everyone else in attendance hadn’t seen anything yet. In the bottom of the ninth of the first game, chants of “disco sucks” almost drowned out the sounds of baseball.
The White Sox lost the first game. And as the teams prepared for the second, DJ Steve Dahl took the field in a military Jeep. He wore a helmet and army fatigues.
“And when Steve rode in on his Jeep, the electricity picked up several volts,” Veeck says. “We went from 120 immediately to 220.”
The Jeep stopped in center field. Dahl grabbed a microphone and whipped the crowd of about 48,000 into a frenzy.
“Since I didn’t think anybody was going to be there, I had no prepared remarks,” Dahl says. “So I just yelled stuff.”
The Veeck’s motto had always been “Fun is good.” But Dahl’s tone was not fun. He led a chant of “Disco sucks.”
“And we’re never gonna let ‘em forget it!” he shouted. “They’re not gonna shove it down our throats! We rock ‘n’ rollers will resist, and we will triumph!”
From there, Dahl directed attention to a large box in center field. It was full of some of the disco records that had been collected at the gates. Then someone lit a fuse.
There was a huge explosion.
“And records went everywhere, and parts of the box caught on fire,” Dahl says.
“It was a hot night, and the wind wasn’t really blowing,” Andrew Brown says. “And so, this almost smog or smoke just settled on the field and gave it, sort of, this surreal aspect to it.”
When the smoke cleared a bit, the damage became evident.
“I do remember it taking out a good portion of center field,” David Brown says. “I mean, there was a huge crater after this was done.”
‘Hell Broke Loose’
Dahl hopped into the Jeep.
“We kind of went around the stadium once on the warning track, and people were throwing cherry bombs and beer at us,” Dahl says. “And those were the people that liked us. Went out through the centerfield gate.”
“And at that point, hell broke loose — people were on the field racing around, disco records flying,” David Brown says.
“I remember looking over to my right and seeing a guy slide down the foul pole from the upper deck,” Andrew Brown says. “And that’s where I was kind of like, ‘Whoa.’ “
“People jumping from the center field bleachers,” Mike Veeck says. “[It] was a 40-foot drop at old Comiskey. It was safe to say that I had probably mistaken what was going to happen next.”
As Dahl made his way back to the press box, he had no idea what was going on. But Dave Gaborek saw the whole thing.
“This kid — maybe 19 or 20, real long hair down his back — he ran across the outfield, and he slid into second base,” Gaborek says. “And he picked up the bag, and he started waving it around. And then that caused an avalanche of all the kids just running on the field and burning banners.”
(Fred Jewell/AP)
An estimated 7,000 people took the field.
“Yeah, I think Mike Veeck will tell you that they were underestimated in terms of security,” says, Dave Hoekstra, another of Chicago’s many Daves. He’s theauthor of “Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died.”
He watched as team officials took the field. One of them was Sox owner Bill Veeck, who used a wooden leg as the result of a war injury.
“And poor Bill Veeck’s walking around the field trying to get all these kids to calm down,” Hoekstra says. “He’s walking around in his peg leg, and his peg leg gets stuck in a piece of sod, you know? And he can’t move his peg leg out of the sod. But they just couldn’t control the crowd. It got too many people on the field to control.”
Some pulled up turf in centerfield and fanned the flames that were already consuming small piles of disco vinyl. With the chaos raging all around them, the umpiring crew and team officials discussed whether the field had been rendered unplayable.
“I distinctly remember Sparky Anderson, who was the manager of the Tigers, coming out to talk to the umpires,” David Brown says. “I could read his lips — basically saying, ‘How in the heck are we going to get the second game underway … or even played?’ “
(Fred Jewell/AP)
“Then they got the riot police out there and then the mounted police came in on horses,” Gaborek says.
“The Chicago police rolled in, and nobody’s gonna stand in their way,” Andrew Brown says. “So they got the field cleared.”
But the White Sox had to forfeit the second game. It was just the fourth forfeiture in modern MLB history.
Questioning Disco Demolition Night
Bill Veeck sold the team in 1981, and Mike was out of baseball for 10 years. He says Disco Demolition Night played a part in that.
But that’s not where the story ends. Because more people are now questioning the ideological underpinnings of Disco Demolition Night. Mike Veeck calls this “revisionist history.”
“That angers me,” Veeck says. “It had simply to do with choosing between rock ‘n’ roll and disco and dance clubs.”
“It was a little bit deeper than, ‘We’re just having a good time,’ ” Darlene Jackson says.
Today, she’s also known as “DJ Lady D.” She’s a well-known house music DJ in Chicago. She was 10 years old on Disco Demolition Night. Her favorite music then was disco. And when she saw the news reports featuring images of Steve Dahl in a military outfit, “Disco sucks!” banners, white rioters and smoldering piles of vinyl, she heard a message.
Darlene Jackson spinning at Chicago’s Grant Park. (Courtesy Darlene Jackson)
“I think part of what Steve tapped into was a little bit of this unspoken transcript, that, ‘This is the music of black people, of gay people, of Latino people — and we should not accept it. We should not try to be a part of it,’ ” Jackson says. “And so that’s why people perceive it as a homophobic and a racist event. The unspoken transcript, a lot of us heard it.”
“I understand now that there was an underground gay disco scene and all, but we were unaware of all of that,” Dahl says.
“You know, we were unaware of the origins of it. We basically joined the timeline at Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54. And that was 40 years ago. Things were just different.”
“I don’t believe I’m a racist, and I am not a homophobe,” Dahl adds. “And, you know, it’s fairly Kafkaesque in that I don’t exactly know how to explain my way out of something that I didn’t think in the first place. You know?”
Jackson says one simple gesture would go a long way: an apology.
“I think that that would be a step in the right direction,” she says. “I think people will respect that.”
But instead of apologizing, the White Sox last month celebrated Disco Demolition Night’s 40th anniversary. There were commemorative T-shirts — and Steve Dahl threw out the first pitch.
But he says he’s now aware of why some feel Disco Demolition Night was an affront.
Steve Dahl throwing out the first pitch before a White Sox game on June 13. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/AP)
“I understand it, and I’m sorry if that’s caused you harm or has hurt you in some way,” Dahl says. “That’s about all I can do.”
Dahl has trademarked the phrase “Disco Demolition.” So what if someone asked him to do another Disco Demolition Night today?
“You know, I would say, ‘I don’t know. That doesn’t seem like a good idea,’ ” Dahl says. “Because, I mean, based on all that knowledge that I have now of how it affects people and upsets people and whatnot, it doesn’t seem cool, I guess.”
“Disco is an awesome music,” Jackson says. “It espouses love, and it has a lot of energy. And why would anybody hate it?”
J. Edgar Hoover led a deeply repressed sexual life, living with his mother until he was 40, awkwardly rejecting the attention of women and pouring his emotional, and at times, physical attention on his handsome deputy at the FBI, according to the new movie, “J. Edgar,” directed by Clint Eastwood.
Filmgoers never see the decades-long romance between the former FBI director, and his number two, Clyde Tolson, consummated, but there’s plenty of loving glances, hand-holding and one scene with an aggressive, long, deep kiss.
So was the most powerful man in America, who died in 1972 — three years after the Stonewall riots marked the modern gay civil rights movement — homosexual?
Eastwood admits the relationship between Hoover, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Clyde Tolson, played by Armie Hammer, is ambiguous.
“He was a man of mystery,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week. “He might have been [gay]. I am agnostic about it. I don’t really know and nobody really knew.”
In public, Hoover waged a vendetta against homosexuals and kept “confidential and secret” files on the sex lives of congressmen and presidents. But privately, according to some biographers, he had numerous trysts with men, including a lifelong affair with Tolson.
Dissociation — denying homosexuality, but displaying sexual behavior — is “not uncommon,” according to Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York City psychiatrist who is an expert in gender and sexuality.
Men with strong attractions to other men can have different degrees of acceptance from being fully closeted to being openly gay. And even if they are homosexually self-aware, they can embrace it or reject it publicly.
“We confuse sexual orientation with sexual identity,” said Drescher. “Some men do not publicly identify as gay, regardless of their sexual behavior.”
Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks a group that is not labeled “gay” but “men who have sex with men.“
Roy Cohn, the lawyer who served as chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist campaign of the 1950s and who successfully convicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of espionage, denied he was gay, despite an attraction to men.
Cohn, who died of AIDS in 1986, was a contemporary of Hoover and according to one biography, the two attended sex parties together in New York in the 1950s.
Cohn was characterized in a scene from Tony Kuschner’s play, “Angels in America,” speaking to his doctor: “…you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that … Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who f****s around with guys.”
Hoover’s degree of self-awareness may have been the same as Cohn’s. Despite his same-sex dalliances, he occasionally sought a “Mrs. Hoover” and even courted — albeit uncomfortably — actress Ginger Rogers’ mother and actress Dorothy Lamour.
Hoover and his constant companion for decades, Clyde Tolson. Getty Images
Hoover’s neuroses were likely rooted in childhood: He was ashamed of his mentally ill father and was dependent on his morally righteous mother, Annie, well into middle age. Until her death in 1938, Hoover had no social life outside the office.
In the film, Annie chastises her powerful son as he wilted before some of his FBI critics, telling him, “I’d rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son.”
In a 2004 biography by Richard Hack, “Puppetmaster,” which was culled from the notes of Truman Capote, who had begun interviews on Hoover and Tolson’s relationship, the author says Hoover was not gay, but suggests the man was vicariously turned on by the smut he collected on others.
One 200-page secret document was on the extracurricular activities of Capote himself, who was openly gay.
But Anthony Summers, who exposed the secret sex life of Hoover in his 1993 book, “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,” said there was no ambiguity about the FBI director’s sexual proclivities.
“What does Clint Eastwood know about it?” he asked ABCNews.com. Summers collaborated with historians and conducted 800 interviews for the book, including nieces and those who were young enough at the time to have known the man personally.
“We were able to get a close view of the man as an individual and as a human being — as close as anybody who had not been afraid of him since he died,” said Summers.
With interest in the Eastwood film, publishers in the U.S. and in Britain are issuing a remake of the book.
One medical expert told Summers that Hoover was “strongly predominant homosexual orientation” and another categorized him as a “bisexual with failed heterosexuality.”
J. Edgar Hoover with child film star Shirley Temple. Getty Images
Hoover often suppressed his urges, but would break out in lapses that could have destroyed him — alleged orgies in New York City hotels and affairs with teenage boys in a limousine, according to interviews conducted by Summers.
“He was a sadly repressed individual, but most people, even J. Edgar Hoover, let go on occasion,” he said.
Hoover as a Cross-Dresser Is Controversial
One short scene in the film showed the FBI director in anguish over his mother’s death, putting on her dress and beads, a nod to Summers expose that Hoover had been a cross-dresser.
The Washington Post recently dismissed that account because of a discredited source, but Summers maintains he had two other independent sources from different periods in Hoover’s life.
Hoover often frequented New York City’s Stork Club and one observer — soap model Luisa Stuart, who was 18 or 19 at the time — told Summers she saw Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.
“I didn’t really understand anything about homosexuality at the time,” said Stuart. “But I’d never seen two men holding hands. And I remember asking Art [Arthur] about it in the car on the way home that night. And he just said, ‘Oh, come on. You know,’ or something like that. And he told me they were queers or fairies — the sort of terms they used in those days.”
Hoover promoted men inclined to homosexual indiscretions, including Tolson, who had barely 18 months experience with the FBI when he became Hoover’s deputy.
The pair used to make “saucy jokes” about some of the other agents, like Melvin Purvis, who was a hero for arresting John Dillinger, according to Summers.
Purvis’s son shared his father’s 500-letter correspondence with Hoover, who teased the good-looking, blond-haired agent as “the Clark Gable of the FBI,” even though he was heterosexual.
Many were intimate and one was highly charged with innuendo, as Hoover referred to himself as the “Chairman of the Moral Uplift Squad.”
Ethel Merman, who had known Hoover since 1938, knew his sexual orientation, according to Summers. In 1978 when the actress was asked to comment on Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign, Merman told the reporter, “Some of my best friends are homosexual. Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had.”
Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, confirmed that Hoover and Tolson sat in boxes owned by and used exclusively by gay men at their racing haunt Del Mar in California.
“They were nodded together as lovers,” he told Summers.
Another FBI agent who had gone on fishing trips with Hoover and Tolson revealed that the director liked to “sunbathe all day in the nude.” Even novelist William Styron told Summers that he once spotted Hoover and Tolson in a California beach house — the director painting his friends toenails.
But, according to Summers, “Nobody dared say anything, he was so powerful.”
The author interviewed the widow of respected Washington, D.C. psychiatrist Dr. Marshall de G. Ruffin, who treated Hoover in 1946 after his general practitioner had been “puzzled by a strange malaise in his patient.”
Monteen Ruffin told Summers that Hoover was “very paranoid” about anyone finding out, and he eventually stopped seeing the psychiatrist. She said her husband burned the evidence.
“He was definitely troubled by homosexuality,” she said in 1990, “and my husband’s notes would have proved that … I might stir a kettle of worms by making that statement, but everybody then understood that he was a homosexual, not just the doctors.”
As the movie depicts, after Hoover’s death, his loyal secretary Helen Gandy destroys the “official and confidential” files.
When Hoover died in 1972, President Richard Nixon ordered his “dirty tricks man” Gordon Liddy to scour the FBI director’s office for files. But when they arrived, someone had taken “drastic action,” said Summers. Nothing but tables and chairs remained.
Summers said he is often asked, but rarely answers the question about what he personally thought of Hoover as a human being.
“Yes, I had sympathy for somebody who has to bury their real preferences through a long life in the public eye,” he said. “But not sympathy for the way in which he was dictatorial, the way he behaved politically and personally to people right from the beginning in his late teens and early 20s.
“He was totally self-serving and the way in which he was a repressed homosexual didn’t require him to abuse individual rights and human liberties the way he did,” said Summers. “It does not begin to justify his behavior toward blacks and concoct an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King and suggest he end it all and kill himself.”
Psychiatrists have concluded that Hoover “no doubt” had a narcissistic personality disorder, perhaps because of his dependency on a forceful mother who had “great expectations for her son,” he said.
“Studies suggest that people with such backgrounds block their feelings and cut meaningful relationships,” according to Summers, who said Hoover would have been a “perfect high-level Nazi.”
However, Eastwood, who is a Republican, contends that J. Edgar Hoover was “probably good for the country,” and whether he was homosexual or not makes no difference.
“I don’t really know and nobody really knew,” he told ABC. “It’s definitely a love story. You can love a person and whether it goes into the realm of being gay or not, is here nor there.”
A younger generation of gays was moved by the film precisely because it portrayed such an iconic figure’s struggle with his sexuality.
“The audience I was in clearly rooted for Hoover to be gay and to have happiness in his sex and love life,” said Ben Ryan, a 33-year-old novelist from New York City. “In a pivotal scene between DiCaprio and Hammer in which the two men engage in the classic brawl-leads-to-furious-kiss, everyone got so excited when they finally locked lips.”
“Anyone in their right mind would see this movie and say, ‘Oh, well, of course Hoover was gay,'” he said. “The more suspicious among us might think that the filmmakers were still afraid of Hoover’s ghost suing them for libel if they just put it right out there that he was gay.”
Still, he said, the film is a “tragic story that should hopefully teach society lessons about how dangerous sexual repression is.”
timalderman 
