Gay Icons of the Past #2: "Berlin is Boys"

[PeterRS]

"Good authors too who once knew better words

Now only use four-letter words

Writing prose.

Anything goes."

These lyrics from the opening of Cole Porter's gorgeous 1934 musical "Anything Goes" could well have been written with the writer and novelist Christopher Isherwood in mind. Although Porter and Isherwood may never have met, both were gay. While Porter married in part to mask his sexuality (the fact that his wife was rich no doubt also helped!) the English-born Isherwood was one of the 20th century's most openly gay men. Exposed to homosexuality at his boarding school in England, he had already met and become best friends with another famously gay Englishman, the poet W. H. Auden, with whom he occasionally shared his bed. When Auden moved to Berlin in 1928, Isherwood followed a few months later. The capital of the Weimar Republic had earned a thoroughly deserved reputation for sexual freedom and debauchery. The words of Cole Porter were never more true: sexually, in Berlin “anything goes”! As his lover of many decades, Don Bachardy, later made clear, "To Christopher, Berlin was boys!" (Isherwood did not meet Bachardy until 1953 on a beach in California when he was 49 and Bachardy 18 - they remained together until his death in 1986).

Christopher revelled in Berlin's thriving gay scene. He was later to say he had had sex with at least 400 boys. In staid old England and indeed the United States to which he would emigrate in 1939, 400 must have seemed an outrageous number. Then in 1932 he met his first real love, a handsome 17-year old German named Heinz Neddermayer. But storm clouds in the form of the Nazi Party were on the horizon. In 1933 the pair escaped to England, but Neddermeyer could not obtain a long-term visa. After a second visit in 1934, they gave up trying and started four-years of wandering around Europe. The relationship had to end when Heinz was captured by the Gestapo in 1937 and interned in a concentration camp. 

Ever the wanderer, Christopher joined his old pal Auden on a trip to the Paris of the Orient, the very permissive Shanghai. They had a commission to write a book on Asia but it was Shanghai that fascinated Christopher the most. He wrote –

“The tired or lustful businessman will find here everything to gratify his desires . . . if you want girls, or boys, you can have them, at all prices, in the bath houses and the brothels. If you want opium you can smoke it in the best company, served on a tray like afternoon tea.”

When war broke out in Europe, Christopher moved to California. Here he wrote and worked on various movie scripts. He soon became one of the celebrated European émigré set, mixing regularly with the likes of Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht and Greta Garbo. As he left for the USA he had written a novel based partly on his experiences, "Goodbye to Berlin". In 1951 one of his friends persuaded the playwright John Van Druten to adapt the novel into a Broadway play, "I am a Camera". Eventually it was fashioned into the musical "Cabaret". With its haunting music, provocative story and lyrics, all set against the backdrop of emerging Nazi Germany, "Cabaret" became a huge Broadway hit. Soon the movie version was to make it into an even bigger worldwide sensation. Liza Minnelli instantly became one of the world's top stars (and a gay icon in her own right) and the first person ever to appear on the cover of TIME and Newsweek magazines in the same week (when Newsweek was still a print publication). In one scene, Minelli as Sally Bowles is confronted by her erstwhile very proper English lover about another man she has been seeing -

Brian: "Oh! Fuck Maximilian!"

Sally: "I already did!"

Brian (sheepishly): "So did I!"

 

Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey sing “Money” from the movie “Cabaret”

Even for 1972 that exchange was close to pushing the limits of public acceptability! Isherwood continued to write and Bachardy became a noted painter. Their partnership had its ups and downs, especially when Bachardy started on a series of affairs. Yet the relationship survived. A frequent visitor to their home was the gay artist David Hockney and the couple feature in several of his paintings. In recent years Bachardy has overseen the publication of Christopher's voluminous diaries and the republication of his novels. Even if only his Berlin stories and "Cabaret" are to survive into the future, they will surely be a fitting tribute to Christopher Isherwood, one of the true gay icons of the last century.

[TotallyOz]

What great memories you bring back for me. Thank you.

I loved Hockney. I especially like this one.

Cabaret is one of my all time favorites.

"Christopher revelled in Berlin's thriving gay scene. He was later to say he had had sex with at least 400 boys."

So few guys? I thought you mean really revelled? 400 is such a low number. But, I guess back then, it may have been a lot. Damn, my NYC days really made me jaded. 

[PeterRS]

That is one of Hockney's A Bigger Splash series featuring memories of his then boyfriend Peter Schlesinger.

400 boys may seem so few today when it's easy to have sex several times a night (for those who are up to it!) But Christopher was only in Berlin for 4 years before he met Heinz. I imagine sex was thereafter between the lovers - at least mostly. Even so, 100 a year must have seemed like nirvana to gays everywhere in those days.

This ia arguably the most famous of his Isherwood/Bachardy paintings.

In their home in California, they had so many Hockney paintings they named one room Hockney Hall.