Following Tar, A Gay (?) Movie About Leonard Bernstein

[PeterRS]

There is little doubt that larger-than-life Leonard Bernstein was one of the great figures in music - classical and popular - of the 20th century. During and after his 12-year tenure as Music Director at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1957, he conducted all the world's major orchestras and was one of the favourite conductors of the notoriously picky Vienna Philharmonic. His music for West Side Story remains popular around the world as do some numbers from other musicals like On The Town and Wonderful Town. His operetta Candide is still regularly performed. 

Less well known is that he was gay throughout his life. As he emerged as a musician in his late teens, he mixed with a crowd of American composers almost all of whom were gay - Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Mark Blitztein and Samuel Barber. Indeed, some have written that gay composers gave America its music! [Barber's most famous work Adagio for Strings was performed on national radio following the assassination of President Kennedy, at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco in 1982, and features in a number of movies, especially Oliver Stone's Platoon]. But Bernstein wanted to be a conductor. One distinguished conductor impressed on Bernstein that he would get nowhere as an orchestra conductor unless he was married.

The new movie titled Bernstein premieres at the Venice FIlm Festival in September and will also be due some time later on Netflix. The producers include Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. It is directed by Bradley Cooper who also plays Bernstein. How much of his gay life will be included, though, must be doubtful for it concentrates on his marriage to his wife, the Chilean actor Felicia Montealegre. For decades during his life and after his death, his estate and then his three children made every attempt to deflect and deny allegations of his homosexuality, even though it was well known in the music profession and in many parts of the gay world. But they finally gave up and in 2014 allowed correspondence between him and his wife to be pubished.

Very soon after their 1951 marriage, his wife wrote to him, "You are a homosexual and may never change . . . I am willing to accept you for who you are as I happen to love you very much." Throughout that marriage, he continued to have affairs with many men, some of whom were aspiring conductors who studied with him and are now very well known. But even his wife could not have realised that in 1976 he would finally abandon her to live in San Francisco with his male lover, Tommy Cochrane (since Cochrane is a character in the movie, that relationship wtih Bernstein must at least be mentioned). Then fate intervened. In 1977 Felicia developed cancer. Immediately Bernstein returned to New York to look after her until her death.

Thereafter, while remaining one of the most in demand conductors of the time, he descended into alcohol, drugs and yet more young men. I had no idea he had been gay until I started visiting Tokyo where he was a regular in one of the gay bars on his many professional visits to the city. A heavy cigarette smoker all his life, he died in 1990 from a heart attack partly induced by his emphysema.