Bath House Bette
I just sat through the documentary Gay Sex In The Seventies (no need to describe what that documentary was documenting). I missed it a couple of years back at MQFF mainly because of a general apathy towards the subject matter. It wasn't a great documentary but it was interesting enough and there were plenty of moustache-laden photographs to evoke those bygone days.Titillation aside, the line the filmmakers drew through the repression of the fifties, the liberation and free love of the late sixties and seventies, and the AIDS crisis of the eighties illuminated, and went some way towards explaining, the development of the sex-centric self-identification of the "gay community" en masse. As a community we are still wearing the aftermath of the shaking off of the fifties, and the AIDS epidemic only compounded the need for sex to be at the centre of our lives. But this is a bigger discussion and I want to talk about bathhouses!
I have always been fascinated with sex on premises venues and beats and the like. I have never partaken, and never really wanted to, but I am intrigued by their existence and co-existence with the straight world. Imagine my delight when in their description of the New York City bathhouses of the seventies (the ones with restaurants and dancefloors) the "talking heads" reminisced about how they would put on shows and that one of the many famous performers was Bette Midler, accompanied on piano by a young Barry Manilow.
Bette got her big break in the Continental Bathhouse. Now that is class. Apparently she used to come onstage with a big basket of poppers to scatter into the audience.
Famous celebrities ended up frequenting the shows at the bathhouses. Can you see that happening today? Lisa McCune attending a Marina Prior concert at Club 80?
Eventually, of course, the poor gay men were driven away by the pushy straights and had to go elsewhere to have their anonymous sex.
It reminds me of an SCTV comedy sketch, which I have located for your viewing pleasure: Edith Prickley Live at the Bath House
Enjoy!
Tags: gay, Bette Midler, comedy
posted by walypala @ 5:54 pm
2 Comments:
That reads like this the first time you've ever heard of Bette Midler performing at bath houses; surely that can't be the case? That's like being a Judy Garland fan and not knowing she was in 'The Wizard of Oz'.
Judy Garland was in 'The Wizard of Oz'!?! Next you'll be telling me she was an alcoholic.
It is actually the first I've heard of it. It would be a stretch to call me a Midler fan. I liked 'Outrageous Fortune' and 'Big Business' but I wouldn't be racing to the stores to pick up her autobiography.
Actually, after this maybe I would.
Post a Comment
<< Home