 I used to teach school and my major, my major ambition in teaching was that we should not be bored. So at the risk of boring you, I want to read just a little bit, okay? About this person here. I think it's wonderful that she's become more famous than ever. This is her strip act. When I first met Buddy Bubbles Kent, exotic dancer, she handed me that postcard. Hello, how do you do? She handed me that postcard. At that time, she had been working for about 20 years as an x-ray technician at St. Vincent's Hospital, but that was nothing like as much fun as being in the entertainment business with the mafia protecting you by paying off the cops. Stonewall, something went wrong with the payoff, says basically, or there was orders that they had to bust people, but that was not generally how things went. Okay, the cops got paid off, they went away, and the gay people had a place to go. Yippee for the mafia. Let me read a little bit about, and this tells you about Buddy and how we all got here and how we got this book, but if anybody is bored, just raise your hand. This is from chapter one entitled Village Gossip. That's Greenwich Village is in what's left of Greenwich Village, as I always say. In our building, we used to have interesting people like hookers and drug dealers. Now everybody works on Wall Street. It's the rents. You're familiar with that? Yeah, right? Angela Calomides Calomaris, who is the subject, this is her picture off the front page, the front page of the World Telegram in New York City in 1949 when she testified at the trial of the National Board of the American Communist Party. They dressed her up like a girl, but that's what she really looked like. The New York world was Joseph Pulitzer's. It was not, you know, amateur hour. It was Joseph Pulitzer's original newspaper, but I digress. Angela, she lived in the village. She lived on Jane Street, et cetera. I digress. Angela Calomaris took her time emerging from the closet as informant witness, vague rumors about government connections and stories about famous people she had known made the rounds in the gay community. Let me just say before I read any more. I don't know. Is anybody here young? Oh, OK. Good. You have some young people. If you're young, this is how you make gay history. This is the only way you make gay history because it ain't written down. You talk to the older people. And they tell you stories. And they might even tell stories about themselves. They might even know stories about people from previous generations. And that's how we figure out what happened. Was that the title of Hillary's book? What happened? Oh, well, I digress. Anyway, that's how you do it. So get at it before they die, OK? Or get where they can't talk or can't remember, which is worse. This is how you do it, talking to buddy can't. No one came forward with significant details until the 1980s, more than 30 years after Angela's appearance on the witness stand. The McCarthy era, as we like to call it, except McCarthy was just actually some old drunk from Wisconsin. He really did not have too much to do with this. But we call it the McCarthy era, for many reasons. Spawned great controversy and especially bitterness toward informants and was generally not a topic for conversation in the gay community or anywhere else. An older lesbian who had known Angela Welle in the homosexual underworld of Greenwich Village finally broke the silence, but quite by accident and unintentionally. She was Buddy Kent, alias Bubbles Kent, exotic dancer. That's what they called strippers. And stripping was a very big business. Alias, her real name, Malvena Schwartz of East New York, Brooklyn, who, like Angela, had lived in the village since the late 30s when the rents were really cheap. In an interview with gay historians, Buddy touched on a variety of topics about a time when unconventional people, artists, bohemians, political radicals, flocked to the village, and lesbians felt safe from cat calls and threats of violence. But it was also a time when identities were closely guarded, when silence and loyalty were community values. Not unlike other secret and semi-secret societies. In parentheses, I put the mafia, the American Communist Party, that is secret and a semi-secret societies. The less outsiders knew about the gay world, the better, particularly sworn enemies like the police. While gays threatened with exposure at mainstream jobs, were routinely blackmailed right up until the Stonewall uprising, as an entertainer working in drag shows in downtown nightclubs of the 1940s. The 181 Club, 181 Second Avenue, at East 12th Street, and the Moroccan village. It was called 23 West 8. Buddy Kent had the advantage of the best in protection from the mafia that owned and ran those establishments. So I go on to talk a bit about Buddy and what Buddy says in her interview with Joan Nessel. Perhaps some of you have heard of Joan, a co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Joan went to interview Buddy as part of a sage project to talk about how gay people had suffered before Stonewall. Joan knew nothing about this world of gay nightclubs from the 1940s. The only reason I knew is because I knew some of the people, but Joan didn't know the same people. So she thought she was going to hear stories of tragedy at all. And of course, Buddy pulled out her photo albums, as they always did, and started showing pictures of when she was in show biz and how much fun that was in comparison with being an x-ray technician at St. Vincent's Hospital. Joan was, shall we say, overwhelmed. Besides, she thought Buddy was cute. So the interview went on and on. But some of the questions were kind of fun. Let's see. What else, Joan asked Buddy, what else would you see in the street sometime or hanging around here in the village? Buddy didn't hesitate. Remembering stage and screen personalities, she had known celebrities whose names still resonated with the contemporary public. She began not too much theatricals because they were afraid then. Now, these tapes are in the Lesbian History Archives. They're still there. I got copies if anybody wants to hear them. Not much theatricals because they were afraid then, but Judy Holliday. Buddy paused. She had named one of the brightest screen stars of the 1950s who had won an Oscar for Best Actress as Billy Dawn in Born Yesterday, a role Judy had created on the Broadway stage. Other nominees, this was not amateur hour in 1950. Other nominees that year included Betty Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard. Judy Holliday, who was born Judith Toovim, she was Jewish, was a big money maker for the irascible president of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohen, and her reputation had to be protected. The plot thickened when Buddy added her voice a bit altered. She was going with a female who was a cop, this Judy Holliday, going with a female who was a cop. This was not idle village gossip. Other sources, a book called Hollywood Lesbians, which is a lot of fun if you haven't read that one, suggest that Judy Holliday went through a lesbian phase before she discovered men, married David Oppenheim, and gave birth to her son Jonathan, who still lives in the village, I hope, haven't talked to him lately. Of course, Judy was no longer a teenager when, according to Buddy, she was going with a female who was a cop. The story goes on, and it is revealed, I won't read you more, it is revealed that Angela Colomar has turned in the cop to, as a communist, and got her fired, and we have her name and a lot of other info. So that's how we got the story, basically, and from there, we make the connection with one, I'll read you that part, maybe. Anybody ever heard of Victor Navaschi? Naming names? If you wanna read something, yeah, if you wanna read something about the McCarthy era and what it meant, read Victor Navaschi, who's still around, he's still teaching something up at Columbia School of Journalism. It's the classic on what it meant. They just wanted the names of anybody who had ever been affiliated with the Communist Party, the Socialist Party would do almost as well, or was just doing anything lefty. If they could get your name, they could basically do you in, which they did. So that's what Navaschi's book is about. Without a name for the informer, this is our friend, Angela, without a name for Angela still, or the girlfriend of Judy Holiday, their secrets were safe. By chance, it was Victor Navaschi who provided information that brought everyone out of the closet. Early on in naming names, he mentions some confidential informants who reported on Communist Party activities to the FBI and sites too, who surfaced to testify in the key 1949 Smith Act trial in Foley Square. There were 15 trials of Communist Party leadership in this country with about 140 defendants. Most were convicted. These people, the first people, the National Board went to prison for conspiracy to advocate, I repeat, conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence. Oh well, it's called the Smith Act. It's still on the books. Be careful about conspiracies. The Rosenberg's trial was also conspiracy to commit espionage. They like conspiracies. One of the people that Victor Navaschi names, and he gives me a name, he says one was an Angela Calamaris whose name, Navaschi repeated and quoted extensively from Red Masquerade. She wrote a book. The book she had published about her undercover work. He listed other informant witnesses who had written books too about their brush with the red menace. The Russians were coming. Did you see that movie? The Russians were coming. It was made by the Canadians, a great movie. And of course, as I always say, the Russians were coming, the Russians were coming. They finally came to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn where they seemed quite happy actually. They have restaurants and things and et cetera. Well, of course the Russians are always cropping up, aren't they? It's a big country. We don't like big countries. We are a big country. We don't like big countries much, et cetera. I won't give you any more hints. Written books about the red menace and sold their scripts to radio, TV, even the movies. Anybody ever seen, I was a communist for the FBI? Matt Svidick, C-V-E-T-I-C. He worked for the FBI undercover in Pittsburgh. Wow, where we used to make steel. Do we still make steel in Pittsburgh? No, why not? Oh, I see, they've cleaned it up. Wow, what a good idea. Nevermind, more about that momentarily. There's a lot about that in this book about the elimination of jobs, labor unions, because that's what the trial was about. Angela did what she could talking about the dock workers' strike in New York City which spread to the entire East Coast in 1948 because the dock were in New York. You saw on the waterfront, the West Coast was different. The West Coast had a legitimate union and pulled a lot of weight. In 1934, the dock workers went on strike. He became a general strike in San Francisco. Harry Hay was there. We all remember Harry Hay at the Manishing Society with his boyfriend, Will Geer. His papers are here. His papers are here, really? Wow, his boyfriend, Will Geer, who was Grandpa Walton and the Walton. How time flies. Anyway, I digress. Nevasky writing says Angela Calamarez, he writes, a witness to the dentist trial, won a citation for patriotic assistance to the FBI. Nevasky struck a resonant chord for me. That's why we're doing this. That name, Calamarez, Angela Calamarez, it was that name and Buddy Kent on tape out of the blue, changing the subject, talking to Joan, changing the subject, volunteering, you know, Angela Calamarez, as Buddy pronounced, it has started coming to our socials. She just fell in love with Sage. You know, Sage, right? I kept telling her, come, come. She says, that cornball shit. I said, no, no, Angie, you'll like it. It's really not. She was there till the last one. She had a ball. Calamarez, Calamedes, Angie, Angela, maybe Buddy Kent had revealed the name without meaning to, she would have welcomed a new supporter to the Sage socials, but she could not forget that this was the FBI and former who had made accusations against Judy Holiday's girlfriend. That's Buddy. Thank you, Buddy. She was beautiful right up to the end, except she had pulmonary problems because she worked in cabarets where everybody smoked. But she had, she had a lot more stories to tell, but hey, we missed part of them. At least we got this one. That's Buddy at probably the Moroccan village in a slightly different impersonation. That's the book I wrote about the people I knew and it's still on Amazon, which is not easy, but it's still there. Allison published it originally. Anybody remember Allison? You know, whatever happened to Allison? They started out in Boston, did okay, went to LA, did okay, went to New York, went bust. What does that tell you? Oh, they educated you? How? How did you get lucky when I started reading? Yeah, that's right. So many of those books that Allison did are out of print. They need to be back in print. I don't know what to do about that. So if anybody has any ideas, half the history of gay society was in those books, including that book about Harry Hay. What's wrong with Harry Hay, isn't it? Those books need to be Joan Nestle's books. They're all out of print. What to do? Any ideas? Come here and read them, okay? Don't, I hope they have lots of copies for you. Judy Holiday in her, as we were just talking about, she started out working in the village. She worked at the Village Vanguard in something called the Reviewers, which basically was talking about the news from a lefty point of view with Adolf Green. What was his girlfriend's name? Who became very important people later in the theatrical world. But Angela Calamaris was jealous of Judy Holiday, I'm sure, from everything I know. She was jealous of Judy Holiday and she took opportunities to be nasty about Judy Holiday in 1952. Judy Holiday was dragged before something called the McCarran Committee. And there were lots of committees, don't lose track. There was HUAC, House on American Activities. There was the one that Mr. McCarthy ran, which was a Senate committee on something government operations bullshit with Roy Cohen. Sorry, I'm sure I'm not supposed to say dirty words. And Judy Holiday was dragged to something called the McCarran Committee. The text of that used to be up online on something called the Judy Holiday Resource Center, which seems to have disappeared. I can't find out who, where, why, but I have most of the material. So if I was a good person, I'd get another website and put it up. Anyway, Judy was dead at 42, okay? The pressure was for people in the entertainment business tremendous. They were all in something called Red Channels, also if you know that book. I talk about that in here. It's all in here, you can just read the book and forget about what I'm saying. That's Angie in her prime, probably up in P-town. This is Angie after her prime, Provincetown, sorry. If you haven't been to Provincetown, it's too expensive now, but it's still nice. Still nice, you won't want to leave, I didn't. Of course, we went to Provincetown with this book and everybody there knew Angie, but they did not know that Angie had been an informant for the FBI and testified at a major trial in 1949 against the National Board of the American Communist Party. That part they'd missed. Anyway, that's her and her apartment. She owned a tremendous amount of property in Provincetown because that's what she did. She was a conniver and a good businesswoman which may be the same thing. Sorry if you're in business and a conniver, I don't know. But Angie made a lot of money. She bought these condos for $14,000 in 1961 and sold them, for God only knows how many millions. But she died anyway, so. That's J. Edgar in 1947 saying before HUAC, before House on Un-American Activities Committee, saying that the communists are a fifth column inside the country and must be gotten rid of. Of course, J. Edgar is one of the longest serving bureaucrats. I think the longest serving, 1924 to 72 or something. He lasted a long time because he had the dirt on everybody. He was the original anti-communist, racist, et cetera. They kept pushing him to have a black agent working for the FBI. And he didn't like the idea, of course, at all, but finally he appointed one, his chauffeur. Would you like me to repeat that? That was the first black agent for the FBI. That's who Hoover was. That's somebody else. This is a time we're talking about when we were good friends with the Russians. You will remember that Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met several times during the war, the last time at Yalta, and talked about how they were winning and how that was going in the Red Army. Thank God for the Red Army was defeating the Nazis. The first defeat they got was at Stalingrad, and it was not easy. So Stalin was our friend and he made the front page Man of the Year of Time magazine twice in 1940 and 43. Things were looking good for American, Russian, solidarity, communist, and all that. This is more in the spirit of things. I have to put on my glasses unless somebody wants to read it for me. Silence. Come on. Sorry, sorry. Yes, some things never change. Does that look familiar? You have the same cops and you have this sort of pitiful little intellectual type with glasses who's overthrowing government. That's from the United Electrical Workers, I think an organization that no longer exists, but they were up. No, found it pretty good. Maybe the UE does still exist. There are a couple of things from the CIO because the CIO in the end of the 1940s, 50s there got rid of the really red incline left-leaning unions. Some of them left under their own power, but I think UE still exists, the United Electrical Workers, and that was from their newsletter. You get the picture, right? Get the picture? Ah, guess who? All right, kids, this was the National Board of the American Communist Party, oops. Oh, what'd you do? Thank you, you're technically gifted. I pressed on these arrows. You pressed on those arrows? Yeah. Thank you so much. Good help is hard to find. Could you read the name? The former slaves, which is the problem here. Anyway, what shall we do with the former slaves? Shall we send them back to Africa, shall we send them back to Africa, or shall we just continue to exploit them for as long as? What is happening with this thing? What darling? What is happening with this thing? This is, this was a series, this was the name of her book, and that story, okay, which she didn't write, but it was okay, she published it. This is in New York Daily News in 1951, because the book came out late in 1950, and this is a series that did seven excerpts from her, in the New York Daily News. If you did this kind of thing, if you were an informer for the FBI, said that communists were bad, you got to be very famous, and you were making money all the time because the FBI was paying you. It's the only good job Angie ever had, but she wanted to be a big time photographer. But no Daniel? What darling? No Daniel? You accept it? If you support yourself on any feature? Oh, well it was, you mean these people? Yeah, but you said that they were fine with their, yeah. Oh, Angie, no, she did not accept it. They, she wanted to think she was in there. She wasn't, they just, these people was that Dan Barry Connecticut, he was in prison, he kept saying he had headaches, he had headaches because he thinks prison is bad, that was bad, didn't he? I had headaches, they did. And they gave him some aspirin, and he had a brain tumor and went blind. So much, 300 wisdom. But he went to Moscow, and they helped restore his life somewhat. This is Jean Dennis, you're Jean Dennis, who was the executive secretary, let's see who's this. Have we found your dad yet? Jacob or Jack Stachel, Gil Green, in the back he's pulled, but you can see Benjamin Jefferson Davis. So, Henry Winston, Eugene Dennis, Jack Stachel, Gilver Green, John Williamson, Irving Potash, Benjamin Davis, Gus Hall, Robert Thompson, Carl Winter and John Gates. What is that that you're talking about? No, I didn't, he didn't make it. Ah. He was editor of the paper, I told you. Oh, editor of the Daily World, that's probably a little later. You think? Okay. Just a statement of fact. All these people were indicted and convicted and went to federal prison. Ben Davis there in the back, I always say all the Davises probably belonged to the same owner at one time. Ben Davis was city councilman from Harlem. He had just been re-elected when he was arrested. These people didn't really believe that this was going to be a serious thing because it seems so ridiculous. It's important and probably impossible for us to appreciate the strength of the American left coming out of the 30s and 40s. So strong was it that they had to get rid of it and they shut it down in the 50s and they did anything that they needed to do to shut it down as they do from time to time. Some of you remember the 60s and 70s. And then in 1980 we got Ronnie Reagan. So if something good is happening, they tend to shut it down any way they can. I'm sure I do not need to give you a more contemporary reference. Anyway, they all went to prison five years and $10,000 fine. If you really want to shock, try the BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator. It's in there. You just type in BLS, something government, something. They have an inflation calculator to see how much $10,000 means in terms of our money. You multiply by about 10 or 12. It was an enormous sum of money. So basically it bankrupted the communist party. When they take away your money, that's it. They bankrupted the communist party because they had to pay these fines for these people. They all went to prison for five years except Bob Thompson who had gotten the Distinguished Service Cross for being in the war in New Guinea and saving countless folks. A lot of those people were in uniform during the war. Maybe you remember Gus Hall who used to run for president? That's Gus. He went to, some of them ran off somewhere in head but they had to come back later and they did their terms. Gil Green did that. Oh well. Oh yeah, everybody went to Moscow. Now he went to, Eugene Dennis ended up in hot land, as we used to say down south, ended up in Atlanta, federal penitentiary, something we would not wish on anyone. That's where he did his time. Fun, huh? Basically it shortened their lives of course because they were not young people obviously. They'd been labor activists for many years, most of them in union business and in the party. So that was what happened to them. Here we are getting off the wagon. That's Henry and Eugene. I thought you'd enjoy this picture. This is a more contemporary shot, guess who? Henry Winston stayed in the party until the very end. On 23rd Street in New York, the American Communist Party owns a building that was given to them by some very rich friend of communism. There were several of them. Marshall Field was a friend of communist. I'm not sure if he's the one who gave the money, but the main salon, the main auditorium, is named for Henry Winston. That's Gus Hall and that's Angela. Have you ever seen so much hair? Because that's back in the day. And that's what's his name? Jarvis. I think he's still around. Okay, and here's our Angie. Like I said, if you did this kind of thing, you made a lot of money more than you would have made because otherwise you wouldn't have a job. The only good job she ever had were working for the WPA, like everybody else, working for the WPA and working for the FBI. So to be an opponent of socialism is rather strange since she basically had government jobs. And there she is, that's from the front page of the paper written by, what's his name? Fred? Anyway, I'll think of you the same. He was the main red-bater for the World Telegram and he was Wolst, Wolston? Sorry, it's in the book. I'm sorry, there's no index in the book. They did not take it seriously enough to do an index. They did do some pictures so that some of the pictures we're seeing are in the book, okay? But it cost me years off my life to get these pictures because they were afraid they're gonna be sued, of course, because you're always afraid you're gonna be sued and some of these pictures are old and the people are gone and nobody knows. Anyway, he was her good friend, he was also a villager he was the main, one of the main red-baters in, the media, of course, was very into this. The media was very into Angie. They didn't mind that she looked butchy because coming out of, of course, World War II, wow, World War II, World War II changed everything. If you look butchy, that means well, maybe you would do in maintenance on, you know, military vehicles and things during the wars. So that was all right. It was okay to be butchy during the war. This is Angie dressed up like a girl. This is from the Daily Mirror which was Walter Winchel's rag, of course. And so they dressed her up. This is her coming off the witness stand. What did she say on the witness stand? Well, she said that the dock workers were all, you know, trying, they were trying to, the communists were trying to take over the New York City Docks and that the New York Photo League was a communist front. I guess we'll talk about the Photo League later and by now the New York Photo League won. About 2011, 2012, 2011 was the anniversary of their founding in 1931. All this comes out of the 30s. The 50s were about getting rid of the 30s and 40s. Like the 80s were about getting rid of the 60s and 70s. I'm not sure what this time is about but I guess we'll find out. I digress. Anyway, the photo, yes, you got 1931 to 19, no, no, sorry, 1936 to 1951, another victim of the Red Scare. They were taking pictures of poor people, even poor black people. One of their main productions was something called the Harlem Document which Angie talks about in her book where she says it would obviously have caused an uprising. Oh well. Anyway, so those were her two contributions and two out the man who was in charge of the Photo League. One guy named Sid Grossman who never worked as a photographer in New York again and was dead five years later. The Red Scare killed people. Angie made headlines all over. Here's the Journal American. Oh, what's his name's newspaper? What was his name? The Journal American. Yes, William Randolph, right down the road here. He had a little place down the highway. This article is by Howard Rushmore. Some of you probably do not remember. Howard Rushmore used to, like a lot of anti-communists, he used to be a lefty. Then he got to working for the other team and that paid so much better. He did work for Confidential, but then, and I have the reference because I have a lot of FBI files. They're very fun. Hoover says about Rushmore, I think he's nuts. So they tried to sort of marginalize him. Rushmore went out with a bang. He shot his wife, then himself, in a New York taxi. But in the meantime, he was a respected journalist who knew the truth about communism and Angela Calamari is the red Mata Hari. And she was not a dancer like Mata Hari. That's the book she maybe wrote. She didn't write the book actually. We know who wrote the book, but she published the book and that's what it looks like and it's all very mysterious and that's what she looked like. All very mysterious. What? Oh, yes, she's a butchie number. Oh, what was I gonna say? Oh, this is the copy from the Lesbian History Archives where, when Angie went to her heavenly reward, God only knows what that would have been. But when she departed, she was 79. She was living in Mexico because she had developed COPD from, as her friends told me, smoking too much. What was I gonna say? When they went to her apartment, she always kept an apartment in the village first on Jane Street, if you know Jane Street, then on Horatio. So they went to the apartment on Horatio Street and they found an entire file cabinet full of goodies about when Angie used to be a celebrity. Because when you were in this, you were a very big celebrity. Whittaker Chambers who screwed Alger Hiss and lots of other people. I was a communist for the FBI. And what's his name? What was the name of that show? I led three lives. Anybody old enough to have watched that? Nobody old enough? Oh, I led three lives. What the hell was his name? Okay, it was a TV story. It was TV series based on this. Angie wanted to have a TV series too and a movie like Matt Savitic, but she didn't get it. I think being a girl under those circumstances also didn't help, but she didn't get it anyway. Oh, but she did get on, sorry, Eleanor Roosevelt's radio program, which I talk about in some detail here. Eleanor, well, after they buried FDR, things were not quite the same. Sorry, Blanche Weasen Cook, volume three. I haven't read it. No Blanche Weasen Cook who writes about Eleanor. Volume three is out. That's Eleanor, I think during the war and after the war. It was not quite the same. Not quite the same. Not quite the fiery lefty because the Red Scare turned everything around for everybody. So Eleanor, there's a great deal to be said about Eleanor and here in the association with Angie. I think she's so Angie basically as a single woman standing up to the Red Monsters and she wrote this book and she was on Eleanor's radio program, December 1, 1950. I use this picture of Eleanor because it shows better times and also another victim of the Red Scare. Who is close, Canada Lee. I remember Canada Lee in the lifeboat with Tallulah Bankhead. Who else was in the lifeboat? No? Oh, I'm getting too old to, I'm getting too old for this. Anyway, the movie called Lifeboat, Canada Lee, he did a lot of things. The last thing he did was cry the beloved country and then he died. Quite young. Canada Lee's name was mentioned at the Judith Copeland trials. Judy Copeland? Big trial in the Red Scare. There's a couple of books about that. Read about Judy Copeland. She was a nice gal. She's really in the way we were, the Barbara Streisand character who's out in the street, you know, Arthur Lorenz who has, I use Arthur. I use Arthur. Arthur knew everything. Arthur also was a big lefty. I use Arthur. He Arthur Lorenz in a book called, that's his autobiography original story about, no one becomes an informer at the moment he informs. He's always been an informer. He's just waiting for the opportunity. Arthur knew all these people in the village. Anyway, Canada Lee, his name was just mentioned because EFB, I had a file on him. They had a file on everybody. They probably have a file on you. I'm sure they have a file on me. I used to go to Cuba before it was fashionable. I'm sure. More stories. They audited my income tax every year. I went. I didn't get it until later. I thought, why aren't they auditing? I don't even have an income. America. Anyway, this is Eleanor when it was okay to talk to Canada Lee, but after his name was mentioned, and that's about all it took, that's why they wanted the names. Once they got your name, you were screwed. And he was screwed in the entertainment business. But at least he made a lifeboat, and later on he made Alan Paton's cry the beloved country, which I think was either English or South African production. Oh, well. Oh, look at that. Guess who that is? Come on, guys. Guess who that is? It's Jay Edgar. Yeah. Yeah. If you get an FBI file, they're full of goodies. This is probably from Angie's file. I got Angela Colomars' FBI file from a nice young woman who'd done a dissertation on the Red Scare comparing male and female experiences, which was kind of interesting, but she never got it published, but at least she's got a job teaching, which is good and bad. Let's see what... Oh, I can't go and read what Jay Edgar said. Well, I'll give you a general idea. This is about Angie because Angie lied. There's a chapter in here, I think. There's a chapter in here called... Hello. Hello. There's a chapter in here called the Big Lie. And the Big Lie, which Angie told on The Witness Stand, and many other witnesses did the same, was that she was not paid. That she had done this out of patriotic duty and sacrifice. And that, of course, made it better, because if all the people on The Witness Stand were being paid to say whatever they were being paid to say, that didn't work so well. The only person at the 1949 Smith Act trial who confessed to being paid was this nice black guy who had worked in Detroit, Detroit, like everybody else. Remember Detroit? Would you like a line from... This is in the book, too, but I'll give you a line from one of the witnesses from the prosecution to show how dangerous things were getting. They said the Russians, this is a quote, the Russians would come down through Alaska across Canada and could even destroy Detroit. My comment is it didn't take the Russian to destroy Detroit, did it? How sad. Anyway, this is Hoover saying, she lied on The Witness Stand, what a dope. And it was not a good idea because that means she committed perjury. And if the defense lawyers had known that, they perhaps could have taken some action, but of course the defense lawyers didn't know and didn't have FBI files to look at. My first line in this book is, this book would not have been possible without the Freedom of Information Act, which as we know is a bit limited, but at least it's something 1967. So they didn't know, they didn't know she lied and all the rest of them lied. So this nice black guy from somewhere working in the defense industries, wars make big money, okay? So we really don't need to have another one, do we? But they make big money. If you read this and look at the statistics of what happens to the American economy when World War II ends, the disappearance of jobs, industries, and the continuing disappearance of jobs and industries, where did they all go? You don't know? No, I'm sorry. Mexico? Yeah, we have a whole thing with Mexico too. We don't want the Mexicans, but we love tacos and quesadillas, and we send all our jobs there. It's very strange, don't you think? Okay, well, this is J. Edgar saying, she lied on the witness, Dan, what a knit wit. She's very, getting very difficult. We're gonna have to get rid of her. Is that what it says? You who can read it? Yeah, yeah. Well, if people that were trying to hire as informants find out we're not paying, they might not want to work for us. And this is in the book somewhere. Ultimately, J. Edgar called for Angie's IRS, you know, her, whatever they call it, income tax, and it turned out she hadn't paid any. She hadn't paid any income tax, so J. Edgar wrote another memo and said, the informants have to pay tax on their income as informants. I doubt that went over big. Poor J. Edgar. It's a hard business to be in, but he loved it. He stayed right to the end. Okay, these cute people are the defense lawyers at the 1949 Smith Act trial. Some of you may have heard of Maurice Iserman. He wrote a book called, Whose Side Were You On, dot, dot during World War II. Whose Side Were You On, which was an old thing. But he came from an old lefty family, that was his uncle there on the left. Little Harry's statue, the short guy, was disbarred for working as a defense lawyer for the communist. George Crockett, the black guy, imagine having, this is 1949. You get to understand how radical it is in 1949 to include people of color in your, the hierarchy of your organization. It was not done anywhere else. And believe me, the people of color knew, they know, they remember, and it makes a difference. Anyway, that's George Crockett. He went to, all these people pictured here at the end of the trial were declared by the judge to be in contempt of court, because he didn't like the way they carried on. I've read the effing trial. It's two million words, 20 something volumes, it's incredible. So it was at the time the longest criminal trial in American history from January to October of 1949. It took a long time. He didn't like the way they conducted their business. So at the end of the trial, after the convictions, he put them in jail. Up to six months, they all went to jail. The only one who got 30 days is the cute guy in the middle with the glasses, who was with the National Lawyers Association. So I guess they figured he was, you know, sort of immune, everybody else. And there's another guy who's not, not pictured here, Gladstein, who was from San Fran, who was very big with the dock workers and defended Harry Bridges. If you remember the San Francisco dock workers, Harry Bridges was an Australian native, but a big organizer, a labor organizer, and of course they wanted to deport him. There's nothing new under the sun. The same things went on, deportations, whatever. Get rid of the people who are causing the trouble. All these are the lawyers. So they put a needless to say for the next time that they were going to put the communist on trial, there was some difficulty finding lawyers because nobody wanted to end up in jail. Oh, here's the judge. What a guy. Harold Medina, or as Eleanor Roosevelt says on her tape, Medina, which we can interpret as Hispanic pronunciation was not fashionable yet. Harold Medina Medina was the judge, and he was quite a guy. If you want to read the trial transcript, what a guy he was. He had been teaching journalism at Columbia University. One of his students was Paul Robeson before he wised up and started singing Old Man River. But he had never conducted a major trial. He was appointed to the federal bench by Harry Truman, and this was his first major trial. Appointments to the federal bench are very important. Keep your eye on that one as we proceed into, you know, the next couple of years because Judge Medina Medina sat on the federal bench until he was 92 years old. He died at 102. The people he put in prison didn't do quite so well. You'd have to read the book to see what Medina Medina did. Oh, like I said, the strength of the American Left was impossible for us to calculate. You might recognize the front of the Foley Square courthouse because you watch law and order reruns. This is part of the crowd, very large crowds gathered to protest the trial of the Communist Party leadership. And these are the cops who came out with the horses. But at least they weren't carrying, you know how they do now, carrying automatic weapons and dressed in body armor and helmets. They just kind of look like normal people on horses. We've come a long way. Anyway, this is a demo in 49 outside the courthouse. Law and order. Oh, dear. Here's another witness, Louis Boudince. He used to be a Communist, too. He worked for the Daily Worker. I don't know what he did. Maybe swept the floor. Anyway, he worked for the Daily Worker. Then he, if you'll pardon the expression, found religion again through Cardinal Spellman. They got to be big buddies. And he testified that everything the Communist, he testified at the trial, everything the Communist said was a lie because they used Esopian language. I hope it says that in the bottom. Esopian language. I assume that comes from Esop's fables, but supposedly Lenine, Vladimir, him, used the phrase that they were disguising their language to avoid the czarist, you know, those people, censorship. So Louis felt the same way. The Communist just lied all the time. Very interesting his testimony of the trial. He made something like between testifying, because most of these people, 90% of them testified not only at this trial, but at other trials and at committee hearings. They were continually paid. He made something. He also wrote a book. Made something in the neighborhood of a million dollars. And she only made in the neighborhood of about 100,000. Oh, that's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you know, inflation calculator. Here's another little guy. I got to look at his name. How could I forget? Herb Philbrick from Boston. He also testified. This is a guy I led three lives. It was a TV series that ran for several years on major TV channels. And everybody believed it. Supposedly it was the favorite TV program of what's his name, who supposedly shot JFK. That tends to be, you know, a bit of a, what was his name? Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh, Lee Harvey Oswald, yeah. I led three lives with supposedly Lee Harvey Oswald's favorite TV program. Anyway, he got on the stand and said all sorts of things. And the party people said who the hell, because they didn't know who these people were. They didn't know who Angie was. Angie was in the party, you know, busy, turning in names and taking photographs of people. Photographs were even more better than, more better than names because you could change your name. So they called up Boston and said, who is this Philbrick guy? And they said, oh, he always seemed like a nice guy. He was always asking to use his Mimeograph machine. That's all they knew about Herb. Herb said he didn't take any money either, but he did. I'll read the book. Oh my, look who's there. Who's there for 20 cents going what? Paul Robson, yeah, and? And the boys, yeah, I wonder what they're doing. Oh, they're attending a communist sponsored peace conference. I don't know why only the communists would want peace. Seems to me strange. Seems strange to you that peace would be a communist thing as opposed to maybe we would want peace too. That was a bad thing to want peace. However, there they are. Paul Robson appeared as a witness for the defense at this trial. The way it was set up, any question he was asked, was objected to by the prosecution, backed up by Harold Medina Medina. And so finally they just dismissed Paul. But it was an act of heroism to appear as a defense witness for the American Communist Party at this trial. And of course Robson paid a big price. WB, they put him on trial a few years after this as a foreign agent. They were going to put him on trial, but Albert Einstein said he was going to appear as a character witness for Dr. Du Bois, and they canceled everything. No trial, no indictment, no nothing. He moved to Africa, but at age 80 he joined the American Communist Party, which he'd never done before. He was a founder of the NAACP. What a world. We don't know much, do we? They didn't cover that in your history class? Sometimes I wonder. I think at my history class they started in 1776 and ended about 1812. I don't really remember much else. And no pictures. Okay. This is another witness for the defense at the trial. His name was Stretch Johnson. Stretch used to be a dancer at the Cotton Club, but he's obviously, and then he became an organizer for the Communist Party, and then he became a teacher of sociology and natural progression. Now he's organizing a demo against, wow, lynching. We were still lynching people into the 60s, and they were certainly lynched a lot of people after they came home from World War II because they thought, well, if we defeated fascism in Europe, we should defeat fascism at home, but it didn't work out that way. There's some stuff in here about that. There's a chapter in here called the Necroproblem. That's what it was called. You'll enjoy it. Anyway, that stretch of the demo up in Harlem against lynching, there was legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress several times at the start of the 20th century to outlaw lynching. It was never passed. I guess we liked lynching. Probably still do. I wrote a book. It's not bad. Not as good as mine, but it's not bad. Scotty Martel, he did work for the L.A., is it Times? Is that what it's called in L.A.? But they had a big cutback, so I don't know what he's doing now, selling scarves at Macy's or working his Starbucks. But he did a couple of books. He did a couple of books. Well, Scotty. He used the mug shots of the defendants for the cover, and he spent a lot of time talking about how he, Scott, was not a communist, which I figured was, you know, not necessary, or nobody cares whether he's a communist or not. He got into this because of Carl Winter, who was the Michigan head of the Communist Party, and Scotty worked for a long time for the newspaper, whatever it's called, in Detroit, if they still have a newspaper in Detroit. So he knew Carl Winter's family. That's how he got into this. It is impossible to calculate also girls and boys, ladies and gentlemen, the importance of the Midwest in all this, the industries of the Midwest, how important they were organized by the communists or whoever. They had labor unions. They had industries. They made cars. They made ball bearings. Did you see on the front page in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago? They made the front page. They closed a ball bearing. Ball bearings aren't very romantic or exciting, but at least they, you know, do things. They closed the factory in Indianapolis. Who do we know from Indiana? Yeah, him. They closed the factory in Indianapolis they were interviewing the people who had worked there for 30, 40, whatever and sending it to Mexico. Without this, they won't make bigger and better ball bearings. It is impossible. If you read this, you kind of get the idea of how important the Midwest and its industries were at this time. And there were lots of commies. That made it very dangerous, but it was also a good place to work. All kind of people came from everywhere to work in these industries in Toledo and Cleveland, Detroit. There on the Great Lakes where nobody much goes anymore, I think. Oh, well, anyway, that's Scott's book and you buy that too. Why not? Or just get it out of the library. Oh, speaking of, those are some contemporary shots when I did some other thing about Detroit. So a few contemporary shots from Detroit. A friend of mine visited there, an economist and was taken around and shown the abandoned mint. Uh-huh. Yeah, it looks kind of barren, doesn't it? Oh, yes. Well, you ought to know about these places. Oh, that was a few years ago. These are obviously places where they produce things during World War II, Detroit was known as the arsenal of democracy. Things were made, money was made. Oh, well. And the Russians didn't invade, after all. They went to Brighton Beach instead. Oh, now, once they got, they did take the 1949 convictions to the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court by a fairly reasonable margin turned them down so everybody went to prison. As soon as the Supreme Court made that decision in 1951, they picked up these people. This is called the second tier, the second New York trial. Let's see what names we got. Anybody know Elizabeth Gurley Flynn? Maybe, yeah, right? Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Question from Alexander Bittleman. V.J. Jerome. His son is Fred. Fred has two books on Albert Einstein as a political thinker. And if you saw the, did you see the Einstein series on Einstein, the sexy Einstein? They were, they must have run that out of here. They ran it in New York. Good God, the same country. You see a series on Einstein? No. Einstein said, you know, maybe you can get it on one of those things you get it on. The sexy Einstein. There was so much, you know, carrying on. You wondered when Einstein had time to do his mathematic things. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is a very good book about her. So, you know, you could find it. Anyway, she was, by that time, she was like 60 years old. She was a big organizer on the west coast of the IWW. You know, Michael Hellquist, is he here? Did Michael come? Oh my God, is that you? Hi, Michael. Michael Hellquist, very important book about Marie-Equie. Has everybody bought a copy? They make great Christmas, make great Christmas gifts. What's the rest of the title? You hear that? Radical Politics and Outlaw Passion. She was sort of a girlfriend, or vice versa. The Communist Party was always worried about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, whether or not she might be a lesbian. But since she'd been in the business a long time, and was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union and had all sorts of credentials, they decided they wouldn't dig too deeply. Anyway, for her trouble at age 60, she got to go to prison. Of course. What's the name of that prison in Virginia? Where they sent, what's her name too? What's the name of it? Oh, come on, help. Anyway, sent her to prison, West Virginia. She was in prison for a while. Alderson, that's where they sent the girls. I'm sure it was just scenic and a treat for one and all. Claudia Jones was there for a little while, the black gal there. She was originally from Trinidad, came to New York as a small child, was active in the American Communist Party, what do you know? And they took, she was in Alderson too, but not for very long. I think she got sick. I wonder why, of course, he would get sick in prison. And they were going to deport her back to Trinidad, but she chose Britain instead. So she was deported, that's what they do if they don't like you. So they deported her and there's a book about her to call something like Left of Karl Marx because she got herself buried in the cemetery with Karl Marx to his left. I forget the woman's name, do you know her name? She teaches up in Cornell, Black Studies, I've heard her speak. It's kind of a strange book, but hey, it's about Claudia Jones, so what do we care? Buy a copy, buy several copies. And then there's Fred Jerome's father, V.J. Jerome, the cultural commissar of the American Communist Party who got to save a small man who wrote poetry and essays and got to spend five years in prison in Louisburg in Pennsylvania according to his son Fred. He spent most of his time cleaning toilets. It was the same prison where Altra has spent a couple of years. Well, that's the second tier. What else can they do, right? Anyway, all these people went to prison. Now, let's talk a little about the photo league. I mentioned that, that was Angie's biggest, that was her first assignment. She was employed by the FBI certainly because she was in the photo league because she wanted to be a photographer. She thought she was Margaret Bork-White. Remember Margaret Bork-White? Well, she thought, and she thought she was. But she wasn't, of course. But the FBI liked her photography because she took pictures of the communist and labor union people and passed them on to the FBI. It's not an uncommon thing. I cite in here some guy who was part of Martin Luther King's circle who while being part of Martin Luther King's circle was also taking pictures and giving them to the FBI and Memphis. So they say. Okay, so that's Angie with a guy who Angie loved to associate with important people. And this guy was photo editor or something for the New York Times. And this is at a photo league Christmas party. I guess that's what the mistletoe means unless they had mistletoe out all the time. And I would know about those photographers. I don't know what to say about Angie. That's Angie trying to look interesting. Oh, that picture was by George Gilbert who was an old photo leaguer. I talk about his daughter's generosity in here. George Gilbert left a lot of important photographs and his daughter lets anybody who wants to use them for free. It's a nice gal. Not everybody is quite so generous. This is, as they said, the American who came from Paris. I think we'll see Emma. What's her first name? Beatrice, Beatrice, come on. Abbott. Bernice. Bernice. Yeah, because she was Bernice and then she called herself Bernice or something when she got to France. Where is she from? Ohio or somewhere? All kind of strange people came out of the Midwest and became amazing. That's amazing. So she got the hell out of there and she went to Paris. She was in Paris in the 1920s. Things got kind of hot in the 1930s. So she came back to New York. They did a book called Changing New York. She was the photographer and her girlfriend. What's her name? McCausland Nancy, I think, wrote the text for it. This is obviously in Washington Square where according to Gloria Norton, who took the picture, Gloria Norton was in the photo league. She is not a famous photographer, but she was a big time lefty and photographer and also lets you use her stuff whenever you want to. She's been for years in Wellfleet up near P-town. A lot of people, when they had to leave New York and a lot of people did have to leave New York, so they fled. Otherwise they would have been pulled in by committees and whatever or put on trial and had to name names. So they fled. Gloria and her group fled to P-town where artists could take refuge anyway. So she gave me this picture. This is Bernice Sabbath and taking the photo league students around to show them how to take pictures of real life. Another big photo. Bernice Sabbath and her girlfriend were on the board of the photo league from the beginning and she taught at the new school. When the new school was really the new school which was another innovation of the 1930s. Wow. This is a photo by Weegee. It was the Arthur Fellig who was also involved with the photo league. They had important people. This is from a museum of modern art thing. It's called something like drag queen descending from a, you know, whatever, police band. It was kind of cute. It was a happy drag queen, right? As they say, people did perhaps did not suffer quite so much before Stonewall as we think they did. Okay. What was wrong with the photo league? Among other things besides taking pictures of poor people and poor black people, they also advertised in the Daily Worker. Oops. This is from the FBI file of the day of the photo league. Okay. The FBI spent a lot of time clipping salacious material from the Daily Worker and any other place they could find to prove that the Russians were coming. Oh, this is Walter Winchel's note to Hoover. Walter Winchel wants Hoover wanted to know who were the dangerous photographers. So Walter Winchel gave him his opinion. Want the names of the dangerous photographers? He wanted to know who the dangerous photographers were because the media, as we know, is dangerous. And when they're too dangerous, what do you do? Well, they wanted to put Amy Goodman in jail for taking pictures up at Standing Rock. Remember that one? She escaped somehow. So, but they wanted to put her in jail for taking pictures. As I say in here, let me share with you this extraordinary statement. If it becomes apparent to anyone upon reading this book that jailing leftist keeping people from taking photographs, breaking up labor unions and promoting racial inequality are somehow related, it will have all been worth it. Unfortunately, in our world, they are related. Okay, so that's Walter. Walter Winchel was good buddies with Hoover and he was also a big supporter of Angie. Whoopie, imagine that. He made very helpful statements for Angie on several occasions and gets this picture in our book. Oh, things Angie did. What you did is a photographer for the FBI. This was among her papers, just like, you know, casual stuff. This is a list of people and descriptions of their houses. Most of these people are in Croton on Hudson, which is where Louise Bryant, and what's his name, ten days that shook the world, John Reed. They lived in Croton for a while. They also lived up on the Cape for a while. They're not in this, they're long gone. But these are contemporary people from Croton and elsewhere who are big lefties, some of them active communists, like Joe North, I think his name's up there. Grace Hutchins and what's her name? Her girlfriend, who were notorious lesbians in the party but nobody ever said anything, because what do you... Anna Rochester? Yes, Anna Rochester, Grace Hutchins. Grace Hutchins, as I recall, had previously been a missionary in China. But they were big advocates for things like, you know, national health and all that. Getting rid of child labor, you know, all kind of dangerous things. Anyway, Angie was sent to photograph their houses. That's what this is about. And she saved this. This is what, this is the kind of photography she did for the FBI. So in case they had to go pick them up and put them in jail, they'd get the right house. Here's some more. Anybody you know? He edited the new masses. That was his little journal. I knew his daughter, Nora. Still no Nora, I guess. She's just not here today. This is the Photo League. We're still talking about the Photo League and what you did with photography to help out the FBI. This is a list of subversive fascist communists, whatever they called it. This is the subversive list that the attorney general in 1947 put out. The Photo League made the list, as you can see under P for photo. And notice the others that made the list. Anything you know? Oh, the Ku Klux Klan, the Photo League. But there are other things that are apparently not quite so dangerous. Sounds dangerous to me. The Ohio School of Social Sciences? Oh, that's dangerous because were there a lot of Jews in the Communist Party? Yeah. Yeah. When the Jews hit the beaches, they noticed immediately one or two things that the outsiders here were not quite the outsiders in Europe. They were people of different colors, so they got together with them, made for an interesting get together. Let me see what else. They're a lot of fun things. Don't go away. The Communist practically invented continuing education because they had all these schools where the older crowd could go and continue their education. There's a book called Dorothy Healy Remembers. Dorothy Healy was one of the LA commies. And that's a whole other story. But anyway, it's fun books, a great book where she says that during her trial, the prosecution attorney was talking about these schools. There was one in San Francisco called the San Francisco Labor School or something like that. There are at least 10 or 12 dissertations in here. If anybody is thinking about writing one or you could write an essay for your home economics class or whatever the, you know. There's lots of stuff to be looked into. Anyway, what was I saying? Hi, Douglas. Oh, is it time to stop? All right. Sid Grossman of the photo league. And she said he had recruited her into the Communist Party, which was a lie. As I said, he never worked again in New York and retreated to the Cape and died five years later. Oops, question. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, she had Fred Woltman, the newspaperman. She had Ken Bierle, Kenneth Bierle, to whom she dedicates, not this book, but her book, who was an FBI, her FBI recruiter. She had a long-term affair with Kenneth Bierle's sister-in-law, so they were sort of family. And if Ken Bierle had any advice, I'm sure she would have taken it. No, as far as a legal, illegal type person. No. What, darling? She definitely did not want them to know. That's right. That's right. No, they did not. No one really knew. There were a couple of people I talked to in P-town recently who said that, yeah, they knew about Angie because she had reported some other lesbians who used to go to commie meetings in New York City, because a lot of people went to commie meetings, and she would do that. And so they knew, but it was not widely circulated now. And she was there at the same time as Sid Grossman, but I don't think they got together much. I forget what that is. Oh, that says they're closing down. This is the FBI report. Close down the photo league. Yippee, they're out of business. It was very sad for the photo league. It was a very important organization. And I thought you'd appreciate this one if you're into FBI files frequently. This is what they look like. I think this was one about Angie back in 1950 where she had wanted something from them that they didn't want to do, so they just blacked all that out. I think that's what it is anyway. But anyway, frequently FBI files look like this. So the Freedom of Information Act is, shall we say, limited. I'm sorry, I'll stop now. Questions? Complaints? What about it? Where are the Lesbianhurstry archives? Found the super secret file. Oh, well, this was all her papers because, well, fortunately, it's good to have archives, okay? The women who were her executrixes, executrix, Melva Wade, who taught for 100 years and something. I don't know what she taught. She probably didn't know either. She appeared nice woman. They moved upstate, you know. Angie's buried upstate. Melva and Mary, her girlfriend, buried Angie up there under a tombstone that said she was a good guy. But Melva, the first thing Melva told me about Angie was, she lied a lot. The first line said, hello, how do you do? Oh, yeah, Angie, she lied a lot. Anyway, yes, they didn't know what to do. They found this file cabinet, you know, like four drawers full of stuff, papers, newspaper clippings. These things, these pictures that I have are copied from the newspaper clippings that are, you know, disintegrating. They need to do something, but they have a limited staff. In fact, they have no staff. They're all volunteers. But anyway, so they had to do something with it. They knew it was important. They didn't know exactly how much or what, but they brought it to Joan Nestle at that time on West 92nd Street in her house. That's where the archives were. They brought it to Joan. Oh, we found this. So Joan, of course, knew what it was because she's a very political person. So she knew what it was. So she cataloged it and it's there. And she told me that it was there. Otherwise, I would not have known. So there. It's hard to make gay history, huh? You have to really snoop around. Other questions, complaints. They're there. They're there in little file folders. If you're coming, let me know. Now they're in Brooklyn. Okay? The last guy who went there, a friend of mine who teaches in Nottingham University. She says this is all very elitist, but it's the only job he could get in humanities. So he's teaching there. Nobody hires anybody in humanities in this country. You aware of that? Thank you. So anyway, he went there to look at the stuff and he says that the, you know, they got to do something. You got to photocopy it or do something. But it's there. It's there. Oh, we're going to be locked in the library. What, honey? She did it for the money. She did it for the money. Now, there were sweet people that I knew in the Communist Party like Annette Rubinstein who thought maybe she was, you know, coerced. She wasn't coerced. And there were lots of, the FB, anybody who would perform an, who would be an informer, they'd do it. Anybody who would do it, they'd pay them in care. In fact, they didn't mind if they were gay or lesbian because they didn't have any quote, and this is in here somewhere. They didn't have any family attachments. So if anything happened to him, nobody would care. Yippee. And as far as J. Edgar being homophobic, of course he had his boyfriend, what's his name? Clyde Tolson. And they lived happily ever after. I'm sorry I talk so much. Anything else? Give them hell, San Francisco. Give them hell.