Partner Ted Strong
Queer Places:
150 E 54th St, New York, NY 10022
Westview Cemetery
Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, USA
Earl
Blackwell (May 3, 1909 - March 1, 1995) was the founder of Celebrity Service,
which has tracked the comings and goings of celebrities since 1939.
After discovering the Cherry Grove’s beaches on a trip to New York City from
Hollywood, stage and screen actor Glen
Boles and his friend—and lover for a brief period—Earl Blackwell counted
themselves beneficiaries of the grove’s seclusion. Blackwell went on to form
the Art Project in Cherry Grove with Helen Ely in the late 1940s. Boles’s
acquaintances who visited the grove during the 1930s included
Noël Coward,
Christopher Isherwood, possibly
Thornton Wilder, and
W.H. Auden.
Samuel Earl Blackwell Jr was born on May 3, 1909, in Atlanta, the son of Samuel Earl Blackwell
(1883–1958) and
Carrie Lagomarsino (1887–1943), and graduated with a journalism degree from Olglethorpe Unversity. He became interested in celebrities as a teenager when he caddied for golfer Bobby Jones. Blackwell came from Southern gentry and mingled easily with the international jet set, using his social connections to raise money for the less fortunate, particularly children in need.
After a brief time in Hollywood, he moved to New York to stage his 1939 play, “Aries Is Rising,” at the John Golden Theater, starring
Constance Collier, but it closed after seven performances.
That same year he founded the Celebrity Service with a fellow writer,
Ted Strong. As it grew, the company published an International Celebrity Register, an annual Contact Book and the daily Celebrity Bulletin, which reported on people in the arts, business, education, politics, religion, science and sports. Blackwell, who later bought his partner out, sold the business in 1985, but remained active as chairman until his death.
He was an actor, known for The Marriage Bargain (1935), Toast of the Town (1948) and The Mike Douglas Show (1961).
1938 Press Photo Ted Strong Opens Celebrity Service in New York City
Blackwell also wrote two novels – “Crystal Clear” and “Skyrocket” – in collaboration with his companion of many years, the late fashion photographer Eugenia Sheppard.
In September 1949, the production of the Cherry Grove Follies of 1949 (Sketches and Lyrics by Ed Burke,
Dances by Vincent Morino, Book Directed by George Freedley, and “entire production under supervision of
Earl Blackwell,” was a smash hit, providing a Broadway staffed, Broadway styled show with original musical
sketches such as “Arthur Murray’s” (a comic take on the famous, national dance instructing school) and
“Saturday Night At Duffy’s” (with a chorus line of jitterbugging couples).
He was co-editor, with Cleveland Amory, of "Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables" (Harper, 1963). He also coordinated parties that mixed charity with celebrity and that drew much attention from the press. One such occasion was a 1967 international masked ball that was held in a 17th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice to aid artisans who had suffered losses in a flood the previous winter.
He was a director of the Broadway Foundation, and from 1957 to 1965 was director of the Mayor's Committee on Scholastic Achievement, raising money for college scholarships.
He died on March 1, 1995, at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City
of Parkinson’s disease. A Manhattan resident, he was 85 and also kept a home in Great Harbour Cay, the Bahamas. He had suffered a long illness, said Vine Phoenix, his assistant for 40 years.
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