Queer Places:
240 Broad St, Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire
388 State St, Portsmouth, NH
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
133 E. 40th St, NYC
2100 Jackson St, San Francisco, CA 94115
Stanley Tracey Gilkey (August 17, 1900 - November 3, 1979) was a Broadway producer. Gilkey was executive producer for Guthrie McClintic for 35 years. After McClintic's death, Gilkey became general manager for Robert Whitehead. He was involved in the Harvard Secret Court of 1920.
Stanley Tracey Gilkey was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of Samuel Gilkey and Jeane C. Gilkey. Gilkey graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Harvard University and was involved in the homosexual purge known as the Secret Court of 1920. Keith Smerage gave the court the names of Stanley Gilkey and 8 other men he thought were gay but withheld the names of others. A sophomore from New Hampshire and the son of a Congregational minister, was probably an active homosexual, but he successfully lied to the court about his associates and judgments. The court expelled him for associating too closely with Ernest Weeks Roberts, for demonstrating an interest in the subject of homosexuality, and for claiming the ability to recognize homosexuals. He admitted reading works by Havelock Ellis, but also Freud and Jung's work about homosexual attraction. He explained that his interest in homosexuality was just part of his more general interest in criminology.
After two weeks of testimony, the court condemned fourteen men including seven current undergraduates and four men without any Harvard affiliation. Not only were the Harvard men expelled, they were ordered to leave immediately and then banished from Cambridge. All the students' families were sent letters telling them about why their sons were expelled from Harvard while the university's alumni office was instructed not to respond to any request regarding the expelled men without consulting the expulsion record. These men were marked for life.
Greenough thought that Nathaniel Wollf, Kenneth Day, Stanley Gilkey, and Joseph Lumbard should be readmitted but was overruled by President Lowell. Though expelled, the court had no evidence Gilkey had participated in homosexual activity. His request to be readmitted was granted in 1921 and he graduated in 1923. Gilkey became a theatre producer for Martha Graham, Elia Kazan, and others. The first general manager of the theatre at Lincoln Center, he was one of the few Harvard men in the scandal who never married.
After College, Gilkey lived in Paris for two years, then returned to the United States, where he produced ten Broadway shows over 20 years. With Gertrude Macy, Gilkey produced two Broadway revues, “One for the Money” and “Two for the Show,” which opened in the early 1940's. With Barbara Payne, in 1945, Gilkey produced “Three to Make Ready,” which starred Ray Bolger. His other productions included “The Deep Mrs. Sykes” and “John Murray Anderson's Almanac.”
During the 1960's, Gilkey was general manager for Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead, producers of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center for its first two seasons. Gilkey retired in 1969 and moved to California where he lived in a penthouse apartment on Jackson Street.
There he made many friends, Dorothy Fay, Ann Miller, Ina Clare, his onetime colleague from New York. Gilkey's home away from home was the Olympic Club. Arriving around 10:30 in the morning, he would sun bathe in the solarium. Get a steam and a swim, the turn topside for two vodka martinis before lunch. He knew everybody at the Olympic Club, the cops and firemen, the political pundits and turfsters.
He died on November 3, 1979, at the Pacifica Convalescent Home in Pacifica, Calif. He was 79 years old.
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