Partner Norman Mann
Queer Places:
Weizmann Institute of Science, Herzl St 234, Rehovot, 76100, Israel
Stanley Posthorn (December 24, 1915 - October 31, 2009) was a prominent
public relations and marketing executive at Time Inc. who established a
marketing presence for Fortune Magazine and was responsible for the innovative
celebrity marketing campaigns at the then newly founded People Magazine that
featured artists, politicians and celebrities such as
Andy Warhol, Paul
Newman, Joe Namath, Dinah Shore and many, many others. His efforts were
largely responsible for People achieving the premier position in celebrity
reporting that it still commands today. He died at the age 93 following a
protracted illness according to his nephew Alan Dine.
Posty, as he was
to become known to his close friends, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served
with honor for over four years with the military, rising to the rank of
captain. While serving in the conflict in France, he received a medal for
bravery in action. After the war, Posty moved to New York and through his love
of the theater and the fine arts he befriended artists such as Andy Warhol,
Joe Brainard, Jim Dine, Ellsworth Kelly Rex Lau, Diane Mayo and Esteban
Vicente, whose early work he collected. His art collection also included the
works of Frank Stella, Robert Youngblood, Robert Rauschenberg and others. Over
the years, he donated art works from his collection to numerous museums
including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and the Parrish
Art Museum in Southampton. His Joe Brainard collection, donated to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, was publicly shown in 2008.
In addition to
his volunteer leadership and philanthropy in the art world, Stanley actively
supported the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he provided gifts
in the memory of his partner Norman Mann, and where his estate will create the
Stanley Posthorn-Norman Mann Discovery Endowment Fund to support cutting edge
research in perpetuity. His love for "Ojay" a Lakeland terrier, prompted him
to include various animal shelters as major beneficiaries of his estate. Posty
was also a founding member of the East End Gay Organization (EEGO) which
fought back attempts to restrict Gays and Lesbians from congregating at Fowler
Beach in Southampton.
Posty will be remembered for his innovative and
witty mind, for his readiness to share his personal views and opinions, his
knowledge and experience in art and theater and for living a life that knew no
boundaries.
Stanley Posthorn was twenty-six in 1941; he enlisted eight months before
the bombing of Pearl Harbor. "I wanted to go in," said Posthorn, who grew up
in Cincinnati and settled in Manhattan when the war was over. "You had real
villains, and if you were Jewish, they were sizable villains. And you had
heroes. Roosevelt was a great man. And Churchill was a great man. Also, it was
the experience of my generation. And I wanted to get away from home. It was a
big deal to get away: a big adventure.
"I remember a man who did get
out while I was still in basic training," Posthorn continued. "A man from
Cincinnati, who got out based on family need. He said, `Sure I want to avenge
Pearl Harbor.' But he wanted out. He was not gay; he was a straight man who
was a coward, who wanted to make money, and who didn't want to be in the army.
I thought he was awful." Posthorn had been in love with a man named Alan
for four years before he went into the army: "There was no one ever more
beautiful in my whole life. Ever! I always felt very lucky to have attracted
that man. He was Nijinsky and I was Diaghilev. I was very lucky to have that
leaper." After Posthorn enlisted, he and Alan got together one more time when
Posthorn came home to Cincinnati for a twelve-day leave.
"We spent
three days in a hotel room-a rather seedy hotel-and I couldn't leave because
if I were seen, I would be in terrible trouble with my folks, who didn't know
I was home yet. So I stayed in there with my clothes off for three days, and
he'd go down and sneak a sandwich. It was just heaven! It was like being
enslaved to this thing we were doing constantly. It was a total cure.
"The
war was on now: it was 1942. I think there was a radio in the room, but I
don't think we listened. We had so much to talk about. We were very
idealistic. You know, it was Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart
time-Casablanca. We're going off, and we might never see each other again."
Two years later Alan was posted to
Iceland and he sent Posthorn a Dear John letter. "I was in France," said
Posthorn. "Alan loved this person, and what was he going to do? The man didn't
even know about it. I was so hurt. You know, saving myself! My eggs were all
in his basket. I didn't write him for a long time, but I kept getting letters.
And then I got sick and I wrote him. And I just wished him luck. I said, `I
can't talk to you. I just can't!' All I wanted to do was to go back to big Al.
And now I had nothing to go back to."
Posthorn became a captain by the
end of the war, but unlike some other veterans he never felt pride in his
success as a gay man in the army. "Pride? No. There was fear, uncertainty;
also the feeling of not being quite fit for what you were doing. You're
softer; you didn't have the macho. I felt in danger. I felt in jeopardy. I
always felt vulnerable, that somebody might catch up with me. I thought I was
passing: softly passing. I couldn't drill as well as anyone else, I wasn't as
good on the athletic field or in the morning exercises. I could do other
things. I excelled where I could excel. Here's a smart Jew-but he can't down
the beers in the canteen, you know. I was considered snobbish-which I didn't
really want to be. I didn't play craps; I didn't get into big poker games; and
I didn't go out and fall down drunk. I felt I really didn't belong there in
the army because I didn't have the muscles and I didn't have the mind-set for
it. And I think maybe that's why I worked so hard-to stay with it, to hang
in." Those who got in generally fell into one of two categories: either they
had long ago learned to mask their sexual identity in civilian life, or they
were too young to have realized that they were gay. And despite the elaborate
new regulations developed to discriminate against gays in the army, the only
obstacle many of them encountered at the induction center was the "Do you like
girls?" question. George Buse remembered, "One of the worst of the stereotypes
was the lie that all homosexuals are effeminate-and you're not really a man,
you're more like a girl. So a lot of us at that time who were gay had to prove
our manhood. So I joined the toughest, most masculine military organization in
the country -and that was the Marine Corps. `The Marine Corps builds men.
Of the eighteen million men examined for military service, fewer than five
thousand were excluded because of their sexual orientation. No records were
kept on the exclusion of lesbians. Once inside, many gay soldiers were
astonished to discover how common their orientation was. Charles Rowland's
first assignment was in the induction station at Fort Snelling, which was
"instantly called the seduction station," he said. "I found that all of the
people I had known in the gay bars in Minneapolis-St. Paul were all officers
who were running this `seduction station.' Recruits would be lined up by the
thousands every morning outside our windows. All of us would rush to the
windows and express great sorrow that all these beautiful boys were going to
be killed or maimed or something in the war."
Posthorn had met only one
other gay man (besides Alan) during his first four years in the army. But then
he visited Seventh Army Headquarters in Deauville, France, in 1945. "I never
saw so many gays in my life as that weekend in Deauville," he recalled. "When
I went to the theater, they were yoo-hooing and waving. It was incredible! A
flaming crew of gays running that outfit." But he did not identify with them
at all; their flamboyance made him uneasy. "I resented them. I did not want to
be considered their equal. I'd been in the field. They'd been living a very
soft life, probably with boas in their closet.
"On my way back I
stopped to see Liechtenstein. I went to the movies and I met a beautiful
soldier, who really didn't know I was after him. But we went for a walk in
this gorgeous park. And I scored. Yeah. I got even with Alan again."
Posthorn's first gay experience with a stranger in uniform had taken place
earlier when he was posted in California. "I was a second lieutenant and I
took a four-day pass by myself to get laid. I went to Carmel, California. So
lovely. And there was a whole crew of guys there from the cavalry. Which never
went overseas because there was no need for a cavalry. But they looked great:
jodhpurs and the boots and the whole thing. And there was one who eyed me and
I eyed him, and he said he had a room.
"When we got there, he said he
had to have ten dollars. I said, `Oh?' He said, `Well, I have a date tonight
with a girl, so give me ten bucks. Okay?' And I said, `All right'-because he
was very attractive. And then he said, `I'm not taking my boots off.' And I
felt really cheap. He just lowered his trousers. And it was not mutual at all.
I just did it and I hated it. And I had to wash afterward, and he said, `Hey,
if you want to go again, I'll get undressed for fourteen.' And I said, `Not
for two dollars.' And I left. I felt very demeaned. And I never paid again.
Ever."
[...]
On leave in Paris, Stanley Posthorn was astonished when he
found himself inside the Boeuf sur le Toit: "It was a great gay nightclub.
Beef on the roof! You walked in, and suddenly you realized the size of
homosexuality-the total global reach of it! There were hundreds of guys from
all over the world in all kinds of uniforms: there were free Poles dancing
with American soldiers; there were Scotsmen dancing with Algerians; there were
Free French; there were Russians. It was like a U.N. of gays. It was just
incredible. I mean there were men dancing with each other! I had never seen
that before in my life! There was lots of singing at the bar, and lots of arms
around each other's shoulders. For me, it was sort of like a V-E Day for
gays-before the real V-E Day."
[...]
Stanley Posthorn met a man who had
been hospitalized for six months because he had "gone down" on a private-"and
it was very important to him to get the boy off. The boy was straight, very
beautiful, and very amenable to being seduced. I don't think he felt remorse
about what he had done. They decided not to court-martial" the man who had
seduced the private. "But he got a dishonorable discharge." All those who
received a dishonorable discharge paid a huge price when the war was over,
because they were automatically denied the lavish benefits of the GI Bill,
which financed the education and subsidized the mortgages of millions of other
veterans. However, at least in the case of Posthorn's friend in the hospital,
his dishonorable discharge had no effect at all on his employment prospects.
"Nobody asked to see it," said Posthorn, who received an honorable discharge.
"Nobody asked him and nobody ever asked me. But it was an ugly thing to have
done to you."
My published books:
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-
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE6DE143AF93AA15752C1A96F9C8B63
- Charles Kaiser. The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America. Kindle Edition.