The Sons Of Tennessee Williams
There’s certainly plenty of eye candy in the DVD release of "The Sons of Tennessee Williams". This 2010 documentary vividly captures gay life in New Orleans from the 1950s to the 2000s through the lens of Mardi Gras.
That day represented -- and, to a large extent, still represents -- the pinnacle of gay life in the Big Easy. But back in the day, it was especially important and singular, because it was the only day of the year when men could dress in drag and not be arrested.
If this sounds like not much, consider that that was one day more than men got nearly anywhere else. The men interviewed by director Tim Wolff are mostly elderly, which makes their stories urgent as well as fascinating.
All of them came from the city, surrounding suburban parishes, or farther afield in Louisiana. One man describes how much his Cajun ancestry affected him. He spoke French better than English (or at least more easily) when he started school. Another man honestly describes his father as a redneck and pretty much a racist.
Their coming-out stories -- or, rather, attempts at staying-in -- resemble other men of the post-war era throughout America. In New Orleans, they did have the benefit of the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter. A sort of Deep South Greenwich Village, the Quarter was a good deal more accepting toward "creative" and "sensitive" men, as anyone who has experienced Tennessee Williams’ works knows.
The men gathered at Dixie’s, whose eponymous owner was a one-woman band who insisted her "gentlemen callers" look like, well, gentlemen, wearing ties and suits even in the the city’s notoriously sweltering summers. Dixie’s appears to have been a haven from the otherwise-ubiquitous police harassment, which included entrapment of the grossest sort.
In the film’s most poignant and, to the contemporary viewer exasperating, moment, a man describes what had to have been the low point for the city’s always-large gay community. As a frat "prank," three students from Tulane University, long considered one of the South’s "Ivies," went to a gay bar where one man lured a man into an alley behind the cathedral in Jackson Square.
The three men beat this helpless victim so badly he died. In their trial, their lawyer offered the novel defense that a gay man’s head is thinner, so it cracked on reaching pavement. What’s even more outrageous is that judge and jury apparently bought the argument: The three men walked, despite the victim’s wallet having been found in their possession.
If they weren’t beaten, men picked up in raids had their lives destroyed in more subtle ways. The Times-PIcayune, then and now the city’s major newspaper, published their names and addresses, which meant no job, no family and no church.
So they increasingly turned to each other. Their means of support was typical New Orleans. They formed krewes, the social organizations that every year parade in the weeks leading up to Lent and culminating in Mardi Gras. Like their straight counterparts, they also had balls. Of course, being gay men, their balls were fabulous.
Even though the first one, in a suburban parish, was raided, subsequent ones held in a black union hall, became so successful that -- surprise! -- it wasn’t long before straight people were clamoring for tickets.
Thanks to some rare footage (even filming these parties was taking a huge risk), we can see the elaborate costumes, especially for the krewe’s annual king and queen. Even in the age of Imperial Courts, these are pretty spectacular. As one man says, "If there was an ostrich with a feather left on earth after I made that outfit, it’s a miracle."
Most of the film is a recounting of the gay krewes. While much is interesting, a lot devolves into the kind of petty infighting inevitable in any closed society. That the krewes provided gay men with their only recognizable organized social structure became evident when a crusading attorney named Harry Connick, Sr. (yes father to Harry Connick, Jr.) ran against district attorney Jim Garrison, who was trying to clean up "corruption" in the Quarter. (And yes, the same Jim Garrison who is portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film "JFK.")
Connick went to the krewes for help and in return promised to stop raids, entrapment and street beatings. He won, and the city became the Mecca for gay men that it remains very much today.
Although the film does delve into the two biggest crises in the krewes’ history -- AIDS and Hurricane Katrina -- there’s nothing about when they were integrated. In fact, no one mentions that the krewes were all white at all, even though they most certainly were. Southerners would have been more shocked at an integrated krewe than a gay one. There’s also no mention of the Society of Anne Krewe, a gay marching krewe that dates to 1969, probably because it didn’t have a ball so didn’t emphasize drag.
I would also liked to have had more backstory about the evolution of the scene in the Quarter and the gay men reflected the highly stratified society of New Orleans. There’s only a passing mention of the "Uptown queens" who founded the first, exclusive gay krewe. Cafe-Lafitte-in-Exile is mentioned only once, even though it is the oldest gay bar in the country.
Despite these and a few other lapses, this is another building block in our hidden history that is so important to preserve as the pre-Stonewall generation ages.
The DVD contains a few extras, which are mostly just footage that had been edited out of the final film. There are also some vintage photos that are fun.
