TOD
Well, as I have mentioned many times in the past, my Mother started taking my sister and me to see the big spring musical each year at Tacoma Little Theatre when we first moved to town in the spring of 1955 (Song of Norway, that year). That experience, along with my own acting debut in Hans Christian Anderson the same year, turned me towards a lifetime in the theater. That love affair was reinforced by seeing my first professionally-produced play The Crucible, and musical Once Upon a Mattress.
I know that a lot of people at this site might be offended by this comment, but seeing the Off-Broadway production of Boys in the Band had an extremely negative on me as an eighteen year old college student on the verge of coming out of the closet. I was shocked and horrified by the cast of characters who all seemed to me, at the time; to be depressed, bitter, or emotionally unstable people. I cam back from New York determined to do anything I could to avoid that lifestyle. In fact, I became engaged to a woman soon after that trip. Now, in all fairness, I have never read or seen that play or movie since the time in New York. Perhaps now, I would view the characters differently, but it was one of the most horrible experiences of my young life.
I had the reverse reaction when I first saw the TV-film of That Certain Summer in 1972. After a lifetime of stereotypical gay characters in films, here were two honest-to-goodness MEN (Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen) who were in love with each other. There was probably just as much angst for the characters as for those in Band, but all I remember from the film was the honesty of those two performances.
