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Matt Connolly Solidification and Flux on the “Gay White Way”: Gay Porn Theaters in Post-Stonewall New York City Abstract This paper traces the exhibition strategies of two gay porn theaters in New York City from 1969-1973: the 55th Street Playhouse and the Eros I. It draws upon contemporaneous advertising and trade press to reconstruct these histories, and does so in the pursuit of two interconnected goals. First, by analyzing two venues whose exhibition protocols shifted over the course of this time period, this paper seeks a more nuanced understanding of how gay porn theaters established, maintained, and augmented their market identities. Second, it attempts to use these shifts to consider more broadly what role exhibition practices played in the shaping of gay men’s experiences within the porn theater itself – a key site of spectatorial, erotic, and social engagement. The 1970s saw the proliferation of theaters in major my conclusions in some ways, but that will also urban centers specializing in the exhibition of gay provide the opportunity to investigate exhibition pornography.1 Buoyed by both seismic shifts in spaces within a city that is central to histories of both LGBT visibility in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall LGBT culture and pornographic exhibition.3 I will riots and larger trends in industry, law, and culture track two Manhattan theaters across this time period that increasingly brought pornography of all stripes to observe what films they screened and how they into the mainstream, these theaters provided a public advertised their releases: the 55th Street Playhouse venue for audiences of primarily gay men to view gay and the Eros I. While the Playhouse offers an pornography, as well as have various erotic and social example of how an established venue negotiates encounters with one another.2 These possibilities the transition from its previous market identity as for sexual exploration and subcultural community an art-house theater to that of a gay porn theater, building dovetailed with the economic opportunities the Eros I troubles the very solidity of the term “gay that such theaters brought to their owners and porn theater,” as new economic opportunities led the managers, for whom the exhibition of gay porn offered venue to sudden shifts in its exhibition protocols. a means to specialize within an ever-more crowded Attending to both the continuities and fluctuations market for pornography of all kinds. At the same in both venues’ exhibition strategies expands our time, these theaters’ identities within the theatrical historical understanding of how gay porn venues marketplace proved far from homogenous or stable operated in the 1970s: what they screened, when –whether they were attempting to transition from they shifted policies, and how they attempted to earlier, more heterogeneous exhibition strategies forge an identity and customer base within a highly to the regular screening of gay pornography or profitable yet increasingly competitive marketplace. weighing the benefits and drawbacks of exclusively Additionally, I hope to offer some further committing to gay porn. methodological tools by which to consider how, Drawing primarily from trade press and where, and under what circumstances gay men advertisements in contemporaneous publications, consumed gay pornography during this time. this paper seeks to address how exhibition policies Previous scholarly accounts of gay porn theaters – or, and strategies for gay porn theaters shifted over the more broadly, public sites of pornographic exhibition course of the early 1970s. I will be concentrating on within which men of various sexual identities and the market in New York City from 1969 to 1973: predilections found physical and social connection – geographic and temporal parameters that will limit have varied in their appraisal of how necessary it is 32 On the Fringe Eszter Zimanyi and Emma Ben Ayoun, editors, Spectator 37:1 (Spring 2017): 32-39. CONNOLLY to consider what was playing on the screen as erotic the space of the gay porn theater itself—not only as encounters occurred. Interweaving sociopolitical the location of varying subcultural practices, but as a commentary and essayistic reflection on personal site whose very legibility as a space of queer world- experience, Samuel R. Delany recounts public sex making remained, if not dependent upon, at least between men attending New York City porn theaters highly imbricated within interconnected logics of from the 1970s through the 1990s, but situates the economic strategy and industrial practice. majority of those encounters within theaters that th exclusively screened heterosexual pornography.4 John 55 Street Playhouse Champagne goes further, arguing in his analysis of Midwestern pornographic arcades that focusing The 55th Street Playhouse had no history of upon the films shown within these spaces offer little exhibiting pornography going into the 1970s. insight into (and may actually obscure) the types of Under the management of Frank Lee Sr. (a notable practices and connections that occur within their distributor and exhibitor of Chinese-language films walls.5 In their accounts of pornographic peep shows in North America), the theater was known in the and gay porn theaters, respectively, Amy Herzog and mid-1960s for screening films from China, before José B. Capino differ from these earlier analyses by shifting its exhibition policy in 1967 to focus more linking the textual properties of the films exhibited on Japanese cinema.8 This art house business model to the embodied spectatorial experience, albeit in became increasingly fraught by the late 1960s as somewhat different ways.6 Capino, in particular, shifts in popular taste and censorship standards argues that spectators in the gay porn theater “cannot began to undercut the profitability of international and do not totally disengage from the text even when cinema in major urban markets.9 they seem preoccupied with sexual pursuits,” pointing The Playhouse’s move towards an exhibition to how “the pornographic text exists ubiquitously on strategy dedicated exclusively to gay pornography the screen and in the soundscape of the theater and can be traced to May 1969. While previous films is embedded in its spatial configurations as well as in shown that year included Akira Kurosawa’s Red those practices of bodily engagement that spectators Beard (1965),10 the Toshiro Mifune-starring samurai perform.”7 film Daredevil in the Castle (1961),11 and the Israeli Certainly, examining the space of the drama Not Mine to Love (1967),12 the Playhouse pornographic theater itself – its architectural design, began the month by screening Andy Warhol’s legal status, and subcultural practices – offers crucial sexploitation hit, Lonesome Cowboys (1968).13 insights into gay men’s interactions with both the Though the film had been playing within New York pornographic film and one another. I also readily since the previous year, its run at the Playhouse lasted concede that a full account of gay men’s use of roughly three months.14 This was followed by Paul various pornographic exhibition sites for public sex Morrissey’s Flesh (1968), which played exclusively requires examining more than just theaters, arcades, at the Playhouse (initially as a solo feature and later and peep shows that screened only gay pornography. in a double bill with Lonesome Cowboys) from late- Nevertheless, I agree with Capino that particular July to mid-October 1969.15 These lengthy runs for types of erotic and spectatorial possibilities can occur films that dealt frankly if non-pornographically with when specifically gay pornography screens within a various types of queer sexuality did not permanently public exhibition space. How theaters constructed, alter the Playhouse’s scheduling, which continued publicized, and sometimes dismantled such spaces throughout the remainder of 1969 and into 1970 seems relevant to where gay men congregated for the with a mixture of international art-house fare and viewing of gay porn, the pursuit of public sex, and the titles focusing on contemporary politics and youth establishment of social bonds that grew within and culture. However, the Playhouse returned to films beyond the space of the theater proper. By attempting dealing with dissident sexuality in March 1970, to track in detail how select gay porn theaters made when it screened Meat/Rack, a soft-core porn film themselves known to potential customers within described by Jeffrey Escoffier as portraying “a the wider pornographic market, I seek to further series of sexual encounters between a bisexual San nuance how film studies and queer scholars consider Francisco-based hustler called J.C. and his male ON THE FRINGE 33 SOLIDIFICATION AND FLUX ON THE “GAY WHITE WAY” clients and girlfriends.”16 Paired with The Charles Pierce Revue – which starred the famed titular female impersonator – Meat/Rack ran from at least mid- March to mid-May 1970.17 Consistently over the previous eighteen months, then, the theater’s most popular and long-running films had been those that foregrounded queer sexuality. The Playhouse then pivoted to an emphasis on heterosexual pornography, screening Censorship in Denmark: A New Approach (a.k.a. Pornography in Denmark: A New Approach) (1970), a film that used the pretense of documentary investigation to show nudity and explicit sexuality, for somewhere between three and four months.18 Advertisements become somewhat fragmentary throughout the remainder of 1970 and 1971, so determining a detailed exhibition schedule for the Playhouse proves difficult. However, amongst the films advertised and mentioned in trade press, one consistently finds a reliance on either heterosexual porn or sexploitation fare: The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo & Juliet (1969),19 The Notorious Cleopatra (1970), and The Notorious Concubines (1969).20 Modest-to-lengthy runs of A History of with a non-pornographic short entitled Andy, a ten- the Blue Movie (1970)21 and Love, Yolanda (1971)22 minute documentary that Poole made on the Andy solidified the Playhouse’s focus upon pornographic Warhol retrospective at the Whitney Museum of and sexploitation fare primarily aimed at heterosexual American Art.