Maude Adams and the LGBTQ History of Peter Pan

have you seen my shadow I swear I left it around here somewhere last time I came to hear Wendy tell the story about Cinderella well if you want I can tell you a better story if you've got time to spare it's the story of mod Adams one of the first great celebrities of American Theater she brought Peter Pan to life for the first time on Broadway and the author of the story himself JM Berry always claimed he wrote the role for her specifically she came from humble beginnings in Utah and always remained humble though her stardom grew and all her life she kept many Secrets including the great secret of her lesbian relationships mod was an incredibly interesting figure in Broadway history as well as queer history but her reclusiveness meant that her name would slowly lose its Fame in the Years following her departure from the stage much like friend of the channel J.C lion Decker both had long time gay Partners who they remained with until death both became near Hermits after exhilarating lives of great Fame in 1900s to 1930s and both died quietly very quietly in the 1950s but although mod wasn't the very first Peter Pan that honor goes to Nina busako who played him first in London in 1904 for Generations mod was the person who would completely define and dominate the role in people's imaginations and she helped to lend a distinctly queer undertone to the character that would only gain more and more power over the following decades come learn with me by the way you can get this beautiful art from Marlo loon on Marlo's patreon the Mary Blackbird Society I'm so excited to have done a collaboration with Marlo on this video and it's absolutely beautiful every month they make some beautiful goods for their patreon like Prince for example and I highly recommend it I'll put some links in the description below where you can find Marlo's work as well as sign up for the Mary Blackbird Society where in January you can get this print so keep an eye out for that but first let's hear 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you so much to private internet access VPN for sponsoring this video and now let's get back to learning about mod Adams and Peter Pan [Music] mod Ewing kiss Caden was born on November 11 1872 in Salt Lake City Utah to Annie Adams an actress from a Mormon family and James kiss Caden a non-mormon banker on her mother's side her Heritage stretched directly back to the Mayflower and her Grandpa Barnabas was born in a place called bastard Township I don't know just some fun facts for you I guess Mod's mother yearned to return to acting and soon she did and would often bring mod with her mod loved being at the theater seeing the beautiful costumes the lights the scenery she even adjusted her sleep schedule to be more nocturnal so she could more easily go one night when her mother was in a production of The Lost Child mod finally had her chance to be on the stage for the first time the baby in this play was played by a baby doll but for some reason this time the stage manager insisted on using a real baby and the property manager went into the audience and borrowed a two-month-old baby from a confused but Cooperative parent the baby was quiet through most of the play but towards the end began to have a tantrum obviously and Annie Adams thinking quickly said here take body and little muddy Adams was taken on the scene though she was nine months old then everybody could tell the difference The Comedy of it all made the audience scream with laughter and loving the attention baby mod sat up smiling and waving from the very beginning she was a star soon enough Annie went to work in the stock company at Piper's Opera House in Virginia City and then later at theaters in San Francisco and mod came with her Annie recalled she would have made an almost perfect stage child she slept more quietly in the daytime and seemed more bright and animated at night she never cried at night and during the time she was brought to the theater by her nurse she was always the picture of wide-eyed wonderment James however was not happy about his wife's passion for theater he began drinking and lived separately at a nearby boarding house for a Time despite this he loved mod very much and when she insisted on joining the theater herself he couldn't refuse Maude did her best to prove to him that she was serious about acting and wouldn't make a fool of herself but her dedication to a craft that took her traveling for long periods of time also meant that she didn't get to see her father very much at all which was painful for both of them over time Mod's Rising stardom caused the rift in the family to grow wider causing James to move in and out of boarding houses and soon enough Annie and mod were invited to become permanent members of an acting company in Helena Montana with opportunities to visit New York this was the opportunity of a lifetime a real chance to escape the Small Town West James was devastated by the news insisting that they must not go but okay James was devastated by the news insisting that they must not go but Annie stood firm and took Maud with her on the next train out despite his wishes mod would never see her father again he passed away on September 21 1883 alone in bed at a lodging house in San Francisco after his alcoholism made him vulnerable to pneumonia touring life would prove to be hazardous traveling by steam engine in those days was uncomfortable dark bumpy cramped and brutally hot sometimes bad weather could delay the train causing missed performances and lost profits hotels were scarce in small towns and often would just be rooms above a noisy Saloon and making the situation worse at the time actors were viewed as being immoral or undesirable so many Inns would refuse to let them stay this made it incredibly easy for actors to get sick from poor living conditions or crappy food because they had to take what they could get as theater historian PC Lewis once quipped actors needed a digestive system made of non-corrosive metal for her part mod thought it was all incredibly exciting many performers would barely memorize their own parts or even be reading from the script on stage but mod learned her Parts rapidly and even learned the other cast members Parts too she insisted on studying the entire plot and loved discussing the themes and symbolism of the shows with her co-stars after the tour ended Annie and mod headed to New York City at last this was where mod would meet one of the two men who would have a massive impact on her life Madison Square Theater manager Charles Froman their first meeting was disappointing and led nowhere but it wouldn't be the last time that mod and Froman meet mod returned a few years later to New York starring as the leading lady in the paymaster which Froman went to see and this time he was even more impressed by her talents now 15 years old mod was given a small part in the Furman company's production of Lord Chumley she would spend time in a different company after the this owned by Charles H Hoyt now starring in larger leading roles and consistently proving herself and Incredibly capable and dedicated actress at 17 years old a rising star mod was beginning to draw in male admirers vying for her attention but no matter what man approached her mod seemed completely disinterested her mother Shrugged this off as one man recalled in a news article Miss Adams has never married a friend of mine who of course must remain unnamed lived at the same boarding house with her and her mother when they first came to New York he was greatly attracted by her and paid her much attention escorting her and her mother to the theater and back every night Miss Adams accepted his attention in a frank-friendly way but when matters had gone along a little while Mrs Adams took opportunity to say to him Mr blank it's only fair to you I should tell you you're wasting your time Marty will never marry she's too devoted to her art to ever think of such a thing and so it seems this is something that I run into frequent with gay historical figures among other things a lot of the time people will say something about them like oh they aren't interested in marriage because their true love is their art or their work meanwhile they've got like a special friend they've lived with for 50 years or something the other thing I run into so often at this point that it's a Telltale sign of gayness is when a person's family or secret partner or secretary or somebody either decides to or is instructed to burn the person's personal papers after they die like specific letters and things of that nature with JC lyondecker he instructed his partner Charles to burn art pieces and letters from between them as we'll see with Mod Adams the same thing happened but going back in time once again here no one saw it as remotely suspect that a young actress would be not interested in men at least not yet in fact it was generally a good thing for mod her disinterested men Also Serve to protect her from the bad reputation of her profession it sended off the typical rumors of actors versus being loose women among all other sorts of horrible stereotypes under the care of her mother and later Charles Froman Maude was able to uphold the image of a chaste Angelic and pure girl Charles Froman for his part had his own share of Secrets as well he worked alongside his brother Daniel Froman and Charles had been interested in the theater ever since childhood he grew to be known as the Napoleon of the drama due to his booming and direct way of speaking and seemingly unshakable talent for building stars and getting what he wants although he was a short King he had a large personality and a reassuring demeanor born on June 17 1860 Charles and Daniel grew up in a German Jewish Family in the biography written by his brother after Charles's tragic death they give a familiar reason for Froman having never married Froman never married a friend once asked him why he had chosen to be a bachelor my dear fellow he answered had I possessed a wife and family I could never have take taken the risks which as a theatrical manager I am constantly called upon to do he lived in Truth for and by the theater it was his world his heart was in his profession and no Enterprise was too daring no venture too perilous to prevent him from boldly facing it if he believed the step was expected of him where have we heard that before yes many historians agree based on accounts from those that knew him that Charles Froman was a gay man this makes his friendship with Mod Adams extremely interesting because in a way their relationship had all the function of a lavender marriage except they weren't married nor ever tried to act as though they were romantically linked it's like lavender employment I guess because throughout their friendship Froman protected mod specifically by allowing the press to publish random fabricated rumors about her love life connecting her to various men that she in reality couldn't have been more detached from reporters even launched rumors that Maude and Froman were secretly married or were lovers and both of them never ever really shut these rumors down too harshly because having the public assume that you're straight no matter with who is safer than them starting to wonder why you're really not settling down and taking a harder look at what your actual love life is like but beyond that Froman wasn't just using mod as a tool they were genuinely friends and Froman knew that he could make her a star he saw greatness in mod and he was not about to just let that go by the 1890s he gave Maude the biggest key to success that any actress needs he made her a leading lady in the company alongside a leading man that leading man was John Drew at nearly 20 years mod senior Drew was already a well-established actor at first he wasn't sure about mod like many others he first thought that she was too frail looking but it didn't take too long for mod to impress him whatever power she lacked in stature she more than made up for in her skill energy and expressiveness mod would later star alongside Drew for the next five years but as her stardom grew the more secretive she became even more so at the instruction of Froman he said you are not to be interviewed you are not to be quoted people will wonder at you yearn for the details of your private life let them it will only spur their interest and their desire for you he was right Maude's elusiveness only made her more Curious more enticing to follow Mod's friend Ethel Barrymore the niece of John drew the sister of John and Lionel baremore and the grand Aunt of Drew Barrymore who remembered Maude fondly she recalled that mod was a good friend but was just as dedicated to her privacy however as time went on this privacy would hit a few Road bumps gossip began spreading through papers that mod had been having secret Liaisons with other actresses quick as always Froman immediately shut the rumors down by releasing an announcement to the papers that mod was engaged to John Drew's friend Richard Harding Davis for obvious reasons this cover-up fizzled out after a while after all this went down Mod's mother made a big oopsie and went and eloped with a man that she had only known for six weeks mod was not cool with this move and didn't attend the wedding and so without her daughter Annie went to live with her new man in Wyoming she came crawling back to New York City two weeks later regretting her decision obviously not one to get caught up in drama involving men mod was hard at work focusing on her role in the play rosemary after which she starred in a play written for her by none other than J.M Berry who had been invited to do so by Froman and so the third member of the creative triangle entered the picture Barry was born in Scotland on May 9 1860 and much like the fairy boy he would go on to create he was a child who never really intended to grow up this is extremely apparent in all of his writing which has a Whimsical imbish quality but never more so than in Peter Pan if you've ever read read the original book the way it's written reads exactly like the boundless scatterbrained humorous way that children tell stories in a way he must have had something like this in common with Mod who herself was something of a child who never was truly a child nor really an adult either the liminalness of her as a person made an immense impression on Barry who quickly befriended her Barry was reworking a pre-existing work of his the little minister in which mod would play Lady babby her first role without a leading man like John Drew by her side for the first time she would dominate the stage she was so nervous but as usual she's shown on stage and earned a two-minute Standing Ovation and was recalled four times after act one 10 times after Act 2 and at the end mod began sobbing overwhelmed by the audience's love as they called her out from the curtain call over and over and over 12 times and were not satisfied until mod made a quick speech to them a theater critic wrote in the New York Clipper on September 18 1897 Miss Adams possesses as did babby the heroine of the play that witching power of beguilement that captivates the heart and makes impulse usurp the place of dethroned and banished judgment Miss Adams has been endowed with two gifts invaluable to an actress brains and temperament and by means of these she legitimately won her Triumph at long last mod had become a star the little Minister kicked off the beginning of Mod's following of Hardcore fangirls one of these girls was a young Phyllis Robbins who instantly fell in love with mod and eventually earned Maude's friendship which would last until death over time mod would become an almost mystical figure for women harnessing a rabbit is following of stands the Press picked up on it running headlines such as actress worship reaches its highest point in the Mad way women worship mod Adams or mod Adams returns to stage in all feminine New York goes crazy over her hordes of women would rush to the stage door after her shows for just a chance to see her it was common to see women in her audience crying at the very sight of her the Press was obsessed with this conundrum why do women love mod Adams so much why does she have this mystical magnetism for the ladies wow it is such a mystery I wonder what it could possibly be surely it's not lesbianism mod continued successful runs in many other plays such as Julia and Romeo and Juliet one instance of which she almost played Julia alongside Sarah Bernhardt as Romeo but it never happened and later as the Duke of reinstadt in lajo and she really began raking in the cash which she used to buy her estate in Lake Ronkonkoma Long Island and her Cottage in Tannersville New York up in the Catskills she also kept an apartment on 41st Street in Manhattan which she allowed young actresses and other women in need to stay in if they had nowhere else to go often giving them money as well her Long Island Property which she called Sandy Garth was a farm home to five dogs pigs chickens cows 12 horses Shetland ponies and a massive vegetable garden that farmed produce for the residents of Ronkonkoma her private getaways were essential to her mental health as would prove absolutely necessary when her performances in Legion drove her to have a nervous breakdown although audiences adored her as always the the theater critics were brutally hard on her and she couldn't help but internalize the pressure after the show's run ended mod disappeared into kalei under the name M.A kiss Caden she went to stay at a Convent run by the sisters of Saint Augustine called La Maison De Retreat after three months of quiet recovery meditation and self-reflection mod was finally well enough to return again to New York to perform in Barry's new play quality street but the recovery didn't last long as in his eagerness to bring her back up to speed Froman scheduled her on an extremely fast-paced and stressful tour that drove her to a second nervous breakdown mod wrote to Phyllis Robbins the long seasons of The Little Minister Legion and quality Street had taken a rather heavy toll even at the beginning of the third year of the minister I had wanted a holiday it had not seemed possible to give the play another year and endure the fatigue of traveling and then insomnia set in no sleep at night and catnaps in the day but it was plain that to stop would be unfair to the managers who have been waiting two years for the play they could not be expected to have confidence in me if I did not keep my engagements so more of each day was given to rest I had never bothered much about strength because I was not supposed to have any but whatever it was it gave out in April of 1903 mod traveled to Egypt for a tour accompanied by a maid named Mary Gorman and another woman named Miss Ray Rockman the ladies had an absolutely Banger trip after which mod finally returned home two months later and at last returned to the stage her first performance back ended with 48 curtain calls and mod was overwhelmed by the love shown to her Modi is back and better than ever baby Amy Leslie wrote in the Chicago Daily News her Talent is undeniable though pale and ethereal her personality unavoidably endowed with a kind of Perpetual use which lies feverishly on the surface of fragile constitutions and her temperament glows and throbs and scintillates in a spring-like attractiveness despite fight a brief scare with her health requiring an emergency appendectomy Maude remained steadfast with her career and it's a good thing she recovered too because she regained her strength just in time to take on the role that would define her career JM Berry was working on a new play called Peter Pan Peter Pan was a story that formed over time from a number of different influences in Barry's life for one thing Barry loved children and always wanted to have his own but he was never able to for reasons we'll examine later but he did spend a lot of time entertaining three children of his friend Sylvia Llewellyn Davis and those children will become the blueprint for the darling children in Peter Pan hello I actually didn't want to have to address this in the video but I'm already getting comments about it so therefore I know that the comment section on this video is also going to talk about it and that is the accusation that JM Berry was a penile now here's the thing we have absolutely no evidence that JM Berry was sexually attracted to children and even less so that he assaulted any of the Davies Boys in fact one of the Davy's boys lived with him for many many years and was very very staunchly adamant about the fact that he believed Barry was completely innocent of those rumors and in fact most people in Barry's life believed that he was most likely uh impotent so another other part of the rumors also goes back to the fact that one of the Davies boys unfortunately committed suicide that is also not evidence here's the problem with rumors like this going around about historical figures that are long long dead I mean Barry has been dead for almost 100 years now I mean he died in the 30s we have absolutely no way of saying 100 for certain that he wasn't like obviously because there were no victims who came forward but there is actually in fact more evidence against that rumor so therefore I don't feel like it's useful to entertain it just because it's a rumor that has gone around a lot here's the thing I've learned in all of my years of doing historical research sometimes somebody spends a lot of time putting out a really stinker biography and then people kind of run with it because you want to trust that a biography is going to be completely reliable right that's not always the case as I learned with JC line decker Etc uh you've kind of got to take things that seem particularly scandalous with a little bit of a grain of salt and really look into them and I think for a lot of people there's this sort of urge to look at these childhood Classics and and want to think that there's like a secret Sinister Dark Side to them I'll be honest when it comes to Peter Pan the dark sides are there it's it's the racism okay you don't need to read into it where things aren't actually there please don't fill my comments section with discourse about Jay and Barry and these rumors I sort of eventually Barry reworked the story with Mod Adams in mind and Froman set up a trial run of the play in London this means that the first Peter Pan actually wasn't mod Adams it was the actress Nina busako who was the sister of the director in case you aren't already familiar with the story Peter Pan tells the tale of the three darling children Wendy John and Michael who are whised away to the neverland by a magical boy named Peter and his fairy friend Tinkerbell in Neverland they encounter Peter's Crew The Lost Boys as well as mermaids and some very unfortunately extremely distastefully portrayed Native Americans and a crew of pirates aboard the Jolly Roger captained by the evil Captain Hook who is obsessed with Peter I should note here the original version of Peter Pan from Barry is still remarkably racist for obvious reasons towards Native Americans but I also need to point out the fact that Disney's 1953 animated film in an attempt to make it more comedic Also Serve to make the story way way more racist than it already was as well as injecting a lot more misogyny as well right Wendy it's really bad I think when New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther said that Mr Disney's picture has the story but not the spirit of Peter Pan he was right Barry's original play had some typical misogyny of the era but not remotely close to whatever this was girls talk too much yes girls talk to him oh well get on with it girl come on Jerry join us for a swim oh please actually the original work is notably sympathetic to women and it isn't difficult to read in that aspect compared to many other stories of its time being a story written in the late 1800s and readapted for the stage in the early Edwardian era however one thing that very much still does take the original story is obviously it's racism in writing Peter Pan Barry created Neverland to be a world full of things that would have fascinated children at the time pirates fairies mermaids magical Birds Etc but children even in England grew up with a Fantastical fiction involving the American West too and therefore many of them viewed Native Americans through a fantasy lens as well completely dehumanized this is greatly apparent in the original Peter Pan because although it doesn't portray the Native American characters as villains they are in fact the allies of the Lost Boys in Peter unlike in the Disney version but it still portrays them in a stereotypically mean-spirited way to make matters worse the name of the neverland tribe is uh I'm not even gonna say it out loud but I'll show you this passage on screen why Barry made these decisions I have absolutely no idea many Peter Pan adaptations in the years since Disney took the Peter Pan train directly to evil town have made attempts to rework the native involvement in the story in a less harmful way without ignoring the issue by simply excluding them all together for one example Peter Pan 2003 had Tiger Lily played by a native actress who was also able to speak her native language in the film and one of the better adaptations actually came long before Disney's version the 1924 silent film starring Betty Bronson although when I say better adaptation that is a very very low bar given how awful it could get in this version Tiger Lily was played by love of my life anime Wong who often got shuttled into various mismatched exotic roles because at the time Hollywood was like uh a character of color I don't know for whatever actor in there who cares so you not only had white actors playing non-white characters but basically any actor of color could be shoved into any non-white role regardless of background because Hollywood figured nobody would tell the difference or even care so it's kind of tough to watch the film and sing anime Wong and I start whooping and hollering like it's the Super Bowl and then I remember who she's supposed to be playing and I'm like oh hi I'm here in San Pedro so when they filmed the pirate ship scenes the pirate ship would have been right out there somewhere meanwhile most of the beach scenes were filmed on Santa Cruz Island which is somewhere in that direction most of the beach scenes filmed on Santa Cruz Island were actually filmed kind of around the Pelican Bay or the Painted Cave area I looked at it on Google Maps Lord even knows how they got the actors on there especially all the diving girls who were wearing the mermaid tails but you know it's a silent film era and you got to do what you got to do now if any of these streets look familiar to you it's because they probably do a lot of Disney Channel original movies from the like 90s and early 2000s were actually filmed here in San Pedro because San Pedro is a favorite filming location of Hollywood and still is today you've seen San Pedro and dcoms such as Brink and the 13th year among many others in fact San Pedro was such a favorite filming location of Hollywood in the silent era many movie stars had like permanent Bungalows down here like for instance Mary Pickford and her dressing room Bungalow still exists today as for Disney though the Peter Pan related war crimes didn't end with the film child actor Bobby Driscoll who voiced Peter and acted as his animation model was was treated horribly by the Disney Corporation after Peter Pan when he began going through puberty he was dropped and unable to get more roles due to his association with Disney and he ended up becoming addicted to heroin after a short stint being involved with Andy warhol's crew of artists in Greenwich Village Bobby Driscoll disappeared his body was found alone in a tenement and unidentified buried in a Popper's grave until he was finally identified years later all this to say Peter Pan has some very obvious horrible things associated with it and it's impossible to separate these things from the story it is what it is but let's go back before all this to when Peter was brand new back to when mod Adams learned to become Peter while studying for the role at her home in the Catskills Maud befriended a couple named John and Elizabeth Alexander who would be the ones who designed her iconic costume which I've recreated and I'm wearing right now the play opened first in Washington DC to a questionable reception that audience wasn't really sure what to make of it but then as performances went on mod introduced a critical aspect of the show that seemed to finally make it click with the audience oh no Tink what's wrong her light is growing faint and if it goes out that means she's dead what's that Tink her voice is so glow I can scarcely hear what she's saying she says she says she could get well if YouTube viewers believed in fairies do you believe in fairies say quick that you believe if you believe clap your hands yeah I should have seen that coming [Music] yeah she's fine where were we oh yeah mod came up with the idea to include the audience in the scene where Tinkerbell is about to die pink pink er bell was played by a bell sound effect and a light being projected across the stage by a crew member named Maura scotlieb holding a mirror against a spotlight at first mod was terrified convinced that the audience wouldn't respond to her plea or Worse say no but when she Rose and asked the question do you believe in fairies the entire house cried out yes and so Tinkerbell was saved side note hilarious fun fact but on the cast list Tinkerbell was listed as being played by someone named Jane Wren so that there'd be some sort of Mystique for the audience Jane Wren in fact didn't exist but it was enough to fool the UK tax inspector who sent Jane a legal demand regarding tax evasion unfortunately the real crew member behind Tink wasn't so magical he became obsessed with Mod convinced that she was in love with him and sending him Secret Love signals from the stage he wrote her love letters that she was constantly having to throw away and after he refused to give up he was fired eventually he persisted in following so much he needed to be taken to a psychiatric hospital but even still mod performed as if nothing was wrong and so Peter Pan became immensely popular both among adults and children and Mod's performance as Peter felt so real that children began getting seriously injured from jumping off of high surfaces at home because she had made them believe that it was truly possible to fly just by thinking happy thoughts so Barry had to add in the little bit about fairy dust being necessary to fly after the fact the play became a huge trend for group nights out so much so that mod began donating tickets to Children's Hospitals and orphanages and the Peter Pan hat and collar became Staples of Children's Fashion mod received hundreds of fan letters from children begging her to teach them how to fly or send them some fairy dust as the show grew so too did mod Circle of Friends the famously and scandalously Sapphic Mercedes de Acosta whose list of exes included basically every famous woman of the time ever began to frequent the Peter Pan shows and hung out backstage with Maude in New York we don't know for certain if they actually had anything going on but it was enough to get the Press talking and Charles Froman began panicking he endeavored to find mod as secretary to help protect her and her image that secretary would be Louise Boynton the daughter of a Massachusetts Lumber Merchant who had notably started a newspaper with her sister and Louise began working with Mod in 1905. as Phyllis Robbins recalled she dedicated herself to mod and won her Lifelong Love and it's true Louise and mod would fall in love and become domestic Partners staying together until Louise's death almost 50 years later before Louise Maude had been in a long-term relationship with the actress Lily Florence Rogers who had tragically passed away in 1901 of kidney failure mod and Lily had met during the production of the masked ball in 1898 in which mod played Suzanne and Lily played rose Lily lived with Mod until she died and she was buried on Mod's own family plot whether or not this has anything to do with her string of nervous breakdowns is unclear but the timing does line up in any case Louise proved to be extremely beneficial for mods health and her reputation in the eyes of the media for gay people in this era your partner being your secretary is the safest cover-up you could hope for I think it's hard to properly convey just how immensely popular this play was and how obsessed with mod that people became I guess it could be compared to like Hamilton maybe no see it's really hard to make a one-to-one comparison just understand that the show was crazy popular and had a comparatively bombastic ending to its run with mod of course all shows must end the last performance of froman's Peter Pan was on January 4th 1908 at the Empire Theater Champaign was served in the lobby and the programs were autographed after the curtain call mod played a tune on Peter's pipe and skipped off stage much in the spirit of Peter himself little did she know just how long Peter would outlive her Peter's Legacy as a character associated with queerness extends far beyond just the fact that mod Adams was a lesbian and the obvious gender weirdness of a woman playing men's roles because for one point mod wasn't the only Sapphic woman to play Peter when Peter Pan was revived on Broadway in 1928 he was played by Ava legalian another lesbian actress who had her own fling with the infamous Mercedes de Acosta who honestly appears basically everywhere in this time period Ava has also been linked romantically to Tallulah Bankhead Greta Garbo and Beatrice Lily following Ava on Broadway was Jean Arthur who was also Sapphic and possibly asexual Gene coincidentally was rumored to have been in a relationship with future Peter Mary Martin who played him from about 1954 to 1960 on both Broadway and in the TV special which I'm not personally a fan of for reasons [Music] in stepping out Bob Fosse dubbed Mary Martin Broadway's biggest closet King and said that everyone thought that lovely little Mary was Miss Femme and she was except next to her gay husband indeed Mary had a number of lavender marriages something that was common at the time in the entertainment industry and more recently Peter was played by Alison Williams in 2014 in a TV movie which do I even need to explain this one but let's go back a bit before Peter landed on stage and back to the Creator himself J.M Berry Barry was married of course

but the situation was a strange one he was never able to consummate the marriage apparently and he felt completely incapable of sleeping with his wife despite both of their desperate wishes to have children he was so unable to learn how to make his marriage work that he and his wife eventually divorced Peter Pan as a work offered Berry opportunities to explore a number of tough issues in his life mainly that it was a chance for him to entertain the children is life that he cherished and connect with the child inside himself that never grew up but Peter Pan is also notably Barry's own exploration of turn of the century issues with masculinity take Peter's obvious disdain for manhood for instance when placed in contrast with Captain Hooks overt dandyism Crystal Lynn Hawkins writes all of Barry's protagonist and Peter Pan stories have masculine identities that conflict with Victorian and Edwardian ideals of gender and are thus marginalized and alienated from society to avoid this harsh reality Barry's protagonist escape to Fantasy worlds in hopes of abandoning the rigid codes and conventions of reality while these fantasy worlds provide these protagonists with temporary belief they eventually realized the conventions of reality are inescapable in his Works Barry constructs a new formation of the male Identity or at least a different depiction of masculinity in comparison to the then established Norms by creating male protagonists who desire other males and who display heterosexual uncertainties however due to 19th century homophobia these male relationships are unable to develop past the socially accepted homosocial stage this is a conflict that extends outside of Peter Pan and Barry's works it can also be seen in the little white bird the little Minister sentimental Tommy and Tommy and Griselle many of Barry's male protagonists protected from scrutiny under the cover of Youth display a lack of interest for women in Peter Pan when viewed explicitly through the lens of the story itself this is obviously largely due to Peter's inability to grow up his childishness but when you understand that Barry often used the protagonist of his stories to explore his own feelings and that this theme appears repeatedly it's worth also looking at it through the lens of being a man who simply isn't attracted to women and struggles to understand why through an Edwardian framework of society for many many years people couldn't understand why Barry had the issues he did and there wasn't really any evidence to offer a gay explanation until 2020 when lecturer Dr Michael Shaw discovered Barry's missing letters to Robert Louis Stevenson buried deep in the Yale University Library the letters are believed lost to everyone including Barry himself although they were cataloged in the library archives when Shaw found the box of letters he initially assumed that they'd already been published and he just didn't know but then he tried to buy a book of the letters found nothing and realized he'd found something very very important in those letters the affection between Barry and Stevenson becomes even more apparent than it already was as Stevenson's side of their correspondence had already been published after his death in the 1890s Barry's letters contained many passages that make it very clear how he felt he wrote to be blunt I have discovered and have suspected for some time that I love you and if you had been a woman he never finishes the sentence but it's pretty clear after Stevenson's death Barry tried to keep their relationship Alive by merging their respective fantasy worlds placing Peter Pan in essentially the same universe as Treasure Island in his book Peter and Wendy Barry refers to Captain Flint and Long John Silver from Treasure Island Captain Hook says I am the only man of whom barbecue was afraid and Flint feared barbecue in Treasure Island the character sometimes referred to Long John Silver as barbecue and so injecting his real life insecurities and dreams into Neverland Barry ended up splitting his frustrations into the two characters of Peter and Captain Hook Crystal Lynn Hawkins continues Peter the Eternal boy lacks maturity and the experiences of adulthood while hook lacks immaturity it is only when Peter and hook interact that the two partial beings combined to create one composite Persona and fill the isolating void in each other's otherwise empty existence this is not to imply the two characters selfishly utilize the other for self-completion Barry makes it very evident that both Peter and hook enjoy the companionship of the other although hook has the company of his crew and Peter of the Lost Boys the manner in which the two captains conduct their communities implies their dissatisfaction they are much more entranced with each other than they are with the other residents of Neverland Peter's transformation as Captain pan following Hook's death reveals the character's dependence on the pirate's existence while their attachment to the other derives from their interdependency and The Sensation of self-completion that arises when the two characters are together they also display a deeper homosocial bond that is based on their Mutual understanding of the other in short both hook and Peter are two halves of a whole all these queer themes that Barry explored created a ripe environment for lgbtq viewers and readers to innately connect with the story this was certainly my experience as a kid I was never interested in the Disney adaptation because the racist scenes Disturbed me and Peter seemed like a sexist jackass all understandable reasons why my mom was never keen on letting me watch it as a kid either but the one adaptation I couldn't get enough of was Peter Pan 2003 and I think many of you might be able to relate when I first saw this movie at seven years old the first thing I noticed was that I was hopelessly in love with Wendy I didn't understand why yet only that I thought she was cool and beautiful and confident and I really wanted to give her a thimble the second thing I noticed was that I really really wanted to be Peter this Peter specifically because unlike past Peter incarnations this Peter was notably romantic he yearns for love in a way that other versions of Peter couldn't the other Peters couldn't truly love Wendy in the book Wendy asked Peter multiple times what are your feelings for me and Peter constantly replies that of a son Wendy in one scene he says you are so queer and tiger lily is just the same there is something she wants to be to me but she says it's not my mother but in the 2003 version although in the end Peter remains in Neverland to Never Grow Up he does accept Wendy's love in fact it's Wendy's kiss that literally gives him power this scene along with the Fairy dance scene made an enormous impact on me as a kid I wanted to be Peter not just because he's Brave and cool and has fun but also for explicitly gender reasons Peter by choice almost exists outside of the gender binary by nature and in this movie at least he gets the love of a beautiful girl if anything made my gender lesbian it was probably this this is also relevant I think to the 1924 silent film as much as Betty Bronson does her best to channel Whimsical young boy energy it's hard not to view this performance as more of a tomboyish girl the silent film also included more symbols than the original has making it really difficult to suspend disbelief and not just seeing this as two women smooching with one really tiny woman being impossibly jealous over it plus you kind of got denied that in a big way Peter very much exudes t-boy swag cosplayer and larper azerai discussed their own experience with gender related to Peter Pan in their video I'm trans where they Channel some of these feelings coming from a different direction before I learned to perform femininity to survive I remember thinking of characters like Peter Pan when I ran Barefoot around my neighborhood with my friends I remember insisting on shopping in the boys section for clothes and wearing little tuxedos to weddings I remembered desperately never wanting to wear makeup basically distancing myself from my impending Womanhood as much as I possibly could Peter Pan is a character that I've had living in my brain rent-free for my entire life for many reasons point is there's absolutely more at work with the Peter Pan character in particular than the gender issue but it's still very relevant I have issues with age and that's partly rooted in neurodivergence and the ableist attitudes towards what makes an adult and the fact that every time I talk about mine it gets met with raging ableism just but part of the appeal of Peter Pan and being Untouched by adulthood for me also has to do with the fact that um when you go through puberty you get your period and that is called becoming a woman [Music] and uh I hated that for me Dr Holly Blackford used her research to connect Peter Pan to Victorian ideas of sexology at the time which saw homosexuality as inextricably linked to a gender issue hence it being called gender inversion she also connects a story to Oscar Wilde's a picture of Dorian Gray another story of a young man choosing Eternal youth written by a gay man who very much would have been at the Forefront of Barry's mind as an Englishman writing his story in the 1890s at the height of the infamous Oscar Wilde trial she writes my work on these novels explains that pioneering sexologists constructed the child as developmentally queer not yet committed to a love object and the Queer as arrested in development trapped in a developmental time before the proper love object was chosen these characters become seductive forces luring others to their hedonistic worlds not because they have pernicious motivations but because they are queer pre-civilized objects for others to play with in their games of pursuing pleasure a trans reading on Peter can also be interpreted out of his fairy identity as it is heavily implied both in the original text and numerous adaptations that Peter is now more fairy than human child and this is part of what makes him separated from Human gender constructs he no longer and perhaps never did exist in a world of man an Edwardian world that created boundaries that he was not at home in in the gene Forbes Robertson version of the play Gene suggested an added line of dialogue to Barry that he agreed with emphasizing this predicament Peter says you mustn't touch me no one must ever touch me and when Wendy asks why he responds I don't know but I think if you were to touch me I shouldn't be here for this version of Peter to be touched is to be reached for by a world of expectations that Peter can never face to touch him is to erase him much like a fairy falling down dead when someone says that fairies aren't real if Peter were to return to the world of humans and their societal bounds in a very literal way Peter would cease to exist he wouldn't be Peter Pan anymore this is part of why Peter became the all-time favorite role of many of the Sapphic actresses who played him to be a lesbian is to inherently exist somewhat outside of Womanhood in many ways many lesbians feel degendered by nature of existing outside of a social ecosystem set up to Center and include men and men's expectations Peter therefore resonates with many lesbians the same way that he resonates with a lot of trans people gay men bi-folks Etc Peter also resonates a lot with neurodivergent folks as azri explained he Taps into the Crux of a common feeling that everyone on the outside of rigid social expectations feels and for men many people he's cathartic in that he chose his own destiny he's celebrated for it and in the end he wasn't pressured into conforming to societal Norms after all because while that was a happy ending for the darling family and even The Lost Boys it wouldn't have been a happy ending for Peter in case you're not familiar in the trans Community people who are trans but haven't realized it yet are often called eggs because they haven't come out of their shell yet in Peter Pan there's a line that I think strongly befits this when Captain Hook asked Peter who and what art thou and Peter gleefully responds I'm youth I'm Joy I'm a little bird that is broken out of the egg what's interesting is that mods Parts immediately following Peter are just as gender non-conforming as Peter was she played shiko in the jester a show in which she really started to flex her skills in stage lighting to design the look of the production itself this caused a lot of criticism from the Press which was concerned that mod may be shirking her Womanhood by taking on so many male roles but mod refused to budge insisting that she takes roles that expand her artistic abilities and that no critics will influence the decisions she makes to further prove her Point she went on to portray Joan of Arc and later a literal rooster in chanticler by this point she was now the wealthiest actress in the U.S with an income of almost two hundred thousand dollars a year which is over 8 million dollars in today's money she actually did take on another tour of Peter Pan trying to hit up smaller cities this time but when the play reached Boston her health gave out once more mod and her fragile build and teetering held despite her dedication and ambition was never really a healthy woman she tried to continue on but Phyllis and Louise begged her to admit defeat she compromised by taking it a little bit easier for the next several months while continuing to work by 1915 World War one had already begun and the world was in a tense atmosphere despite the current events Charles Froman decided that he must sail to England to produce one of Barry's new plays and handle his war-addled theater business but at the last minute he decided to put off the trip because D.W Griffis got awful film Birth of a Nation just dropped and was drawing massive audiences so much so that Stage Theater attendance was waning Froman determined he needed to stay behind to keep an eye on his business at home and he finally did set off for London on May 1st aboard the Lusitania he would never make it to London on May 7 1915 a German U-Boat torpedoed the Lusitania and it sank Charles Froman stood on the deck and handed his life vest to a woman named Rita jolive saying why fear death it is the most beautiful Adventure that life gives us and no doubt a solemn reference to the famous line from Peter Pan to die would be an awfully big adventure and so Charles Froman was dead when Maude found out via telegram the next day she was absolutely devastated and broke down in a fit of tears and screams but still had to go on stage and perform to make the situation worse in the same three-month span Mod's production assistant Alan Fawcett and her dear friend and designer John Alexander both passed away in a noble attempt at grieving Maude and Louise decided to go to Canada for some time alone but then suddenly mod insisted on returning to work which greatly concerned Louise and Phyllis everyone in Mod's life could tell felt that something was off she was acting different she insisted on Long Long rehearsals obsessed with perfection the actress Ruth Gordon recalled after the play opened she never came on stage until just before her entrance then she came out of her dressing room proceeded by one stage manager and followed by another nobody ever thought of speaking to her on the way to the stage or between the scenes it was Eerie because mod had always been known as one of the kindest people in theater she always remembered to throw cast parties buying people gifts and was famous for her charity to rub salt in the wound later that year Mod's grandmother passed away too and then a few months later a message came from Salt Lake City that Mod's mother was ill and about to die Annie Adams passed away on March 17 1916 and mod receded further and further into herself and her pain as the war Drew on mod became weaker and weaker and more depressed she asked Louise to find her a retreat she could recover in but it was difficult because at the time most Retreats like what she was looking for were convents and those typically refused to accept actresses or wouldn't accept Maude because she wasn't Catholic finally Louise found one that said yes the sisters of the Senegal in New York the cynical sisters were immediately welcoming to both Maude and Louise and so Maude would stay with them on and off for the next two years their acceptance and caring made a massive impression on her and she would later donate her property in Long Island to them as well as her property in the Catskills they use the Long Island property as a retreat until the summer of 2020 when it was sold to the Diocese of Rockville Center and I reached out to the cynical sisters for more info on how the property's being used and they informed me that the diocese is using it as a retirement home for their priests so then I reached out to the diocese itself to ask how the mod Adams house is being used whether or not it's still open to visitors and if there's plans to make changes to the mod Adams House itself Unfortunately they never replied to me maybe they're still too busy dealing with the whole predatory priests controversy anyway after mod emerged from her isolation she realized just how much she yearned to follow her interest in stage lighting so she got in contact with the head of General Electric labs and discussed her ideas the head Willis Whitney was so inspired by her that he immediately got her her own office at GE mod and Louise moved to Schenectady New York and hope I'm pronouncing that right to go head on into the lighting project the engineers at GE were shocked at how useful Mod's ideas and suggestions were with her complete lack of engineering training although mod was staunchly opposed to being in movies she was really interested in how her expertise could apply to making movies she worked very hard to produce a Tungsten lamp for film and Stage exerting herself so much that Louise confided in Phyllis that she was worried about mod but at long last Maude and the GE team successfully finished creating a new light bulb at the time it was the world's biggest incandescent bulb at 18.5 by 12 inches

large the light required 30 000 watts of electricity and gave give off a powerful sixty thousand candle power of light GE wrote up an agreement between themselves Kodak and mod to build a motion picture lab that would produce films directed by mod but despite ge's insistence and despite the fact that it would have made her a ton of money mod refused to sign she stood by her reasoning that she was only passionate about the stage and she didn't need the money or stress out of frustration it suspected that most of ge's papers regarding Mod's involvement in her invention were destroyed for years she was scarcely mentioned in their Museum and archives in 1926 mod published an autobiography in the Ladies Home Journal titled the one I knew least of all written in the third person in it she admitted that she had harbored a mild dislike and a fear of children until she played in Peter Pan as a child she was mostly surrounded by adults so childhood was a foreign concept to her it was in becoming Peter the boy who never grew up that helped her reconnect with that lost childhood and that lost childhood consumed by new roles always being a different person had given mod an identity crisis that she had spent years trying to crawl out of in her biography she wrote it is one of the many blessings of life in the theater that we are delightfully busy being someone else and need have scarcely an inkling of ourselves that doubtful pleasure can always be deferred and what a mercy if we really knew ourselves how could we endure it to make one's own acquaintance is difficult enough under ordinary circumstances but if life is begun pretending to be Ava the youthful heroine of Uncle Tom's Cabin or little Paul in the octoroon or this or that other little boy or girl it becomes increasingly difficult to separate whom from which our self becomes more and more indistinct and nebulous much more Visionary than the very real children all written out of black and white that we spend conscious hours in learning they are real children not at all intangible like the wispy thing inside us which is always asking questions that never seem to be answered following this publication mod promptly dropped off the face of the Earth she had always been as Ethel Barrymore called her the original I want to be a lone wo

2022-12-26 17:06

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