Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is short Stuff,
Speaker 1: the Slang edition. That's right. And while we are not
Speaker 1: friends of Dorothy, we are friends of friends of Dorothy. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: put man. I wanted to say, hey, we're friends of
Speaker 1: Dorothy because it seems like it could mean that you're
Speaker 1: just uh endorsed the l g t b Q community.
Speaker 1: But that's not what it means. No, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: means you're straight up member of the l g b
Speaker 1: t Q community. That's right. Um. And it's slang, like
Speaker 1: I said, it doesn't. It doesn't have any direct meaning,
Speaker 1: or does it. We're going to find out, um. But
Speaker 1: the whole reason that you would have slang kind of
Speaker 1: a coded phrase for being gay is just part of
Speaker 1: the shameful past of how gay people were treated in
Speaker 1: in Europe and America up until very recently, of course,
Speaker 1: and so there was code that they would use amongst
Speaker 1: themselves so they wouldn't uh you know, all men are
Speaker 1: bad things could happen if if word was out about them,
Speaker 1: so shamefully they did need code. But like you said
Speaker 1: in this article that you put together Um, let's move
Speaker 1: on to the more fun stuff, which is where this
Speaker 1: came from? Right, Who is Dorothy? Who is Dorothy? That's
Speaker 1: the great question, And actually it's never really been answered,
Speaker 1: to tell you the truth. Um. Supposedly the whole uh
Speaker 1: that that that phrase friend of Dorothy to mean a
Speaker 1: gay person has been around since the World War two era,
Speaker 1: says the Pride website. Okay, it's a legit source. But
Speaker 1: then we head on over to the Wizard of Oz
Speaker 1: fan blog friends of Dorothy and they say it doesn't
Speaker 1: appear in any gay slang books or academic reviews of
Speaker 1: gay slang in the twentieth century, which is really weird
Speaker 1: because it definitely did exist. It wasn't you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just me and people I knew using that, like,
Speaker 1: it was widespread. And exactly how old it is really
Speaker 1: kind of matters, doesn't it. Well, Yeah, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some Dorothy candidates. Uh, I feel like we
Speaker 1: should probably talk about these first three and then take
Speaker 1: our break and get to the man, the big whammy.
Speaker 1: You know what, you know, exactly what you're doing. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that the first Dorothy we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: and there's some legitimacy here for sure, because it was
Speaker 1: a socialite named Dorothy King in twentieth century London, early
Speaker 1: twenties century London. Uh. And Dorothy King, very early on
Speaker 1: in London was a friend of the gay community, especially
Speaker 1: gay men. She would have these big parties. Uh. And
Speaker 1: apparently they would use friend of Dorothy or friend of
Speaker 1: Mrs King uh to refer to themselves as slang to
Speaker 1: get them in these parties or just to talk about them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The fact that there's also a friend of Mrs King
Speaker 1: meaning the same thing a gay man in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, mid twenties century, that really supports the possibility
Speaker 1: that she was the original Dorothy I agree. Okay, the
Speaker 1: next one is Dorothy Parker. She's also a great contender.
Speaker 1: She's coming out of not just New York, but also
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and the ninet thirties and then later on
Speaker 1: in the sixties. Those are the two times that she
Speaker 1: really had a huge impact and was kind of almost
Speaker 1: an icon in the gay community because, like Dorothy King,
Speaker 1: she surrounded herselves with gay people at a time when
Speaker 1: gay people were very much persecuted. Um. And she was
Speaker 1: also a huge ardent supporter of the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I did not know about her sixties. Comeback, Um,
Speaker 1: I know all about the thirties Dorothy Parker was kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of into researching that for a little while quite
Speaker 1: a few years ago, but did not know about the sixties.
Speaker 1: L A version doesn't surprise me. Pretty cool because I
Speaker 1: can see her then, uh, sitting around a mid century
Speaker 1: modern pool doing the same thing she was rocking in
Speaker 1: the thirties in New York. Yes, but she married a
Speaker 1: man who was openly bisexual. He referred to himself as
Speaker 1: quote queer, as a billy goat, so she was. She
Speaker 1: was very much in the running as a possible Dorothy yes. Um.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, the third of the first three Dorothy's
Speaker 1: was a woman named Dorothy Dean. She was an African
Speaker 1: American socialite in New York, and she was very much
Speaker 1: in the orbit of the gay community, especially through Andy
Speaker 1: Warhol in his gang. And was not like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: she right exactly sounding She's kind of like hung out
Speaker 1: with Warhol every once a while, like she was part
Speaker 1: of Warhol's inner circles, would appear in as films, like
Speaker 1: she was a bit of amused for him and then
Speaker 1: also as if her cool cred in the art community
Speaker 1: and gay community couldn't get any better. She was a
Speaker 1: door I guess a doorman is what they would have
Speaker 1: called her in the um un liberated early sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to be cool back then, you could
Speaker 1: work the door at one of two places, either CBGB
Speaker 1: or Max's Kansas City. And she worked the door at
Speaker 1: Maxus Kansas City, which was a music club and and
Speaker 1: barn hang out of the coolest of the cool in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies. Yes, so she knew everybody, and
Speaker 1: she also had a lot of gay friends too, So
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that she was the Dorothy that we
Speaker 1: spoke of. She couldn't have been the Dorothy if this
Speaker 1: This phrase has been around since World War Two. But
Speaker 1: the one of the things that I figured out about this,
Speaker 1: chuck is that, um, it could have been any of
Speaker 1: these Dorothys. All these Dorothys could have could you could
Speaker 1: You could use that phrase and it would still hold
Speaker 1: water um at different times depending on the context too.
Speaker 1: So it's not like any of these are wrong necessarily.
Speaker 1: They all went, I agree, But there is one that's
Speaker 1: actually the winner. That's right, And we'll introduce this winner,
Speaker 1: and I'll bet you know who it is, right if
Speaker 1: to this and stop? Okay, Chuck, it's time for the
Speaker 1: big reveal. Who is Dorothy? For reels somewhere over the rainbow,
Speaker 1: keep going, I'm not familiar. I don't know the rest
Speaker 1: of the words. Something cries, there's way up, high way up. Hi,
Speaker 1: So who cries? Didn't want to cry? No, I think
Speaker 1: you've misheard it. I think you're right. Uh, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Dorothy Gail, the character in L. Frank Baum's Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz book series. Um. And there's a few big
Speaker 1: time reasons for this, one really big time reason. But
Speaker 1: the movie Wizard of Oz is special in the l
Speaker 1: g tb Q community because, Um, Dorothy kind of comes
Speaker 1: out in her own way and undergoes this transformation from
Speaker 1: a very um, sort of boring, black and white world
Speaker 1: to a brilliant, colorful, rainbow filled world. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: just if you're reading the book. She also in the book,
Speaker 1: um be friends and in Companies, three men, none of
Speaker 1: whom are traditionally masculine or manly. And there's even a
Speaker 1: part in the book well not the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1: But one of the other books Um from the Oz series,
Speaker 1: where um another character tells her Dorothy, you have some
Speaker 1: queer friends, and she says the queerness doesn't matter so
Speaker 1: long as they're friends. I don't know about that part,
Speaker 1: because that's not what queer meant. No. But but the
Speaker 1: point is this is whether it meant no, They certainly
Speaker 1: didn't mean queer as in gay. They just meant strange, unusual.
Speaker 1: And that's I think we're queer applied to gay people,
Speaker 1: especially in the mid mid twentieth century. That's where it
Speaker 1: came from. It men, you're you're weird, you're off, or whatever,
Speaker 1: and Dorothy saying it doesn't matter how they're off. It
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter that they're off. It just matters that
Speaker 1: they're friends. And I think if you felt alienated, especially
Speaker 1: if you fell alienated because you were gay, uh, that
Speaker 1: something like that would have resonated with you. And I
Speaker 1: think that's that's why a lot of gay people it's
Speaker 1: very it's easy to stereotype at this point because there's
Speaker 1: probably a lot of gay people who can't stand Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz, but there's a lot of gay people who
Speaker 1: do love with Wizard of Oz. That's right. And one
Speaker 1: of the big reasons why is because the star of
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz it was none other than Judy Garland,
Speaker 1: who is top three gay icon. Maybe. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of arguments for number one, but I would say
Speaker 1: definitely top three. Who are the other two? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: you know Lon Cheney Jr. I would Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know that that would be tough because you could throw
Speaker 1: Share in there. You could throw Barber Strice in in there, Madonna,
Speaker 1: who Liberaci, Oh, Libarraci of course. Um so maybe it
Speaker 1: might be one of those things where the top three
Speaker 1: is like a list of ten people. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: because we just had so much trouble even narrowing it
Speaker 1: down to top three, she might be the number one
Speaker 1: then maybe, But it's not for us to say anyway.
Speaker 1: You know, no, it's not. You're right, but Judy Garland.
Speaker 1: Garland is certainly a gay icon. Uh. There have been,
Speaker 1: you know, everything from her her funeral, which was attended
Speaker 1: by more people than Rudolph Valentino, Uh, to her. I
Speaker 1: mean Rufus Wainwright did an entire tour where Rufus sings
Speaker 1: Judy Garland. Yeah, yeah, and her her funeral that day
Speaker 1: of her funeral was this that later that night was
Speaker 1: the Stonewall Riot, and a lot of people were like, well,
Speaker 1: Judy Garland's death kicked off the Stonewall riots with kick,
Speaker 1: which kicked off the air of civil rights for gay people. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's apparently been refuted by some people, but other
Speaker 1: people said, no, that that definitely had something to do
Speaker 1: with that. It was a factor, man. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're at a boiling point and then one of your
Speaker 1: icons and spiritual leaders dies, that'll send you And if
Speaker 1: you're at a bar drinking and you're sad about that,
Speaker 1: that could definitely be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're sad about it and everyone with you
Speaker 1: at that bar is sad about the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: that sends a camaraderie and collect suness. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: definitely translate into that. And there was also um like
Speaker 1: it's really kind of difficult to to under state like
Speaker 1: the impact in the the what an icon she was?
Speaker 1: But I saw did I say understate? Yeah? I didn't didn't.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to overstate it because, um, but I saw
Speaker 1: it like really summarized well by this one quote. Some
Speaker 1: some writer was describing a bio of her that was
Speaker 1: first put on as a stage play but was later
Speaker 1: produced into Judy starring Renee's elwigger Um. The stage play
Speaker 1: was called End of the Rainbow, but the this writer
Speaker 1: said that it was explaining the End of the Rainbow
Speaker 1: was like a gay version of the Passion of the Christ.
Speaker 1: Very he clearly kind of gets across, like what an
Speaker 1: icon she is and was in the in the gay community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna end up with my final verdict being Dorothy
Speaker 1: could be a combination of all these Dorothy's and could
Speaker 1: have been any one of them, two different people at
Speaker 1: different times. So the last thing about this chuck is
Speaker 1: the slang has actually gone the way of the dinosaur,
Speaker 1: which is good because that suggests that gay people don't
Speaker 1: feel the need to encode their gayness nearly as much anymore,
Speaker 1: if at all, in a lot of places, which is wonderful.
Speaker 1: But before that happened, Right before that happened, in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, there was a an actual witch hunt to
Speaker 1: root out gay people well in the military that was
Speaker 1: spearheaded by Navy Intelligence Services and Army intelligence and it
Speaker 1: was terrible and shameful and They wasted hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars doing this because an admiral vice admiral named
Speaker 1: Joseph S. Donald flipped out at the idea that they
Speaker 1: were gay men in the military apparently he'd never noticed,
Speaker 1: and wasted all this money doing this. But the one
Speaker 1: good thing that came out of this was this amazing
Speaker 1: story that I think you should tell everybody. Well, they
Speaker 1: intelligence and then I say that with quotes around it
Speaker 1: got ahold of the friends of Dorothy um usage and
Speaker 1: they thought there was a real Dorothy that was providing
Speaker 1: uh quarter for gay men in the military, and what
Speaker 1: uh where it was. This was sympathetic to their cause
Speaker 1: and aiding and abetting them. And so they spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money of your tax dollars trying to chase
Speaker 1: down who Dorothy was because these friends of hers were
Speaker 1: serving in the middlets Are and they wanted to get
Speaker 1: her to inform on them. They didn't never find her, though, Huh,
Speaker 1: that seems like a made up story. It's so great,
Speaker 1: it does. I saw it in multiple sources though, so
Speaker 1: I think it's actually real, including the l A Times. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's it, everybody. That's it for friends of Dorothy.
Speaker 1: Now you can say hey, I'm a friend of a
Speaker 1: friend of Dorothy, and people say, what does that mean.
Speaker 1: You say, let me tell you. That's right okay, which
Speaker 1: of course means short stuff. Is that stuff you should know?
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