Marc Ballantyne

@darylandfilms She won the Oscar though, didn't she? He didn't.

theatre studies prof did an hour long lecture on marlon brando's performance in "a streetcar named desire" and it genuinely baffles me how one can watch that film and talk about anything else other than vivien leigh's heartachingly beautiful performance as blanche dubois

@alexyoungalpha I don't know if you generally get credit for it but your hair always looks 😘. It really enhances everything else. Natural, sexy, spun gold, somehow timeless, like you would see on a hero from Greek myths.

locked in

@conradkraus_ I live all the pics where you put your legs on show. Here your quads are just 😘.

sporty outfit 🧦👟

@TurnbullMartin A bit creepy. Overlook Hotel. All men. Where were the dames?

Sid Grauman is best remembered for his Chinese Theatre. He was very well liked and friendly with everybody. So I wasn’t surprised to find this photo of a dinner held on July 17, 1929 in Grauman’s honor in the Crystal Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel to celebrate his retirement.

@jmlx_john2 I enjoyed the Tate's wonderful retrospective late last year. They played music in the galleries from Burra's own record collection, which the Tate now holds. It was very evocative not only of his era but also of his personal likes and sensibility.

Edward Burra (b. 29 March 1905) was a highly distinctive British artist who defies categorization, but whose acerbic wit, visual brilliance, and dead-eyed skewering of sex, society, and religion secures his place as a major figure in Modern British Art. He is best known for his large-scale, vibrant, and often eerie watercolor paintings that captured the urban underworld of the 20th century. Edward spent significant time in New York and France, with his art documenting street life, nightclubs, and cabarets. His series of Harlem street scenes (1933–34) are among his most famous works. In the 1940s, he was deeply influenced by the Spanish Civil War and World War II, leading him to create darker, more violent imagery that critiqued fascism and state violence. In his later years, he focused on the British landscape, often depicting the environmental anxiety of post-war industrialization. Considered a master of watercolor, Burra used it to create bold, graphic, and saturated scenes. He largely avoided oils because his chronic rheumatoid arthritis made them too physically demanding to work with. Besides his paintings, he also achieved success designing scenery and costumes for opera, ballet, and theater, including productions for the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells. Burra is widely considered to have been gay, though he never publicly identified as such during his lifetime. His personal letters were famous for their wit and camp terminology, often referring to London as "TinkerBell Towne". His closest lifelong friend was the gay dancer and theatre director William “Billy” Chappell. Though there are suggestions of a sexual affair, some believe Burra remained celibate due to his poor health. A reclusive and sardonic character, Edward famously declined membership in the Royal Academy, but is now recognized as a "modern master". His works are held in major institutions like the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Galleries of Scotland.

@jmlx_john2 They didn't make you gay. You were already that. You just connected with the gay sensibility of many of those who made those movies. Seeing "That's Entertainment" projected in 70mm in the mid 1970s on a massive screen did the same for me. 😍🤩

Halfway between our town and one town over, along a grim stretch of prairie and cotton fields, in the early Fifties a Drive-in opened on Hwy 6, with its newspaper ads encouraging patrons to “come in your work clothes, with the kids in their PJs, and smoke at your leisure”. Indeed. My parents were both chain smokers and between Daddy’s cigars and Mother’s Pall Malls, we looked like a car on fire. But despite the tinny sound from the window speaker and my sisters’ nonstop chatter, I was captivated by the movies. But it wasn’t the Comedies, the Westerns, the War films, the Sin & Sandal epics, or the Horror pictures that captured my imagination. It was the Musicals. The singing, dancing, and, yes, swimming. Gorgeous women in glorious costumes. Handsome men in hot pursuit. All in color-saturated fantastic settings. Sputnik could have crashed into the car beside us, and I wouldn’t have torn my eyes away from that screen. My imagination was fired. My future was set. These were The Movies That Made Me Gay!😀 Click to play.

@jmlx_john2 A splendid tale indeed. What a life.

William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp (b. 20 February 1872), was an accomplished British politician and leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords (1924 – 1931). Lord Beauchamp is generally considered to be the model for the character Lord Marchmain in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, although both lived abroad, apart from their family, for very different reasons. The Earl was the perfect aristocrat. Tall, handsome, intelligent, cultured, and highly artistic, he was an energetic and successful public figure and an exceptionally devoted father. His family and their immediate entourage moved by private train between Madresfield, the family’s fabulous ancestral home beneath the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, their house on Belgrave Square in Belgravia, and Walmer Castle in Kent, the Earl’s official residence as Warden of the Cinque Ports. Here’s the rub. Married and the father of 7 children, in 1931, Lord Beauchamp was outed as a homosexual. Oh, dear. Although his proclivity was an open secret in parts of high society, and one that his political opponents had refrained from using against him, Lady Lettice Beauchamp (née Lettice Mary Grovesnor, daughter of Earl Grosvenor) was oblivious to it and professed a confusion as to what homosexuality actually was. When the news was delivered, with what appeared to be unrestrained brutality, she apparently suffered a nervous collapse. “Benny (her brother, Hugh, the Duke of Westminster) tells me it’s because he’s a bugler,” was her response. Think about that one for a minute. By all accounts, her husband had pursued numerous affairs at Madresfield and Walmer Castle, with his partners ranging from socialites to servants to local men. In a commendable display of nonpartisanship - it seems any man would do. In 1930, while on a trip to Australia, it became common knowledge in London society that one of his escorts, Robert Bernays, also a member of the Liberal Party, was his lover. This was reported to King George V and Queen Mary by Beauchamp's Tory brother-in-law, the Duke, who disliked Beauchamp and hoped to ruin both him and the Liberal Party through his downfall. Damn Tories! Family – what can you do? Homosexual practices were a criminal offence at the time, and the King was horrified, rumored to have said, "I thought men like that shot themselves". The King also had a personal stake in the case. His sons Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent, had visited Madresfield in the past. Prince George was even then in a relationship with Beauchamp's daughter, Lady Mary. That was immediately terminated. So much for love. After sufficient evidence had been gathered by his brother-in-law, Beauchamp was made an offer -- separate from his wife, retire on a pretense, and get the hell out of the country. In June 1931, he accepted and left immediately, living a nomadic life in the global homosexual hotspots of the time. (List, please!) Soon afterwards, Lady Lettice obtained a divorce. There was no public scandal, but the Lord, as agreed, resigned all his offices. Following his departure for the continent, Benny sent him a note which read, "Dear Bugger-in-law, you got what you deserved. Yours, Westminster." Indeed! Perhaps truly happy at last, Lord Beauchamp's final partner was David Smyth (son of John Smyth-Pigott, second leader of the messianic sect the Agapemonites) to whom he left a Sydney mansion and a stock portfolio. Downton Abbey, it very decidedly was not.

@ParadiseBoys64 It's not so much the car, it's the house. Wow! I want it! Where is it? 😯

@jmlx_john2 I mean, murder, mutilation and cannibalism! The late Catherine O'Hara did a splendid impression of the even later Elizabeth Taylor in "Suddenly...". I've seen it here on X but regret I cannot find it now. It's hilarious.

@MarcBallantyne Suddenly, Last Summer is one of my favorites but I think we have Gore Vidal to thank for the outrageousness of the screenplay.😎

Tennessee Williams (b. 26 March 1911) was a preeminent American playwright and screenwriter, widely considered one of the three most important dramatists of 20th-century American theater alongside Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. Born Thomas Lanier Williams III, he adopted the pen name "Tennessee" early in his career, reportedly a nickname from his college days due to his Southern drawl. Williams is best known for his intense psychological dramas that explored taboo subjects -- The Glass Menagerie (1944); A Streetcar Named Desire (1947 - often cited as one of the finest plays of the 20th century, it earned him the first of two Pulitzer Prizes); The Rose Tattoo (1951); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955, his second Pulitzer Prize-winning play); Suddenly, Last Summer (1958); Sweet Bird of Youth (1959); and The Night of the Iguana (1961). His work was deeply autobiographical, drawing from a life marked by personal tragedy. For instance, his sister Rose’s lobotomy in 1937 was a lifelong source of guilt and a recurring motif in his writing. His sexuality also deeply influenced his work, which frequently featured social outcasts and themes of loneliness, forbidden desire, and repressed emotions. Although his private life was an “open secret”, he did not come out publicly until 1970 at age 59 on the David Frost Show. Williams lived a nomadic lifestyle, spending significant time in Europe, New York, New Orleans, and Key West. Among his many gay friends were Christopher Isherwood, Donald Windham, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and William Inge, each subtly capable of drawing blood from the others. He was also close to Carson McCullers, a fellow Southern Gothic writer, who famously bonded over their shared backgrounds, gay identities, and artistic sensibilities. His most significant relationship was with Frank Merlo, an aspiring actor, which lasted for 14 years from 1947 to 1961. Following Frankie’s death from lung cancer in 1963, Tennessee spiraled into deep depression and substance abuse which affected the critical reception of his later work. Twenty years afterwards, on February 25, 1983, at the Hotel Elysée in New York City, he died after accidentally choking on a plastic cap from a bottle of eye drops. Despite his desire to be buried at sea near where the gay poet Hart Crane had died by suicide in 1932, leaping into the Gulf of Mexico from the deck of the steamship SS Orizaba, Tennessee’s family buried him at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, the city of his youth. [click to play]

@jmlx_john2 I have seen a number of Sondheim works, most recently Into The Woods, currently running at London's Bridge Theatre. Of all the musical theatre composers, I think his is the most identifiably 'gay' aesthetic: the humour & the phraseology in particular.

Stephen Sondheim (b. 22 March 1930) was an American composer and lyricist widely regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater. Over a career spanning nearly seven decades, he reinvented the American musical by introducing complex, sophisticated lyrics and addressing dark, ambivalent themes of the human experience. Sondheim first gained major recognition as a lyricist for iconic shows like West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) before moving on to write both music and lyrics for some of Broadway's most celebrated productions -- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Sweeney Todd (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), and Assassins (1990). Sondheim's work earned him 8 Tony Awards (more than any other composer) plus a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, 8 Grammy Awards, 1 Academy Award (for "Sooner or Later" from the 1990 film Dick Tracy), the Pulitzer Prize (for Sunday in the Park with George), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015). A gay man who frequently collaborated with other gay artists (including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Arthur Laurents, most notably on West Side Story), Sondheim became more open about his sexuality in the later decades of his life. He officially came out at approximately age 40 and did not live with a romantic partner until he was 61. His first long-term, live-in relationship was with dramatist Peter Jones. They lived together in Sondheim’s Turtle Bay home from roughly 1991 to 1999. His last significant partner was Jeffrey Romley, a digital producer and actor. They married on December 31, 2017, and remained together until Sondheim's death in 2021.

@archivetvmus71 I am sure there was a voice-over: "This is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. Can you guess who is inside it today?" - Brian Cant sounding like he was recorded inside a cupboard. These programmes were truly hand-made and beautiful.

Camberwick Green (21st March 1967). Mickey Murphy pops out of the musical box today.

@coriumalart @ScamLadz2 @GreedyMiles Miles looking hot, fit and hunky in this one. Insolent smile. Ideal proportions, with nice angle on his thigh. Shame his bulge is in shadow. Our imagination needs something to work on. 7 out of 10. 9 with bulge.

I did some unusual aiart for Miles. @GreedyMiles using a different scenario and concept. Let me know what you think. A lotmof older cashpigs out there apparently! I am pleased with the sunglasses and leathers within the Ai Art.#findom

@ScamLadz2 Hot, fit, hunky lad, this one.

@ChonlozB GWTW costumes were designed by Walter Plunkett (1902-1982).

Gone With the Wind (1939) — Scarlett O’Hara’s Dresses Restored 👗✨ Scarlett O’Hara’s wardrobe in Gone With the Wind (1939) remains one of the most celebrated costume collections in cinema history.✨

@manuthebest58 More foreshadowing of Marion's fate: the rain is the shower, the wipers are the stabbing blade of Mrs Bates' butcher's knife.

Once the rain starts, there should be a progression of falling rain sound... Wind-shield wipers should be heard all through the moments she turns them on… The rain sounds must be very strong, so that when the rain stops, we should be aware of silence. ⤵️

@manuthebest58 Note how the shower is visible through the open bathroom door, foreshadowing Marion's fate. Also, if I remember correctly she has just changed from white underwear to black, signalling her transition from innocence to guilt.

Marion brings the money home to her apartment. She changes her clothes and starts packing her suitcase. This controlled and carefully prepared scene is thoroughly visual, accompanied only by Herrmann's music. It's pure cinema. #Hitchcock

@jmlx_john2 Your witty thumbnail portraits are always worth reading. This one made me chuckle. Xx

Alan Campbell (b. 21 Feb 1904) was a prominent, high-earning screenwriter, who in collaboration with his “wife” Dorothy Parker, produced over 15 films during the 1930s and 40s. The pair moved to Hollywood in 1934, initially signing contracts with Paramount where the more famous Parker earned $1,000 per week to Campbell's $250. Their most notable works include A Star Is Born (1937, for which they received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay), Trade Winds (1938), The Little Foxes (1941 – they provided additional dialogue), and Saboteur (1942). Campbell also co-wrote the Ann Sheridan vehicle, Woman on the Run (1950). Widely reputed to be gay during his lifetime (Parker famously referred to him in public as being "queer as a billy goat"), Campbell was 11 years younger than Dorothy and often took a caretaking role, managing their household and finances while encouraging her writing. Married and divorced twice, their relationship was marked by intense devotion, public volatility, and a high consumption of alcohol. During one of their separations, Campbell had shared a duplex apartment in Manhattan with the writer, Thomas Heggen (“Mister Roberts”). In May 1949, shortly after Campbell left for LA to return to Dorothy, Heggen was found dead in their bathtub with his head under water and a near-empty bottle of sleeping pills close by. Heggen, who was not known to be gay, was reportedly suffering from writer’s block following the tremendous success of his novel and subsequent play. (If you say so). Both Alan and Dorothy were active in left-wing causes, co-founding the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. This involvement eventually led to them being blacklisted during the Red Scare in the 1950s. On June 14, 1963, in West Hollywood, like Heggen, Campbell died from an overdose of barbiturates. While the coroner ruled it a probable suicide (he had a plastic bag wrapped around his head), Parker publicly maintained it was an accident. Upon his death, Dorothy famously displayed her signature humor—when a neighbor asked if there was anything she could get her, she replied, "A new husband. But if not that, then run down to the corner and get me a ham and cheese on rye. And tell them to hold the mayo". [Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell pictured below]

@spclsmthin So effortlessly stylish. Just watched Rear Window again this afternoon and, knowing the plot so well, I could just sit and admire Ms Head's gorgeous costumes for, well, you know...She did a couple of beautiful suits too for Wendell Corey. I want.

I did a film with Henry in 1977 originally called “The Last of the Cowboys” in Orville, Ca. One afternoon during a break in shooting while I was holding an actress’ parasol and bag Henry photographed this picture of me and called it, “Edith Head on location.”

@haruto8college Would love to see more of this guy running, jumping, doing anything. Even just standing still.

Exercise and cute underwear make a sexy male body.