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Short Stuff: Friends of Dorothy · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is short Stuff,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the Slang edition. That's right. And while we are not
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: friends of Dorothy, we are friends of friends of Dorothy. Yeah. Well,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: put man. I wanted to say, hey, we're friends of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Dorothy because it seems like it could mean that you're
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: just uh endorsed the l g t b Q community.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: But that's not what it means. No, it doesn't. It
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: means you're straight up member of the l g b
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: t Q community. That's right. Um. And it's slang, like
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I said, it doesn't. It doesn't have any direct meaning,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: or does it. We're going to find out, um. But
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the whole reason that you would have slang kind of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a coded phrase for being gay is just part of
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the shameful past of how gay people were treated in
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: in Europe and America up until very recently, of course,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and so there was code that they would use amongst
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: themselves so they wouldn't uh you know, all men are
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: bad things could happen if if word was out about them,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: so shamefully they did need code. But like you said
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: in this article that you put together Um, let's move
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: on to the more fun stuff, which is where this
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: came from? Right, Who is Dorothy? Who is Dorothy? That's
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the great question, And actually it's never really been answered,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: to tell you the truth. Um. Supposedly the whole uh
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that that that phrase friend of Dorothy to mean a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: gay person has been around since the World War two era,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: says the Pride website. Okay, it's a legit source. But
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: then we head on over to the Wizard of Oz
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: fan blog friends of Dorothy and they say it doesn't
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: appear in any gay slang books or academic reviews of
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: gay slang in the twentieth century, which is really weird
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: because it definitely did exist. It wasn't you know, it
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't just me and people I knew using that, like,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it was widespread. And exactly how old it is really
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: kind of matters, doesn't it. Well, Yeah, because we're gonna
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: talk about some Dorothy candidates. Uh, I feel like we
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: should probably talk about these first three and then take
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: our break and get to the man, the big whammy.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: You know what, you know, exactly what you're doing. I
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  Speaker 1: appreciate that the first Dorothy we're going to talk about
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and there's some legitimacy here for sure, because it was
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  Speaker 1: a socialite named Dorothy King in twentieth century London, early
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: twenties century London. Uh. And Dorothy King, very early on
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  Speaker 1: in London was a friend of the gay community, especially
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  Speaker 1: gay men. She would have these big parties. Uh. And
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: apparently they would use friend of Dorothy or friend of
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Mrs King uh to refer to themselves as slang to
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  Speaker 1: get them in these parties or just to talk about them. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: The fact that there's also a friend of Mrs King
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  Speaker 1: meaning the same thing a gay man in the early
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  Speaker 1: twentieth century, mid twenties century, that really supports the possibility
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: that she was the original Dorothy I agree. Okay, the
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: next one is Dorothy Parker. She's also a great contender.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: She's coming out of not just New York, but also
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles and the ninet thirties and then later on
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: in the sixties. Those are the two times that she
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: really had a huge impact and was kind of almost
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: an icon in the gay community because, like Dorothy King,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: she surrounded herselves with gay people at a time when
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: gay people were very much persecuted. Um. And she was
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  Speaker 1: also a huge ardent supporter of the civil rights movement
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  Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I did not know about her sixties. Comeback, Um,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I know all about the thirties Dorothy Parker was kind of, uh,
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  Speaker 1: kind of into researching that for a little while quite
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  Speaker 1: a few years ago, but did not know about the sixties.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: L A version doesn't surprise me. Pretty cool because I
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  Speaker 1: can see her then, uh, sitting around a mid century
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  Speaker 1: modern pool doing the same thing she was rocking in
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the thirties in New York. Yes, but she married a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: man who was openly bisexual. He referred to himself as
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: quote queer, as a billy goat, so she was. She
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  Speaker 1: was very much in the running as a possible Dorothy yes. Um.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: And then lastly, the third of the first three Dorothy's
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  Speaker 1: was a woman named Dorothy Dean. She was an African
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: American socialite in New York, and she was very much
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  Speaker 1: in the orbit of the gay community, especially through Andy
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Warhol in his gang. And was not like, um, you know,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: she right exactly sounding She's kind of like hung out
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: with Warhol every once a while, like she was part
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of Warhol's inner circles, would appear in as films, like
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  Speaker 1: she was a bit of amused for him and then
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  Speaker 1: also as if her cool cred in the art community
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  Speaker 1: and gay community couldn't get any better. She was a
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  Speaker 1: door I guess a doorman is what they would have
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  Speaker 1: called her in the um un liberated early sixties. Yeah,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: if you wanted to be cool back then, you could
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  Speaker 1: work the door at one of two places, either CBGB
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: or Max's Kansas City. And she worked the door at
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Maxus Kansas City, which was a music club and and
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: barn hang out of the coolest of the cool in
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  Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies. Yes, so she knew everybody, and
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  Speaker 1: she also had a lot of gay friends too, So
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  Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that she was the Dorothy that we
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  Speaker 1: spoke of. She couldn't have been the Dorothy if this
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: This phrase has been around since World War Two. But
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the one of the things that I figured out about this,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: chuck is that, um, it could have been any of
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  Speaker 1: these Dorothys. All these Dorothys could have could you could
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  Speaker 1: You could use that phrase and it would still hold
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  Speaker 1: water um at different times depending on the context too.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not like any of these are wrong necessarily.
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  Speaker 1: They all went, I agree, But there is one that's
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: actually the winner. That's right, And we'll introduce this winner,
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  Speaker 1: and I'll bet you know who it is, right if
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to this and stop? Okay, Chuck, it's time for the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: big reveal. Who is Dorothy? For reels somewhere over the rainbow,
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  Speaker 1: keep going, I'm not familiar. I don't know the rest
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: of the words. Something cries, there's way up, high way up. Hi,
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  Speaker 1: So who cries? Didn't want to cry? No, I think
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: you've misheard it. I think you're right. Uh, we're talking
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  Speaker 1: about Dorothy Gail, the character in L. Frank Baum's Wizard
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  Speaker 1: of Oz book series. Um. And there's a few big
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  Speaker 1: time reasons for this, one really big time reason. But
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the movie Wizard of Oz is special in the l
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: g tb Q community because, Um, Dorothy kind of comes
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  Speaker 1: out in her own way and undergoes this transformation from
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a very um, sort of boring, black and white world
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  Speaker 1: to a brilliant, colorful, rainbow filled world. Yeah, and that's
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  Speaker 1: just if you're reading the book. She also in the book,
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  Speaker 1: um be friends and in Companies, three men, none of
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: whom are traditionally masculine or manly. And there's even a
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  Speaker 1: part in the book well not the Wizard of Oz.
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  Speaker 1: But one of the other books Um from the Oz series,
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  Speaker 1: where um another character tells her Dorothy, you have some
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: queer friends, and she says the queerness doesn't matter so
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: long as they're friends. I don't know about that part,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: because that's not what queer meant. No. But but the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: point is this is whether it meant no, They certainly
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: didn't mean queer as in gay. They just meant strange, unusual.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: And that's I think we're queer applied to gay people,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: especially in the mid mid twentieth century. That's where it
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  Speaker 1: came from. It men, you're you're weird, you're off, or whatever,
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  Speaker 1: and Dorothy saying it doesn't matter how they're off. It
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't even matter that they're off. It just matters that
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  Speaker 1: they're friends. And I think if you felt alienated, especially
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: if you fell alienated because you were gay, uh, that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: something like that would have resonated with you. And I
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: think that's that's why a lot of gay people it's
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: very it's easy to stereotype at this point because there's
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: probably a lot of gay people who can't stand Wizard
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  Speaker 1: of Oz, but there's a lot of gay people who
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  Speaker 1: do love with Wizard of Oz. That's right. And one
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  Speaker 1: of the big reasons why is because the star of
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  Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz it was none other than Judy Garland,
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  Speaker 1: who is top three gay icon. Maybe. I mean a
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  Speaker 1: lot of arguments for number one, but I would say
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  Speaker 1: definitely top three. Who are the other two? Oh? Well,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: you know Lon Cheney Jr. I would Well, I don't
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  Speaker 1: know that that would be tough because you could throw
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Share in there. You could throw Barber Strice in in there, Madonna,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: who Liberaci, Oh, Libarraci of course. Um so maybe it
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: might be one of those things where the top three
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: is like a list of ten people. Yeah, I think
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  Speaker 1: because we just had so much trouble even narrowing it
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  Speaker 1: down to top three, she might be the number one
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  Speaker 1: then maybe, But it's not for us to say anyway.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: You know, no, it's not. You're right, but Judy Garland.
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  Speaker 1: Garland is certainly a gay icon. Uh. There have been,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: you know, everything from her her funeral, which was attended
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  Speaker 1: by more people than Rudolph Valentino, Uh, to her. I
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: mean Rufus Wainwright did an entire tour where Rufus sings
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  Speaker 1: Judy Garland. Yeah, yeah, and her her funeral that day
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  Speaker 1: of her funeral was this that later that night was
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the Stonewall Riot, and a lot of people were like, well,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Judy Garland's death kicked off the Stonewall riots with kick,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: which kicked off the air of civil rights for gay people. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and that's apparently been refuted by some people, but other
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: people said, no, that that definitely had something to do
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  Speaker 1: with that. It was a factor, man. I mean, if
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you're at a boiling point and then one of your
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: icons and spiritual leaders dies, that'll send you And if
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: you're at a bar drinking and you're sad about that,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: that could definitely be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And if you're sad about it and everyone with you
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  Speaker 1: at that bar is sad about the exact same thing,
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  Speaker 1: that sends a camaraderie and collect suness. Yeah, I could
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  Speaker 1: definitely translate into that. And there was also um like
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  Speaker 1: it's really kind of difficult to to under state like
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  Speaker 1: the impact in the the what an icon she was?
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  Speaker 1: But I saw did I say understate? Yeah? I didn't didn't.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: It's difficult to overstate it because, um, but I saw
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  Speaker 1: it like really summarized well by this one quote. Some
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: some writer was describing a bio of her that was
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: first put on as a stage play but was later
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: produced into Judy starring Renee's elwigger Um. The stage play
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: was called End of the Rainbow, but the this writer
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: said that it was explaining the End of the Rainbow
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  Speaker 1: was like a gay version of the Passion of the Christ.
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  Speaker 1: Very he clearly kind of gets across, like what an
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: icon she is and was in the in the gay community. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna end up with my final verdict being Dorothy
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  Speaker 1: could be a combination of all these Dorothy's and could
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  Speaker 1: have been any one of them, two different people at
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: different times. So the last thing about this chuck is
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the slang has actually gone the way of the dinosaur,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: which is good because that suggests that gay people don't
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: feel the need to encode their gayness nearly as much anymore,
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  Speaker 1: if at all, in a lot of places, which is wonderful.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: But before that happened, Right before that happened, in the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: late eighties, there was a an actual witch hunt to
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: root out gay people well in the military that was
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: spearheaded by Navy Intelligence Services and Army intelligence and it
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: was terrible and shameful and They wasted hundreds of millions
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of dollars doing this because an admiral vice admiral named
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Joseph S. Donald flipped out at the idea that they
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: were gay men in the military apparently he'd never noticed,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: and wasted all this money doing this. But the one
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: good thing that came out of this was this amazing
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: story that I think you should tell everybody. Well, they
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: intelligence and then I say that with quotes around it
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: got ahold of the friends of Dorothy um usage and
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: they thought there was a real Dorothy that was providing
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: uh quarter for gay men in the military, and what
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: uh where it was. This was sympathetic to their cause
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and aiding and abetting them. And so they spent a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: lot of money of your tax dollars trying to chase
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: down who Dorothy was because these friends of hers were
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: serving in the middlets Are and they wanted to get
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: her to inform on them. They didn't never find her, though, Huh,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: that seems like a made up story. It's so great,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: it does. I saw it in multiple sources though, so
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's actually real, including the l A Times. Uh.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And that's it, everybody. That's it for friends of Dorothy.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Now you can say hey, I'm a friend of a
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: friend of Dorothy, and people say, what does that mean.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: You say, let me tell you. That's right okay, which
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: of course means short stuff. Is that stuff you should know?
• 13:31
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• 13:34
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• 13:37
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