11 AM, 3:30 PM, 8 PM
Mickey and Judy put on another show, this time at a Western college. Great Gershwin songs stitch together a paper-thin plot; Judy shines as always.
1 PM, 6:15 PM, 10:15 PM
Gene Kelly’s first feature for MGM has him high-stepping with Judy and then breaking her heart by dodging WWI draft (ahead of his time?). Great period fun.
Birch Tate, 1972
WALKING ALONG EIGHTH Street from the Village, you first crossed Sixth Avenue, under the benevolent eye of the Jefferson Market Courthouse Library. With its turrets and narrow leaded windows, it looked like a fairy-tale castle. You could picture Rapunzel letting down her long thick hair, which made Scotty laugh when Birch said it, because Scotty remembered when the old Women’s House of Detention was there and prisoners leaned out of barred windows, yelling at boyfriends and girlfriends on the street below.
If there was one thing Birch was getting tired of, it was being young. Too young to remember the Women’s House of D. Too young to remember Busby Berkeley. Too young to care much about seeing Judy Garland in a movie; to her, Garland was a boozy concert singer with a drug problem and a ruined voice. Which was cool when it was Joplin, but Judy Garland was
She was not, Scotty had decided, going to spend one more day in this abysmally ignorant state. Theatre 80 St. Mark’s in the East Village was running a Garland double feature and Birch was, by God, going to know by the end of this afternoon precisely why Judy Garland was the greatest star Hollywood ever produced.
They passed Orange Julius and the wedding-ring store, pushed through the crowd at Macdougal, and met the boys on the corner of Sullivan. Patrick and Stanley were even crazier than Scotty when it came to old movies. Patrick liked to say he was the reincarnation of Ann Miller, which was supposed to be funny because Ann Miller wasn’t dead. Stanley preferred somebody called Lubitsch whom Birch had never heard of, and then Scotty said, “But he didn’t do musicals,” and Stanley arched his eyebrow and asked, “What about
Queers.
The word popped into her mind before she could stop herself. It wasn’t a nice word, and it was especially not nice because what were she and Scotty? But somehow it was different when it was boys.
The trouble was, she was new at this. She’d “come out”-and in her mind the words were always in quotes- only a few months earlier, and not by choice. She wasn’t even sure she really was one, except for one thing: there had never been a boy or a man, in the movies or in real life, who made her feel the way certain girls did. First Enid and now Scotty. She felt a stirring in her jeans just looking at Scotty-her elegant short hair with its slight curl, her long legs in those tight jeans, the silk shirt, the studded belt, the Frye boots-Birch looked down at her own feet, clad in moccasins, peeking out from under frayed bell-bottoms and wondered for the fiftieth time what a really cool chick like Scotty saw in her.
“My baby dyke,” Scotty called her. “My little tomboy from the Catskills.”
Birch didn’t mind being called a tomboy; she’d spent her entire seventeen years of life answering to that description. But “dyke” sounded so ugly. It had sounded especially ugly in the mouths of kids she’d known since kindergarten. When some of her former friends caught her holding hands with Enid at the Tinker Street Cinema last summer, they’d thrown stones at her, called her dyke. Now Scotty used the word with amused affection, as if it could never hurt.
Scotty, present
“ALL SINGING, ALL dancing” it said on the long red awning that stretched from Theatre 80’s double doors to the curb. You could see that awning from as far away as the Bowery, and you walked toward it with heart high, knowing that no matter how dreary the day or how low your spirits, the double feature at the end of your trek would change your mood more rapidly and surely than any of the illegal substances being thrust at you along the way. Who needed grass when you had Busby Berkeley? Who needed uppers when Fred and Ginger were dancing cheek to cheek?
Patrick I still miss every day. He was the brother I never had, and yes, I’m well aware that I have three brothers, thank you very much. Three brothers who hate me for three different reasons: Brian because he’s a Christian now and I’m going to hell, Ian because he’s a stuffy old fart and I embarrass him, and Colin because I had the nerve to be born at all. The only saving grace to Colin is that he’d feel that way even if I liked men.
So Patrick was my soul-friend, the girl I should have been.
Birch, 1972
“LIKE THAT PLACE in Hollywood,” Birch said, and Patrick rolled his eyes. Usually she liked Patrick, but she could tell she was about to get another lesson in how little she knew.
“That one’s Joan Blondell.” He pointed to the square of sidewalk with handprints and a scrawled signature. As if she couldn’t read. Of course, who Joan Blondell
“I was here when she came,” Patrick said with a rapturous sigh. “Oh, she’s put on weight and her hair can’t possibly be that color in real life, but just to see her, to stand next to her-it was a dream come true.”
Scotty came back with the tickets and they walked through the double doors into the narrow hallway that led to the seats. The white walls were covered with posters and black-and-white glossies signed by the stars personally to the theater’s owner, Howard Otway. Patrick always made a point of blowing kisses at his favorites as they made their way to the coffee bar, a little black-painted cubbyhole just off the screening room.
No popcorn, just movie candy and tiny little cups of very black, very strong coffee. Everyone but Birch bought a cup; she decided on Milk Duds because they lasted nice and long. She suppressed a sigh. The little theatre reminded her of the Tinker Street Cinema back home, where she’d spent so many happy hours-until last summer.
Scotty, present
WHAT WE DID at Theatre 80 was buy our coffee in the anteroom, push aside the heavy red velvet curtain, and walk across the stage to our seats. Theatre 80 hadn’t started life as a movie theater. It was a legitimate stage once home to
This meant that not only did the theater have a little foot-high stage, but the seats were nice and plushy, set wider apart than usual. There was also a real curtain that opened and closed, giving the showings a special touch you just couldn’t get at the Quad or even the Regency uptown.
The regulars were there: three old ladies I privately thought of as the weird sisters, a little matched set that reminded me of salt shakers. The old man with the liver spots and the burgundy-colored beret who sat by himself in the fourth row. Groups of gay men wearing sheepskin coats and laughing loudly. Black-clad film students from NYU, who discussed the social implications of the musical in not-hushed-enough voices. Patrick made it a point to steer us to seats as far away from them as possible.
We loved each other very much, Patrick and I, but we never actually sat together during a movie. He favored the center seats, and I had to have an aisle. No idea why, just an overwhelming need to know I could get up and run out if I had to-not that I ever did. It was just that the thought of being trapped in the center brought on a panic I couldn’t control. So I led Birch toward the extreme right side of the theater and found us two seats in the seventh row while the boys edged past a plus-sized couple who glared at them.
The lights dimmed and then darkened, the red curtain was pulled back, the projector began to whir, and a thin blue vapor emanated from a tiny window in the back, projecting an image onto the screen.
And not just any image: The MGM lion roared, and the audience clapped. We were notorious for applause. First the stars received their due (Judy most of all), and then the director got a hand, and the choreographer, and, from the gay men especially, the costume designer.
