Blackmail at the Krim

Long before the Detroit Film Theater – now celebrating its 35th year of showcasing good, bad, indifferent American and foreign films at the DIA – Detroit had three art theaters: Studio, Coronet and Trans-Lux Krim.
The Studio and Coronet are dream dust. The Krim's become a fundygelical church. (Things went downhill – spiritually speaking, that is – for the movie venue shortly after premiering Linda Lovelace's unforgettable tribute to cinematic tonsillitis, "Deep Throat.")
In the 1960s it was considered a mark of highbrow sophistication for moviegoing fans – gay men especially – to take in a foreign film. Coffee served in the lobby, eye-candy sampling hoped for in the balcony.
Adept at reading English subtitles (I was a 2.5 HPA high school grad), I enjoyed movies by greats Fellini, Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman – even if, at age 19, I usually didn't understand what in hell their films were really about.
I was lucky that my partner for three years, Ernie (5'6" to my 6'2", Mutt to my Jeff), was a classically trained pianist, a former ballet dancer, and, shortly after we met, drama/dance critic for the Wayne U's Daily Collegian. Ernie got comps to everything. A marvelous intro to the arts. Nureyev and Dame Margot Fontaine. Diva Maria Callas. Jose Greco. The DSO. Entertaining while it lasted. Looking back decades later, I owe Ernie a world of thanks.
I remember nervousness at seeing my first "gay" film at the Krim. "The Victim" was a British import, released in 1961. But because of its content, shown, if at all, at "avant-garde" venues. "Victim" stars Dirk Bogarde, born: Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde. (No wonder he was gay.)
Bogarde – handsome, popular box office idol, with three "Doctor in the House" comedy roles to his credit – was warned that "Victim" would likely victimize him. In the long run, the role actually gave him incentive to take on other controversial parts that only enhanced his actor status.
His best known gay-bordered films are "The Damned" (1969) and "Death in Venice" (1971), directed by gay Italian Luchino Visconti. Bogarde, commissioned a World War ll major in the Queen's Royal Regiment (no comment), writes in his autobiography, "I would get off an elevator if a German got on." (Curious. He plays a Nazi in three films.)
Roger Ebert lists "The Victim" among his Great Movies essays, calling the film courageous for subject matter and lead actor. "To be gay was a crime in the United States and the United Kingdom, and the movie uses the devices of film noir and thriller to make its argument, labeling laws against homosexuality 'the blackmailer's charter.'
"Indeed 90 percent of all British blackmail had homosexuals as its victims," writes Ebert.
(During the McCarthy years, hundreds of suspected gays were witch-hunted (or, in the Senator's case, bitch-hunted) out of the State Department as blackmail risks. Gay Americans were also denied passports when "Tricky Dick" Nixon was president.)
Bogarde (1921-1999) never admits being gay in his published reminiscences. Bogarde calls his longtime partner of 30 years, Tony Forwood, his manager, never his lover. Says Ebert, "A private, quiet person, as an actor Bogarde risked a great deal to take a crucial role at a time when it truly made a difference."
Difference, tallyho! "Victim" dramatized for a mass audience, knowing nothing good about gays, the urgency and justice of England's "Wolfenden Report on Homosexuality" (1957), advocating the decriminalizing same sex acts among consenting adults.
Decriminalization finally came in 1967, one year before Stonewall. (Blackmailing, for those who may not be aware, still remains a crime.)