Throwback Thursday: March 27th, Today In Queer History

Over at the awesome website This Day In LGBTQ History, curated by the equally awesome Ronni Sanlo, Ed, D., there isn't a lot that went down on this day in history, March 27th. But what did go down is awesome and juicy and all the other things, from Nazi fighters (need them now!) to actresses to politics, so let's dive into it!

1943

 

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In 1943 in The Netherlands, artist and super-proud out gay man Willem Arondeus (1894-1943), along with a group of anti-Nazi resistance fighters, gained entrance to the Amsterdam public records office dressed as German soldiers, set fire to it, and destroyed it. What was housed in this building were the records of local Dutch Jews. Arondeus and his boyfriend, Gerrit van der Veen, who operated as a forger of identification cards, realised that the cards they created could be useless if the information could be matched to what was in the local records office. So those official records had to disappear. The bombing destroyed around 800,000 records (about 15%). By doing so, they blocked the Nazi's ability to locate many Jews and send them to concentration camps, saving countless lives.

Arondeus was an artist who joined the Dutch resistance movement during WWII. Their action spawned similar undertakings across the Netherlands, stymying the Nazis. Arondeus, who was out and proud before the war, was caught within the week and executed. He boldly heralded his sexuality before his execution, stating:

“Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

1952

 

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Actress Maria Schneider was born on this day in 1952 in Paris. Schneider is best known for the controversial 1972 film Last Tango in Paris opposite Marlon Brando. In the film she performs several nude and sexually graphic scenes, including a simulated rape scene which she was not informed of until minutes before the shoot. This led to accusations of abuse by filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci and Brando. Of the experience, she would later say:

I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can't force someone to do something that isn't in the script, but at the time, I didn't know that. Marlon said to me: 'Maria, don't worry, it's just a movie,' but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take.

Afterward, she would refuse to perform nude and became a vocal proponent of better working conditions for women in film. She came out as bisexual in 1973. In 1976, she fled the set of Caligula and checked herself into a mental institution to be with her lover, the photographer Joan Townsend. As a result of her refusal to perform nude in the sexually explicit film, she was let go from the production. Substance abuse and suicide attempts would haunt her, but she would continue to work until shortly before her death from cancer in 2011.

1977

Jimmy Carter's White House Press Secretary Jody Powell addresses accusations that the administration panders to the gay community. On an episode of Meet The Press, he stated:

For an organized group who feel they have a grievance that they are not treated fairly, for them to have a right to put that grievance before high officials and say ‘We want redress,’ that to me is what the essence of America is all about.  What I feel about gay rights or any other group doesn’t have a thing in the world to do with it.

 

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Stay tuned for more queer history!

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