The Full Spectrum: A Tribute To Orlando’s Tragedy

“No, I’m not a homosexual,” James Dean said when asked about his predilections between the sheets, “but I’m also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.” It’s a rakishly liberal life philosophy, and remarkably candid for a man whose career crested in the ultra-conservative post-war years. A recent biography claims Dean had a secret sadomasochistic relationship with Marlon Brando (who is also rumoured to have dallied with Paul Newman), and rumours have also always rumbled about an erotic liaison with eccentric tycoon Howard Hughes. Whatever the truth of the no-doubt rollercoaster love life Dean enjoyed until his death aged just 24, his inclusion here is a toast to his impact in trashing spurious associations of homosexuality with campiness, femininity and even perversion.

Fry’s humour has always been an idiosyncratic brand of super-smart, wry silliness, and so it was when he said of his sexuality: “I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, ‘That’s the last time I’m going up one of those.’” It’s a good thing for gay rights that Fry wasn’t delivered into the world via caesarean section – to elaborate on his playful quip – as he is a tireless gay activist, also raising awareness on mental illness and HIV/AIDS (he recently fought against the homophobic legislation in Russia, calling for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics). Celibate for 16 years from 1979, he’s now married to a man 30 years his junior, Elliott Spencer, who he credits with saving his life, following a chronic battle with depression.

In these thankfully more liberal times, it seems odd that the German-American icon was once compelled to remark, “In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it's a fact.” It’s not surprising the world couldn’t help frothing at the mouth at Dietrich’s sexual escapades, not least the Did They/Didn’t They? quandary concerning Dietrich and Greta Garbo (they almost certainly did, by the way, when they were both young silent movie actresses). What’s certain is that Dietrich had flings with Edith Piaf and many other women, as well as Joseph Kennedy and Frank Sinatra. A viewing of Morocco, in which the androgynous yet potently sexual performer wears a full a top hat and tuxedo tails, would surely tempt the most ribbon-straight female viewers into the realms of bi-curiosity.

“One's real life,” the celebrated Irish playwright, novelist and essayist once wrote, “is so often the life that one does not lead.” Poignant words from a man who experienced an intense fascination with a female fellow student until he left Oxford University in 1878, then married Constance Lloyd - mother of his two sons – before developing an infatuation with Lord Alfred Douglas, aka Bosie, in 1891. When it came to the trial brought about by Bosie’s father, the Marquis of Queensberry – yes, he of boxing rules fame - a string of young male prostitutes testified against him. Two years of imprisonment with hard labour followed, and Wilde died of meningitis three years after his release in Paris aged 46. Wilde is responsible for what is perhaps the most rakish literary quote of all time: “What is termed sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate or grow old or become colourless. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from the commonplace.”

After seeing the 1946 biopic about him, Night and Day, which starred Cary Grant, Porter remarked: “It's a dream”; when pressed on the comment, he added: “I'd prefer not to say.” Among the lovers the Kiss Me Kate composer dallied with were Boston socialite Howard Sturges, narcissistic womaniser John Vernou Bouvier III and actor Monty Woolley (who played himself opposite Grant), while relationships with men also inspired his most stirring works – notably Easy to Love architect Ed Tauch and Night and Day choreographer Nelson Barclift. All this while being married for 34 years. “His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with "much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians, and a large surplus of recreational drugs,” according to The Cole Porter Story by Richard G. Hubler. We can believe it.

Weapons-grade sybaritism was this aristocratic French banker and socialite’s raison d'être, forte, and many other words and phrases we haven’t got around to purloining from across La Manche yet. Born in Zurich in 1922, De Rede was described as “the Eugene de Rastignac of modern Paris” by Chips Channon, “La Pompadour de nos jours” by Nancy Mitford and the host of the best, most debauched costume balls in all of Europe by pretty much anyone lucky enough to attend them. “I dislike men whose socks are so short that when they cross their legs they expose flesh,” the kept lover whose wealth was derived from married Chilean millionaire Arturo Lopez-Willshaw once complained.

A stamp-collecting Zoroastrian who a) ignored an anti-apartheid United Nations cultural boycott by playing gigs in South Africa, b) used to phone home from tour destinations to chat to his cats and c) paraded around stages in a vest singing songs about bicycles seems an unlikely candidate for the epithet, “rake”. But the man born Farrokh Bulsara in Tanzania also fronted a band that sold 300 million records, held parties at which dwarves carried trays of cocaine around on their heads and slept with enough people, by some accounts, to fill the Electric Factory in Philadelphia before becoming the first major rock star to die of AIDS-related illness in 1991. “I always knew I was a star,” he once quipped, “and now, the rest of the world seems to agree with me.”

She cross-dressed, smoked cheroots, got her arms emblazoned with ink, wore exquisitely tailored Savile Row suits and raced speed boats. An heir to the Standard Oil fortune, she also became the self-appointed ruler of an island in the Bahamas where she kept a string of lovers well into her 70s. Has a more rakish carbon-based life form ever walked the green orb of debauchery we call Earth? Carstairs also enjoyed tumultuous affairs with leading actresses including Tallulah Bankhead, Mabel Mercer and Marlene Dietrich. Kate Summerscale describes this British eccentric’s approach to life, in her biography The Queen of Whale Cay, as: “blithe, bold, courageous, unself-conscious, imperialist, impervious to social change.”

Capote’s eye-wateringly vivid depiction of Holly Golightly has invoked lascivious stirrings in the imaginations of six decades of heterosexual male readers. It’s a testimony to his deftness as a pensman that the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author was able to do so. Capote lived with his male partner Jack Dunphy for 36 years at a time when sodomy laws existed across an America which deemed homosexuality to be a mental illness. Among his first lovers was his literature professor Newton Arvin, while heterosexual men he claimed to have had liaisons with included Errol Flynn. His thoughts on what people said of his life choices? “I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true,” he once quipped.

The most famous LGBT politician ever elected in the United States, and the brains behind the one of the most emotive and impactful utterances in gay cultural history: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Having been voted into public office in California, Milk became the gay component of the civil rights movement’s equivalent to Martin Luther King, passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city during his relatively short 11 months in office. He was fatally gunned down by a disgruntled former city Supervisor in 1978. The eponymous 2008 biopic, starring Sean Penn in the title role and James Franco as his lover Scott Smith, received eight Academy Award nominations.