'Out & Proud' traces gay history in Chicago

The ironic thing about "Out & Proud in Chicago," a new documentary airing at 7:30 p.m. today on WTTW Channel 11, is that in dealing with the history of homosexuality in Chicago it largely concerns eras when homosexuals could be neither out nor proud.

"I'm from Chicago," says host Jane Lynch, a former Second City trouper best known for her roles in the improvisational feature films "Best in Show," "A Mighty Wind" and "For Your Consideration." "And this is a wonderful place to be openly gay. But that wasn't always the case."

You ain't kidding, sister.

This is a marvelous documentary and a fine way for Channel 11 to kick off Gay Pride Month, but there's more than a tinge of sadness to it, because as open as the society is now about homosexuality and as proud as homosexuals can be, there were generations that were persecuted or forced to live hidden lives.

For instance, it's now widely acknowledged that Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith were lesbians in running the renowned Hull House, but in her later years, after Smith died, Addams burned their letters, lest they be discovered and their reputations tarnished by the mores of the early 1900s.

Tony Jackson was one of the few openly gay entertainers of the era, a South Side ragtime pianist who provided a key link between that highly composed music and more improvised jazz. One person points out that even Jelly Roll Morton granted him a privileged spot in the development of jazz, and Morton was not one to minimize his own contributions to the benefit of someone else. (He once pronounced: "New Orleans-style, Chicago-style, Kansas City-style, it's all Jelly Roll-style.") Jackson was most famous for the song "Pretty Baby." Yet is it mere coincidence that Jackson left behind no recordings, not on wax cylinders or piano rolls, or was there a prejudice involved even then, even in the relatively free society of jazz musicians?

Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap were open lesbians in running The Little Review, an early bastion of modernist literature, but if they had to become expatriates in Europe not because of their sexual orientation, but for violating the Comstock Law for publishing portions of James Joyce's "Ulysses," how much of a source of pride is that?

What "Out & Proud" does capture -- as a source of pride for all Chicagoans -- is that for all its self-definition as a tough town, city of the big shoulders and all that, Chicago also has a tradition of ornery opposition to almost anything, in our labor history, but also in our sexual history. Those two movements intersected at Bughouse Square, outside the Newberry Library. Famed as a place where lunatics and labor organizers could exercise free speech, it also attracted trolling gays at a time when the only alternative to find like-minded partners was to patronize bars like the Dil-Pickle Club.

There was no safety to be found there, either, as known gay bars were prone to raids long after the 1961 repeal of homosexuality laws, with get-tough politicians like Dick Ogilvie basing their reputations on prosecuting and persecuting gays.

It takes a long time for this two-hour documentary to get to the era of openness and pride, beginning with the lesbian pulp fiction of Aurora native Valerie Taylor, who went on to help develop Mattachine Midwest, one of the early influential gay newsletters. Even then it's often a tragic story, as with Danny Sotomayor, an AIDS activist who eventually died from the disease.

Yet it is something significant that all these hidden stories are now brought into the open on public television in "Out & Proud." A proud momentum builds toward the end as many of the interview subjects tell their own tales of settling down and finding happiness with a mate of the same sex. Chicago has always taken pride in being a tough town, but one of our greatest secrets is that behind the Haymarket Square bombing and the St. Valentine's Day massacre and the 1968 Democratic Convention and the Days of Rage and Council Wars it can also be a surprisingly tolerant town. That's the final note struck by "Out & Proud," and it's something for all Chicagoans to take pride in.

In the air

Weigel Broadcasting, owner of WCIU Channel 26, WWME Channel 23 and WMEU Channel 48, has hired Randy King as production manager. He previously served as executive vice president for television at WTTW Channel 11 and worked at WFLD Channel 32. It comes after Weigel hired Harvey Moshman as executive producer of program development.

Turner Classic Movies begins a month-long look at "Race and Hollywood: Asian Images in Film" with a series of silent movies at 7 p.m. today, including D.W. Griffith's excellent "Broken Blossoms" at 8:45.

End of the dial: Urban-contemporary WCGI 107.5-FM jumped into the lead in monthly Arbitrend ratings released last week, ahead of personality-talk WGN 720-AM. Adult-urban WVAZ 102.7-FM, all-news WBBM 780-AM and Spanish-oldies WPPN 106.7-FM filled out the top five. ... Kudos to Nick Digilio on his 10th anniversary at WGN-AM.

Rick Jakle has applied to transfer ownership of Elgin's WRMN 1410-AM from his Elgin Broadcasting to his Fox Valley Broadcasting. Listeners are not expected to notice a difference in the "seamless" transition.