Torch Song Trilogy

Today in Summer Under the Stars is the day for the movies of Anne Bancroft. One of her movies is on my DVR from when TCM ran it back in June as part of a two-night salute to "Pride" Month: Torch Song Trilogy. It concludes Bancroft's day, early tomorrow (August 15 in all time zones in the contiguous US) at 4:00 AM.

The movie is based on a set of three one-act plays by Harvey Fierstein that were eventually combined into a Brodway play in the early 1980s and the edited down to movie length for the film, and since the plays all have (mostly) the same set of characters, the material fits as one coherent whole. Fierstein plays Arnold Beckoff, who in a prologue is a New York boy caught by his mother (Anne Bancroft) trying on women's make-up and clothes. Nowadays, the Ts who have tried to take over the LGBT community would try to tell you that young Arnold was really showing he's "transgendered", but thankfully in those days they didn't have puberty blockers and people pushing chopping off genitals, so Arnold and all the other boys like him were able to grow up to be the gay men they always were.

Fast-forward to the first of the acts, set in 1971. Arnold, now an adult, is a female impersonator using the stage name "Virginia Hamm" and working with a bunch of other impersonators at a gay nightclub. But Arnold doesn't really have any love in his life, at least until he meets Ed (Brian Kerwin) at a bar. The two start a relationship, but Arnold is consistently more needy than Ed and pushing the relationship faster and farther then Ed is thinking of going. Arnold then goes over to Ed's apartment for Ed's birthday, to find out that Ed is having dinner with... old girlfriend Laurel (Karen Young). Ed says he's bisexual, although Arnold notes that most bisexuals are really gay and just not ready to admit it.

Act two starts at Christmas, 1973. Arnold is still performing at the same club, and one night a bunch of young men including Alan Simon (Matthew Broderick) show up. The group seems to be slumming by acting like it's daring to go to a gay club to see the show, but one of Alan's companions starts being really nasty to Arnold in a way that results in fisticuffs and Alan ending up unconscious. Arnold takes Alan back to his apartment to recover. A few days later, Alan shows up again outside the stage door, mostly to reveal that he's gay too, and the sort of young man who all the older gay men found gorgeous. But now, as a fully legal adult of 21, Alan wants something more out of life. The two start a relationship that goes on for several years, until out of nowhere, Ed and Laurel call, wanting to meet Arnold. Arnold decides he wants a real family, and applies to foster a troubled gay teen, David. This necessitates moving to a new neighborhood, but they pick one with a lot of gay-bashing....

Finally, in 1980, Arnold is alone with David, since Alan was killed in one of those gay-bashing attacks. Arnold hasn't had the courage to tell Mom that he's taken on a son, or even about his relatinoships with Alan and Ed, because Mom is so full of regret that one of her kids turned out to be gay that she just can't handle it. Arnold, for his part, can't handle Mom, either. She decides to return from Florida and learns about what's going on in Arnold's life, which opens up all those old wounds again.

For the most part, Torch Song Trilogy is an excellent movie, although sometimes I feel like the script has Arnold not realizing that he's partly causing his own problems through his emotional neediness (in a way, I should point out, that is not because Arnold is gay; there are straight people who are just as clingy). But then, the main theme of the movie is how tough it would have been for gay men to find love in a time and place where there was a lot less acceptance of gays than there is now. One other problem for me is that I don't know that Fierstien can really sing like a woman. I found myself thinking of Carol Channing, who looked and sounded like she was 60 even when she was 30; Fierstein here sounds like the male equivalent with a voice that sounds like it should be coming out of the mouth of a character like Vic Tayback's short-order cook in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

But these are minor quibbles that don't really distract from what is generally a fine movie. If you haven't seen Torch Song Trilogy before, take this opportunity to watch it.