This Day in Gay History
April 02
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, born, (d: 1875); Forget the silly Danny Gay, um...er...Kaye movie of yesteryear in which Hans sings to inchworms and measures all the marigolds. Anderson was an odd duck, all right, but odd in ways not even hinted at in that Technicolor monstrosity.
The real story, on the contrary, might actually make a good film. One can already see the scene between his poor parents as they realize something is a little strange about the lad. When the other kids are out doing masculine things, like circle jerks and pulling wings off flies, all he wants to do is sew clothes for his dolls.
Then we can have the scene where he decides to leave his place as an apprentice to a tailor to try to make it as an opera singer. He’s really torn about leaving, because he just loves being surrounded by all those clothes to sew. Then there’s his time of starvation on the road until he’s taken in by two Gay musicians who see to it that the hunky young man is plenty stuffed.
Passed on to a middle-aged poet, and getting a little wiser, he decides it’s much more fun being kept than taking dancing lessons, as he had originally wanted, in return for services rendered. Eventually he makes it big as the greatest fairy tale writer in Europe, and the entire cast joins in the great production number, “It Takes One to Write One.”
