A Scrapbook Memoriam of Great Charm

Angus Fitzroy

Toby McCutcheon

The other day, Art Mariano sent me the URL for a curious little 85 page scrapbook memorial put together by Angus Fitzroy to commemorate the thirty year relationship with his friend/lover (?) Toby McCutcheon.
I thought it was absolutely charming, if somewhat slight, but have found myself coming back to it over and over again. A sure sign of something of greater interest. And for a post.
The book charts the relationship between the two men in a potpourri of sketches, photographs, cards, magazine covers and stamps. Most are captioned - with pithy, erudite, thought-provoking, gay funny, or just plain quirky remarks.
There are images of the two friends at home in England. And in gay company. The comments here often reflect the particular humour of the period - like a photograph of two men dancing captioned 'Foxtrot anyone?'
There are pictures of Angus and Toby in all corners of the globe - from France to Cuba to Algeria to Athens to Istanbul to Egypt. One with the cute 'I was forever hungry in Hungary'.
Snaps of muscular athletic men, mostly from the athletics/health magazines of the day. One sticks in my mind - of a body builder whose nipples Angus has saliently 'annotated' with gold stars.
Tender reflections on the relationship - Will something of me survive? And ask 'What was that?' 'You?'
There are sketches of nudes - the one I love best is of a guy with a hard-on, captioned 'Surprise!'
This is the most easy and delicious document of gay social history.
Now I've probably overdone the inclusions but ...

Then, after all the gaiety and lovely lightness of the scrapbook, there is a final entry opposite a woodblock of a medieval knight ...

... which brings the notebook into closing dedicatory focus:

Dear Toby, you shall forever be my number one man. My knight in armour. You will forever shine in my dreams as hero. Galahad has nothing on you. I would rededicate myself to you over and over again for all time.

The perfect epitaph we'd all want our loved one to be able to write of us. Or vice versa!
After wiping the tear from your eye, were there any entries that particularly took your fancy?

The source of this extraordinary diary is JD Doyle’s site http://queermusicheritage.us/toby1.html - I hope Mr Doyle will let us keep this post but I perfectly understand if he would like it removed.

Big Big Bawdiness In Weimar Republic Germany

Sometimes the impact of a personality is just so arresting that, even with great distances of time and place, it demands your attention.

And so it is for me with Claire Waldoff, rough and bawdy Berlin carbaret singer of the 1910's and 1920's.

Born Clara Wortmann, the singer arrived for work in Berlin in 1903, saying:

I fell passionately in love with Berlin. Not because the city was beautiful or the Imperial capital, but because it was Berlin, with its special atmosphere, its vivacious and curt character

For the stage, she adopted a gruff persona and the rough slang of the working class native Berliners, full doubles entendres and sexual innuendos:

I began to become the Berliner, a prototype of the Berliner, a representative of modern Berlin

This is typified in ''Ach Gott Was Sind Die Männer Dumm'' ('My God How Stupid Men Are'):

A regular at the Chat Noir in Friedrichstraße, and the Eldorado ...

Eldorado 1932

... Claire Waldoff limited her performances to three songs only, with no encores, which allowed her to play a number of different venues each night, establishing herself as a major star.

The rise of Hitler and fascism in the 1930s put an end to Waldoff's career, and she and the lover with whom she had always lived openly, Olga Von Roeder ...

Claire Waldoff and her lover, Olga Von Roeder

... went to love in Bayerisch Gmain - and took up gardening in a very serious manner.

Sadly, or otherwise, after listening to 'Ach Gott Was Sind Die Männer Dumm' I feel just a tad more 'delicate' and less hairy-chested than usual!

How bout you?

I guess the Isherwood posts put me in the mood for things of this sort, and the angle it gives on gay social history.

If you'd like more, then I came across an interesting blog 'Berlin Cabaret' - LINK.

The post on Anita Berber, who you may know through Otto Dix's painting ...

... is particularly good.

And my bet is this work was used as one of the models for the look of the dykes at the Kit Kat Klub in the 1972 film of 'Cabaret. What do you reckon?

Another more obvious model being Dix's portrait of the same year ...

... of Sylvia von हर्दें.