The Boys in the Band **** (1970, Leonard Frey, Kenneth Nelson, Reuben Greene, Cliff Gorman, Frederick Combs, Robert La Tourneaux, Laurence Luckinbill) – Classic Movie Review 2,973

William Friedkin’s 1970 movie The Boys in the Band was a very significant game-changer and remains an important document of its time. It is one of the earliest US films to revolve around gay characters

Director William Friedkin’s 1970 movie of Mart Crowley’s pioneering Broadway hit play The Boys in the Band, which seemed a step forward in its sympathetic frankness about gays, now seems as remote and unhelpful as the 1961 British film Victim, made a decade earlier. But like that film, it was a very significant game-changer and remains an important document of its time. It is one of the earliest US films to revolve around gay characters, and can be seen as a milestone of queer cinema.

The problem is that, while it was two steps ahead in the frank honesty department, it was one step backwards with its negative portrayal of a group of gay stereotype men wallowing in self-pity. Another problem is Friedkin cut the scene he shot with two guys kissing during editing, feeling it was ‘over-sensationalistic’. So there goes the ‘the frank honesty’ idea. Friedkin is right to call it ‘a bad decision’.

The story is about eight gay men and one possible straight guy (Peter White) getting gradually drunker and nastier at a birthday party thrown for Harold (Leonard Frey) by his closest friends at Michael (Kenneth Nelson)’s Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan in 1968. This allows Crowley to assemble all the infamous unattractive negative gay stereotypes – the bitching, camping, loneliness, jealousy and lusting after straights – and deliver them by the unsubtle bucketload. 

Alan (Peter White) is a married man, accidentally invited to the gay party, who serves as the main catalyst in the story. (White ended up playing Linc Tyler on and off for more than 30 years on daytime soap All My Children). Another catalyst is Cowboy Tex (Robert La Tourneaux), one of Harold’s presents, as he might be having trouble finding a cute guy now that he is getting older.

Movie-wise, it is very well played by the American stage cast of the original off-Broadway production and Leonard Frey is outstanding in a commanding, all-stops-out, no-holds-barred performance as the bitchy birthday boy Harold, the self-proclaimed ‘Jew fairy’. Director Friedkin handles the stage-to-screen transfer with confidence, style and aplomb.

Also in the cast are Kenneth Nelson, Reuben Greene, Cliff Gorman, Frederick Combs, Laurence Luckinbill and Keith Prentice.

It runs 118 minutes and the cut version runs 108 minutes.

The Boys in the Band cost $5.5 million and earned $3.5 million in US/ Canada cinema rentals, so it was by no means as acclaimed or commercially successful as some of Friedkin’s later films.

The opening bar scene is filmed at Julius in Greenwich Village. Studio shooting is at the Chelsea Studios in New York City. Michael’s apartment was inspired by the Upper East Side apartment of actress Tammy Grimes, a friend of Mart Crowley. Most of the patio scenes were filmed at her home, which would not allow for filming inside so a replica was built on the Chelsea Studios sound stage.

Songs include “Anything Goes” performed by Harpers Bizarre during the opening credits, “Good Lovin’ Ain’t Easy to Come By” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “Funky Broadway” by Wilson Pickett, “(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas, and an instrumental version of Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love”.

The original off-Broadway production opened at the Theatre Four on April 1, 1968 and closed on September 6 1970, after more than 1,000 performances. It went on to have a run in London. The play had a short revival at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Greenwich Village, from August 6 to October 20, 1996. Crowley’s sequel play The Men from the Boys premiered in San Francisco and was produced in Los Angeles in 2003.

Producer Kenneth Utt’s 26th and last film before his death was Philadelphia (1993). Kenneth Utt (July 13, 1921 – January 19, 1994) received the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Shockingly, and tragically, five cast members from the play and film The Boys in the Band died from AIDS before Philadelphia‘s release, as well as the play’s director Robert Moore and producer Richard Barr.

Crowley explains the title: ‘It’s that line in A Star Is Born when James Mason tells a distraught Judy Garland “You’re singing for yourself and the boys in the band”.’

Crowley said his motivation in writing the play was not activism, but anger that ‘had partially to do with myself and my career, but it also had to do with the social attitude of people around me, and the laws of the day.’ He said he ‘wanted the injustice of it all – to all those characters – known”. He also said: ‘I was not an activist. I didn’t know what hit me. I just wrote the truth. The self-deprecating humour was born out of a low self-esteem, from a sense of what the times told you about yourself.’

The cast are Kenneth Nelson as Michael, Leonard Frey as Harold, Cliff Gorman as Emory, Laurence Luckinbill as Hank, Frederick Combs as Donald, Keith Prentice as Larry, Robert La Tourneaux as Cowboy Tex, Reuben Greene as Bernard, Peter White as Alan McCarthy, Maud Adams as photo model and Elaine Kaufman as extra/ pedestrian.

Leonard Frey died of AIDS on August 24 1988, aged 49. He said: ‘I’m grateful to The Boys in the Band but I started to get paranoid that I’d reach old age with people still thinking of me only as Harold – if they thought of me at all.’

In 2015 Friedkin said he made the film as the play was ‘funny and poignant and, in its own way, a love story.’ Friedkin rehearsed for two weeks with the cast. There were tensions over a scene in which two of the actors were to kiss a scene that was offstage in the play where Hank and Larry kiss passionately. ‘This would be the first time a scene with two males kissing would be portrayed in a mainstream film.’ The actors reluctantly agreed but their agents protested. The scene was eventually shot but not used in the final cut. ‘We didn’t need it and I felt it would only sensationalise the piece. But it was a bad decision. I think we should have kept it.’

So, it was OK to be the first mainstream American film to use the swear word ‘cunt’ but not OK for two guys to kiss. My how times have changed.

Friedkin went on to make the infamous 1980 gay thriller Cruising. He considers The Boys in the Band one of his favourites of his films: ‘It’s one of the few films I’ve made that I can still watch.’

Gordon Stulberg, head of Cinema Center Films, was reluctant to entrust direction to the play’s director, Robert Moore, who had never made a movie before. William Friedkin got the job after making a success of filming Harold Pinter’s play The Birthday Party.

A new Broadway production of The Boys in the Band, directed by Joe Mantello, ran from 30 April 2018 until 11 August  2018 at the Booth Theatre. Staged for the 50th anniversary of the play’s original premiere, it starred Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto and Andrew Rannells. All of the 2018 actors are openly gay. All of the gay members of the original play stayed in the closet after the premiere.

Ryan Murphy produced a second film of The Boys in the Band released on 30 September 2020 on Netflix. with the 2018 Broadway revival cast and Joe Mantello directing.

William David Friedkin (August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023).

William Friedkin (August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) directed The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and for himself Best Director, and The Exorcist (1973), for which he was Oscar nominated as Best Director.

His other films include The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), The Boys in the Band (1970), Sorcerer (1977), The Brink’s Job (1978), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in LA (1985), Bug (2006) and Killer Joe (2011).

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,973

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