By Robert Heide and John Gilman
Yes, we were there the night of June 28th, 1969, and all the rest of those famous nights whose impact has been felt around the world. This year’s annual Gay Pride Parade will celebrate the 50th anniversary of that date, and is expected to be attended by a record three million people. We were not actual participants in the Stonewall Riots but we were neighbors and spectators and we were completely empathetic.
Several friends had come over to our place on Christopher Street, and after a fun-filled evening we broke up the party at around 3:00 a.m. and walked out to the street. Across the Square we saw an angry crowd, which before our eyes quickly turned into a full-fledged riot (what is today referred to as a revolution, or at least an uprising), and the crowds grew larger and louder and more aggressive. The police and paddy wagons arrived with sirens screeching.
As they were led out of the bar, the arrested Stonewall patrons were wisecracking and making bows before being thrown in the wagons and whisked away. It went on and on for three days and three nights. In the 50 years since those riotous nights, the Stonewall Tavern; Christopher Park, just across from the bar; and the streets around it have become the epicenter and symbol of gender equality, and all of these were commemorated as the Stonewall National Monument by President Barack Obama.
We decided to interview Robert Bryan about that long-ago and significant event, who is a longtime friend of ours who was the men’s fashion director for the New York Times Magazine, known for his spectacular spreads featuring handsome male models wearing designer versions of 1930s and ’40s clothing. In 2009, Robert, who had previously been the fashion editor for a menswear magazine called Civilized Man and wrote for Women’s Wear Daily as well, had his book American Fashion Menswear published by Assouline. He had been one of the actual Stonewall rioters right in the middle of the melee, and agreed to share his experiences and memories with us.
Stonewall uprising: Robert Bryan as a young protestor in 1969 and later as an adult editor at the New York Times, shown here with a classic vintage automobile. Photos courtesy of Robert Bryan.
Jeffrey Geiger, Robert’s protege, a former bartender at the famed Pyramid Club in the East Village, and later the founder of the fun and fantastic Wonder Bar on East 6th Street, had introduced us to his mentor. Robert wanted to pass on his sartorial smarts to good-looking, dark-haired Jeffrey, a charismatic young man who was always dressed in vintage clothing.
On a recent bright and sunny afternoon we were invited for tea to Robert’s splendid Art Deco apartment in New York’s Lower East Side. The classic Deco structure is stunning in its detail, from the building itself to the inner lobby with its 1930s chandelier and wall sconces. Once inside the apartment there is a large vestibule that opens onto a grand living room furnished with a plush maroon-and-royal-blue couch with two matching chairs, and cobalt-blue mirrored coffee and end tables, and is accented with decorative pottery and green patinated nude-lady lamps with outstretched arms. The even larger dining room, with an adjoining and colorful kitchen, maintains the classic and elegant timeframe of the Depression era. A large windup Victrola sits in a corner, and there are two or three hall and bedroom closets filled with 78 rpm records and an electronic player for Robert’s collection of CDs featuring the vocalists and backup bands of the 1920s and ’30s. There are two ample bedroom suites in this elegant “bachelor’s apartment,” and it seems ideally suited for parties.
We were reminded of Robert’s annual New Year’s Day parties we have attended over the decades at which men and women are dressed in vintage outfits, Robert himself usually wearing a pinstriped double-breasted George-Raft-style suit or a satin smoking jacket, presiding as guests party and dance to the popular music of the ’20s and ’30s classics. Often the great New York Times society photographer Bill Cunningham would be there snapping photos for the paper. Sadly, Bill, as well as Jeffrey, are now both gone.
As we stared out the many windows of the apartment at the breathtaking views of the Manhattan skyline and were served tea poured from an elegant teapot into Harlequinade cups, Robert filled us in on the details of his experience those many nights ago.
“In those days,” he said, “you either went to Julius or the Stonewall. As a last resort you would go to Mama’s Chicken Hut, hit the trucks, or take a cigarette break on a Christopher Street stoop and cruise the cruisiest street in town.” Robert remembered, “Saturday night was the biggest crowd, over two thousand people—it got crazier and crazier—cops were pulling people and hitting them. By the second night smoke from fires in the metal mesh garbage cans filled Sheridan Square. The TPF [Tactical Police Force] were wearing helmets with visors and carrying shields and clubs, clearing people out. It was like a war zone. There were a lot of effeminate nelly boys, a few drag queens who had wandered over from Club 82.”
Robert continued, “The clientele at the Stonewall was ninety-five percent white gays. They mostly tended to be young, in their early twenties. They would solicit johns—also panhandling street kids in their late teens—dressed in hiphugger elephant bells, wearing shirts with ruffles. Outside people formed chorus lines like the Rockettes, exposed their midriffs, and joined up with the queens, including Marsha P. Johnson aka Black Marsha, who in addition to throwing cans and coins at the police like the rest of us, broke a police car window and defiantly sang, ‘We’re Stonewall, we wear our hair in curls, we don’t wear underwear or girdles,’ kicking and screaming as they were dragged off.”
Robert admitted kicking a cop. “I ran for six blocks to get away, and then doubled back to the Square just in time to see a parking meter being used as a battering ram. A gay woman, resisting violently, screamed, ‘Why don’t you do something? DO SOMETHING!’ was grabbed and taken away like the others.”
Robert paused, noting that amid all the chaos the police chief was confused and frightened. This was verified long ago by the Village Voice “Scenes” columnist Howard Smith, who told us he had actually been barricaded inside the bar along with the police, who had only their pistols and a single walkie-talkie. “Plywood covered the windows,” Howard said. “Smoke was seeping in and there didn’t seem to be any way out. I was sweating and mentally writing my will. We were very scared.”
Finishing our tea, Robert remarked wryly, “The physical place, the Stonewall Tavern, won’t be missed at all. It was then, and still is, just a cheap, sleazy Mafia liquor outlet. What counts about Stonewall is that all these people fought back in June, 1969, and won a major victory in the fight against victimization and repression.”
For further reading: Martin Duberman wrote the first book about the Stonewall, and in it remarked that Robert Heide’s one-act play, West of the Moon, produced at New Playwrights off Broadway in 1961, was the first gay play produced in The Village. David Carter followed with his Stonewall book, which is seen as a classic on the subject. Robert Bryan said, “The filmmaker Roland Emmerich used Carter’s book as the basis for his screenplay, trying for authenticity in 2015.” In 2019 Penguin published a collection of writings from John Rechy to Holly Woodlawn and Jayne County, edited by Jason Baumann with the New York Public Library, with an introduction by Baumann and a foreword provided by Edmund White.
Robert Heide and John Gilman have written together for many years, notably their books on American popular culture, including a guide to Greenwich Village published by St. Martin’s Press and Mickey Mouse’s official biography, Mickey Mouse, the Evolution, the Legend, the Phenomenon! For more check robertheideandjohngilman.blogspotcom. Heide’s plays have recently been published in a collection entitled Robert Heide 25 Plays. All available at Amazon.
Stonewall uprising: Robert Bryan as a young protestor in 1969 and later as an adult editor at the New York Times, shown here with a classic vintage automobile. Photos courtesy of Robert Bryan.
