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James Dean paid off disgruntled male lover to keep him from revealing gay affair on eve of actor’s big break: book

“Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean,” which drops Tuesday, author Jason Colavito claims the ill-fated Hollywood icon shelled out $800 to advertising executive Rogers Brackett only days before his first movie, “East of Eden,” premiered, averting a public scandal that would have cost him his career in the homophobic 1950s.In excerpts published by DailyMail, Colavito details the disastrous affair which left Dean feeling sexually exploited. “I didn’t know it was the whore who paid – I thought it was the other way around,” Dean reportedly said.The $800 blackmail — around $9,395 today, per the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis — was an enormous sum at a time when a man’s median salary in the US was around $3,100 per year, per DailyMail.Dean and Brackett met in 1951, when Dean was a parking valet next door to CBS studios, where the radio drama “Alias Jane Doe” — produced by Brackett’s advertising agency — was recorded.
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13.02 / 21:06
Obituary Life Famed ’70s bathhouse trailblazer Steve Ostrow dies at 91
A post shared by Fire Island Pines Historical Society (@fipines)Gay bathhouse impresario Steve Ostrow, the trailblazer who founded New York City’s iconic Continental Baths–the sex club and performance space that helped launch the careers of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow in the early ’70s–has died. He was 91.Ostrow, who was bisexual, passed away on February 4th at a retirement home in Australia, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.An entrepreneur and former opera singer, Ostrow opened the Continental Baths in 1968 in the basement of the previously lavish Ansonia Hotel, a Beaux-Arts landmark building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.Subscribe to our daily newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.Steve Ostrow, Founder of Ansonia’s Continental Baths, Dies at 91 https://t.co/TrTyuD5FRE pic.twitter.com/tcHSyqKdiZAfter observing the crowds at other bathhouses, Ostrow wanted to elevate the scene from a seedy, rundown environment to a clean and extravagant wonderland where gay men could congregate more openly.This was a particularly bold idea pre-Stonewall as homosexuality was still illegal, most NYC gay bars were owned by the mafia, and police raids were commonplace.Ostrow transformed the Ansonia’s crumbling Turkish baths and broken-down pool into a Roman-themed pleasure palace with cascading waterfalls, saunas, public spaces with bunk beds, private rooms, and a disco dance floor.RIP Steve Ostrow, who ran the Continental Baths (1968-1976), and helped discover everyone from Bette Midler & Barry Manilow to Labelle, Melba Moore, Nell Carter & Wayland Flowers.
New York City (NYC), often called New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2019 population of 8,336,817 distributed over about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the U.S. state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With almost 20 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and approximately 23 million in its combined statistical area, it is one of the world's most populous megacities.
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