David Hunt:

There are hundreds — perhaps thousands — of news outlets serving the LGBTQ community around the world, from the Star Observer in Sydney, Australia, to QX magazine in Stockholm, Sweden. Some — like the Advocate in the United States — have been around since before Stonewall. Most go back just a decade or two at most. 

There was a time, not that long ago, when the very idea of a newspaper or magazine for queer readers was unthinkable. It took a world war to change that.

I’m David Hunt. In 1983, I met historian Allan Bérubé at the annual convention of the Gay and Lesbian Press Association in San Francisco. Bérubé was researching a book documenting the lives of gay and lesbian servicemembers during the Second World War. That book, Coming Out Under Fire, would come out in 1990 and earn Bérubé a Lambda Literary Award.

In his research, Bérubé interviewed scores of older gays and lesbians, leading to a startling discovery. The first queer publication in the U.S. wasn’t the One Magazine, as widely believed. It was a gossipy newsletter published a decade earlier — in the 1940s — by members of the U.S. Army stationed at an airfield in the deep South.

Bérubé recounted his findings in a presentation at the convention. Let’s listen in.

Allan Bérubé:

In 1943, Norman, one of the men that I've interviewed, was sent to Hunter Field, an Army Air Force base near Savannah, Georgia as part of the special services unit there. Special services put on entertainment for the troops. We were putting on a musical comedy, he remembers. During the rehearsals, they found out that there was a time slot they needed, that they needed to be filled. And I had two buddies and the three of us decided that we would do a comedy drag routine. So we got together a little skit and wrote a little song, and we did a dry run for the cast and crew when they really, they really loved it. It broke them up. The next day we went into downtown Savannah and we walked into this dress shop and happened to find a woman there who was quite liberated for her time. We told her that we were doing this show and could she contribute some dresses. Well, she was absolutely blown out of her mind to see three soldiers walk in and ask for dresses. But she was very cooperative and she took us into the dressing room while we trot on a lot of gowns,

And she gave 'em to us for free for the war effort, she said, with the understanding that she and her husband could have complimentary tickets to attend the performance <laugh>. Well, the first night of our show right in the middle of our act and our song, there was a blackout, which happened in those days. And when the lights came back on, this bee that had a nest in the wings of the theater came out and stung me right on the nose. And I fell off the stage right into the lap of a colonel in the front row.

Everybody thought it was part of the act, so we were asked to keep it in. Each night we ended the act by coming out for an encore. And after the applause died down, we lifted our dresses and rollerskated off the stage just like Bea Lily. She was a comedy singer at, at that time. From Hunter Field, I was transferred to Walterboro, South Carolina, and my two friends were transferred to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. One day I got a letter from my two friends in Myrtle Beach saying they were going to publish a monthly newsletter because they were a lot of gays in air corps among the higher ranks as well as the PFCs and the privates. So they produced a newsletter, which they called the Myrtle Beach Bitch.

They wrote about who was going with who, who was sleeping with who, who divorced each other and was going with someone else. And so the Myrtle Beach Bitch went on for quite some time, and it was almost like receiving a newsletter from home because it was the only communication we had about people we had met in other bases. And it let us know who was overseas and where they were. It was just a mimeograph, standard size piece of paper. And maybe it consisted of four or five sheets that were stapled together and it was mailed to those people who were on the mailing list, and they in turn would give it to someone else. And if they wanted to be on the mailing list, they would just go ahead and send in their name. You see, people didn't save things in those days because we were so afraid, not only of the service, but of our families, but people saved the Myrtle Beach Bitch. One particular issue was a parody on the night before Christmas. It went something like, It was the night before Christmas when all through the field, not a single queen was stirring, not a single high heel.

One issue also printed the words from a song we wrote for our comedy drag routine, which we called, Isn't It Campy? Here you see three lovely girls with their plastic shapes and curls. Isn't it campy? Isn't it campy? We've got glamor. And that's no lie. Can't you tell then we swish by. Isn't it campy, isn't it campy? Those G.I.s all stop and stare and we don't even bat an eye. You'd think that we were shy, but we really don't care. Now isn't that campy? So now drink a toast to these lovely girls, doing their utmost to upset you most. Now, who do you think is campy?

Well, what happened was the Myrtle Beach Bitch got into the hands of someone who turned it in. The two fellows who produced it had made the mistake of not camouflaging or changing the names. They just used the actual names. Well, there was a big purge. All the men whose names had appeared in the newsletter were called before the board they were reviewed and they were interrogated. There were hundreds involved. My two friends at Myrtle Beach were court marshaled and convicted for using the government mails to send lewd and obscene materials. They were sentenced to one year and one month at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. My name also came up on the Myrtle Beach Bitch mailing list. And they called me in and they wanted to know if I had known any of these people. They had a whole list of a couple of hundred names of people that were in Savannah and people that were in South Carolina and people that were in North Carolina and even overseas.

And they wanted to know how many I had had sexual contact with. I denied having sex with any of them because I didn't wanna put anybody on the spot. They sent me to psychiatrists and then they interrogated me, and then they put me in the hospital under observation in a locked prison ward with German prisoners of war. I will never forget the day of my discharge. It was almost like being in front of a firing squad. I was called out early in the morning from the ward and the platoon is at attention, and they called my name and I stepped forward. They read the charges off and then stripped my stripe off me and they ripped off my medals. I don't even remember what the officer said because my mind completely blocked out. I just felt all these eyes upon me and could hear them mutter fairy fruit, c*cksucker. And I wanted to block it all outta my mind. It's almost like I had fainted. The next thing I remember, I was in JC Penny's and they bought me a civilian suit because I was not allowed to wear the uniform. And they put me on a bus back home to New Jersey, and that was the end of my service. And that was the end of the Myrtle Beach Bitch.

David Hunt

You’re listening to This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. I’m David Hunt. In a presentation to the Gay and Lesbian Press Association in 1983, historian Allan Bérubé revealed how servicemembers published what was likely the first gay newsletter in the U.S. during World War II. The first known lesbian newsletter was created a few years later. Bérubé continues the story.

Allan Bérubé:

Toward the end of World War II, a woman named Lisa Ben — that's her pseudonym. She rearranged the letters in the word lesbian to make the word Lisa Ben. Pretty ingenious.

Toward the end of World War II, Lisa Ben left her parents' home in a small northern California town up here and took a bus down to Los Angeles to find secretarial work in the movie studios. There she moved into a women's boarding house where she met other gay women for the first time they lived on the floor above her. They introduced her to lesbian social life by taking her to women's softball games and dancing at the IF club, a lesbian bar in Los Angeles. Her wartime coming out experience s radically changed her life, but immediately after the war, she started the first lesbian newsletter in the United States, which she called Vice Versa. A few years ago, Lisa Ben described to Lula Moss a writer for Gays Week in New York, how she started up her little magazine in 1947. I had a lot of time to myself when I was secretary in the movie studio, she recalled, and the boss was out a lot. So I decided I would make up a little magazine to while away the time

I thought I'd make up a gay magazine because I had never seen any on the newsstands. I thought it would be great if it were a real magazine with a printing press and all that, but it, I couldn't do that. So I typed it out on a typewriter. In those days, we didn't have Xerox machines, so I typed six copies at a time, five carbons and one original. I typed the whole magazine page by page. Then I'd begin over again and type six more so that each printing, there were only 12 copies, which made it a darned exclusive magazine.

I didn't really want it to be that exclusive, but I had no other recourse. There would be a preamble, a movie review. There were very few movies that dealt with that subject in those days. But even if there was one that only hinted at it, I would blow it up and I'd write poetry and maybe a short story. I would entreat my readers to send in articles and stories too, because I wasn't that prolific and I felt like I would run out after a while, if not of time and opportunity than of my materials. So a few girls sent in some poems and some little items of this and that, but they didn't really get into it and I wish they had, well, it was a very slim magazine, maybe about nine pages in one 16 in the next. But the reason it was so slim was that it was so very hard to turn it out and that if anybody came around, I had to zip it into my briefcase quick or my desk drawer.

But I had a lot of fun doing it and I would give it away to my friends. There was one stipulation. I didn't wanna make money off it, I just wanted to give it away. I had no idea how daring or dangerous this was. I used to mail them lively out from the place where I worked until somebody said don't you know you could get in trouble for mailing this. I didn't know why. There were no four-letter words or pictures in it, nothing that could be misconstrued as something sexual. I didn't name the names of places where people congregated, but they said, we're telling you for your own good. You better not do that anymore. So I took their advice and distributed them personally and I'd say, when you're through with it, pass it on because there aren't that many of them.

And I'd like to get them to as many people as I can. Some of the readers thought, gee, you are just too much. Or I think you are a little silly. Some people ask me why I did it in the first place. And I said, because we don't have any gay magazines and I think we should. It would be lovely even if someone started up one in addition to mine, but they still thought it as a little off center for doing it. Others would say, yeah, I think it's a keen idea. I'll send you some materials sometime, which was never. One time I took the magazine down with me to the IF club and some of my friends were horrified and they said, don't you know if there's a raid here? And they confiscated that they could throw you in prison? And I said, what for? My name isn't in there. Nobody's name is in there. I purposely left all names outta there. So that was the story about my gay magazine. Vice versa. And it went on for nine months. Unlike the Myrtle Beach Bitch, copies of vice versa still survive. And I have a Xerox copy of one of them here if you wanna look at it later.

The first issue, which Lisa Ben typed up for distribution in in June of 1947, began with this explanation. Have you ever stopped to enumerate the many different publications to be found on the average newsstand? Yet there is one kind of publication which has never appeared on the stands. Newsstands carrying the crudest kind of magazines appealing to the vulgar would find themselves severely censured were they to display this other type of publication. Why? Because society decrees it thus. Hence the appearance of vice versa. A magazine dedicated in all seriousness to those of us who will never quite be able to adapt ourselves to the iron bound rules of convention. Vice Versa because of limited circulation. And crude reproduction methods is at present published irregularly whenever there is enough material gathered together for another edition and it is offered free of charge. However, just because the magazine is gratis does not indicate that work and effort have not been expended in publishing it. So if Vice Versa does not appeal to you either refuse it or pass it along to somebody else.

A few issues later in response to a reader's letter praising the magazine. Lisa, Ben wrote, your letter is very flattering. I have never considered Vice Versa as a courageous venture. I believe that there is a definite need for such a magazine among the gay folk. Vice Versa was long a fond dream of mine ere it came into reality in June, 1947. It is my personal contribution to others of my ilk meant to provide an outlet for the creative self-expression so often of necessity pent up within us.

And another issue a reader wrote, I'll thanks to you for sending us the copies of your magazine. We have enjoyed reading them, and I personally felt that sought after feeling of actually belonging to a group somewhere in society while reading your magazine. Lisa, Ben responded, I wonder if you realize just how greatly pleased I was by your remark, that reading Vice Versa made you feel as if you were part of a group. This is precisely the feeling that I would like to impart through our publication. That even though readers may never actually become acquainted with one another, they will find a sort of spiritual communion through this little magazine, which is written by and for those of our inclinations. As long as I know that my friends enjoy reading vice versa, I shall try to keep on publishing it for as long as circumstances permit.

And finally, in an article entitled Here to Stay, Lisa, Ben reveals her dream for the future. Whether the unsympathetic majority approves or not, it looks as though the third sex is here to stay. Nightclubs featuring male and female impersonators are becoming increasingly prevalent. Even cafes and drive-ins intended for the average customer when repeatedly patronized by inverts tend to reflect a gay atmosphere. Books such as Diana and The Well of Loneliness are now available at book marts and even drugstores. With such knowledge being disseminated through fact and fiction to the public, homosexuality is becoming less and less a taboo subject. And although still considered by the public as contemptible, I venture to predict that there will be a time in the future when gay folk will be accepted as part of regular, society. Perhaps even Vice Versa, might be the forerunner of better magazines dedicated to the third sex, which in some future time might take their rightful place on the newsstand beside other publications to be available openly and without restriction to those who wish to read them.

David Hunt:

You’ve been listening to a 1983 recording of historian Allan Bérubé, author of Coming Out Under Fire, discussing the first LGBTQ newsletters in the United States, the forerunners of today's queer media. Sadly, Bérubé died in 2007. I’d like to thank the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California for preserving this recording. For This Way Out, I’m David Hunt.