Private life
1935-39​
Malecón
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'Jorge had a partner [Tex Compton] for decades who travelled with him always. He was just always there but it was never really laid out clearly who this was. You could think he was a boyfriend, you could think he was a secretary, a manager or whatever you chose, but there he was. We really shouldn’t demand too much heroism in the past because it was so different.'
Sir Stephen Hough, pianist
PHOTO:
La Rampa, Calle 23, from L until the Malecón
(Noah Friedman-Rudovsky)
Jorge grew up as a gay man, coming into society - both in Caribbean Cuba and in North America - where this identity had to an extent to be concealed. While it seems that homosexuality in the USA enjoyed greater recognition in the media after World War I, many were still arrested and convicted for their acts. Little change in the laws, however, or in the mores of society was seen until the mid-1960s, when the sexual revolution began.
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'Coming from a Latin country like Cuba, with its traditional element of machismo/hyper-masculinity masking a more complex attitude among men, being different from the average young man - unsure of himself and of the world, and not anxious to make waves, kept in check by the proprieties of polite Philadelphia society and the extreme cosseting of a prodigy, both by his family and by Curtis,
it makes sense that Jorge would have encountered a complex world, of which his family and others might disapprove.' (Private letter to the website)​
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'His improbable handsomeness was sufficiently striking to attract the worst as well as the best attention. Like many other performers, he was sheltered from worldly or sophisticated considerations from an early age, and he had difficulty in differentiating between sycophants and genuine admirers. Hurt and confused on too many occasions, he acquired a formidable outer image or protective shell. Pursued and questioned about his failure to marry, Bolet quickly developed an evasive Jekyll and Hyde personality, elements increasingly hard to reconcile.' Bryce Morrison 1997
The revolution was an affair of 'fists and not of feathers' (Samuel Feijoó)
'The bourgeois male homosexual of this era (pre-1959) tended out of guilt to avoid same-class liasons with other homosexuals and was constantly on the lookout for the heterosexual macho from the lower strata of the population. Thus, in many ways pre-revolutionary homosexual liaisons in themselves fostered sexual colonialism and exploitation. The commodification of homosexual desire in the Havana underworld and in the bourgeois homosexual underground during the pre-revolutionary era did not produce a significant toleration of homosexual life-styles in the larger social arena. Attitudes in traditional workplaces and within the family involved... shame toward the maricones. [maricón, the (usually) abusive/negative term in Iberian and Latin American Spanish for 'gay'] The consumer structure of the Havana underworld never spawned a 'gay culture' or 'gay sensibility' even in strictly commercial terms, due to its isolation from the mainstream of social life.'
'Homosexuality had been a component of the thriving industry of prostitution in pre-revolutionary Cuba, with many gay men drawn into prostitution largely for visitors and servicemen from the United States. There were few gay-friendly bars in Cuban cities, such as the St. Michel, the Intermezzo Bar and El Gato Tuerto ("The One-Eyed Cat") in Havana. However, despite the vibrancy of the Underworld and the breadth of its influence, Cuba still had laws that oppressed homosexuality and targeted gay men for harassment. The homosexual culture was purely recognised as an economic strategy.​
Lourdes Arguelles & B. Ruby Rich, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Summer, 1984).
Ian Lumsden, in Machos, Maricones, and Gays mentions that historically in Latin America, gender and sexuality norms have been more socially punitive toward deviations from traditional male appearance and manners than toward homosexual behaviour in itself. In Cuba, it was assumed that males whose comportment deviated from stereotypical masculinity would be homosexual. They were called maricones. (1996, 27).
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As Ian Lumsden, Emilio Bejel, and Jafari Allen all point out, in Cuba, homosexuality is seen as more dangerous for its refusal to perform patriarchal masculinity properly than in the sexual act itself. Allen points out that “the male body is allowed a fair amount of mixing and ambiguity, as long as the body performs the masculine gender script competently". For example homosex experienced in youthful relationships which then passes is exempted from mariconísmo” (2011, 127).
Kerry P. White (2017)
'By the late 1950s, when Fidel Castro and his guerrilleros came to power, homosexuality was viewed as a form of capitalist decadence at best and counter-revolutionary deviance at worst.
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'[But] times changed. By the 1990s, Castro began to soften his stance on queer rights, to the point that he recently declared that the persecution of homosexuals in Cuba was “a great injustice” for which he accepted personal responsibility.'
Jeffrey Round (2013)​
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'The cult of masculinity was so pervasive that men feared wearing pants (trousers, UK) without creases - too effeminate. (So that men could have this 'masculine edge,' women would have to do more ironing.)​
Alfred Padula, Latin American Research Review 31/2 (1996), pp. 226-235, reviewing M.Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba (1993) &
Alberto Orlandini, El Amor El Sexo Y Los Celos (Santiago de Cuba: Oriente, 1993)
The 'Lavender Scare' (USA)
The Red Scare, the congressional witch-hunt against Communists during the early years of the Cold War, is a well-known chapter of American history. A second scare of the same era has been much slower to make its way into public consciousness, even though it lasted far longer and directly impacted many more lives. Beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, thousands of gay employees were fired or forced to resign from the federal workforce because of their sexuality. Dubbed the Lavender Scare, this wave of repression was also bound up with anti-Communism and fueled by the power of congressional investigation. The purge followed an era in which gay people were increasingly finding each other and forming communities in urban America.
During World War II, many men and women left behind the restrictions of rural or small-town life for the first time. After the war, young people poured into cities, where density and anonymity made pursuit of same-sex relationships more possible than ever. By the late 1940s, even the general public was becoming more aware of homosexuality. Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, became a bestseller and drew attention for its claim that same-sex experiences were relatively common.
Judith Adkins (2016)
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The term for this persecution was popularised by David K. Johnson's 2004 book which studied this anti-homosexual campaign, The Lavender Scare. The book drew its title from the term "lavender lads", used repeatedly by Senator Everett Dirksen as a synonym for homosexual males. In 1952, Dirksen said that a Republican victory in the November elections would mean the removal of "the lavender lads" from the State Department. The phrase was also used by Confidential magazine, a periodical known for gossiping about the sexuality of politicians and prominent Hollywood stars.
Out of the Headlines
Rock Hudson (1925 – 1985), one of the most popular movie stars of his time, had a screen career spanning more than three decades and was a prominent figure in the Golden Age of Hollywood. While his career developed, Hudson and his agent, Henry Willson, kept the actor's personal life out of the headlines. In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson's secret homosexuality. Willson stalled this by disclosing information about two of his other clients.
According to some colleagues, Hudson's homosexual activity was well known in Hollywood throughout his career, and former co-stars Julie Andrews, Mia Farrow, Elizabeth Taylor, and Susan Saint James claimed that they knew of his homosexuality and kept Hudson's secret for him, as did friends Audrey Hepburn and Carol Burnett.
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In real life, Hudson was dating men, like Lee Garlington, who recalled, "We were ordered never to have our picture taken together, because somebody would know that we were gay." Hudson even married his agent's secretary, Phyllis Gates. It lasted just three years. But Hudson's commitment to playing straight never faltered.
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"The actor died of complications from AIDS, having been outed as gay months beforehand. His sexuality had been an open secret within the industry for decades: his pool parties, described as blond bacchanalias, were legendary. The public, however, remained oblivious until 1985."
Ryan Gilbey, Guardian 6 October 2023
His sister Maria
Bolet came from a strongly religious background, and several siblings became missionaries for the Protestant faith.
Of her later work in Spain (in the ancient city of El Escorial, not far from Madrid), Maria writes:
'Spain must be evangelized at any cost. It seems a totally impossible task as long as Generalisimo Franco
is in power and the Roman Church in full control…Spain has a right to have an opportunity to hear the good news of salvation..’
In a letter from these years, sister Maria writes to a friend, ‘I am so crazy about my little brother that I can understand how proud you must be of yours. My greatest pride about my little brother is that he really loves Jesus Christ as his savior and he prizes him more than the world with all its glories.’
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She worried, however, about his contacts. 'I appreciate deeply your interest in my brother's affairs, and your keen insight of the whole situation regarding that man whom I felt all the time was dangerous to my candid brother. I cannot imagine how blind Jorge has been or what powerful influence that man must exercise over him. (...) I feel that trouble is coming.' ('That man' is almost certainly Raymond L. Stover, of whom more later)
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Godowsky dies
Leopold Godowsky, that arch-magus of the keyboard, died on 21 November 1938 in the Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City.
Jorge was to continue to champion his works for the rest of his career, making a notable recording of a selection of the arrangements of Chopin’s études and waltzes for DECCA on its L'Oiseau-Lyre label in 1977.
1938 and the Philadelphia Orchestra
On a February afternoon, Friday 4th and on the following Saturday and Tuesday, Jorge made his first appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra (in its 38th season) and its famous conductor Eugene Ormandy.
This was in the Academy of Music, at 240 S. Broad Street between Locust and Manning Streets in the Avenue of the Arts area of Center City. It was built in 1855-57 and has been known as the Grand Old Lady of Broad Street. ​
Eugene Ormandy (born JenÅ‘ Blau; 1899 – 1985),
a Hungarian-born American conductor, had a 44-year association with the orchestra: one of the longest enjoyed by any conductor with an American orchestra.
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The programme began with Menotti, Amelia Goes to the Ball (overture). Then Jorge played Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto.
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Edwin H. Schloss in the Philadelphia Inquirer states that this was ‘an unusually fine performance of the difficult concerto – which is a nice work if you can get it. Yesterday’s soloist did get it and beautifully.’ He mentions a ‘silken touch, luxuriously rippling technique and (best of all) a head and heart... greatest of ease and the best of good taste.’ The concerto is ‘super-Muscovitish’ in its plaintive mood and Tchaikovskian glamour which makes it a work easily cheapened into sentimentality by Grade B keyboard exhibitionists.
‘Young Bolet avoided that bog.’ The only possible rife in the lute was the fear that young Bolet does not seem to have acquired ‘a tone of sufficient force and resonance to match his other equipment’.​​​
Ormandy is seen in 1951 with the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (left, seated) and Nils-Eric Ringbom in Sibelius' home, Ainola. With the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ormandy - among a number of Sibelius performance - made a highly regarded recording in 1979 for
EMI of the Four Lemminkäinen Legends.
The music takes its inspiration from national epic of Finland, the Kalevala.
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Ainola, Järvenpää, Finland: June 2023, my short video
Ormandy and Jorge Bolet
Bolet in a recital on 12 March 1985, paying tribute to Ormandy. You'll need to turn the volume up full blast! (Recording courtesy of Francis Crociata)
1939
Thursday, 3 August 1939 in the Anfiteatro, Havana at 9pm. The initiative for the concert came from municipal mayor Dr Antonio Beruff Mendieta (1901-1952), who devoted much time to cultural and educational matters. The programme included Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Strauss II/Godowsky, Künstlerleben ("An Artist's Life" Op.316), this last being the only reference I've found thus far to a performance by Jorge of this piece. Diario de la Marina, 2.8.1939
Jorge usually played the Fledermaus paraphrase, though Albert McGrigor has said that he studied both with Leopold Godowsky (around 1933/34).
Monday 18 December 1939, Auditorio, Havana "at the usual hour of 9:30pm": Liszt's Concerto No.2 in A Major with Massimo Freccia. "[Bolet], uno de nos compatriotas que ha alcanzado grandes lauros en el extranjero." One of our compatriots who has achieved great success abroad. (Noticias de Hoy, 14.12.39)
Diario 14.12.39 adds the full programme: A suite of music by Corelli for strings by Ettore Penelli, R Strauss, Death and Transfiguration, Ravel Pavane and Berlioz's Hungarian March from Faust.
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Jorge had arrived by air from Miami on 14th at Havana's Arsenal airport on Pan American Airways (the flight continued to Yucatan Mexico. (He departed on 7 January
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A recital 20 December for the Sociedad Hubert de Blanck in the Sala Espadero.
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Claudio Arrau's recitals at the Teatro Odeón, Buenos Aires on Tuesdays 20 and 27 June 1939 at 6:30 pm, presented as part of the 1939 Season organised by Conciertos Daniel, and sponsored by Blüthner pianos.
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JB's arrival on 15 September 1938 in Miami, Florida.
