The accompanying document is an oral history. It is a spoken account of certain events and phenomena recorded at one particular moment and filtered through one individual's life experience, sensibility, and memory. As such, it should be considered a primary source rather than a final, verified, or complete narrative of the events it records.
This interview is being made available for research purposes only and may not be reproduced or disseminated in any way. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the head of the Center for Oral History Research.
Requests for permission to quote or use the interview in any other way should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted and an explanation of the anticipated use of the passages and of the identification of the user.
Hay's previous interview experiences--Factions within the gay movement--Hay's radical position--On conventional histories of the gay movement and their efforts to downplay the role of the left-- The desire to make the gay movement respectable-- Hetero imitation--Family background--The Hay clan of Scotland.
Hay's parents marry in South Africa--Hay is born in England--Edwardian life--Childhood memories of Chile--Hay's relations with his father--The family moves to Southern California in 1916.
More on the Hays' move to Southern California-- Further discussion of restrained relations with parents—Early attraction to masturbation--Archaic medical practices used to curtail the habit--On his father's efforts to instill manly discipline--Defying his father's authority--Hay's work in father's nursery and Nevada hay fields--Hay's great--grandmother travels in Mexico and the West during and after the Civil War.
Hay's great-grandmother settles in Virginia City-- Aunt Kate's work as a teacher.
Great-grandfather James Alan Hardie's service in the Civil War--Great-uncle Frank Hardie's participation in the Battle of Wounded Knee--More on working in Nevada--Recollections of visit to the Washoe rancheria.
More on the visit to the Washoe rancheria-- Wovoka--Hopi pilgrimages to the Pacific--Setting up the Committee for Traditional Indian Land and Life--Ghost Dance religion--0n influences derived from exposure to divergent cultures--Exposed to the Wobblies--Childhood memories of growing up in Los Angeles--Further disputes with father--More on Aunt Kate--Hay's father as a "negative identity"--Raised as a Catholic--Schooling--More recollections of growing up in Los Angeles—Dance classes.
Rituals of dance lessons--Sports interests--Early inclinations to homosexuality--Sexual initiations--The Bimini Bath Club--Boxing "lessons"--Crushes on schoolgirls--Masturbation fantasies--Discovering Edward Carpenter--Early homosexual encounters--Opening up of "subterranean rivers of feelings and sensations."
More on Los Angeles High School--Interests in mathematics, history, and literature-- Difficulties in choosing a career--Varied activities in high school--Involvement in ROTC and a citizens' military training camp in Northern California--Matt--Options faced after high school graduation--Assumes a job in legal firm with intent of studying law.
Recollections of Spring Street during the Wall Street Crash--Continued work in the law firm--Determined to explore new sexual horizons--Pershing Square--Rites of passage--Champ-—On Stanford's admission process—More on summer work in Nevada--Sustains serious back and stomach injuries.
Fields of study pursued at Stanford--Leaves Stanford in 1931 due to medical complications--Background to interest in dramatic arts--Hay finds his "calling" in the theater--On "coming out" at Stanford--Friendships developed while at Stanford--James Broughton--Recollections of San Francisco in the thirties--Finocchio' s--Roy.
On beginning an acting career--The Hollywood Repertory Theater--Lands the part of Citizen Defarge in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities--Serves as understudy in the Hollywood Theater Company--Melodrama--The Mountainview Hotel in Hollywood--Will Geer--Exposure to radical politics--Camp and the gay ethos--Bert Savoy and the origin of camp.
Vaudeville as main line of communication for gay people--The underground "gayspeak" of the Savoy show--Julian Eltinge--Camp as healing force-Involvement in the Communist Party during the thirties--The political tutelage of Will Geer--Free speech zones in Los Angeles--Film work in Hollywood--Pressures against being openly gay-- Joining the Communist Party--Combining radical politics and dance performance--The emergence of "progressive" theater--The Hollywood Theater Guild--The Hollywood Film and Photo League--More on progressive theater.
Involvement with the foreign colony in Hollywood--Afternoon garden parties--The campaign to recall Mayor Frank Shaw--The disparate political groups around the anti-Shaw campaign.