Festa per il compleanno del caro amico Harold

I suppose all gay men must have a reaction to BITB one way or another. It must be respected for being incredibly daring when it came out: the first play to focus exclusively on gay characters and show us as average men with basically normal lives. (As late as the 60s few plays, & far fewer films, even acknowledged gays existed; those that did used gays as symbols of abasement or decadence. 'Different from the Others'-1919 and 'Victim'-1961 were isolated exceptions.) The sexually frank dialog was also a groundbreaker. A gay friend who saw the original stage production remembers being astonished by Harold's line, 'Your lips are turning blue. You look like you've been rimming a snowman!' Crowley wins laurels for being the first playwright to present our community without apology.

That said, I admit I found the film dated when I first saw it in the 80s, when I was in my 20s. Watching it now, I have a different reaction. For one thing, I adore the brilliant dialog. What an inspiration to write a comedy of manners set in the archly mannered world of New York gays! There hasn't been a screenplay with this many epigrams per inch since 'All About Eve.'

The first act is funny and marvelous. The second act teeters into melodrama, stealing the device of all-night boozing and humiliating party games to 'strip characters bare' from 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' Michael, the host and game emcee, is such a bitch that we can't feel sympathy when Harold confronts and effectively destroys him. Kenneth Nelson's performance as Michael doesn't help: it's like an acting class exercise, all shrieking and hysterics.

While the ensemble as a whole is strong, Leonard Frey's brilliant, definitive Harold enables him to walk off with the film. The straight Cliff Gorman does fine work as the flaming, ultimately touching Emory; Keith Prentice is very good as the one well-adjusted party goer, the happy sensualist Larry; and Reuben Greene and Frederick Combs make the best of underwritten characters (Combs get lots of chances to show his rear end to great advantage, including a gratuitous nude shot).

Besides good acting, the film has other points to recommend it. The film's 'opening up' of the play is never intrusive or contrived. Friedkin's camera never seems trapped, though almost the entire picture is shot in one apartment, and he keeps the story moving swiftly along. And Crowley shows courage in leaving the question of Alan's sexuality somewhat ambiguous, despite his affirming his wife as the person he truly loves, thereby rejecting Michael as a gay man and precipitating his collapse.

The themes of love, truth, self-loathing, friendship and relationships speak to audiences gay & straight. They are dealt with in a well made film and a script crafted with wit and humor. While the 'if we could just not hate ourselves so much' viewpoint does date the movie, it has more skill and substance than 75% of the films on the market-and (I agree with other posters) 99% of the 'gay' films out there now.

I know I'm walking into a minefield by writing this, but here goes:

To begin with, I should say that I was born one month before the Stonewall riots and, of course, entirely missed the era this movie portrays. I have read countless reviews insisting that this is a dated film, and a time capsule of a long gone age of self-loathing. But, speaking as a single gay man living in Manhattan now, all I could think was that this movie hits closer to home than a lot of folks would like to admit. For every character in the movie, I could think of at least one acquaintance of mine of my age who could easily step into those shoes. I have met numerous "Michaels" who shrug responsibility, live off credit cards and (try to) drown their insecurity in endless parties; Walk into any bar in Chelsea and you'll see at least a dozen snide, contemptuous "Harolds" skulking around radiating disdain for everyone around them; and let's not get started on the legions of airhead pretty boy "Cowboys" out there!

This is not to say that all the gay men I know are like this. I certainly don't share the P.O.V. of Michael, Harold, etc. In fact, I know just as many well-adjusted, happy and likeable gay guys, and I'd bet money there were similar folks like that in 1968, when the original play came out (no pun intended). But it seems very p.c. to write this movie off as a history lesson and I can't. The whole tone of the movie, the suppressed anxiety the characters feel about themselves, and the bitterness they feel towards each other, the resentment the gay men feel for the (possibly) straight guy, and above all the need for the characters to bury their self-esteem problems by getting drunk and partying with abandon happens too often among people I know to dismiss as long ago and far away.

"The Boys In The Band", in my opinion, remains to this day the quintessential gay film and still holds the test of time against such recent gay films as "Philadelphia", "Jeffrey", and "In And Out". The film is also a landmark in another way, keep in mind that when it was originally released in 1970, homosexuality was still classified as a "mental illness" by the American Psychological Association, and the Gay Rights movement was barely a year old. The plot is quite simple: 9 men get together for a birthday party and one of them is straight. What transpires evening long examination of themselves and each other. Many today have stated that the film perpetuates gay stereotypes, but I disagree. Every type of person at that party exists in the gay community. Others have had a hard time with the characters self-loathing, but how many of us gay and lesbian Americans haven't gone through a period like that in our lives, especially before we are out. The film is both funny and sad and for most of us can bring about strong memories of what life was like before self-acceptance and coming out of the closet.

I went to see "The boys in the Band" the weekend before it opened in Chicago in 1970 by accident. I took a new girl friend, fresh from a farm town in Wisconsin on her 20th birthday to see "Endless Summer." It was the movie that she most wanted to see, and since I mostly wanted to be around for breakfast the day after her 20th birthday, we went. As a "Surprise Sneak Preview" we also got "The Boys in the Band." The next morning, after a Wisconsin style hearty breakfast in bed, I found that I could not remember a single scene or line from "Endless Summer," but to this day I remember nearly all of "The Boys in the Band." Caroll and I were not an item for too long, but several years later when I bumped into her strolling on Michigan Ave. with her new husband, she mentioned "The Boys in the Band" and how glad she was that we'd seen it.

The reason that I liked it so much then, and even went to the trouble to hunt down a very hard to find copy for a weekend mini-film-festival that some friends and I held two years ago, is that it is a brilliant play about people. You could substitute a group of straight folks, set it in downtown Shanghai or Moscow or Rome and nearly every line would still ring true. Good art must be universal or it is just advertising! "The Boys in the Band" is very good art. It portrays the everyday, not particularly larger than life, not particularly unique everyday flaws and quirks of people. The message of this film is "What the hell, were all the same under these cheesy facades we polish so brightly and value so highly and couldn't justify for two seconds in the light of any true intelligence and logic."

I don't mean to hurt anyone's sensibilities or detract from the real ground breaking value of this film. This was a big first. Gay guys right up there on the silver screen just like Rock Hudson and Doris Day, BUT admitting it. In a sense, being a "Period Piece" is the highest compliment that you can pay to a production based on "social commentary." Of course it looks like 1970, Folks, it was 1970. Now if you want a period piece, I just saw "Endless Summer" on AMC the other weekend. Talk about dated!

As far as filmed stage plays go, the production effort on "The Boys in the Band" is not really fabulous, but it isn't bad enough to detract from the story or it's impact. As literature I rate this film a solid 10. As a movie I rate it as a 7.5. Compared with other similar efforts of the time, "Butterflys are Free" or Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" for instance it stands up.

If you can find it (which ain't easy), rent it. It is well worth an evening.

This is the film version based on the 1968 Off-Broadway play and with that production's original cast of actors. And they are excellent.

The plot revolves around a birthday party among a small group of gay friends and the uninvited guest who may or may not be gay.

Kenneth Nelson stars as Michael, a 40-ish gay man who is probably a lapsed Catholic and feels a sense of guilt for being gay, based on his religious upbringing. He apparently lives well but is much in debt.

Among the guests are Donald (Frederick Combs) a friend who's seeing a "shrink," Larry (Keith Prentice) who's in a relationship with Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) but who is not faithful to Hank who is divorcing from his wife. There's also Emory (Cliff Gorman) a flaming queen, and Bernard (Reuben Greene) a quiet Black man.

The birthday boy is Harold (Leonard Frey), a acerbic aging gay with bad skin and an imperious manner. His birthday gift is a gay hustler (Robert La Tourneaux) who dresses as a cowboy and who's not very bright.

The men drink heavily as they trade insults amid gossip and music and witty barbs. Into this mix comes Michael's old college roommate Alan (Peter White) who desperately wants to see Michael. But he's shocked by what he sees and is apparently unaware that Michael is gay.

The party quickly devolves into a series of arguments and even an act of violence. Very drunk, Michael insists they play a telephone game where each man has to call the person he truly loves and tell them so. Secrets are exposed.

Kenneth Nelson is superb as the bitter Michael, a man who's probably never found real love and is adrift in his life. Equally superb are Leonard Frey as Harold and Cliff Gorman as Emory. These are towering film performances. Every else is quite good.

Kenneth Nelson was basically known as a musical theater star. Indeed he played "the boy" in the original production of "The Fantasticks" along with Rita Gardner as "the girl" and Jerry Orbach as El Gallo. Ironically, he won a Golden Globe nomination for this film as "best newcomer."

This film is a time capsule of what it was like to be gay long before gay rights and even predates Stonewall and the AIDS epidemic. It's a trenchant look at a period of time. And this is a superb production and much better than the flimsy 2020 film remake.