The Friend Of Dorothy Conspiracy

[+ Gar1eth]

 

Edited 22 hours ago by Gar1eth

[samhexum]

3 hours ago, Gar1eth said:

 

The Friend Of Dorothy Conspiracy

which, of course, became the Friend of Tootie Conspiracy after the premiere of The Facts of Life...

 

[+ Gar1eth]

2 hours ago, samhexum said:

The Friend Of Dorothy Conspiracy

which, of course, became the Friend of Tootie Conspiracy after the premiere of The Facts of Life...

 

You've totally lost me. 

[DunwoodyGuy]

He's cute and very earnest but his videos are often disappointingly superficial. In this case, the phrase only became widespread in the decades after the 1939 release of the Wizard of Oz when Judy Garland became enormously popular among gay men. But the phrase had been used before 1939 by gay men referring to humorist Dorothy Parker, who had a large number of gay male friends and habitually invited them to meet her at soirees and cocktail parties to which they hadn't been invited. The phrase derived from the fact that so many would show up and tell the host or hostess "I'm a friend of Dorothy's." It became a punchline for any newby in a gay social situation, as in: "Who let HER in?" "Oh, she must be a friend of Dorothy's."

After WW2, when the returning servicemen flooded big cities like NY, LA, SF, and Chicago--and Garland's emotional roller-coaster became something that cautiously-out or still-closeted gays identified with--the phrase lost its party-crashing meaning and took on the larger meaning encompassing all gays. 

[samhexum]

6 hours ago, samhexum said:

The Friend Of Dorothy Conspiracy

which, of course, becameiss the Friend of Tootie Conspiracy after the premiere of The Facts of Life...

 

3 hours ago, Gar1eth said:

You've totally lost me. 

surely you haven't forgotten that after Facts premiered, all Dorothys were rechristened Tootie!  How could you forget the famous Tooties of the past, the most well-known of which were Miss Zbornak and Miss Gale?