Pittsburgh's LGBT+ in the Media Transcript
Episode: COMING SOON
Welcome folks! I’m Al and this is the podcast of the Holiday Pride: A Pittsburgh LGBT+ Community Museum.
Now, this season of the podcast we’ve covered a number of LGBT+ people and themes in film, TV, books, and other forms of media. We haven’t been practically Pittsburgh forward in this conversation, but there are many LGBT+ folks on local Pittsburgh TVs through the news, modeling in magazines, and as the location of TV shows. In this final episode of the podcast, we’re going to talk about some of those moments where Pittsburgh’s LGBT+ folks were widely visible.
We’ll talk about just a few appearances of Pittsburgh’s LGBT+ community on TVs locally and across the nation. Some of these were by activists who wanted to change peoples minds, showcase the reality of being LGBT+. Others were for work or accidentally brought LGBT+ people and issues to the nation. Then, amazingly, there’s a sitcom, Queer as Folk which is about queer folks in Pittsburgh. Now, I hope to have a full review of Queer as Folk as soon as I can find a way to watch it. For these other moments of queer Pittsburgh media, you can find the archives of these moments in archives across the city.
The Ricki Lake show aired from 1993 to around 2004. Ricke Lake is a relatively famous actress who gained her fame from playing Tracy Turnblad in the 1988 performance of Hairspray. She starred in other films by John Waters and eventually started the Ricki Lake talk show at the age of 25, making her the youngest person to host a daytime TV show at the time. The show focused on topics related to families and the impact of trauma on parent-child relationships.
One episode, Pittsburgh natives, Wendi and Cooper Miller appeared on the Ricki Lake show to talk about their relationship. The reason they were invited on is because Wendi is a transgender woman who transitioned when her son, Cooper, was relatively young. Some may recognize Wendi Miller as the lady behind the counter at Miller Frame in East Liberty. She and her frame shop were a hub of the community where little old ladies and the owner of skyscrapers all got their art and photos framed.
Wendi also started TransPitt, an organization dedicated to Pittsburgh’s transgender folks. She, TransPitt, and Cooper all attended the first transgender march on Washington, appearing in the documentary Transexual Menace which recorded the event. Now, they appeared on Ricki Lake’s show to talk about how Wendi’s transition didn’t tear her and Cooper apart. They’re, in fact, very lucky. While transitioning led to Wendi’s divorce with her wife, she was very lucky that it didn’t lead a judge to keep her from seeing her son. Many other transgender folks weren’t so lucky. Instead, Wendi being able to be herself fully and completely made her and Cooper closer and they got the chance to tell the nation that story on The Ricki Lake Show.
If you’d like to know more about that appearance or find some recordings of it, you can reach out to the Wendi Miller Legacy Project which still runs out of the old frame shop in East Liberty.
Wendi and Cooper weren’t the only ones to appear on TV. In the midst of the AIDS crisis, members of Thursday Night Live or TNL appeared on the local news.
On June 18th, 1991, members of TNL were guests on WTAE’s ‘Pittsburgh’s Talking’ hosted by Ann Devlin. Among the members of TNL present was Tim Ziaukus, one of our oral history narrators! Some may remember Devlin’s show. It was an hour long show on WTAE that ran from 1988 to 1991. Devlin interviewed folks from the city about different aspects of their lives. They had episodes about horror movies but also birth control. The goal, for TNL, was to go onto her show and show Pittsburgh that their queer community were just average guys. They were average Pittsburghers with average jobs. The humanization of queer folks, especially in the 80s and 90s was very important. With the AIDS crisis looming over everyone’s heads, being LGBT+ was increasingly dehumanized by the average population and governments. In fact, when the crisis began, many scientists and government officials said it was a good thing gay men were dying in mass.
TNL began as a social group. A way for gay men and eventually women, to gather together and be social. When the AIDS crisis went into full swing, the group shifted to activism. They hosted a number of events and fundraised to help AIDS research. Part of that activism was appearing on ‘Pittsburgh’s Talking’. They wanted to gather support behind AIDS research, but also humanize being gay. While it’s difficult to find much information about ‘Pittsburgh’s Talking’ today, at the time, it was prime time day-time TV.
Imagine, it’s 1991. Being gay isn’t fully decriminalized yet. You can still be fired from your job, evicted from your home, or abused for just being visibly gay. There’s a horrible disease that is killing your lovers, friends, and found family and many government officials think that’s a good thing. All you want to do is live your life with people you care about. You joined TNL to meet others like you. Now you’re fighting to save lives. Now, you’re about to step on the set of a widely watched TV show that will air in homes across this city. Now, you’re about to admit, on TV, live. To the city. That you are what some hate the most.
How scary that must have been.
But now, picture this. It’s 1991. Being gay isn’t fully decriminalized yet. You can still be fired from your job, evicted from your home, or abused for just being visibly gay. There’s a horrible disease that is killing your lovers, friends, and found family and many government officials think that’s a good thing. All you want to do is live your life with people you care about. You feel a bit hopeless, maybe you’ve been to a funeral, one of many, recently. You turn on the news to think about literally anything else. Ann Devlin’s show is on and there are a few men in nice suits being interviewed. They’re gay, they say. They’re gay and they’re fighting AIDS. You’ve been to a funeral, you will go to a number more. But on the TV are men, just like you proudly admitting that they are just like you. And that’s the exact thing you needed to see and hear right now.
I don’t think Tim or the other members of TNL who took part in the interview really understood every impact they would have on people in the city. They aimed to make one, but I’m sure they may have missed the many different kinds of impacts that they would make. The interview with Ann Devlin is archived at the Heinz History Center in their Detre Library and Archive if you want to actually watch the interview.
Activism drove queer Pittsburghers to the screen. They wanted to showcase the reality of being LGBT+ in the world, show that they were human, and that there were unjustified struggles placed upon them. However, that wasn’t the only reason queer folks took to the screen or other kinds of media.
From the archives of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, Sandy Beach’s archive showcases her time as a model and drag queen. She is an interior designer who was active the most from the 1980s to the 1990s. She was a runner up for Miss Pittsburgh 1988 as well. Pittsburgh’s vintage market also hired her to model for them. She modeled for Eons and Hey Betty on Ellsworth Avenue! Through her time modeling, she also gained relationships to folks who worked with PCTV 21, that is, local Pittsburgh Public Access TV on channel 21. They would host classes to help folks learn TV related skills but they also provided programming for the city for free.
She wasn’t only in paper advertisements, she also appeared on TV commercials for businesses. In 1999, she was in a commercial for Folio Papers on Murray Avenue. That business no longer exists, a Matcha store is there now. She also appeared on Gay Cable Network or GCN. GCN was the first cable TV network that was open about catering to queer folks. It was started in New York City by Lou Maletta. The network had many gay specific programs that appealed to those looking for erotica, but it also provided coverage on Democratic and Republican National Conventions as well as LGBT+ marches on Washington. The network ended in 2001. Sandy, however, was part of the Victims of Fantasy Lipsynch program.
Some of Sandy’s archives are available to the public on the Pittsburgh Queer History Project website which is linked in the description. You can watch some of the videos as well!
Now for the least expected example. The 2000s show Queer as Folk was an Americanized version of a British show of the same name. However, the American version takes place in Pittsburgh! Bars across the city held watch parties for the show when it was running and it had some national notoriety. Some writers and scholars of the LGBT+ community bring up how the show isn’t as realistic as people may have wanted. Some authors, like Cathy Crimmins argued that some of the more fictional elements of the show were the fact that Pittsburgh didn’t have such a “glamourous gay scene” (pg. 111) as depicted. Now, I haven’t seen the show yet, but I think Pittsburgh’s scene was rather glamourous, you just had to know where to look. Granted, the show was filmed in Canda and was made by Canadian writers and directors so how accurate could it be?
While hardly any Pittsburghers were involved with the show, it did put Pittsburgh on the screen and in people’s minds. The show focuses on gay men and their favorite nighttime spot, Babylon. Their convoluted love lives fuel the story, getting increasingly complicated as most gay loves based in the bars tend to become.
There are 5 seasons from 2000 to 2005. The first had 22 episodes which made the show far too big for us to handle for the podcast. However! We hope to find the show and watch it probably for a written review.
Pittsburgh’s LGBT+ Community faced many of the issues queer folks did across the nation, but they were often bold and visible. The bravery it takes to go onto local and even national TV is very Pittsburgh. Our community has it’s struggles, disagreements, and arguments, but many members have tried their best to help the best they could and appearing on TV helped display their struggles, but also their normalcy. The human part of the argument. They also showed off the hope people could have in seeing success stories. The fact that Wendi and Cooper were still parent and child was a rarity. That most of the members of TNL that appeared on the local news didn’t get fired shows how welcoming their work places were. That’s not to say all of them were so lucky or that bigotry isn’t here. They had to appear on the news to fight for gay rights after all.
A show about Pittsburgh’s queer community that was made by and for Pittsburghers would be a fascinating story to follow. Maybe Wendi’s wild life, maybe the wild parties the bar owners hosted or even the Pitt Men’s Study could showcase the unique community in this city. All of it’s good and bad qualities.
Aaaand with that, this season comes to a close! I hope you’ve had a good time following along!
Moving forward, we will be pausing the podcast for a bit. There are a lot of new projects coming up that we need more time to dedicate to. Every so often, we’ll upload another one of our oral histories as we process them. For now, we’re not sure when we’ll bring the podcast back, but we have plans for the future!
Thank you for listening and thank you for sticking around.
Sources:
Detre Library and Archive TNL collection. Call number: 2024.0046
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