November 30th

12-01-1945 Bette Midler – Born in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is an American singer, songwriter, actress, comedian, and film producer. Midler is a gay icon and has long been a supporter of the LGBT community. In 1970 she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse, where she built up a gay following. Since 1970, she has released 14 albums. In 1979, she made her motion picture debut in The Rose (loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin), which earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress. She has been in a number of hit films, including Beaches, The First Wives Club, and Outrageous Fortune. In 2018, Midler returned to Broadway in a revival of Hello, Dolly! At the Academy Awards 2019 ceremony, she performed the song, The Place Where Lost Things Go, from the film, Mary Poppins Returns.

12-01-1940 – 12-10-2005   Richard Pryor – Born in Peoria, Illinois. He was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and social critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential comedians of all time. Pryor won an Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. The first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was given to him in 1998. He was married seven times to five women and had relationships with actresses Pam Grier and Margot Kidder. In 2018, Quincy Jones and Jennifer Lee, whom Pryor married twice, stated that Pryor had a sexual relationship with Marlon Brando and that Pryor was open about his bisexuality with friends. In his autobiography, Pryor talked about having a two-week sexual relationship with a transvestite, which he called “two weeks of being gay.”

12-01-1913 – 11-03-1990   Mary Martin – Born in Weatherford, Texas. Martin was an American actress, singer, and Broadway star. Her Broadway debut was in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me! in 1938. In the second act she sang My Heart Belongs to Daddy” which made her a star. She originated many leading roles in her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1949), and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1959). In October 1954, Martin appeared in the role of Peter in the Broadway production of Peter Pan, for which she won a Tony Award. Fortunately Peter Pan filmed and aired on NBC. Also her performance as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun was also filmed and broadcasted on NBC in 1957.  She married Benjamin Hagman at the age of seventeen and had her first child, actor Larry Hagman. They divorced in 1936. In 1940, she married Richard Halliday, a gay man. Martin was probably a lesbian. She did have an affair with Janet Gaynor. They traveled frequently together with their husbands (both gay) and lived together in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. Martin died of cancer at her home in Rancho Mirage, California in 1990.

12-01-1985   Janelle Monáe – Born in Kansas City, Kansas. She is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and producer. Monáe has received six Grammy Award nominations, an MTV Video Music Award, and the ASCAP Vanguard Award. In 2018 she was awarded the “Trailblazer of the Year” by Billboard Women in Music. Monáe had roles in two feature films, Hidden Figures and Moonlight. In April 2018, in an interview with Rolling Stone, she said that she identified with both bisexuality and pansexual, having had relationships with both men and women.   

12-01-1947 Richard Barnes – Born in the United Kingdom, place of birth unknown. He is a British politician. Barnes is openly gay. In 2008, he was appointed Deputy Mayor of London, making him the first male and first LGBT Deputy Mayor of London. Barnes held that position until May 4, 2012. On September 30, 2014, Barnes announced he was leaving the Conservative Party to join the UK Independence Party.