October 1st

10-01-1903 – 11-05-1989 Vladimir Horowitz – Born in Kiev, the Russian Empire ( now the capital of Ukraine). He was a classical pianist and composer. In 1939, Horowitz settled in the U.S. and became an American citizen in 1944. He is considered one of the finest classical pianist. He recorded with Columbia Records. His last recording, for Sony Classical (formerly Columbia), was completed four days before he died. In 1933, he married Toscanini’s daughter Wanda. There were persistent rumors that Horowitz was gay. Arthur Rubinstein said of Horowitz that, “Everyone knew and accepted him as a homosexual.” In an article in The New York Times (September 2013), Kenneth Leedom, an assistant of Horowitz for five years prior to 1955, claimed to have been in a closeted relationship with him as his lover, saying, “We had a wonderful life together…He was a difficult man, to say the least. He had an anger in him that was unbelievable. But then he was calm and sweet. And he really adored me.” In the 1940s, Horowitz began seeing a psychiatrist in an attempt to change his sexual orientation. He died of a heart attack at the age of 86.

10-01-1928 – 11-25-1973 Lawrence Harvey – Born in Joniskis, Lithuania, he was raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. In a career that spanned a quarter of a century, Harvey appeared on stage, film, and television both in the United Kingdom and the United States. For his performance in Room at the Top (1959), he received an Academy Award nomination. Harvey also starred in two films with Elizabeth Taylor, Butterfield 8 (1960) and Night Watch (1973). He also starred with Kim Novak in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1964). Harvey was married three times and was known to be bisexual. In Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (2003), written by George Jacobs, Frank Sinatra’s valet, he states that Harvey often made passes at him while visiting Sinatra. In his autobiography Close Up (2004), British actor John Fraser claimed Harvey was gay and that his long-term lover was Harvey’s manager James Woolf. Harvey died of stomach cancer at the age of 45. Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Lawford held a memorial service in California.

10-01-1867 – 06-04-1950 George Cecil Ives – (Place of birth unknown) Ives was the illegitimate son of an English army officer and a Spanish baroness. He was raised by his paternal grandmother, Emma Ives. He was a German-English poet, writer, penal reformer and early gay rights campaigner. By 1897, he created and founded the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for homosexuals. Ives also visited prisons across Europe and specialized in the study of penal methods, especially those of England. He also lectured and published books on the topic. At his death in 1950, George Ives left a large archive covering his life and work between 1874 and 1949. The archive is housed at the University of Texas at Austin. Most of his diaries provide views of the life of an upper-middle-class English homosexual from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and is of particular interest for understanding the homosexual movement in England during this time.

10-01-1890 – 11-05-1950 Blanche Oelrichs (Michale Strange) – Born in Newport, Rhode Island. She was an American poet, playwright and stage actress. Because of the erotic nature of her poetry, she wrote under the name of Michale Strange. It soon became the name she used permanently. She married three times, her second marriage was to John Barrymore. Oelrich was an activist for women’s suffrage. In 1921, she joined the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names after marriage. Starting in the summer of 1940, she began a relationship with children’s author, Margaret Wise Brown. The relationship lasted until Oelrich died from leukemia in 1950.

 

10-01-1953 Klaus Wowereit – Born in West Berlin, Germany. He is a German politician and was the Governing Mayor of Berlin from October 21, 2001, to December 11, 2014. Wowereit is one of the most famous German politicians who is openly gay. In coming out, prior to the 2001 mayoral elections, he coined the now-famous German phrase “Ich bin schwul, und das ist auch gut so.” (“I’m gay, and that is a good thing.”) In a 2010 interview with Time Magazine, he said coming out may actually have strengthened his campaign. Wowereit’s civil partner, Jörn Kubicki, is a neurosurgeon. They have been together since 1993.

10-01-1970 Martin Andreasson – Born in Malmö, Sweden. He is a Swedish Liberal People’s Party politician and was a member of the Riksdag (national legislature) form 2002-2006. He is openly gay. He is also an active member of Swedish science fiction fandom.

10-01-1985 Isis King – Born in Annapolis, Maryland. She is an African-American fashion model and a fashion designer. She was a contested on both the eleventh cycle and seventeenth cycle of the reality TV show America’s Next Top Model. As the first trans woman to compete on the show, she became one of the most visible transgender people on television. King was born biologically male but has stated that “mentally and everything else” she was “born female.” In 2007, King appeared in an MSNBC special titled Born in the Wrong Body, which documented the lives of transgender teens from across the United States. She has stated that people refer to her as “transgender” or “transsexual”, but she prefers the phrase “born in the wrong body.”

10-01-1991 Gus Kenworthy – Born in Chelmsford, Essex, United Kingdom. He is an English-born American freestyle skier from Telluride, Colorado. His mother is English and his father is an American. Kenworthy won the silver medal in Men’s freestyle skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. While in Russia he stayed behind after the Olympics to save a mother dog and her four puppies. His adoption of these dogs helped to bring attention to the problem of the stray dog population in Sochi. In October 2015, Kenworthy came out as gay. He was on the cover of the magazine Attitude’s March 2016 issue.