The Greatest Gay Love Stories Never Told

The Pitch: Best Little Whorehouse in Texas meets La Cage Aux Folles
The Cast: Alan Cumming as Mother Clap, and John Barrowman and Tim Campbell as two men who find love under her roof

Once Britten
The Love Story: Brilliant and provocative composer Baron Benjamin Britten and his life-long partner, tenor Sir Peter Pears, lived through pretty much every major event of the 20^th century as vibrant, talented, and successful gay men.

The two met in their twenties in 1934 but did not become close friends until a friend of Pears died in an airplane crash. The duo gave their first concert together in 1937 and became one another’s colleagues, mutual inspirations, and lifelong lovers. Britten turned down the knighthood, but later accepted a life peerage as Baron Britten. The two lovers are buried side by side at St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church.

Britten, whose reputation as a World War II pacifist, rumored obsession with young males (including David Hemmings) and curious sources of operatic and choral material (the poems of an institutionalized religious fanatic, The Turn of the Screw, and others) once obscured his reputation as a composer and musician, is now considered to be one of the great 20^th-century composers, and one whose talent and life were enmeshed with his sexuality and his life partner.

Britten is also known for his strong religious beliefs and moral code, which is an element rarely explored in stories of openly gay men. Pears once noted, “I think the key to his music lies in his moral point of view combined with his craving for lost innocence brought on by his increasing disillusionment with man.”

The Pitch: Amadeus meets La Vie en rose
The Cast: James McAvoy as Britten and Neil Patrick Harris as Pears

The Writer’s Housekeeper
The Love Story: An Australian Nobel Prize-winning novelist and a Greek Army officer become lifelong lovers and run a farm outside of Sydney. What’s not to love?!

Australian author Patrick White met George “Manoly” Lascaris in the 1940s and the two were a couple for the rest of their lives. After a number of years spent living on a farm outside of Sydney, the couple moved into White’s city home, and it was here where his career as a writer and dramatist took off.

White would go on to write 12 novels and 11 plays, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. Lascaris is credited with being his inspiration and driving force. But being the times that they were, the men’s relationship was largely kept secret, with Lascaris frequently referred to as White’s “housekeeper. ”

It was not until his autobiography in 1981 (Flaws in the Glass) that White publicly acknowledged Lascaris as his partner. He died nine years later, with Lascaris surviving him until his death in 2003. Upon Lascaris’ death, White biographer David Marr wrote, “Everyone loved Manoly. He was courtly, intuitive and gentle. He protected people from White's outbursts of fury while remaining, at heart, absolutely loyal to his lover. 'There must be one person in the world Patrick can trust absolutely'.”

Behind some great men there are other great men, and the story of these men deserves to be told.

The Pitch: Gosford Park meets Gods and Monsters
The Cast: Hugh Jackman as White and The Starter Wife’s Chris Diamantopoulos as Lascoly