No openly gay musical group had ever tried what the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus planned for June 1981: a coast-to-coast tour of nine cities. Paying for it took months.
“The national gay story of 1981”
An internal chorus memo from January 19, 1981, now in the GLBT Historical Society’s archives, laid out the plan: open at home on June 4, then Dallas, Minneapolis, Lincoln, Detroit, New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The budget came to $358,919, with $96,222 still to raise. Armistead Maupin had promoted the tour at a national gay media conference, and columnist Liz Smith pledged support.
That same week, publicist Kenneth Maley wrote to the Chronicle complaining that the paper was ignoring the chorus. Its 125 men, he said, were raising $300,000 on their own for what he called the national gay story of 1981.
“The dam has burst”
By late February, the Bay Area Reporter wrote, the money was coming in. Tour co-chair Steven Prokasky said ticket sales would cover most of a $325,000 budget; private donors had pledged $72,000, including $6,000 from Air Force veteran Leonard Matlovich and $2,500 from Advocate publisher David Goodstein. Maley arranged free 30-second television spots credited “Compliments of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.” Prokasky joked he hoped the chorus would make the cover of Time.
“The dam has burst and the money is rolling in.”
— Steven Prokasky, as quoted by the Bay Area Reporter
Ready to fly
By May the BAR put the budget at $356,000. Four members reportedly mortgaged their homes, the chorus’s instrumentalists gave a benefit recital at First Unitarian Church, and businesses on Castro Street donated a share of sales. On May 15, Prokasky and fellow co-chair Gerald Pearson handed United Airlines a $229,000 check for the airfare. A Kansas farmer promised 50 turkeys for the chorus’s dinner in Lincoln, and Seattle promised Washington apples to match.
From the archives: this post retells reporting by the Bay Area Reporter and the San Francisco Chronicle. The original articles survive only in newspaper archives, so we have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to those outlets are their reporting; see the sources below.
Sources
- SFGMC Archives, GLBT Historical Society, “San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus Tours America (tour committee memo)”, January 19, 1981.
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Letters to the Editor: Baffled” by Kenneth Maley, January 13, 1981. sfchronicle.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Gay Men’s Chorus To Tour America”, February 26, 1981. ebar.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus Tours America ’81” by Allen White, May 7, 1981. ebar.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Gay Chorus Makes Final Plans” by Allen White, May 21, 1981. ebar.com
