January 22

Lads in plaid:

Bros in the locker room:

Ronan Farrow

Harvey Weinstein trial shines

the spotlight on Mia Farrow's son

Ronan Farrow (b. December 19,1987) is an openly gay journalist and author of the current best-selling book Catch and Kill (2019) that describes the challenges in investigating the coverup of sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, whose trial is currently underway in New York. The term “Catch and Kill” refers to a technique by which disreputable media companies purchase stories and subsequently bury them, thus preventing publication of damaging material. Farrow also investigated similar accusations against other prominent men, including U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Mr. Farrow initially began his investigative reporting on Weinstein while an employee at NBC, which decided against publishing his initial findings in 2016 (i.e., "catch and kill"). Ronan then took his story to The New Yorker, and they published his investigative reports in October, 2017. The magazine subsequently won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for Farrow’s reporting. Farrow’s disclosures effectively ended the career of Weinstein and gave rise to the #Metoo movement. That year Ronan was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People.

Ronan with his betrothed, Jon Lovett (left):

Farrow has worked as a lawyer, speechwriter, investigative reporter, author, television journalist and activist. He also held positions in the Obama administration and the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2011 Ronan began dating podcast host and former presidential speechwriter Jon Lovett (37), who had also worked at NBC and the offices of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They became engaged in 2019 and bought a home in Los Angeles last August. In addition to hosting Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It, Lovett works as a television producer and writer under the umbrella of Crooked Media, a Los Angeles based political media company, which Jon co-founded in 2017. 

Farrow remains based in NYC, where he enjoys spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline from the terrace of his Lower East Side penthouse apartment (below). Farrow and Lovett are an influential bi-coastal gay power couple.

Farrow holds a B.A. degree in Philosophy from Bard College, and at age 15 became the youngest ever graduate of that institution (he enrolled as a freshman at age 11). When he turned 16 he began studies at Yale Law School, where he received a J.D. degree in 2009, subsequently passing the New York state bar examinations. He was later a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University while working towards a doctorate in philosophy; he submitted his thesis in 2018.

Ronan has a nearly unbelievable and complicated family situation. He was born Satchel Ronan O’Sullivan Farrow as the grandson of Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan, remembered for playing the role of Jane alongside Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan films of the 1930s and 40s. Among O’Sullivan’s children was actress Mia Farrow, who conceived Ronan when she was in a relationship with filmmaker Woody Allen. Although they never married and always maintained separate residences, she appeared in 13 of Woody Allen’s films. Mia had been previously married to legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra and pianist and conductor André Previn.

Ronan is estranged from Woody Allen, who married Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn. Upon Allen’s marriage to Soon-Yi, Ronan stated, “He’s my father, married to my sister. That makes me his son and brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression.”

Enough said.

Sources:

Wikipedia, The Guardian, NPR, The Telegraph, The New Yorker

September 27

Murder of Biographer Pope-Hennessy
By "Rough-Trade" Gay Prostitutes

I received a hardcover book for my birthday (back in February) that I just got around to reading -- but I bailed before finishing it. For the most part, I find books about the British royal family stultifyingly dull. The author, on the otherhand, had a life that was anything but. To wit:

Noted biographer James Pope-Hennessy (1916-1974) was the grandson of Irish politician and colonial administrator John Pope Hennessy, a member of the Anglo-Irish landowning gentry who served as the eighth Governor of Hong Kong from 1877-1883. Grandson James, however, was born in London, not taking Irish citizenship until he was in his fifties. He was known for two things – being the biographer of Queen Mary and being beaten to death at age 57 by homosexual prostitutes who were attempting to rob him in his own home.

During WW II James was a member of British intelligence stationed in Washington, DC, returning to London in 1945, when he shared an apartment with Guy Burgess, a gay man who notoriously defected to the Soviet Union in 1951. In the ensuing years James wrote biographies and travel accounts that formed the basis of a solid career as a writer.

James became famous after writing what many regard as the best royal biography ever written, Queen Mary, published in 1959, only six years after the queen’s death. It was an astonishingly candid book, considering that it was published at the time when royal secrets were tightly shielded from public scrutiny. Amazingly, Pope-Hennessy was given rare access to the private diaries Queen Mary had kept during her lifetime. A collection of the notes, letters and interviews used to research this biography was published as The Quest for Queen Mary in 2018, and the original 1959 biography was republished in a paperback (and Kindle) edition earlier this year.

Actually, James didn’t want to write the biography when first asked by royal librarian Owen Morshead. Pope-Hennessy was an unlikely choice, described as “two characters lodged in one shell”. One was the hard-working professional writer, the witty raconteur and confidante of smart society women. The other was a heavy drinker, a man driven by “unremitting homosexuality” into low life, consorting with male prostitutes of the ilk known as “rough trade”. In fact, one of the youths he picked up for sex moved into his house and instigated his murder several months later.

In 1974 his London apartment was “broken into” (the official version*) by three men after one of them overheard him boasting about an advance of $150,000 he had received to write a biography of the celebrated homosexual playwright, Noël Coward. They thought the cash was in the apartment. It wasn’t, but Pope-Hennessy was nevertheless brutally beaten to death.

*In actuality, this was an inside job, since one of the three assailants was living with James at the time.

If ever an account of a high-born member of English society dipping into the low-life realm of homosexual prostitution were ripe for the basis of a TV miniseries, this is it. I want Jonathan Groff for James and Russell Tovey for the live-in assailant.

 In the swim*:

*"In the swim" was a phrase from the 1940s referencing fashionable people or places, or objects that were trendy.

"For my rich uncle Max, winters in Palm Beach and summers on Nantucket were in the swim."

Frat house memories:

Oktoberfest continues through Oct. 6: