Singer

Singer

b. March 28, 1986

"I'm just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time."

Lady Gaga is a world-famous performance artist and singer. She is best known for her chart-topping singles and outrageous costumes. She has had three consecutive best-selling albums and one of the highest-grossing tours.

Born Stefani Germanotta, she is the first of two daughters born to working class parents in Yonkers, New York. She describes her younger self as an “artsy, musical-theatre, nerdy girl who got good grades, who learned the tricks of self-reinvention, and [had] a look that veered between a bit too sexy and a bit strange.” Raised Roman Catholic, she graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart School before attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She left the school after two years to work on her musical career. In 2005, she was signed by Def Jam Recording and worked as a songwriter for Britney Spears and The Pussycat Dolls.

Lady Gaga’s persona is derived from her unique, androgynous, vintage-themed fashion sense and constructing her own costumes. In 2008, Gaga produced her first album, “The Fame.” The album has two international hits, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.” The Fame Ball Tour premiered Lady Gaga’s innovative use of performance art and glam rock to form a multimedia party.

Her second album, “The Fame Monster,” received critical acclaim. The hit song “Bad Romance” earned Lady Gaga two Grammy Awards for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Short Form Music Video. Her third album, “Born This Way,” topped the charts within days of its release. She has sold 15 million albums and 51 million singles.

Lady Gaga has won five Grammy Awards and holds two Guinness World Records. She was named 2010 Artist of the Year and the top-selling artist of 2010 by Billboard. In 2010, Time magazine named her Most Influential Artist, and in 2011, Forbes listed her among its World’s Most Powerful.

Openly bisexual, Lady Gaga is an outspoken LGBT equality advocate. She spoke at the 2009 National Equality March in Washington, D.C., calling it “the single most important event” of her career. She was a leading activist for the repeal of  “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Through her music, concerts and demonstrations, she continues to fight for LGBT rights.

Singer

b. September 30, 1935

“Sometimes being famous gets in the way of doing what you want to do.”

Johnny Mathis is a Grammy Award-winning American singer who sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. One of the most popular solo artists of the 20th century, he released more than 200 singles. “The Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson called him “the best ballad singer in the world.”

Mathis’s family moved to San Francisco when he was a boy. His father, a vaudeville performer, spotted his young son’s talent and encouraged his singing. Also a star athlete, Mathis excelled in high jump and basketball. In 1954 he enrolled at San Francisco State University on an athletic scholarship.

As a teenager, Mathis caught the attention of a club owner who offered to become his manager. After she invited a talent agent from Columbia Records to see him perform, the company signed him.

Despite a recording deal, Mathis was torn between music and sports. The U.S. Olympic Team invited him to try out at the same time he secured the contract with Columbia.

On his father’s advice, Mathis recorded his first album, “Johnny Mathis: A New Sound in Popular Song” in 1956. He recorded two of his most famous songs, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and “It’s Not For Me to Say,” that same year. By the end of the 1960s, he had released a greatest hits album, which spent an unprecedented 461 consecutive weeks on the Billboard charts.

Mathis struggled with drugs and alcohol. He was candid about his addiction and rehabilitation. He was reluctant, however, to discuss his sexuality. In 1982 he told US magazine, “Homosexuality is a way of life that I’ve grown accustomed to.” He received death threats over of the comment.

Mathis’s music has been featured in movie soundtracks and in more than a hundred television series. His 1978 song “The Last Time I Felt Like This” was nominated for an Academy Award. He has appeared in films and more than 300 times on TV, including in his own specials.

In 2003 the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honored Mathis with its Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame.

In 2016 Mathis performed a sold-out show as part of his 60th Anniversary Concert Tour. A year later, he came out on “CBS Sunday Morning.” “I come from San Francisco,” he said. “It’s not unusual to be gay in San Francisco … I knew that I was gay.”

Singer and Songwriter

b. June 17, 1943

“I’m so private. I always have been.”

Barry Manilow is an award-winning American singer and songwriter. He has recorded 47 Top 40 singles and sold more than 80 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.

Born Barry Alan Pincus in Brooklyn, New York, he adopted his mother’s maiden name, Manilow, at the time of his bar mitzvah. He attended the New York College of Music and studied musical theater at Julliard.

Early in his career, Manilow earned a living as a pianist, producer and arranger for CBS. He also wrote advertising jingles for clients such as State Farm (“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”) and Band-Aid (“I’m stuck on Band-Aid, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me”) and sang jingles for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi and McDonald’s, including for the hamburger chain’s famous “You deserve a break” campaign.

By 1971 Manilow was playing piano for a then-unknown singer, Bette Midler, in the Continental Baths—a gay bathhouse in New York. He wrote and recorded his own music and arranged and co-produced Midler’s chart-topping 1972 debut album, “The Divine Miss M.”

Manilow’s first big hit came in 1974 with “Mandy,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts. He followed it with a string of hits, albums and television appearances. His international hit “Ready to Take a Chance Again” was nominated for the Oscar for Best Song in 1978. The same year, he met Garry Kief, the man he would marry in 2014 after California legalized same-sex marriage. The longtime couple kept their relationship secret for most of Manilow’s career.

In the early 1980s, Manilow hosted his own variety show on ABC for which he won an Emmy Award. He went on to win another Emmy, four Academy Awards, two American Music Awards and a special Tony Award. He has been nominated for 15 Grammys.

Manilow has toured worldwide. He has performed at many charity events for health organizations and to benefit victims of natural disasters. He created the Barry Manilow Scholarship for the six highest-achieving lyric-writing students at UCLA.

Manilow officially came out two years after making headlines for marrying his longtime partner. He told People magazine that he kept his sexuality secret for fear of disappointing his female fans. Manilow’s first marriage, to a woman, was annulled in 1966. 

Gay Publishing Pioneer

b. November 7, 1921
d. December 22, 2015

“I felt that it was a labor from the heart …”

In 1947 Edythe Eyde launched the first lesbian publication in the United States, laying the groundwork for gay and lesbian publishing. 

Born in San Francisco, Eyde was the only child of a Norwegian immigrant and his wife. She had her first crush on a girl when she was in high school. 

In college, Eyde took a secretarial course that led to a job in 1945 at RKO Studios in Los Angeles. A year later, she came out to friends she had met at lesbian bars. 

While working at RKO, Eyde conceived the idea for Vice Versa, primarily as an arts publication for lesbians featuring fiction, poetry and reviews. Eyde began producing it by making carbon copies at the office. When she discovered it was illegal to distribute lesbian material through the U.S. mail, she delivered Vice Versa by hand, urging readers to share it. As the publication’s popularity grew, she became well known on the West Coast for her activism.  

“I never sold it, I just gave it to my friends,” Eyde said many years later. “I felt that it was a labor from the heart, and I shouldn’t get any money for it.”

From 1947 to 1948, Eyde printed a total of nine issues. As demand increased, she could not make enough copies to keep up. When RKO was sold, she found another job and lacked the resources to continue production, ending the publication’s brief but influential run. 

Throughout her life, Eyde continued her activism and creative work. She joined a West Coast chapter of the early lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis and contributed to its publication, The Ladder, using the name Lisa Ben. She also wrote gay-inspired lyrics to popular songs and performed them at gay and lesbian clubs and events. 

In 1960 the Daughters of Bilitis released a record of Eyde singing “Frankie and Johnnie” and “Cruising Down the Boulevard.” She performed some of her songs in the short film “Dyketactics” (1974) and in the documentaries “Before Stonewall” (1984) and “History Lessons” (2000). 

Eyde was honored as the founder of L.A.’s LGBT community in 1997 and was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Hall of Fame in 2010. When she died at age 94, her death went unnoted.

Original copies of Vice Versa can be found at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles.