Hal Call

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Hal Call
Born
Harold Leland Call

September 1917
Grundy County, Missouri, US
DiedDecember 18, 2000 (aged 83)
San Francisco, California, US
Alma materUniversity of Missouri
Occupation(s)Businessperson, LGBT rights activist
Known forPresident of Mattachine Society
Military career
Allegiance United States
Service/branch United States Army
Service years1941–1945
Rank Captain
Battles/warsPacific War
AwardsPurple Heart

Harold Leland "Hal" Call (September 1917[1] – December 18, 2000[2]) was an American businessperson, LGBT rights activist, and U.S. Army veteran. He served as president of the Mattachine Society and in the 1950s, was one of the first gay activists to speak publicly on television. Call founded printing presses for LGBT publications and later opened gay adult shops and pornographic film screening venues. He received a Purple Heart for his service in the Pacific War.

Early life and education[edit]

Born and raised in Grundy County, Missouri, Call enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1935 on a scholarship. He studied journalism. Call enlisted in the United States Army in June 1941 as a private. He was promoted to sergeant within the year and, after completing Officer Candidate School, was promoted to lieutenant. He saw combat in the Pacific War, where he was wounded and received the Purple Heart. Returning to the United States in 1945, Call left the army at the rank of captain and returned to the University of Missouri to complete his journalism degree.[3]

Career and activism[edit]

After graduating, Call worked for several news outlets, including the Kansas City Star.[4] In August 1952, while working for the Star, Call was arrested for "lewd conduct" and paid an $800 bribe to have the charges dismissed. Call resigned his job and he and his lover Jack moved to San Francisco.[5]

With his arrival in the city, Call became involved with the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States. Following the resignations of the original leadership in 1953, Call became president of the Society.[6] Call frequently appeared on local television programs in the 1950s, as one of the few openly gay men who spoke about gay issues, and appeared both in The Rejected, the first-ever television documentary on homosexuality,[7] and "CBS Reports: The Homosexuals", the first network broadcast on the subject.

In 1955 Call co-founded Pan Graphic Press, which printed The Mattachine Review, The Ladder and other homophile publications. During his time there, the paper sold 3,000 copies.[8] He also founded Dorian Book Service, a gay and lesbian literature clearinghouse.[9] With the liberalization of obscenity laws beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Call began in 1967 to market gay erotica through the Adonis Bookstore, the first gay adult shop in the United States.[10] The next year he established Grand Prix Photo Arts, a film and photograph production business. In 1973 he added the Cinemattachine theater (associated with Mattachine Society, Inc. and the Seven Committee) as a back room to Adonis.[10]

He expanded the business to include peep shows, also adding the Rooster Room for chicken films which was later renamed to the Circle J club (which had no references to Mattachine) in the 1980s.[10] Circle J continued as a venue for screening pornographic films and hosting "circle jerk" parties until 2005. Call also began filming pornographic "loops" of men masturbating on a gold couch in his office. These Gold Couch Capers became collector's items.[11]

The June 1964 Paul Welch Life article entitled "Homosexuality In America" was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues; Life's photographer was referred to the gay leather bar in San Francisco called the Tool Box for the article by Call, who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were effeminate. The article opened with a two-page spread of the mural of life size leathermen in the bar, which had been painted by Chuck Arnett in 1962.[12][13] The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America" and inspired many gay leathermen to move there.[14]

Call died of congestive heart failure in San Francisco on December 18, 2000, at the age of 83.[2][15] He was survived by three brothers who did not approve of him. They visited Call a few months before his death to say goodbye. At Call's request, he was cremated and did not have a funeral.[15]

Legacy[edit]

Season 2, episode 3 of the podcast “Making Gay History” is about Call.[16]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Bullough, p. 151
  2. ^ a b "Transitions". The Advocate. 2001-01-30. p. 18.
  3. ^ Bullough, p. 152
  4. ^ Marcus, Eric (1992). Making history : the struggle for gay and lesbian equal rights. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-016708-4.
  5. ^ Bullough, p. 154
  6. ^ Loughery, pp. 228–29
  7. ^ Castañeda, et al., p. 259
  8. ^ "Hal Call". LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
  9. ^ Bullough, p. 155
  10. ^ a b c Hilderbrand, Lucas (June 1, 2016). "The uncut version: The Mattachine Society's pornographic epilogue". Sexualities. 19 (4): 449–464. doi:10.1177/1363460715599159. S2CID 147679455.
  11. ^ Szymanski, Zak (2005-11-24). "Historic Circle J club closing". Bay Area Reporter. Archived from the original on 2006-06-29. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
  12. ^ "yax-192 Life in 1964, part 1". Yawningbread.org. 1964-07-27. Archived from the original on 2005-01-20. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
  13. ^ Rubin, Gayle (1998). "Folsom Street: The Miracle Mile". FoundSF. Retrieved 2016-12-28.
  14. ^ "Leather Archives & Museum Leather History Timeline". Archived from the original on 2012-04-21. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  15. ^ a b Ness, Carol (2000-12-22). "Pioneering S.F. Gay Rights Advocate Hal Call". SFGate. Retrieved 2019-11-05.
  16. ^ "Season Two". Making Gay History. Retrieved 2020-04-27.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Bullough, Vern L. (2002). Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. Routledge. ISBN 1-56023-193-9.
  • Castañeda, Laura, and Campbell, Shannon B. (2005). News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity. SAGE. ISBN 1-4129-0999-6.
  • Loughery, John (1998). The Other Side of Silence – Men's Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth-Century History. New York, Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-3896-5.
  • Sears, James Thomas (2006). Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation.

Further reading[edit]

Archival Sources[edit]

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