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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African-Americans, and dynamic women invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and my guest today is author Deborah Phillips, whose new book is titled "And This Is My Friend Sandy: Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, London Theatre and Gay Culture." The musical The Boy Friend, with book, music, and lyrics by Sandy Wilson, is one of the most successful British musicals of all time. It emerged originally out of London's secretive but vibrant gay theatrical subculture in 1952, a time when we must remember it was illegal to be homosexual.

By the following year, The Boy Friend and Sandy Wilson were the biggest hits in London's West End, where they created nearly as much excitement as Queen Elizabeth's coronation that same year. That original West End production ran for five years. Meanwhile, a hit American production of The Boy Friend opened on Broadway in 1954, making a star out of Julie Andrews. Eighteen years later, in 1972, an ill-conceived film version was released starring Twiggy and Tommy Tune and directed by Ken Russell. Despite all of this, prior to this book, very little has been written about Sandy Wilson. Deborah Phillips, who is professor of literature and cultural history at the University of Brighton, is the first researcher to delve into Wilson's extensive archives, out of which she has created this in-depth portrait of Wilson as both a key figure in post-war British theater and gay culture.

This book and this interview introduced me to a number of fascinating subjects that I'd never heard of before, including the hilarious BBC radio series that inspired the book's title and the secret gay language Polari. All that has sent me down a number of mesmerizing rabbit holes, and I'll be sharing the articles and video clips that I found there in our Broadway Nation Facebook group. This episode is made possible in part through the generous support of our Broadway Nation patron club members, Anne Welsh, Chris Moad, and Bob Braun. If you too would like to support the work of Broadway Nation, I'll have information about how to do that at the end of the podcast. Here we go. Welcome, Deborah Phillips.

It's so wonderful to have you here today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, "And This Is My Friend Sandy: Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, London Theater and Gay Culture." Thank you for being here.

[2:39] Deborah Phillips: Thank you for having me.

[2:44] David Armstrong: I just read the title and the subtitle of the book, which gives us a sense that this is not a biography of Sandy Wilson and not a typical making-of-the-boyfriend account of the show. How would you describe this book?

[3:00] Deborah Phillips: I think what it is is it's a cultural history of how Sandy Wilson fits into the history of musical theater, because he's always there as a footnote, but nothing more, and I think he warrants more than that. He's also, I think, a really important figure in terms of gay history, that he's a transitional figure, both in terms of the musical and in terms of modes of homosexuality, that he begins his life very much in the shadow of being discreet and very closeted and ends his life still discreet, but he lives through the Great Gay Liberation Front, so I think that in itself is an interesting period.

[3:44] David Armstrong: He has a very long life. He lives to 80, is that right?

[3:51] Deborah Phillips: Yeah, yeah.

[3:51] David Armstrong: He's born in the 1920s.

[3:53] Deborah Phillips: Yes, but he says firmly that he doesn't really remember the 1920s.

[3:58] David Armstrong: And yet that becomes the subject of his most famous show, is the 1920s.

[4:04] Deborah Phillips: Absolutely. It's a love letter to the 1920s.

[4:07] David Armstrong: That he never really knew.

[4:10] Deborah Phillips: That he never really knew.

[4:10] David Armstrong: So when does he die? What year does he die?

[4:13] Deborah Phillips: 2014.

[4:14] David Armstrong: 2014, which is now, basically, seems so recent. Part of what you get into is the way the musical theater changed and the way queer culture changed in that period of his life.

[4:23] Deborah Phillips: Yeah, and theater's changed. I mean, The Boyfriend is two years before Look Back in Anger, but I mean, one of the things that the book argues is that the distinction between the West End and avant-garde theaters like the Royal Court is not as great as theater history assumes. Dan Bilato has written about this in his book 1956 and all that, but Sandy Wilson's already synthesizes that problem in that he is at Oxford with all the major players at the Royal Court. He knows them well. One of his most esoteric musicals was commissioned by the Royal Court. They didn't actually do it, but he was close enough to them that they did actually commission him. That's another story, but it's a good story.

[5:09] David Armstrong: And I think that's true in so many cases when you look at history, is the separate sides are actually very much more intertwined than historians make them out to be later on.

[5:19] Deborah Phillips: Yeah, exactly so.

[5:21] David Armstrong: Yeah, the difference in American theater as well, the difference between the avant-garde and the commercial side of the theater, it often overlaps very, very much.

[5:29] Deborah Phillips: Yeah, the people and the power brokers overlap a lot.

[5:33] David Armstrong: And go back and forth between the two.

[5:36] Deborah Phillips: Exactly.

[5:36] David Armstrong: So for many musical theater fans today, the name Sandy Wilson and even the show The Boyfriend will be somewhat obscure references, and yet you put in years of research into writing and telling their story. What do you think makes Sandy Wilson and The Boyfriend and Sandy Wilson's other shows important enough for readers to sit down and spend the time discovering what you've discovered?

[5:58] Deborah Phillips: Somewhere in the world, there will be a production of The Boyfriend. Schools do it, amateur dramatics do it. Most people will know The Boyfriend through the very spectacular Ken Russell movie, which, by the way, Sandy Wilson absolutely loathed. But I think many people have a fondness for it. I grew up with it. I have a particular fondness for it. But when I was an undergraduate, we did a student production. It's a perfect little musical, I think. It's not difficult to stage. Every character has at least one great number. It's not expensive to put on. It was put on at the Little Players Theater, which had no money. And it very much came out of making do and mending post-war ethos. So it's not an extravagant or lavish production. Colin Soule, who was Sandy Wilson's musical director, who's musically directed a lot of other musicals, says for him, it is his favorite musical. He says it's just the perfect musical. It's beautifully structured.

[7:16] ♪ Musical number ♪

[8:19] Deborah Phillips: That in itself, I think, is enough. But also I have a particular interest in the post-war period in British history, the prelude to the 1960s, and watching where movements like the Women's Liberation Movement, the Gay Liberation Movement, where they were seeded, they didn't come out of nowhere. That's, again, a kind of false opposition in history, in what historians have to say, in that the 60s was suddenly this explosion of liberation, and nothing had happened before. And it did happen, and I think it's important that's noted and recorded.

[8:57] David Armstrong: Absolutely. I know with my students, it's hard for them to understand that liberation ebbs and flows, and that periods like the 1920s and 30s were relatively liberated compared to what came after, and that that set the seeds for what would then re-emerge again in the 60s.

[9:13] Deborah Phillips: Yes, yes, exactly. And I think one of the things you have to recognise about the British context in the 1950s was how draconian the law was, that male homosexuality, lesbianism was never illegal, not because Queen Victoria didn't believe in it, as it's sometimes mooted. That's not actually true. I think what is true was that ideas of female sexuality was that women just weren't sexual enough to be interested in each other. But male homosexuality was really cracked down on, in part because of the Cambridge Spiring, who were upper-class, Cambridge-educated, homosexual men, and that generated a moral panic. Kinsey brought out a report saying that homosexuality was much more prevalent, and one of the things that was so frightening that was taken from the Kinsey report, Kinsey later rolled back on it and spoke in favour of homosexual law or reform, but the terrifying thing about homosexuality was that a man could pass you in the street and be invisible, but nonetheless a threat.

There's a real paranoia around, especially homosexual men from the upper classes who've been educated at Oxford and Cambridge. There's also the Montague trial, which is a symptom of this crackdown on homosexuality. That happened in 1954, and I think it was the first time that an aristocrat had been arrested, and it was Lord Montague with his cousin who was another aristocrat, Pitt Rivers, and a friend of Sandy Wilson's called Peter Wildblood, and Peter Wildblood's a really interesting figure, but they were all jailed, and Peter Wildblood had been at Oxford with Sandy Wilson and was a very close friend, and there are letters in the archive of his friend's fear and concern for him. What you have to recognise is that at the time of this camp piece of fluff, this is an incredibly dangerous, stressful time for gay men.

[11:22] David Armstrong: And that camp piece of fluff, the boyfriend, is being produced in one of the havens for gay culture at this time.

[11:27] Deborah Phillips: Absolutely.

[11:30] David Armstrong: Welcome to this encore episode of Broadway Nation. Today, we’re diving into Sandy Wilson’s "The Boy Friend," exploring its significance in London theatre and gay culture.

[12:30] David Armstrong: My guest is Deborah Phillips, author of the new book "And This Is My Friend Sandy — Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend, London Theatre and Gay Culture."

[13:00] David Armstrong: Sandy Wilson's "The Boy Friend" is one of the most successful British musicals of all time, emerging in 1952 from London’s vibrant gay theatrical subculture, a time when being homosexual could lead to imprisonment.

[13:30] David Armstrong: By the following year, both "The Boy Friend" and Sandy Wilson were the toast of London’s West End, creating nearly as much excitement as Queen Elizabeth’s coronation that same year.

[14:00] David Armstrong: The original West End production ran for five years, and an American version opened on Broadway in 1954, making a star out of Julie Andrews.

[14:30] David Armstrong: The show was revived on Broadway in 1970, launching Sandy Duncan into stardom, and two years later, an ill-conceived film version was released, starring Twiggy and Tommy Tune and directed by Ken Russell.

[15:00] David Armstrong: Despite all of this, very little has been written about Sandy Wilson until now. Deborah Phillips is the first researcher to delve into Wilson’s extensive archives, creating a captivating portrait of him as a key figure in post-war British theatre and gay culture.

[15:30] David Armstrong: This conversation introduced me to fascinating subjects I had never encountered before, including the hilarious BBC radio series "Round The Horne," which inspired the book’s title, the history of London's Players Theatre, and the secret gay language, Polari.

[16:00] David Armstrong: Exploring all of that sent me down several amazing internet rabbit holes, and I will be posting articles and video clips that I found in the Broadway Nation Facebook Group.

[16:30] David Armstrong: This episode is made possible in part through the generous support of Broadway Nation Patron Club members Anne Welsh, Chris Moad, and Bob Braun.

[17:00] David Armstrong: If you are a fan of Broadway Nation, I invite you to become a patron! For just $7.00 a month, you will receive exclusive access to never-before-heard, unedited versions of many of the discussions I have with my guests.

[17:30] David Armstrong: In fact, I often record nearly twice as much conversation as ends up in the edited versions.

[18:00] David Armstrong: Now, let’s dive into my conversation with Deborah Phillips about Sandy Wilson and "The Boy Friend."

[18:30] Deborah Phillips: Thank you for having me, David. I'm excited to discuss Sandy Wilson and the impact of "The Boy Friend."

[19:00] David Armstrong: Let's start with the origins of "The Boy Friend." What was the context in which it was created?

[19:30] Deborah Phillips: "The Boy Friend" emerged during a time when gay culture was largely underground, and it provided a unique lens through which to view the social dynamics of the era.

[20:00] David Armstrong: That’s fascinating. How did Wilson's personal experiences influence the musical?

[20:30] Deborah Phillips: Wilson's experiences as a gay man in post-war Britain deeply informed the humor and subtext of the show, making it resonate with audiences in ways that were both subtle and profound.

[21:00] David Armstrong: It sounds like there’s a rich history behind the musical that many people might not be aware of.

[21:30] Deborah Phillips: Absolutely. The interplay between the public and private lives of those involved in the production is a key theme in my book.

[22:00] David Armstrong: I can’t wait to hear more about that.

[22:30] Deborah Phillips: Thank you! I look forward to sharing more insights with you.

[23:00] David Armstrong: Let’s get started!

[23:00] Deborah Phillips: I love the way you described this little London world of small theatres and private clubs and this golden age of the review to a certain extent. I guess it would be sort of the equivalent of off-Broadway in New York. Yes, although it's a smaller and very concentrated area of London, I think more concerned with review rather than theatre. They were often on late at night. I mean, I have to say I'm too young to have been to them. So I only know about them from descriptions and from programs. But they would be often performed late at night so that stars from the West End, which was not far away from where many of these theatres were in Soho and around, would come and do their schtick after their main show. So you would get major stars like Imani Gingold, for whom Sandy Wilson writes several songs, performing in these tiny theatres.

[23:53] Deborah Phillips: And the reason they're private clubs is what? Partly this is also a period at which the Lord Chamberlain had the right to censor any scripts. And so if it was a private members club that you would evade that. You could put on anything you wanted to put on in a private club. Yeah, and you could put on controversial plays that the Lord Chamberlain's office would not permit. But I think also, although because it's so discreet, I have no evidence, but I think also because a lot of the members would have been gay men. Right. It was a way to create a safe space. Yeah. I should say that Neil Bartlett has written an essay in which he says, you know, there's nothing natural about why gay men should be attracted to the theatre or that there are more gay men within theatrical circles than anywhere else, which may be true.

But nonetheless, in the period, it's just a repeated pattern of what the theatre meant. The theatre was a place where you could recognize yourself as gay. And same thing in New York. So I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Bartlett on that. I think there is something and it's a chicken or the egg situation. Are you drawn to the theatre because you're gay or gay men drawn to the theatre because they perceive that it's a safe space? I don't know. That's the question that I'm not sure can be answered. But I do think there's some affinity connection there.

[25:14] Deborah Phillips: Yeah. Neil Bartlett actually wrote a play called Night After Night, which is about the invisible gay men who staff every major theatre, you know, the people in the cloakrooms and behind the bar and selling programs and ushering you to your seats and in the cloakroom. They're all gay men, but not noticed, especially in London. I mean, you do notice that if your antenna are out and it's very interesting to see that still to this day, it seems.

[25:40] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Broadway Nation will be right back. Hi, this is David Armstrong. And if you're enjoying this episode, I strongly suspect that you will want to read my new book, Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish Queer and Black Artist Invented the Broadway Musical on sale now wherever books are sold. And I'm very happy to report that the early reviews have been terrific. The esteemed author Jeffrey Bloch says that Broadway Nation is a fascinating, comprehensive and timely gem of a book that more than lives up to its promise of delivering no less than five books in one. Kudos to David Armstrong. And Tony Award winning lyricist David Zippel says that David Armstrong's insightful history of the evolution of the Broadway Musical and its creators is captivating and comprehensive as well as indispensable.

The book is, of course, available on Amazon, but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website, Bloomsbury.com, where you will currently receive a 10 percent discount. Again, like the podcast that inspired it, the book is titled Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish Queer and Black Artist Invented the Broadway Musical. Now back to the show.

[27:01] Deborah Phillips: So one of those small private clubs theaters is the Players Theatre Club, and you devote an entire chapter to that. And we'll get into some reasons why you do that. But mostly it's because it's where the boyfriend will emerge from. That's where Sandy Wilson will become involved in the boyfriend. But prior to Sandy Wilson, describe the Players Theatre Club, because it has a long history prior to Sandy Wilson and the boyfriend.

[27:21] Deborah Phillips: It does. It has a very eclectic history. I mean, British audiences are familiar with the ethos of the Players Theatre from a television program called The Good Old Days, which used many of the performers from the Players Theatre Club. But when it began, it was a space for putting on new drama experimental plays, also a site for the kind of reviews we've been talking about. But what it prided itself on was recreations of Victorian musical. I think that really resonated in the post-war period of a nostalgia for a place where Britain had its empire. Queen Victoria was on the throne. The Players Theatre has a bar, and you're encouraged to bring your glasses to your seats and toast the Queen, who is Queen Victoria. And this is, of course, nostalgia for something the audience is not old enough to have remembered themselves.

[28:23] Deborah Phillips: No. It's their grandparents' generation. Yeah, it's like the 1920s was for Sandy Wilson. It's an imagined past. They become very famous for recreating this or creating a fictional version of the British musical. It's not entirely fictional in that they really did their research. They went to the British Library and they got Victorian pantomime scripts and musical songs and were concerned to reproduce them with authenticity. And that actually was terribly important to Sandy Wilson. He was very concerned that in The Boyfriend, the representation of the 1920s should be authentic. And that was why he loathed the New York production because he felt it didn't have that authenticity. Also, in terms of British culture, musicals, there's actually a very subversive form of entertainment.

A lot of these songs are about sexually voracious women or drunken men. There's a lot of double entendre. It's assertion of difference, I think, and of refusing the conventional. So in a way, the audience and the creators at the Players Theatre Club are sort of the counterculture to a certain extent. They're reviving these songs that sort of question the traditional view of Victorian society.

[29:42] Deborah Phillips: Yes, and particularly marriage and the family. I mean, these are songs about husbands and wives who are miserable. And I think you mentioned this in the book that one of the differences between what you would see at the Players Theatre Club and what you would have seen on the television show that sort of was a spinoff of this kind of thing was the campy tone of it or the sense of irony.

[30:04] David Armstrong: Yes, exactly. It's cleaned up because it's on the BBC. It's no longer as edgy as it was on stage. And as satirical, I guess. I love the way you describe one of these evenings at the Players Theatre Club. It started with a very particular song, Every Night, the theme song of these reviews.

[30:22] Deborah Phillips: Well, the Players Theatre Club had an anthem, which was a 19th century musical song of which the first line is, Oh, the fairies goes on saying nothing but splendour and feminine gender. There's a fellow round town who they call Johnny Brown, who is on the lookout for ideas. When he hears of a show, you bet that he'll know, for he's constantly changing his gear. One night he said, gee, if you come out with me, you'll be in for the dizziest time. Inside theatre walls, he lounged in the stalls, and he sat through a grand pantomime.

[31:24] Deborah Phillips: I'll talk about this a bit later, but I went as a child and I took it entirely straight that fairies were lovely and feminine. It wasn't until I got quite a bit older that I realised that there was another way of reading that. So every night at the Players Theatre Club, whatever the show was, would start with this song?

[31:42] Deborah Phillips: Absolutely. Sort of like the national anthem used to be in the United States, that they would perform that before any performance. Yes. That's quite amazing.

[32:00] Deborah Phillips: Oh no fairies. No, stop chasing me. No, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. I've got to go. This is on purpose, I'm assuming.

[32:29] Deborah Phillips: Nothing was ever said. It was just the way it was. I mean, the thing about the working class musical, this is a period, the post-war period, is of really very fixed gender relations. An idea of what masculinity is and what femininity is. And these songs did subvert that expectation of conventional roles. I don't think it was necessarily conscious, but it was certainly part of the experience.

[33:01] David Armstrong: So you talked about going to the theatre as a child. This is because you have a personal connection to the Players Theatre Club. Tell us about that.

[33:07] Deborah Phillips: Yep. My mother was an actor. After the war she got a job at the Players Theatre Club and she loved it. And she worked in the office and she worked behind the bar. And her great moment was playing the bad fairy Sleeping Beauty. And she was still prone to quote lines from this pantomime. The Players has this ritual of everybody who's been a significant part of it is given lifelong honorary membership. And every year my mother would get her card. And every year we would go for the pantomime. And in those days it was really glamorous because there was a harlequinade before the actual pantomime. Something I've never seen anywhere else. Followed by the pantomime, afterwards we would go backstage to see Rachel Wooley and Don Kemmel, who were very close friends of my mother's. They often came around.

And my parents had the record of The Boyfriend. And I loved it. And I played it over and over again. And I still know all the words to all the songs. When I saw that the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, had Sandy Wilson's archives, I thought, I am the person who needs to go and read those.

[34:27] David Armstrong: Absolutely. And did you ever meet Sandy Wilson himself?

[34:30] Deborah Phillips: I did, however, one of the very nice things about having done this book is that I had a contact for Sandy Wilson's civil partner, Chuck Keoy, who is still alive and still lives in their house, Valmouth. I had a contact for him, but I kind of didn't want to get in touch with him before I'd read the material. I wanted to come to the material without too much in my head. So I was very nervous about having written this biography without consulting him, and I sent him a copy. What was lovely was that he was thrilled. He was really delighted that somebody had done it. He invited me to dinner with Sandy Wilson's best friend, who's another musicologist. It was a very strange experience of being with these two men who were mourning a man that I'd never met, but I was very glad to be there, and it's really nice that Chuck and I have become friends.

[35:26] Deborah Phillips: Very, very interesting. In talking about the Players Theatre, there are two subjects that come up very closely involved with gay culture, and you keep returning to them throughout the book at various times. First of all is the concept of camp, and we just talked about opening every performance at the Players Theatre singing, "Oh, the Fairies." That is somewhat the definition of camp, I would think. But how does camp fit into this overall picture? How is the camp sensibility related to what's happening in this theatre and these other theatres at this time? That's a really complicated question, a really difficult question. I did a whole conference with some colleagues on camp. I think we all came out of it still lacking any easy definition, but I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Richard Dyer.

He's a terrific British cultural historian. He's written a really important essay called "It's Being So Camp As Keeps Us Going," and I think camp is both a form of defiance and a mode of subversion. I think one of the things for me that defines camp is that at some level it could be taken straight, much like Noel Coward and Ivor Novello and Binky Beaumont, who just looked like particularly well-turned-out gentlemen, and "Oh, the Fairies." If you're a child, it's an innocent song. So I think camp for me is a coded way of asserting your sexual identity, which will be recognized by some and missed by others, and I think that spirit suffuses the Players Theatre Club and suffuses "The Boyfriend."

There's something about camp, and I appreciate the challenge here, because I have students say to me, "What is camp?" That's the hardest question you can get sometimes, because it is so hard to define. You know it when you see it.

[37:14] Deborah Phillips: Exactly. It's like pornography. The people who have tried to define it, and Susan Sontag most famously, I find that not very satisfying explanation of what camp is. I think she misses the mark quite a bit. It's like a butterfly. If you dissect it, it dies. Exactly. And yet I think it's, as you say, it's very subversive. I also think it's aggressive in a way, in a positive way, because people understand that they're missing something. The people who don't get camp also understand that they're missing something, and that somehow whatever the work of art is, is being targeted above their head or around them, and that is disconcerting to them. I don't know if American audiences would be familiar with the radio program "Round the Horn," which starred Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddock, who were both gay men.

But the extraordinary thing about "Round the Horn" is it made use of Polari, which is a coded gay language, which allowed people to talk without being understood. "Round the Horn" was full of these extraordinary jokes. I could go on at some length about "Round the Horn," which is a rather amazing program, but one of the lines is, "Oh, we're very involved in a criminal practice." The criminal practice, of course, being, at the time, homosexuality. I remember as a child my mother and her best friend hooting with laughter and simply thinking, "I don't understand what this is all about, but I know there's something very subversive going on here." But I couldn't have explained it.

[39:01] Deborah Phillips: And this is a radio program that's on in what era? It was on in the 50s and the 60s, on mainstream BBC primetime radio. And you mentioned Polari, which is a term I was not familiar with, and I assume that many in an American audience won't be either. What is Polari? It's a whole language which divides into various substrates. There are two very good books by an academic linguist, Paul Baker, about the origins and practice of Polari as a language, and it has separate strains. There's a West End and an East End Polari. And the West End was very much spoken among theatrical people and chorus boys, and it was a kind of theatre speak, which is still used. There are, I think, very few people who speak fluent Polari, but you will often find gay men using a Polari word like "naff."

Is naff a term? What is naff? Normal as fuck. No, that's unknown to us here, at least to me. We know Sandy Wilson spoke it. He shared a flat. I don't know if it represents anything more with somebody who was in a West End chorus who spoke it a lot. And you could see at this period when you could easily be arrested, it was a necessary strategy. One of the things that's so interesting in the aftermath of the Montague trial and during the Montague trial is how much homosexuality was associated with the theatre by the law and by the media. Should I explain something about the Montague trial?

[40:23] Deborah Phillips: Certainly. The Montague trial was in the aftermath of the Cambridge Spring, and it was Lord Montague of Bewley, who was very, very upper crust, and his cousin, and Peter Wildblood, who was a friend of Sandy Wilson's from Oxford. And they were arrested for the corruption of two young airmen. And the airmen were given immunity if they testified against these three upper-class men. And one of the things that was cited in evidence against them was that these men had taken the young men to the theatre, and that in itself was enough to suggest homosexuality. Wow. And the Montague trial is one of the pivots that begins the move towards homosexual law reform. Peter Wildblood was arrested and jailed, and he wrote this passionate plea for a change in the law called "Against the Law," which is published and sent to every MP in the House of Commons.

And he was the only gay man who was invited to give evidence at the Waltham inquiry. Kinsey was one of the people who gave evidence at the inquiry, and he said he was shocked at the number of men who had committed no crime other than to be homosexual who were currently in jails, and that he very much argued for a change in the law. It takes 10 years, but that is the beginnings of a shift in attitude. In the case of Peter Wildblood, a refusal on the part of gay men to be quiet.

[42:06] Deborah Phillips: Yes, within limits. One of the things about the early homosexual law reform movement was that it did its absolute utmost to be as respectable as possible. And in that way, it saw itself as distant from the Gay Liberation Front. It somewhat disapproved of the flamboyance of the Gay Liberation Front. But the generation who spearheaded the Gay Liberation Front hadn't gone through what the previous generation had gone through. Very similar to the situation in the United States with those generations. Back to Polari for just one second. This is another case where the gay culture and the theatre culture sort of overlap, because Polari becomes a language for theatrical types who are not homosexual.

[43:10] Deborah Phillips: Yes, I mean, it's largely used by gay men. But it infiltrates theatrical speak, I guess, in a way. People around theatre would know the words. Yeah, very interesting. So all of these elements sort of come together to provide this launch pad for "The Boyfriend." And just to emphasize, Sandy Wilson writes the book, the music, and the lyrics for "The Boyfriend."

[43:14] David Armstrong: Yeah. Which is always extraordinary. So few people have done that successfully in the history of musical theatre. How does "The Boyfriend" come about?

[43:27] Deborah Phillips: To hear the answer to that question, you'll have to join us next week when Deborah Phillips and I return for the second part of our conversation about her new book, "And This Is My Friend, Sandy: Sandy Wilson's The Boyfriend, London Theatre and Gay Culture."

[43:51] ♪ Musical number: "Charleston" — performed by the cast ♪

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[44:55] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[45:21] ♪ Musical number: "Charleston" — performed by the cast ♪