GLR July-August 2022

buttocks of two sailors in close proximity. The female figure in the red dress is not without a hint of gender ambiguity, includ ing a prominent Adam’s apple. In a historic sleight of hand, Cadmus had used satire as his pretext for depicting the cruising rituals of the gay community. During the brouhaha over the painting, Cadmus received death threats that forced him to stay with relatives until the scandal subsided. It wasn’t until a 1981 retrospective that he was re united with the painting, which he hadn’t seen in 47 years. In the intervening years, he had the pleasure of seeing how his paint ing had inspired Jerome Robbins’ ballet Fancy Free , which be came the source for the Broadway musical On the Town (1944). Notwithstanding the Fleet’s In ! scandal, the government commissioned Cadmus to paint a large mural for a Virginia Post building. When Pocahontas and Captain John Smith was un veiled in 1938, officials objected to the phallic loincloth worn by one of the Indians. Cadmus gladly retouched that part of the painting, gleefully relieved that no one had expressed concern over a warrior’s prominently placed male buttocks. Benefiting from the publicity, Cadmus had his first solo gallery show. More than 7,000 visitors came through, eager to see what all the fuss was about. But just as he was enjoying the sweet smell of success, Jared French, who was still his lover, married a mutual friend, photographer Margaret Hoening (1906–1998). She allowed her husband to continue seeing Cad mus in what became the first of several triangular relationships in the latter’s life. In Cadmus’ painting The Shower (1943), one of the first ex amples of his “magic realism” style, Margaret looks peacefully at her husband, as French and Cadmus, both naked, are connected by the flow of white, semen-like water. The indomitable trio shared summer vacations on Fire Island, where they took care fully posed black-and-white photographs of each other, many in

Mallorcan Fishermen , 1932. Seymour Stein collection.

Fleet’s In! (1934), a wild scene of drunken sailors interacting with civilians and sketchy women inspired by his memories of the uninhibited sailors who flooded NewYork’s Riverside Park. A retired U.S. Navy admiral, upon spotting a reproduction of The Fleet’s In! before its opening at Washington’s Corcoran Gallery, published a letter in multiple newspapers that accused the painting of depicting “a most disgraceful, sordid, disrep utable, drunken brawl.” The admiral ordered the assistant sec retary of the Navy, who was President Roosevelt’s cousin, to remove it from the show to ensure that it would never be seen again. The Navy had no authority over the Corcoran, but be cause of the secretary’s connection to Roosevelt, no one stopped him when he lifted the painting from the wall and took it home. The painting eventually landed at the Alibi Club, an all-male lounge for high-ranking officials, where it hung for decades. Outraged that a government official had censored a govern ment-funded work of art, Cadmus furnished newspapers across the country with quotations and photographs related to the painting and the attempt to suppress it. The ensuing scandal cat apulted Cadmus to front-page news and national notoriety. In the aptly titled documentary Paul Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80, Cadmus noted with relish: “I owe the start of my career to the Admiral who tried to suppress it.” Indeed the most striking thing about the Fleets In! scandal is that no one mentioned the homosexual subtext of the paint ing. They denounced the loose women and drunken sailors, but once you delve into this scene of general debauchery, you no tice at its center an unmistakable gay pickup in progress. We see a well-groomed man wearing a red tie offering a cigarette to a Marine, who eagerly accepts it. As George Chauncey wrote in Gay New York : “The blond civilian with plucked eyebrows, rouged lips and powdered face is the 30s archetype of the gay ‘fairy.’ His red tie was a well-known queer code that conveyed his availability.” The painting’s queerness extends beyond this encounter. At the far right, we’re presented with the suggestive

The Fleets In! (detail), 1934. Navy Art Gallery.

July–August 2022

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