Dark Moment for Gays Revisited in Documentary
The
Republican, January 22, 2005
1860 Main Street, Springfield, MA 01101
By Ronni Gordon, rgordon@repub.com
ON THE AIR
Event: The Great Pink Scare
When: Thursday, 9 p.m.
Channel: WGBY-TV, Channel 57
Running time: 60 minutes
The three professors were forced out of their jobs at
Smith in 1960 after postal inspectors charged with rooting out smut discovered
naked photos of men in a package addressed to Arvin, a distinguished English
scholar. Under pressure from police, he turned in Dorius, Spofford and two
others.
Tug Yourgrau remembers a fundraising event for a bald
little man in a dark gray suit. “He had done something that revealed a human
frailty and was being punished for it. He had been stomped on hard by the
police.”
Yourgrau, now a writer, director and producer in the
Boston area, was between 10 and 13 at the time. He lived in Northampton where
his father, Wolfgang, taught philosophy at Smith College. His father was
raising money at their house for his colleague, Newton Arvin.
Several years ago, Yourgrau read an article in The New
Yorker magazine about Arvin and two other Smith professors prosecuted in the
1960s for possession of pornographic material. In the article and in his book
“The Scarlet Professor,” Northampton author Barry Werth wrote that the
professors’ civil liberties were trampled and their careers ruined because
they were homosexuals at a time when many considered homosexuality an
abomination.
Yourgrau wanted to tell the story on film.
The result is “The Great Pink Scare,” a one-hour
documentary scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Thursday on WGBY, Springfield’s
public television station. Yourgrau is executive producer, director and
writer.
He contacted Werth, who became senior adviser to the
project. The film features interviews with Werth and with the two surviving
professors, Joel Dorius and Ned Spofford, and with people who knew them, such
as Hatfield author Jane Yolen, a Smith student at the time.
The three professors were forced out of their jobs at
Smith in 1960 after postal inspectors charged with rooting out smut discovered
naked photos of men in a package addressed to Arvin, a distinguished English
scholar. Under pressure from police, he turned in Dorius, Spofford and two
others.
Newspaper headlines screamed, “Police Break Up Major
Homosexual Smut Ring!” Arvin pleaded guilty to charges of lewdness and
possession of obscene pictures. He died in 1963. Dorius and Spofford were also
found guilty but acquitted on appeal three years later after the state Supreme
Judicial Court ruled against illegal searches and redefined obscenity.
The stigma remained. Dorius and Spofford went into and
out of mental hospitals for years.
“The papers went wild, blowing up
minor acts into a lascivious circle of professors leering
over photographs,” Dorius says in the film. He says he internalized the
newspaper images of himself. “It made it impossible for me to live any kind
of normal life,” he continues later. “And I skulked about town mainly at
night, avoiding people I thought might be able to recognize or see me. It was
a criminal feeling.”
As for Spofford, “I felt perfectly innocent and I felt
that I had been abused,” he says.
The documentary also includes historic footage and
impressionistic recreations from the period. With its moody music, it was
intended to have the effect of a modern film noir, according to production
notes.
“That period of American history is pretty unknown,”
Yourgrau said from his office in Somerville, where he is vice president and
co-founder of Powderhouse Productions, a documentary film and video production
company.
He said that pornography was considered to be a cancer in
the country’s soul. And the Northampton case had added shock value because
it involved homosexuals.
“There was this remarkable spasm of sexual McCarthyism.
... It was more troubling to be declared a homosexual than a communist,” he
said.
“Homosexuality back then was considered to be something
you never discussed in polite society. It was a mental disease, a sin and a
criminal activity,” he said. “I hope the film raises discussions about the
way people think about difference and privacy.”
According to Yourgrau, the invasion of the professors’
privacy has “troubling echoes” in today’s laws such as the USA Patriot
Act, which grants the Justice Department sweeping powers to monitor the lives
of suspected terrorists.
“The post office was given the right to snoop in your
mail to see if it was obscene. It became a felony to sit in your house and
leaf through Playboy with another person,” he said.
Dorius and Spofford now both live in different parts of
California. “Both of them have come to a more accepting place,” Yourgrau
said. “But they are not wealthy guys. That was hard to see.”
He said they agreed to be filmed only after a two-year
courtship.
“When you say ‘camera’ to people, they either jump
to you or away from you. They said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They finally changed
their minds. It was so painful to talk about these things and they talked
extremely intimately,” he said. “To me it’s just riveting.”
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