About: Friend of Dorothy   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

Most commonly "friend of Dorothy" has been linked to the film The Wizard of Oz because Judy Garland, who starred as the main character Dorothy, is a gay icon. In the film, Dorothy is accepting of those who are different. For example the "gentle lion" living a lie, "I'm afraid there's no denyin', I'm just a dandy lion."

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  • Friend of Dorothy
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  • Most commonly "friend of Dorothy" has been linked to the film The Wizard of Oz because Judy Garland, who starred as the main character Dorothy, is a gay icon. In the film, Dorothy is accepting of those who are different. For example the "gentle lion" living a lie, "I'm afraid there's no denyin', I'm just a dandy lion."
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abstract
  • Most commonly "friend of Dorothy" has been linked to the film The Wizard of Oz because Judy Garland, who starred as the main character Dorothy, is a gay icon. In the film, Dorothy is accepting of those who are different. For example the "gentle lion" living a lie, "I'm afraid there's no denyin', I'm just a dandy lion." This theory of origin, although more widespread, may have more prevalence as the movie and related media stories likely eclipsed the other possible source, New York City's celebrated humorist, critic and "defender of human and civil rights" Dorothy Parker. Parker, whose rise to popularity was largely limited to literary circles and geographically to New York, predates the popular movie by at least a decade and at a time when gay men had to be more covert so the phrase could have been in use but likely not recorded as such. Thus the phrase could retain its euphemistic meaning even if the commonly understood etymology transferred from Parker to the universally-known movie icon and even-larger celebrity Garland. With World War II gay men and lesbian women served throughout the services and traveled worldwide, potentially spreading the phrase through oral history. In the early 1980s, the Naval Investigative Service was investigating homosexuality in the Chicago area. Agents discovered that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as "friends of Dorothy." Unaware of the historical meaning of the term, the NIS believed that a woman named Dorothy was at the center of a massive ring of homosexual military personnel. The NIS launched an enormous hunt for Dorothy, hoping to find her and convince her to reveal the names of gay servicemembers.
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