Shaking the Closet: Analyzing Johnny Mathis's Sexual Elusiveness, 1956–82

Abstract

In 1982 Johnny Mathis inadvertently revealed his homosexuality during what he thought was an off-the-record interview. The notion that Mathis was sexually “closeted” is insufficient for understanding his career. Mathis, who debuted in 1956, authored a sexually elusive persona that relied strategically on a non-threatening sexual image to curb the “threat” he posed to white audiences. He also conveyed an ambiguous sexual romanticism with room for heterosexual and homosexual audiences to project their desires onto him without having to engage with his sexuality. Analyzing press coverage and various career documents reveals how sexual elusiveness was central to his commercial allure.

Notes

^[2] Marlon Ross notes how among many African-American queers there is “not a binary of secrecy versus revelation” but rather “a continuum of knowledge that persists at various levels according to the kin and friendship relations within the community. Although sometimes imprecisely referred to as an ‘open secret,’ such attitudes express instead a strong sense that it is impossible not to know something so obvious among those who know you well enough. In such a context, to announce one's attraction by coming out would not necessarily indicate a progress in sexual identity, and it would not necessarily change one's identity from closeted to liberated as conceptualized in the dominant closet narrative” (“Beyond the Closet” 180).

^[3] Michael Kimmel (223–58), discusses '50s masculine types including delinquents, deviants, “men in gray flannel suits,” and “organization men.” Various scholars have addressed '50s-era anxieties about male effeminacy including Vito Russo's analyses of the films Tea and Sympathy and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (113–15). Julia Grant traces maternal anxieties about homosexual sons during the '50s in “A Thought a Mother Can Hardly Face.”

^[4] Two relevant discussions of ethnicity and the limits of “the closet” are Tomás Almaguer's “Chicano Men” and Martin F. Manalansan IV's “Searching for Community.”

^[5] Roderick A. Ferguson's “queer of color analysis” is an intersectional paradigm that addresses social constructions of African-American culture and sexualities as existing outside the “boundaries of gender propriety and sexual normativity,” within the “genealogy of liberal, capitalist economic and social formations” (2).

^[6] In Nelson George's discussion of black commercial assimilation strategies in 1980s pop music he noted that, despite Jackson's “disquieting androgyny” and “alarmingly unblack, unmasculine figure,” he was “the most popular black man in America”; regarding Prince he noted, “No black performer since Little Richard had toyed with the heterosexual sensibilities of black America so brazenly” (174). Critic Dave Marsh discusses the controversies surrounding Jackson's sexuality and a bizarre 5 September 1984 Los Angeles press conference where Jackson's manager read a press release stating Jackson's intention to marry and have a family in response to press comments regarding his effeminate appearance and sexual speculation (106–17). Seymour's Vandross biography features several passages noting AIDS-related and gay rumors and Vandross's unwillingness to verbalize his sexual orientation (Luther 195–200, 279–83).

^[7] The Nat “King” Cole stories include the following: “Are Second Marriages Better?” (Cole), “Why I Quit My TV Show” (Cole), “St. Louis Blues,” and “Nat King Cole” (Robinson). The Billy Eckstine stories include “Celebrities Flock to Eckstine Party” and “Mr. B. Finds His Dreamhouse.”

^[8] For example, a 1961 Variety magazine concert review detected his plaintive multi-sexual appeal when it noted that “he is a singer with a gimmick. He just sings” and continued by framing him as “A romantic with a style which gets to the females and doesn't antagonize the males” (66). Mathis has also commented on his intentional emphasis on the purity of music over overt performative stylization. As he notes in the liner notes to The Music of Johnny Mathis, “I was always adamant about the fact that I was not an entertainer, I was a singer” and he admired the way singers like Cole, Eckstine, and Vaughan, “would always stand there; nothing would get in the way of the music” (37).

^[9] Some relevant discussions of contemporary black masculinities in relation to hypermasculinity and homophobia in the hip-hop era include: Mercer (130–70), Harper (10–11), Neal (166–68), and Stephens (“Pop Goes the Rapper”).

^[10] Musto defines the “glass closet” as “that complex but popular contraption that allows public figures to avoid the career repercussions of any personal disclosure while living their lives with a certain degree of integrity. Such a device enables the public to see right in while not allowing them to actually open the latch unless the celebrity eventually decides to do so herself” (52). Incidentally he mentions Aiken (53–54). In 2008 Aiken came out in the People magazine article “No More Secrets” (Caplan).