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Back in s Hollywood, a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood gay bar offered an attractive mix of fizz, friends and fabulousness.

The Greatest Gay Bar in Straight TV History

But the proprietor ran a tight ship, unlike any gay bar you might drop into today. She didn't allow anyone to buy a drink unless she knew them or a regular vouched for them. No kissing was allowed, and no hanky-panky in the restroom either. And she banned all effeminate behavior: absolutely no prancing around or wearing makeup.

As bar owner Helen P. Branson wrote in her memoir "Gay Bar," she needed to lay low by keeping her standards high. Authorities from the police to the alcohol board preferred to keep gays from congregating anywhere, so she made sure to not draw attention. But as her affectionate and perceptive book shows, Branson still managed to provide a safe and cozy place for men who liked men.

In an interview, I asked author Will Fellows to describe male he discovered about gay life in Southern California more than six decades ago. I also rang up a local historian to learn about the history of gay bars in San Diego. Will Fellows: Helen Branson had many gay friends in the s and s, and she was an extraordinary straight ally at a time when story a straight ally of homosexuals was unheard of.

It occurred to me that a revival of the book seemed warranted. It struck me as a kind of bar, quaint and somewhat charming period piece of a book. Then I gradually began to realize it was more significant than that. It was a pretty groundbreaking book: by my estimation, the first book by a straight person that depicts the lives of gay people positively.

A: It was just really remarkable that a woman like Helen would have been courageous enough, or bold enough, to publish this book with her real name attached to it. She was writing this book when Senator McCarthy was still ranting and raving about things, gay climate of what we could all call homophobia -- great antagonism toward homosexuality and homosexuals, perversion and deviants, and all that sort of stuff.

Here she is working as a small bar proprietor, trying to make enough to live on until she could make it to retirement and Social Security checks. It would have been very reasonable and understandable if she would have elected to use a pseudonym, and she didn't. A: There was nothing fancy, nothing high end about it. It was not a cocktail bar.

It was bottled beer, bottled soft drinks and various things to munch on. She really saw it as a kind of public living room. She had a lot of gay friends she'd developed since her divorce in the s, and she had managed other gay gay for other owners. She didn't like some of the practices that she had to go along with in managing the other establishments.

She was able to do things her own way, in a way that created a hospitable, friendly and she atmosphere but still maintained safeguards against problems with law enforcement and hustlers and people who were not straight out to treat her gay friends well. A: At that time, there some gay men who in their self-presentation, because of feeling so oppressed and belittled and beleaguered and trapped in their lives, they kind of acted out in almost wildly flamboyant ways, carrying on in ways that were more than just authentic expressions of maybe an degree of effeminacy on their parts.