Sunday, January 1, 2012

The Marlin Beach Affair: When Fort Lauderdale’s LGBT Community First Stood Up.





 Although the LGBT community has been  a part of the Fort Lauderdale even before it became  a place on the map, it was only in the 1970s that  it emerged as a visible community. Riverside and Sailboat Bend, with its Key West ambiance, were  the first neighborhoods with sizable  concentrations of lesbians and gay men. Organizations like the Metropolitan Community Church provided one of the earliest gathering places  where lesbians and gay men could come together and worship. Bars such as Tacky’s   and the Everglades provided popular social meeting places.  And  gay owned local businesses like photographers, printing shops and restaurants began to to advertise openly.

For the most part the emerging gay presence was  ignored by the larger heterosexual  community.   In the 1954 when Miami went through a brief period of “moral panic” about the city’s gay bars, public officials in Fort Lauderdale assured the citizens that there were  no threats and they had the situation under control. In 1967 there was a well publicized  Grand Jury investigation about crime and homosexuality in Broward.   Yet, nothing much came of it. The Fort Lauderdale News ran a multi-part series on homosexuality in Broward noted for its lack of sensationalism and tepidness.  When the report was released its major outcome was to indict  a well know  local crime figure for gambling. Homosexuality was an ignored footnote.   Since then, although there were occasional bar raids and  arrests  for “lewd behavior” in the parks or along the beach, the resort  economy and culture of Fort Lauderdale created  a relatively relaxed scene.

The warm weather and beautiful beaches  also made Fort Lauderdale  a perfect destination for the growing lesbian and gay tourist trade. While some gay men and lesbians opened up early guesthouses and most hotels did not blink when two men or women rented a single room, it was the opening in the mid-1970s of the  Marlin Beach Hotel as America’s first explicitly gay resort hotel that explicitly marked Fort Lauderdale as a gay tourist destination.

Completed in 1952 the Marlin Beach  was the jewel of the Beach’s hotels. Just across AIA from the  (the place where Beach Place is today)  it had  over 105  rooms, a stage and dance area  two restaurants, and a courtyard with a large pool One of the restaurants was downstairs and had a large aquarium type window  onto the pool, allowing diners to enjoy their meals while  watching  the goings-on under the water in the pool.  Both the hotel, and the dining room window were featured  in the 1960 movie “Where the Boys Are” that established Fort Lauderdale as the place to lay in the sun in the day and party at night.

However the 1960s were not kind to the Fort Lauderdale Beach and the Marlin.  With jet flight becoming popular,  tourists began to discover  newer fresher places like Las Vegas, the Caribbean  and  Hawaii. The opening of  Orlando’s theme parks stole the family trade. As a result  South Florida tourism began to decline. Fort Lauderdale’s beach area became the destination of spring break students  and others looking for beaches, warm weather, parties and cheap hotels.  With them came a large population of panhandlers, “street people,” hustlers  drifters and druggies. Like other hotels on the beach, the Marlin Beach  quickly  became  run down and  lost its glamour.

However in  1972 it was rescued  when bought by  a group of gay entrepreneurs with plans to turn it into a  top-class resort catering to the emerging lesbian and gay  tourist market. They spent   over $300,000 renovating it and in 1974 began   ad campaign in national gay magazines  promoting it as “America’s premier gay resort,” making Fort Lauderdale again the place “Where the Boys Are.”  

All of this occurred under the  Fort Lauderdale establishment’s radar. Neither the city   nor business leaders  condoned or even knew about it. However in late November 1976, the  Fort Lauderdale Beach Improvement Association, the civic group charged with  trying to increase  the tourist business   issued a report on the conditions of the beach. It noted the many problems, particularly the large population of “street people” and drifters. It also highlighted Marlin Beach and its gay clientele, noting the hotel’s national advertising  campaign  and  its  reputation as  a popular gay resort hotel.  It   cited the  number of arrests of young male hustlers who were drawn to the area by the presence of the hotel.  

This  news  came as a shock to Fort Lauderdale’s mayor E. Clay Shaw. A conservative Republican who had been a member of the city commission since 1971, he was elected mayor in 1975. One of his major goals with to revitalize Fort Lauderdale tourism,  In Clay’s view and the view of most of the city’s establishment, the presence of an openly gay hotel on the beach ruined any chances of  drawing tourist trade. “If a family from the Midwest comes to Fort Lauderdale and sees men making love on the beach what will they think.....They’ll never come back.” The head of the city’s Hotel Resort and Hotel Association agreed with and  noted that the presence of  a gay hotel would have an adverse economic effect on the beach. “It’s a social stigma and it will drive families away.”

The city’s major newspaper The Fort Lauderdale News headlined the story of the mayor’s disapproval “Mayor Shaw is Adamant-The City’s Gays Must Go.” According to the newspaper   the mayor’s goal  was  to eliminate every vestige of homosexual activity from the beach. “:If he had his way , the Marlin Beach....will go straight.”



However Shaw knew that trying to shut down  a legitimate business, even if it was gay, was a difficult proposition. Earlier that year in Miami, Jack Campbell, owner’s of the Club Baths, Miami’s gay bathhouse, had successfully sued the city for harassment in their attempts to shut it down. He even won a letter of apology  and a promise to desist from the city’s police chief.  Moreover attitudes towards the Hotel, even among its  straight neighbors on the Beach,  were generally favorable. The hotel’s clientele spent its money at other beach businesses. And as one 81 year old widow and 40 year resident of the Bach noted, “I can’t object to (the gay clientele) . They keep their place neat and clean and they’re respectful.”

Rather than target the hotel directly Shaw aimed at  another problem: the beach’s large population of  rowdy, noisy and unruly street people, drifters and panhandlers.    More specifically he targeted the presence of young gay male hustlers.(or “male prostitutes”)   who were part of the crowd and stood along the street and propositioned the hotel’s guests.     Their numbers were not large The weekend before  the story broke, the city’s beach squad made 30 arrests on the beach  for disorderly conduct and other reasons. Of the  30,  only one  was for male hustling. In spite of the figures,  Shaw contended that male prostitution was a major problem on the beach, a problem  created by the presence of the Marlin Beach.

Shaw ordered his city manager, along with the  police chief and legal advisers  to investigate the possibility of creating  a county grand jury investigation not only of the problem of  male prostitution on the beach, but of gay owned businesses on the beach and their links to such prostitution. His overall goal, according the to News, was to stop the proliferation of “gays and the businesses  they patronized.”

Ten years earlier, the threat of a grand jury investigation  would have been enough to shut  down the Marlin Beach or at least stop  its catering to a gay clientele. However it was 1976,  seven  years after Stonewall and the emergence of a  proud and activist lesbian and gay community, The community in Fort Lauderdale had grown strong enough, for the first time,  to stand up and fight. Moreover the straight community was beginning to realize that the rights of lesbians and gay men were not something they could dismiss lightly. as they had done in the past

The hotel management  responded to the mayor’s attacks by noting they had a  six man security force and  strict policy of keeping the street hustlers out of the hotel. Moreover they stressed that the hotel was an upscale operation and  it clientele included “doctors, lawyers,  professors, ...mostly middle and upper middle class people.” Moreover they  criticized the mayor for acting rashly, noting that it made no attempt to  first talk  with the hotel owners  about any problem. They  argued that gay tourism  did not hurt Fort Lauderdale. “Have gay communities ever deterred people from going to Acapulco or Cape Cod or San Francisco? Can he suggest one instance where an influx of gay  people has hurt the value of a resort?” Nonetheless they expected a  rash of new inspections by the city health and fire officials.  “There are many ways they can shut us down.” said one of the managers. “But we will not capitulate... we will hold on as long as it takes.”

More importantly, there was a new element  in the fight. Joining the hotel management in condemning the mayor’s action was the recently formed community group: The Broward County Coalition for the Humanistic Rights  of Gays. Started  by local activists Bob Kunst ,Dale Moore,  Mark Silber  and MCC minister John Gill, it was the first LGBT political organization formed in Broward County to fight for the rights of  the LGBT community.

They along with two dozen other local activists held a press conference outside the Mayor’s office and  charged him with acting with political motives; he was up for reelection next year.  “It’s a nice political slogan to get the community hysterical  over it becoming a gay mecca.,” said Bob Kunst.  Accusing Shaw of homophobia, Kunst continued,”These political terror tactics are not going to work, The straight community gets ripped off by them worse than the gay community while the police are fussing around with us, the regular community doesn’t have the same protections...He’s doing this because he thinks the gay community won’t fight back. We will fight back . We are not going to put up with this  nonsense.”

Adding to Shaw’s discomfort was the conclusion of  his city manager and other advisors:  there was no grounds for a grand jury investigation. There was no evidence that  the activity of male prostitution was organized. Furthermore as Police Captain Ron Cochran noted, “homosexual men are not typically involved in violent crimes” and trying  to police sexual activity-homosexual or otherwise-required a use of scare police  resources better put elsewhere. Finally the city manager added, “there is nothing the city can legally do  to stop homosexuals from vacationing in Fort Lauderdale  if they want to.”

By now the news story about Shaw and the Marlin Beach had become a regular item both in the Fort Lauderdale and Miami newspapers. It even made the national media with a story in the Variety, the daily movie industry newspaper.  In an editorial The Fort Lauderdale News  criticized the mayor’s  for his “Hip-shooting on Homosexuals,”  advising him that he should first think before he acts. Speaking at the Coalition's press conference, State Representative John Adams of Hollywood called Shaw’s actions “dirty politics”  and pledged  to support  “the preservation of your (LGBT) rights.” The Coalition demanded that Shaw either apologize or resign.


Shaw would not apologize, rather he now argued that his actions were misunderstood. His call for a grand jury  to deal  “with problems  on the beach of which homosexuals are only a small portion...They’re  the ones  seeking to get mileage out of something that does not exist.” Moreover he denied that he  or his city administration ever harassed  homosexuals. “If  they have specific charges of wrongdoing, we’ll investigate them.” In any event he learned a valuable lesson about  Fort Lauderdale’s LGBT community.

The expected rash of city inspections never occurred and the Marlin Beach  continued  being the  one of the  nation’s most popular gay resort hotel.  The Broward Coalition for Humanistic Rights of Gays became the Broward Coalition for Human Rights, the first county gay rights organization. Shaw went on to be elected to Congress and his district comprised mostly  the beach area in Broward and Palm Beach counties: The Marlin Beach was one of his constituents.  

For many in the city’s LGBT community, this was the first time they publicly stood up  and demanded to be heard. . No longer quietly content to live in  the shadows of this sunny resort city, they were beginning the long march of being acknowledged  as an legitimate and important part of the larger Fort Lauderdale community.




Image Credits: Fort Lauderdale News; Discomusic.com



38 comments:

  1. Great story. I have fond memories and of the Marlin Beach and am happy to see its history and role in the community highlighted

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    1. I only went twice to the MBR when I was 17 or 18, but glad I got to experience the tea dances before it closed. I lived in Miami then. My regular haunts in Fort Lauderdale included Backstreet and the Copa. Those were the best days our our lives...

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    2. I was a bartender at the Marlin in 1979 to 1981 with a great staff of bartenders including "crazy Richard".

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  2. Great piece, Fred! It is remarkable that in the recent history of Fort Lauderdale, there has been not only one but two Mayors, Clay Shaw and Jim Naugle, whose tenures were marred by obsessive campaigns to malign the gay community, and drive it underground or out of the city. Both efforts were not only thwarted, but actually served to make the community stronger.

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  3. I first went to the Marlin Beach in the early '70s. Yes, Bill Hovan was the owner but do you know who worked for him? John Castelli (Copa, Tangerine) was the Marlin Beach manager at the time, and Lefty Mayer and Kevin were both bartenders (Lefty's). I was working at the DownUnder in the mid-seventies. What a time that was, what great places! I first met Lefty and Kevin at the Elbo Room. I was barely OUT at the time. Kevin suggested I drop by the Everglades Bar if I was looking for fun. That was just before the Poop Deck made it's appearance. Gary.

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  4. god do I miss the marlin beach and all the great times I had there .. it encouraged me to be come a dj in the Detroit area, which I did for about 25 years until I decided to retire...but I will always have such fond memories of the place as well as the copa and backstreet

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  5. HI, Really appreciate the information that you shared with us.

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  6. Hi! I was mentioned in the article and I'm delighted to let everyone know I'm still around! - Mark N. Silber

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  7. I moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1979 and Sunday T dance was the place to be. So much fun back then. Ended up working at The Gym and was there when Boots Bar opened. Miss all the guys that became my family there, Joe, Kevin, George, Roger, Dean, Harold, etc. as well as all the great people I had the opportunity of meeting.

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  8. Back in 1979, my dad took my sister & me to Florida to visit his mother, and he decided to show us this hotel where he used to watch underwater dancing back in the 50s when he was in the Navy. As we approached the entrance, we were stopped by the doorman, who told my father "Sir, I don't think you want to bring your kids in here." "Why not?", asked my dad. "Sir, are you aware this is a gay hotel?" My dad hustled us out of there, but not before 12 year old me noticed the hot sailor standing in the lobby.

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  9. Excellent and helpful post… I am so glad to left comment on this. This has been a so interesting read, would love to read more here….
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  10. Great and informative article. My first of many trips to Lauderdale - and Marlin - was Halloween weekend 1976. It was a magical weekend I will never forget. I had a friend, Bruce, who moved to Lauderdale to work at Marlin the following year. I eventually moved to the area in 1986 and spent many weekends there, as well as Copa, 13 Buttons, and Tacky's. I wish at least one of these bars was still in existence.

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  11. A very good and informative article indeed. It helps me a lot to enhance my knowledge, I really like the way the writer presented his views.
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  12. good afternoon, back in 1980 approximatly I met a guy at the Marlin Beach Hotel and I lost track of him. I was from Montreal my name is Sylvain B. and his name was Randy S. He was staying in Orlando. if this short story tell you something please reply. Thanks

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  13. Very fond memories......this story just took me back in time when I spent a night and sit out by the pool and touched the most amazing lips in my life. He was also the love of my life. But because of my machoism and plain stupidity I lost him forever. I really have not thought about that night much until I saw this. I am saddened by joyful at the same time. "If you leave, at least in my lifetime I had one dream come true. I was blessed to be loved by someone as wonderful as you."

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  14. A terrific article Fred and glad to see the stories of these places are not being forgotten 40+ years on. I discovered the MBH on vacation from college (only 19!), deciding La-Te-Da was the place for me to make my home in 1975. While I continued school here, I loved listening to Bobby Viteritti spin at the Poop Deck and Upper Deck tea dances, The Flying Machine (which became Copa) and Tangerine on North Federal. Though they certainly weren't this twink's cup of tea at the time - much, I imagine, to their disappointment - I nevertheless have a soft place in my heart for Lefty and Kevin. At this point in my life I'm gratified to have experienced that part of Laudy's gay history.

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  15. I came out there at age 16, during the summer of '75. Soon thereafter, I worked as a barback for Lefty and Kevin during happy hours and Tea Dance! Also worked as a graphic artist for David Magazine.
    Esme Lorenzo was the hotel manager, Marsha Rose was running the kitchen, and the Copa was still the Flying Machine. Richard was bartending the outside cabana bar, and Frank was the bar manager. And I was there the night John Castelli quit. Such drama!
    I went to the opening night of Tangerine, too. Kevin was working the upstairs bar, and Frank Collins and Bobby Viteritti (before he moved to SF) were taking turns spinning.
    I feel blessed to have grown up in Ft. Lauderdale, and experienced the true "Golden Days of Disco".

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    1. Mmm.. Summer of 1975.. I was 17 and I knew I felt attracted to men but didn't know where to go or how to meet other men; Boston was a strange and somewhat hostile city to non-irish and foreign people. Maybe if I would had move to Ft Lauderdale back then I would had come out and who knows, met the guy of my life.. oh well!

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  16. http://www.discomusic.com/clubs-more/13616_0_6_0_C/

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  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  18. My God, the Marlin Beach Hotel. The first bar I ever went to, with high school friends. We were all 16, but as long as we paid the cover charge for the Poop Deck bar (I think it was a hefty $3 back in 1977). I was so relieved to see that not all gay men were matched the characterization of gays as being limp-wristed, feminine, etc.

    I'll never forget the mass exodus from the beach at 3 p.m. every day as the rain came down. We'd all squeeze into the bar or under cover outside until around 3:30, when the rain stopped and we all went back to the beach. Tough life back then.

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    1. I too was there in the late 70’s and have a vivid memory of an older gentleman ( probably younger than me now) anyway he had on bellbottom jeans with giant RR appliqué on the bottom, Rolls-Royce. I must have been 17-18yrs I thought even then “tacky” but not for the time I guess. Much love to all and those innocent times

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  19. Almost forgot to mention that I worked there as a waiter when Sylvester used to hang out at the MBH. He'd laze around the pool, laughing and joking with his little entourage of admirers, myself included. Such a sweet soul.

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  20. Correction: It wasn't the Poop Deck, it was the Lower Deck Disco, the hottest disco in '77, IMO.

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  21. That song is a memory...
    Sylvain
    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=paradis++sur+un+echanson+en+francais&view=detail&mid=032CEA5C767085E8DCBC032CEA5C767085E8DCBC&FORM=VIRE

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  22. I lived in Tampa in the late 70's and early 80's and would go on vacation to the Marlin Beach Hotel in Lauderdale. Many fond memories of the Marlin, T-Dance, and one particularly wild and crazy Spring Break. Thanks for this trip down memory lane.

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  24. It says that the lower floor with the windows to the pool was featured in the movie Where The Boys Are. That is incorrect. The Yankee Clipper, further south on A1A, also had the same deal in the wreck bar and that's where those scenes were filmed. My dad knew someone from the camera crew

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  25. Oh, wow, thanks for this post and thanks to all who commented. What a great thing that these memories are preserved! Those days were so progressive, even more than it is now, in some places. I moved my not-so-innocent self to Ft. Lauderdale in 1975 after H.S. and landed right in the midst of this gay Revolution as it was. I had two friends from back home in New England, Ricky and Joey, who worked as housekeepers in the Marlin Beach Hotel.

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  26. This really brought up a lot of good memories! I remember walking down the beach in Fort Lauderdale singing all the young heterosexual spring break couples wrapped around each other all up and down the beach, until you came in front of the Marlin Beach Hotel and saw those beautiful boys two three and four at a time on blankets wrapped around each other. My friends Ricky and Joey would tell me such fabulous stories, mostly I remember that the guests were so wonderful to them and left them all kinds of gifts. I would go with them to the Copa at that time in 1977 I think it was there were about five or six different parts of the club that you could walk around in. They had the stage with the wonderful Diva shows I remember somebody did Diana Ross. The beach bar, the piano bar, the Western Bar, the Disco. OMG!

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  27. One place I made it my business to attend on Sunday after Church T DANCE on the Poop Deck, and the She in the basement until

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  28. loved wearing my speedo at the marlin !

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  29. Just for the sound, the beat and the truth…
    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sur+une+chanson+en+francais&view=detail&mid=032CEA5C767085E8DCBC032CEA5C767085E8DCBC&FORM=VIRE

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  30. Just copy the address https below and search you will access to the video on my previous message from 07-10-2019 SUR UNE CHANSON EN FRANCAIS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCmnx-e928k

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  32. Met the greatest guy at MBH. His name is Sid Spear from Louisville KY. My name is Ron Cracchiola from Brooklyn NY. I'm hoping that this message gets to him and I hear back. I know it's a long shot, but I remain hopeful.

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  33. Many of my dear cherished memories are from y days and nights at the MBH and the Lower Deck. I was friends with most of the guys who worked there and they were the best friends anyone could ever have. I miss it terribly as well as all my friends.

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  34. And thanks for all their wreckless hedonism, they’re all dead….having suffered a heinous demise under Reagan and A.Bryant. R.I.P.

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