Acquired Tastes LXIII: Gay Pulp Fiction, Part 15 - Douglas Dean / Dean Goodman

Acquired Tastes LXIII

Gay Pulp Fiction, Part 15 

Douglas Dean / Dean Goodman

Note: This profile was compiled from four different bios and a series of five interviews he gave to San Francisco's Gay Crusader in 1977, all of which I found on-line.

I don't know what it is that drew me to Mr. Goodman. His ambition? The breadth of his career? But I found him fascinating enough to do a bit of research - which in itself, I found rather fascinating. There's nothing like trying to reconcile four different bios about the same man. 

The interviews he granted to the San Francisco Gay Crusader was a fortunate find. However, it should be noted that there was a sixth installment (in the November 1977 issue) that I was not able to locate.

I hope you enjoy this brief look at a rather complicated, interesting man half as much as I enjoyed putting it together. 

Ah, a life in the theater!

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Douglas Dean, author of 12 gay pulp novels and two short story collections, is the pseudonym of actor and writer Dean Goodman.

In his own words:

"My legal name is Dean Goodman. That’s how I’m known as an actor and teacher, and by my life-long friends. Douglas Dean is a pen name, which I’ve used as a columnist and as an author of gay novels."

Douglas Dean Goodman was born in July 2, 1920 in Heppner, Oregon. During a career that spanned over sixty years, Goodman was an author, playwright, and accomplished actor on radio, stage, and screen. He was briefly married to Maria Elisabeth Seiber, the daughter of Marlene Dietrich and Rudolph Seiber. In 1991, he was treated for colon cancer and prostate problems and underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. In 2006, he passed away at the age of 86.

Acting/Theater

Goodman was attracted to the arts at an early age, winning several drama and speech contests in high school. 

In his own words:

"I was fifteen. I had a high school drama teacher who gave me great ideas and aspirations. In the spring of 1936, I won the award as the best high school actor in the state of Oregon, reciting Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Then, in 1937, I went to the University of Washington, in Seattle, as a drama major."

He made his professional acting debut at radio station KOMO in Seattle .

Goodman began his career in the theater in 1938 at Seattle Repertory Theatre, where he played leading roles for four seasons.  As resident 'juvenile' he played the young male lead in the company's widely toured West Coast premiere of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, before moving to Hollywood to study under Maria Ouspenskaya on a scholarship.

In his own words:

"She was a great actress and a great teacher. I was privileged to be her protege and private secretary off and on for about 3 years, with the exception of a few months when I was in the Army. In 1943, I was cast in the leading role of a play at the Max Reinhardt Studio and Ouspenskaya coached me in the part. That production got me a lot of professional offers and it also introduced me to the girl I finally married (Marlene Dietrich's daughter, Maria Sieber).

She died in 1949 and not many of her films are shown on TV. So unfortunately the younger generation identifies her best as the old gypsy woman in the “Wolf-Man” series. She’s become sort of a camp figure because of that.

However, Madame - as we all called her - created many memorable character portraits during her fifteen years in films, and of course she had a distinguished career in the theater before she ever did anything in the movies. She was a member of the Stanislavski Moscow Art Theatre, you know, and she taught in the master’s studio for a long time.

I was closer to her than most of her students, even the most famous ones. I was her protege and private secretary off and on for three years. She directed me in two plays in Hollywood and coached me in another role I played at the Max Reinhardt Studio."

After a stint in the Army infantry during World War II, Goodman acted at the Pasadena Playhouse and on many of the NBC-CBS radio shows of the 1940s, and toured the west coast with John Carradine in Shakespearean repertory. 

Later, in New York, he managed four summer theaters and acted with such luminaries as Jose Ferrer, Jane Cowl, and Arlene Francis. In the season of 1948-49 he co-produced the national company of O Mistress Mine starring Sylvia Sidney, John Loder, and Dick Van Patten.

He made headlines in 1949 when he tried to open a nonsegregated theater in Hyattsville, Maryland, losing his entire investment. It took would take him 30 years to pay off the personal debt incurred.

In 1950, Goodman became director and leading actor at the Cirque Playhouse in Seattle. Subsequently, he was invited to play Macbeth in Vancouver, British Columbia and in 1953, toured Canada in his own production of Hamlet, an engagement he considered a highlight of his career. 

Settling in San Francisco in 1955, he taught drama at San Francisco State and went on to star in his own productions at a downtown theater. There, one of his leading ladies was Dianne Goldman, who would later become better known as politician Dianne Feinstein.

Goodman went on to work with the American Conservatory Theater, the Berkeley Repertory, and Ben Kapen's Melodyland. He was resident character man with Ben Kapen's Melodyland in the mid-'60s, and appeared in musicals appearing along side of such well-known names as Leslie Uggams, Pearl Bailey, Ann Blyth, Robert Goulet, Pernell Roberts, Zasu Pitts, Brock Peters, and Lucille Ball. He also appeared in several independent Equity and Equity waiver shows. 

He appeared in several shows with the Actor's Workshop, San Francisco's original major repertory theater, including a year long run in the local premiere of Edward Albee's landmark "The Zoo Story." 

"It may be," Chronicle theater critic, Paine Knickerbocker wrote in 1974, "that Dean Goodman has had a greater variety of theatrical roles and responsibilities than any other individual connected with the stage in the Bay Area."

Nominated several times for outstanding achievement as an actor by the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, Goodman won twice (in 1978 as Ben Hubbard in The Little Foxes and in 1996 as Tom Garrison in I Never Sang for My Father). 

His acting career in film and television included Fear with Ally Sheedy, several commercials and industrial films shot in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also had a guest-starring role on Midnight Caller, and a recurring role on Santa Barbara.

However, his best known role may be as the pompous Mr. Bennington in Tucker: The Man and His Dream, starring Jeff Bridges. 

His brief film and TV career was cut short due to his growing health problems in the late 1980's.

After his recovery, he returned to the theater, where he continued to write and perform in plays at the Aurora Theatre, among others. His final appearances were in the title role of Visiting Mr. Green at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in the fall of 2000, and again at Playhouse West in Walnut Creek in early 2002.

Leadership/Advocacy/Community Service

• He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1955, to teach drama at San Francisco State College. In 1970 he helped to found the Community College Federation of Teachers, Local 2121, when the San Francisco Community College District was formed, and served for two terms as its first full-time elected president. 

• A founding member, he was elected president of the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, serving two terms, and was also president of the San Francisco Council on Entertainment for two terms. 

• He was a founder of the Bay Area Advisory Committee to Actors' Equity and served for 10 years, five of them as chairman. He was a leading activist with the regional chapter of Actors' Equity, the national union for professional actors and stage managers. 

In his own words:

Yes, they’ve shown a lot of faith in me. There are about 450 Equity members.in the Bay Area. We held a meeting at the St. Francis Hotel on March 25th (1973), a committee of ten was elected and subsequently I was chosen as chairman of that committee. We have our work cut out for us!  Now professional actors in this area will have a direct pipeline to the Western Advisory Board, and the New York and Los Angeles offices of the Union. It’s something all of us who live and work here have wanted for a long time.

• In 1989 he was invited to serve on the Artistic Policy Committee of the San Francisco Archives of the Performing Arts.

He also received citations from Actors' Equity, Mayor Willie Brown, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) for his longtime contribution to Bay Area theater.

Critique

A tireless self-promoter, Goodman wrote frequent, lengthy letters to local papers in the San Francisco Bay area, excoriating productions - their critics had praised - as inferior to ones he had directed or appeared in previously. 

Goodman began writing film and theater reviews for the Hollywood Citizen News and, as Douglas Dean Goodman, he was a correspondent for the Hollywood Drama-Logue, eventually becoming a columnist in 1991, covering theater, opera, ballet, and cabaret for the larger Bay Area. During this time, he also wrote reviews and other articles for the Advocate and other gay periodicals, along with the occasional book review for the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1998 he established the Dean Goodman Choice Awards, honoring outstanding productions and theater artists. The awards continued after he left the paper as the annual Dean Goodman Awards.

Writing

Using the pseudonym Douglas Dean, Goodman wrote several books in the 1970's, including twelve paperback novels and two short story collections. In addition, he published two editions of a gay travel guide to Mexico and one for San Francisco. 

In his own words:

"No, I never (wrote) porno novels. I published twelve novels and (two) short-story collections which had graphic sex scenes, sure, but explicit sex doesn’t label a book as pornographic, in my opinion. Nor do I consider nude photos, of either males or females, as pornographic.

They were stories with gay themes. Some of them were better than others, but I don’t consider any of them to be lewd or vulgar. In most of them, I tried to strike some moral tone or make a point of significance about human behavior. I’m quite proud of one or two of them. This Flesh Could Melt, published in 1970, was about a love affair which lasted for thirty years. The Advocate called it a real trend.

At Greenleaf, in the late 60's and early 70’s, there was a wonderful editor, Ginger Sisson. She really wanted to publish gay literature. She encouraged good writing and paid good money to her regular staff of novelists: Peter Tuesday Hughes, Larry Townsend, Lance Lester, etc. And myself of course. 

I’ve always been a writer, for all kinds of markets. 1 sold my first story when I was twelve years old, long before I knew what being gay meant. And I’ve written a lot of straight stuff... "

 

His final novel, Prime Time was published in 1988

In addition to his other theater work during the 1970's, Goodman had two plays he'd written produced. His 1975 play, Special Friends, starring porn star legend Jack Wrangler, was the first full Equity production of an openly gay-themed play by a playwright in the Bay Area. Other plays he wrote and produced include: Rusty, Blue Concerto, and Tricks of the Trade.

Reviews for his 1976 production Rusty (a gay homage to the Greta Garbo classic, Camille) which also starred Jack Wrangler, were not kind:

• "Dies of overdose on desire." - Newswest, 3/19/76

• "Rusty is neither erotic, romantic, nor dramatic." - Sentinel, 3/11/76

• 
  "Overwritten. The fraughtest. You begin to wish for those white cells to chew a little faster. Directed atrociously. An interminable bore." - B.A.R, 3/4/76

• "On opening night, in the death scene, (Garbo died of consumption. Wrangler dies of lukemia) Wrangler  pull, himself  up from the bed, walks to the stairwell, and dies, falling down the steps, the 'white cells having won', and the audience reaction to the non-melodramatic scene was one of howling laughter." - The Gay Crusader, 4/76

In 1986, San Francisco Stages: A Concise History, 1849-1986, an idiosyncratic history of local theater, was published.

Maria, Marlene and Me, a memoir of his yearlong marriage to Marlene Dietrich's daughter, Maria Sieber was published in early 1994.

In his own words:

A man never can escape his past, can he? Yes, I was married to Maria Riva. I was her first husband and we were married for three years. But, that’s a story in itself, my friend! 

Well, I was protege and private secretary to Madame between 1942 and 1945. It was in June of 1943, when I was appearing in Love From A Stranger at the old Max Reinhardt Studio, that I met Maria Seiber.   

I didn’t like Maria and was rather hostile towards her in the beginning. She was a protege of Rheinhardt’s, as her mother had been, and, though only 18, she was permitted to teach at the Studio. She was surrounded by sycophants, a lot of people who wanted to get close to the mother, by being a friend to the daughter. That atmosphere turned me off. I didn’t want to be part of the crowd.  

I think Maria sensed that I wasn’t drawn to her. Therefore I became kind of a challenge. She admitted that to me later. Also, you have to remember, I was young and handsome at that time. I was considered a promising young actor and a big success in Love From A Stranger. Many of Hollywood’s top agents were trying to sign me up. Maria decided she wanted me and she set out to get me. It may have been a little immodest of me to put it like that, but that’s the way it was. 

She made up her mind to give a party. inviting a lot of our mutual friends, and she asked on of these friends to persuade me to come.

At Maria’s party we had a chance to really talk to each other for the first time. We discovered we like the same books, the same films, the same music — and found out we had a lot of other things in common, too. The hostility I had felt toward Maria disappeared. We spent the night together.

The day after Maria’s party I was due on the set at Universal, where I was playing a small part in a picture called, Top Man with Donald O’Connor. Maria came on the lot to see me. I sneaked off the set, and we drove in her car high up into the Hollywood Hills, where we parked and made love.

We were young and tremendously attracted to each other. For the rest of that first week we were together almost constantly; at the beach, for moonlight drives, seeing movies, making love and getting to know each other. By Friday we were discussing what kind of a family we were going to have, and on Saturday night, while dancing at The Palladium, we became engaged. It happened very fast.

Dietrich was not in Hollywood when Maria and I started dating. Rudy Seiber, Maria’s father and a man whom Marlene never divorced, was living in New York, so I never go to know either of Maria’s parents before we were married. We had not been introduced. She (Dietrich) was in New York on vacation. She returned in mid-August, just a few days before Maria and I planned to get married.

At first she was furious. Maria and I had been engaged for about six weeks, then, but Marlene and I had never met and she knew nothing about me. Some of Maria’s friends were very jealous. They didn't want Maria to marry me because they were afraid they’d lose her themselves. So, they got to Marlene with all sorts of stories about me. There was “something funny about my relationship with Ouspenskava” and I was a fortune hunter and I was Jewish (they thought) and I was gay and I was just interested in Maria for what help her mother could give my career, etc... etc. The gossip was all very vicious and calculated to ruin the love Maria and I had grown to feel for each other.

She (Maria) was beautiful and talented. And remember, at that point of my life, I was oriented towards women. I’d had a few casual sex experiences with men, sure, but women were my main interest. I was excited as all hell about our coming marriage

I guess you could say we eloped. Maria had a terrible fight with her mother and left home on the night before our wedding. Marlene did everything to persuade Maria she shouldn't marry me, but it was no use. Maria had made up her mind.

It (theirs) was a love-hate relationship, and I think it continues to this day. Maria had a very unhappy childhood. She adored her mother, in a sense, but in another way she resented her and felt very inferior to her. She never believed she could compete with her mother’s beauty, and she still doesn’t. But, really, Maria was just as beautiful as Marlene, in a younger and softer way.

It (the wedding) was on Saturday, August 23, 1943. That morning I had a call from Marlene’s lawyer, asking me to come to his office. Maria was terrified. She was afraid her mother was trying to buy me off. But she consented to a talk with the attorney, if I promised I wouldn’t change my mind about anything.

He was a nice guy and very embarrassed by the job he had to do. But Dietrich had told him to get specific information from me. Was I or wasn't I Jewish? How did I plan to support Maria? I told him I wasn’t Jewish, but if I were I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed of it. I told him neither Maria or I wanted a cent from her mother. We had our own plans about how we'd earn our living. So he said, "I'm sure if you’d just talk to Miss Dietrich, she’d understand. Why don’t you call her?"

On the telephone she was so very cool. But I told her I really loved Maria. I told her I knew the marriage might even hurt my career; my agent had warned me the publicity might be bad - but I was still going ahead with it. Didn't that prove what I felt for Maria was real?

Finally she said, “Well, maybe everything will work out alright.”

Later I learned that one of the girls - supposedly Maria’s friend - was in the room with Marlene during the conversation. When Marlene had hung up she turned to this girl. “You told me some bad things about Dean. But he sounds like a gentleman. Why did you lie to me about him?”

We were over a temporary hump. Maria and I were happy for a while, but the cards were really stacked against us. We were scheduled for some rocky times ahead."

Celebration of Life

A celebration of his life was held at ACT on June 19. The evening, attended by Goodman and some 200 guests, included a reading of his newest play, Bloody August. At the ceremony, Goodman received a special lifetime achievement award from Actors' Equity for 63 years of service to the union and to the theater.

His archives, which, sadly, include nothing related to his gay pulp fiction work, are housed here, in Minneapolis MN.

Archives and Special Collections
Elmer L. Andersen Library

University of Minnesota
222 21st Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455

Welcome To The Theater - Lauren Bacall

from Applause

Maria and Marlene

La Vie En Rose - Marlene Dietrich

(for Mistress Maddie)