leaving by the front door
by
Douglas Messerli
Robert
L. Camina (screenwriter and director) Upstairs Inferno / 2015
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The bar, established and run by Phil Esteve,
which he opened on Halloween 1970. Having been in both a seminary and the Navy,
neither of which worked out for him. He and friends fixed it the second floor
up with a front bar, and an open room, and behind it a larger “meeting room,”
in which for a while Phil celebrated gay performances and readings but which
was eventually used, with his joyful permission, on Sundays for one of the national
centers of the Metropolitan Community Church, a protestant pro-LGBT religious
denomination founded in Huntington Park, California by Troy Perry, who appears
as a central figure in the film.
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On January 27, 1973, in fact, several of
their members, including Larson, as well as bar regulars had filled the bar to
celebrate a regular “beer bust” drink special than ran from 5:00-7:00 pm. About
110 patrons were visiting the bar when a terrible fire broke up, trapping many
within since there were bars on the windows to protect people from falling out,
and most of the patrons did not know of the existence of a special back door
from the large back room of the space.
As Christopher Rice, who narrates this
film and has written extensively about the event, and others such as Luther
Boggs later reported the immediate events, summarized on Wikepedia,
“At
7:56PM, a buzzer from downstairs sounded, and bartender Buddy Rasmussen, an Air
Force veteran, asked Luther Boggs to answer the door, anticipating a taxi cab
driver. Boggs opened the door to find the front staircase engulfed in flames,
along with the smell of lighter fluid. Rasmussen immediately led some 20
patrons out of the back exit to the roof, where the group could access a neighboring
building's roof and climb down to the ground floor. Others saw the floor to
ceiling windows as the most promising means of escape despite the fact that
there were safety bars on the windows with a 14-inch gap between them to
prevent dancers from breaking through the glass. Several people managed to
squeeze through, some still burning when they reached the ground below. Luther
Boggs was one who came through the window in flames after pushing his female
friend through the gap. The flames on Boggs were extinguished by the owner of a
neighboring bar, but he died on the 10th of July (16 days later), from 3rd
degree burns to 50% of his body.”
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Some of the men who had escaped found
their partners missing and rushed back into the building to find them, only to
be consumed in the flames.
In all, 32 people were killed in the fire,
until the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were shot and
murdered, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack was deadliest event in gay club
history in the US.
Although Camina’s documentary shows
detailed images of the fire and recounts the events from both men and women who
experienced the terrible fire itself, the most fascinating and sad aspects of
this moving film begin after the fire when concerned figures such as Troy Perry,
and others attempted to find a church that would be willing to host a memorial
for the victims. Perry’s early presumption was that the arson attack was perhaps
related to two other arson attacks on MCC churches at the headquarters in Los
Angeles, which resulted in the collapse of the building with no injuries and
the complete destruction of their Nashville, Tennessee church in Nashville,
Tennessee. Homophobia was clearly behind these events, and it was presumed that
the arson fire at the UpStairs Lounge was related.
The major Catholic Bishop and most other
church leaders not only refused their sanctuaries and would not even speak out
about the events. Even worse was the media, some of whose members described it
as the “fruitfry.” The police department head stated, so the newspaper
reported, that this was a bar “frequented by thieves, burglars, and queers.”
As one survivor speaks, the reaction to
the murders spoke to the homophobia not just of the city but of the society in
general. Survivors had to return to work the next day and often pretend they
hadn’t even heard about it, playing the game of closeted queers of the period: “While
instead there was a lump in your throat that could choke you. But that was just
part of the play-acting we all learned to do.”
Both the Mayor, Moon Landrieu and the state
Governor Edwards, one commentator suggests thought it was too political risky or
simply unnecessary to acknowledge the deaths of gay men. Previously there had
been a serious fire in New Orleans that killed 6 people, when the Mayor,
Governor Edwards and Archbishop Hannon had made many public statements to the
press. Later, a fire at the Howard Johnson’s hotel which killed 10 people, and
again all made statements to the press, days of mourning were declared. But none
of these men chose to say anything about the
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Heroes included, other than Perry
himself, Reverend Paul Breton from the MCC church who visited three of the
dying patients regularly in the hospital. When he sets up a fund to help the
victims, people rose to the occasion; and what he didn’t realize, he explains,
is that the process would teach them how to deal later raising support for AIDS.
When no church seemed available for Revered
Perry’s memorial service, Reverend Bill Richardson of St. George’s Episcopal
Church offered his space, but was reprimanded by his Bishop, he even offering
to resign if his church could not be open to such an act of kindness.
Perry even considered holding the
memorial service on the street outside the burned-out bar.
But
finally, Rev. Edward Kennedy of the Methodist Church opened the doors to his
church for a filled memorial service. Local businesses even agreed to put up
notices for the service.
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Eventually, a suspect was found, Roger Dale Nunez, who had been ejected from the bar earlier in the evening after arguing with several other customers. He had warned to bartender that he would regret it. Nunez who police later found to be suffering from psychiatric problems. He later told a friend that he had squirted the bottom steps with a lighter fluid he had purchase at a local Walgreens before tossing a match. Evidently, the plastic grass covered carpet which the owner had laid down to make the steps attractive immediately caught fire and itself rose up to block any possible exit through the front steps down to the street. Nunez committed suicide in November 1974.
LGBTQ individuals are perhaps exhausted
by watching films documenting their torment and death over the decades, but I
would still argue that this film is necessary if we are to know our own pasts
and prognosticate about our possible futures.
Los
Angeles, February 19, 2024
Reprinted
from My Queen Cinema blog (February 2024).
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