Queer Places:
Greenwood Cemetery
Muscatine, Muscatine County, Iowa, USA
Howard J. Bristol (August 14, 1902 – February 11, 1971) was an American set decorator. He was nominated for nine Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction. He worked on 56 films between 1936 and 1968. All of the most prominent decorators of MGM were gay – Arthur Krams, Henry Grace, George James Hopkins, Howard Bristol – as was virtually the whole of the MGM research department.
Bristol, a native of Iowa, was the son of Eugene M. Bristol (1863–1935) and Adele D. Donlon (1868–1950). In 1953 Howard Bristol was gay-bashed in a Santa Monica Park. Police found him in the rest room in a pool of blood, his hands tied with his belt and his trousers knotted around his legs. After this he found work hard to get for several years. A freelancer, he moved from prestige films before the attack (Rope and Hans Christian Andersen) to B pictures immediately afterward (China Venture and the Vincent Price horror flick The Mad Magician). Not until Kiss Me Deadly and Guys and Dolls in 1955 was he again working on big-budget films, and then, notably, his most frequent employer was the gay producer Ross Hunter.
Bristol was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Art Direction: Star! (1968)[1][2] Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967)[3] Flower Drum Song (1961)[4] Guys and Dolls (1955)[5] Hans Christian Andersen (1952)[6] The Princess and the Pirate (1944)[7] The North Star (1943)[8] The Pride of the Yankees (1942)[9] The Little Foxes (1941).[10]
My published books:
