''The Rejected'' is a made-for-television

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

about

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexu ...

, produced for KQED in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

by John W. Reavis.Kaiser, p. 161 Notable as the first documentary program on homosexuality broadcast on American television,Alwood, p. 41 KQED first aired the film on September 11, 1961. Later syndicated to

National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It op ...

(NET) stations across the United States, it received positive critical reviews.

Production

Reavis, an independent producer who was apparently unconnected to the homophile movement, wrote up his idea for ''The Rejected'' in 1960.Capsuto, p. 39 Reavis originally titled the documentary ''The Gay Ones''. He explained his goals for the program in his proposal: Thus, Reavis approached the topic from the standpoint of homosexuality being a social problem akin to

alcoholism Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World He ...

prostitution Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...

. This echoed how many earlier programs, often produced as episodes of local talk shows, addressed homosexuality with shows bearing such titles as "Homosexuals and the Problems They Present" and "Homosexuality: A Psychological Approach". ''The Rejected'' focused exclusively on gay men, with no representation of

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

s.Castañeda and Campbell, p. 259 Reavis expressed his reluctance to include lesbians in his proposal: Commercial stations turned down the program, as did sponsors. KQED bought the project in early 1961 under the new title. The documentary was shot entirely in the KQED studio except for one segment on location at the Black Cat Bar, a

gay bar A gay bar is a Bar (establishment), drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) clientele; the term ''gay'' is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBTQ+ communi ...

that had been fighting state and police harassment since 1948. Reavis and co-producer Irving Saraf filmed ''The Rejected'' on a budget of less than $100. Reavis and director Richard Christian utilized the

talk show A talk show is a television programming, radio programming or podcast genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show', pp.3-4Erler, Robert (201 ...

format, breaking down the subject matter into a series of smaller topics. Each segment included one or more subject matter experts discussing homosexuality from a different perspective. Within each segment, Reavis presented a stereotype about homosexuality and then challenged the validity of that stereotype through the expert interviews. His goal, as he noted in his original proposal, was to give the viewer "a feeling he is confused and that society as a whole is confused about homosexuality".Alwood, p. 42 Experts interviewed for the program included: *

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Col ...

speaking from an

anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...

standpoint. Mead spoke of the positive roles that homosexuality had played in the cultures of

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

and the South Sea Islands and in

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

and Native American societies. She noted that it is society and not the individual that determines how homosexuality and homosexual behaviour are viewed. * Psychiatrist Karl Bowman of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, who explained the

Kinsey scale The Kinsey scale, also called the Heterosexual–Homosexual Rating Scale, is used in research to describe a person's sexual orientation based on one's experience or response at a given time. The scale typically ranges from 0, meaning exclusively ...

of human sexuality and who spoke against a punitive approach to treating homosexual patients. Medical doctor Erwin Braff also addressed medical issues. * Episcopal Bishop of San Francisco James Pike and

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

Alvin Fine addressed religious topics. Each man espoused his belief that sodomy laws should be repealed because in his opinion homosexuality was a

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

. Pike specifically compared homosexuality to chronic

, but called for homosexuals to be treated with "love and concern and interest" and for not condemning them as "evil". * The city's district attorney, Thomas C. Lynch, covered legal issues along with lawyers J. Albert Hutchinson, Al Bendich, and Morris Lowenthal (who had previously defended the Black Cat Bar during its 15-year legal battle against police and government harassment). * Openly gay

Mattachine Society The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, preceded by several covert and open organizations, such as Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Ha ...

president Hal Call, Mattachine executive secretary Donald Lucas and Mattachine treasurer Les Fisher spoke for gay men. ''The Rejected'' was unusual for its time in that it included actual gay people as opposed to only presenting ostensibly heterosexual experts. KQED station manager James Day opened the documentary by reading a statement from

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

's then-Attorney General

Stanley Mosk Morey Stanley Mosk (September 4, 1912 – June 19, 2001) was an American jurist, politician, and attorney. He served as Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court for 37 years (1964–2001), the longest tenure in that court's history. ...

Critical and popular response

''The Rejected'' was critically and popularly well-received upon its initial airing. '' Variety'' described it as handling the topic in a "matter-of-fact down-the-middle manner, covering it quite thoroughly and, for the most part, interestingly". Terrence O'Flaherty, critic for the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

'', concurred, praising KQED for its courage in addressing the subject matter,Tropiano, p. 6 as did the ''

San Francisco Examiner The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and has been published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst and the flagship of the He ...

'', which said the program "handled he topicsoberly, calmly and in great depth". Of the letters KQED received, which numbered in the hundreds,Capsuto, p. 40 97% were positive and many of the writers encouraged the station to make more programs like it.Tropiano, p. 7 Dorian Book Service of San Francisco published a transcript of ''The Rejected'',Stryker and Van Buskirk, p. 46 and close to 400 people ordered copies. KQED syndicated ''The Rejected'' to NET channels across the country; it aired on as many of 40 of the 55 NET stations and was repeated on educational stations in 1963 and 1964. Conservative members of the gay community were pleased with how the Mattachine members presented themselves as ordinary people, an image that differed from the perception held by many outside the community. Some more radical activists, including Frank Kameny and

Randy Wicker Randolfe Hayden "Randy" Wicker (born February 3, 1938) is an American author, activist, blogger, and archivist. Notable for his involvement in the early homophile and gay liberation movements, Wicker has documented the early years and many of th ...

, found the program wanting for the apologetic tone it took toward homosexuality. In 2002, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation presented KQED with the first Pioneer Award, in recognition of its production of ''The Rejected'' as the beginning of a long history of LGBT-related programming.

Availability

KQED, after airing ''The Rejected'', did not archive a hard copy of the documentary, and for many years, the full documentary was considered lost, with only transcripts available. Robert Chehoski, an archivist for KQED, and Alex Cherian, an archivist for the J. Paul Leonard Library at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

, searched for any remaining hard copy for up to six years. Eventually, the two found that the film was owned by WNET, which funded the film, and a single 2-inch quad videotape was archived in the Library of Congress. The Library's Recording Laboratory had already remastered the film onto a digital format and provided the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive with a copy, for the purpose of making it available online. The 60-minute film was released by the TV Archive online on May 22, 2015. The co-producer of the film, Irving Saraf, also alluded to 30 extra minutes of unaired footage, including content filmed in the Black Cat Bar. This extra footage has not been recovered. Production correspondence written from March to July 1961 between KQED's Program Manager Jonathan Rice and NET's Director of TV Programming Donley F. Feddersen refer to scenes featuring the bar and its owner Sol Stouman that had been shot but were probably going to be cut from the final edit. These documents were preserved by the

Wisconsin Historical Society The Wisconsin Historical Society (officially the State Historical Society of Wisconsin) is simultaneously a state agency and a private membership organization whose purpose is to maintain, promote and spread knowledge relating to the history of ...

.''The Rejected'' at the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive
/ref>

Notes

References

* Alwood, Edward (1998). ''Straight News''. Columbia University Press. . * Cain, Patricia A. (2000). ''Rainbow Rights: The Role of Lawyers and Courts in the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement''. Westview Press. . * Castañeda, Laura, and Campbell, Shannon B. (2005). ''News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity''. SAGE. . * Capsuto, Steven (2000). ''Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television''. Ballantine Books. . * Kaiser, Charles (1997). ''The Gay Metropolis 1940–1996''. New York, Houghton Mifflin. . * Sears, James Thomas (2006). ''Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation''. Routledge. . * Stryker, Susan and Jim Van Buskirk, with foreword by Armisted Maupin (1996). ''Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area''. San Francisco, Chronicle Press. . * Tropiano, Stephen (2002). ''The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV''. New York, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. . * Witt, Lynn, Sherry Thomas and Eric Marcus (eds.) (1995). ''Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America''. New York, Warner Books. .

External links