Steamy Saturday
- Twilight lives of talent & torment.
- Man-for-man in the world of dance.
- The ones who call themselves “strange.”
- They drift into a pastel world of fey relationships.
- Men who are not quite men.
- Hansome, desperate, twisted, born to dance.
The world of dance, as depicted in numerous media iterations, is just bathed in steam! Very often in queer steam. And so it is with Mr. Ballerina by American writer, dancer, and film actor Ronn Marvin (1919-1998), published in Evanston, Illinois by Regency Books (another William Hamling imprint) in 1961. Despite the genre and its inevitable tragic ending, Mr. Ballerina is actually fairly well-written, with authentic dialogue and believable depictions of gay relationships.
The story centers on dancer Dana Bates who works under dance director Lee Apollo at Hemisphere. Dana’s lover is musician Ralph Matthews, who is convinced that he is probably straight, and that it was actually his mother and then Dana, playing on his sexual needs, who turned him into a homosexual. Ralph seeks a way out and turns to a woman who herself is trying to rescue her mother from a lesbian relationship. Ralph breaks up with Dana, punches him in the nose (breaking it), has sex with the woman and proposes to her. Meanwhile, Dana barely escapes a police raid on an all-male party at Lee Apollo’s place but is outed to the police by some jealous flames, leading to the tragic ending that we present above.
… everyone has to pay eventually. Some way or other, everyone pays. Now for Dana Bates – Mr. Ballerina, Pride of the Ballet, Princess of the Bed – it was his turn at last.
In an October 1961 review in The Ladder, Barbara Grier (as Gene Damon) laments the negative aspects of the story, but praises its author:
A rather sad look at the very gay world of the ballet, according to Mr. Marvin, exclusively peopled with homosexual boys and an occasional homosexual girl. Basically another of the conflict stories, in which one character fights against his homosexuality. The San Francisco background is very colorful and the presence of major lesbian characters will make this of interest to Ladder readers. A fairly good first novel. Mr. Marvin will bear watching.
Ronn Marvin began his career as a dancer, but a foot injury ended that line of work, so he turned to writing novels and television scripts. He also appeared in four movies during the 1940s: The North Star (1943); Step Lively (1944); George White’s Scandals (1945); and he was Pulaski in the 1947 film Gas House Kids Go West. The cover art for Mr. Ballerina is credited to “Dillon.” While we have found no direct evidence, based on the characteristic style, we believe this to be the legendary illustrating duo Leo and Diane Dillon.
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