Nestled against Manhattan’s 21 Club on West 52nd Street, is an edifice that houses one of the great repositories of gay pop culture, The Museum of Television and Radio. This treasure trove of kinescopes (before tape!) and videos is of great interest to the general public, too, but if you arrive there with a gay agenda you can spend hours—days, really—pouring over contributions made by gay performers, producers, and directors from the 1930s to the present.

Of course, since the word "homosexual" was not uttered over the airwaves until the 1960s most of the artists represented there were closeted, which might make their work especially poignant, since they were risking a great deal by their very appearance. Thank you, Robert Q. Lewis, actor, game show panelist/host, talk show personality in TV’s "Golden Age," and Burr Tilstrom, the brilliant puppeteer and genius behind Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, that fondly remembered Boomers’ kiddie show.

Visitors pay $10 to have unlimited time in the "library,"a computer room where one can pour over listings of the thousands of programs, and watch for two hours and up to four selections.

Everyone you’d expect to be represented in thearchives is there, including pianists Elton John and Van Cliburn—Cliburn won the Moscow based Interna-tional Tchaikovsky Competition, at the apex of the Cold War. The reclusive Van remains closeted to this day, but the legend flies. Cliburn and I had a mutual pal in the "Opera Biz" and one day in the 60s, we were seated next to one another at one of this lady’s Met performances.

Observing my over the top bravaing for our diva, Cliburn said, "Wow, you’re really a fan, aren’t you?" whereupon, he placed his arm around my shoulder, where it remained for the rest of the afternoon. Has my life really been such amass of missed opportunities?

Then there was Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde, those TV game show cutupswho stayed on the cutting edge of outrageousness. Both gentlemen had their roots on Broadway, Reilly in, among other trifles, Hello, Dolly! and How To Succeed, and now a sought after director. Lynde, who died under tragic and mysterious circumstances, lit up Bye Bye, Birdie and New Faces of 1952. Tab Hunter and Rosie O’Donnell appeared along with gifted comedienne Kay Ballard. She was an under-rated cabaret singer, and appeared in sitcoms and was a regular for years on The Tonight Show.

All the important gay icons (some of whom were not actually gay,) can be found on tape at the museum. There’s lots of Milton Berle, the first man to wear a dress on American TV, Judy Garland and Tallulah Bankhead. Miss Bankhead, excruciatingly, if unintentionally amusing as a Hedda Gabler in her cups.

Viewers can check out the immortal British playwright/actor/composer director Noel Coward who wrote such masterpieces as Private Lives and Blithe Spirit. His comedy Design for Living boasted scandalously (for its time) homoerotic overtones and was written for Coward to perform along with Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne.

A dignified and discrete man, Noel Coward was linked with many closeted lovers, including Lunt, Sir Laurence Olivier and (gasp) The Duke of Windsor. Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne were America’s foremost acting couple, with careers spanning six decades on stage, screen, and TV. Although their marriage was affectionate and professionally productive, both Lunt and Miss Fontanne were long reputed to be gay.

Going way back, there is a solitary appearance by the fabled Catherine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Cornell was the reigning classical actress of the 1930s and 40s. Married to director Guthrie McClintock, Cornell played Juliet and Elizabeth Barrett Browning until she was sixty, and her marriage has been portrayed as a sham on both sides.

Like Burgess Meredith in that beloved Twilight Zone episode about a man trapped forever in a library, I could happily spend the rest of my life in the TV Museum.

The collection is as varied as it is large—sitcoms, dramas, documentaries and TV movies are all there. A lot of gay history can be traced at the Museum of Television and Radio. Viewers can see the first nervous references to homosexuality on TV, or watch Billy Crystal playing the first gay character in a sitcom—Soap, in 1976.

Check out the work of Sheila James Kuehl (once an ingénue on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and now a highly effective gay rights activist and legislator in California. It’s fun to see her in the company of Bob Denver, Tuesday Weld and—surprise—Warren Beatty, her straight co-stars.

Am I slighting musical theatre? Definitely not. There’s lots of work by Mary and Ethel (If you don’t know which Mary and Ethel, I’m not going to tell you), not to mention the incandescent favorite of gay audiences Barbara Cook, in her early years.

Show queens and the curious can find the arcane musical comedies like Kiss Me Kate, with the original cast, Bloomer Girl (Cook), Panama Hattie and Anything Goes (Merman), Annie Get Your Gun (Mary Martin and John Raitt), and The Dress Rehearsal of Cinderella with Julie Andrews—and on and on.

For camp, there are dozens of Ed Sullivan Show tapes, with the usual bizarrely eclectic lineups, such as the Beatles, Joan Sutherland, acrobats, Stiller and Meara and, of course, Senor Wences. Don’t remember him either…ah, youth.

For higher brows, there are dozens of operas, concerts and ballets, as well as many wonderful performances of great plays from the pens of Shakespeare, Ibsen. O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, et al—and don’t forget all those sitcoms, westerns, detective stories, and incredible array of "live" drama from the "golden age"—the 1950s. Recently I screened a television play that starred old-timer Mary Astor—and a 23 year old Texan named James Dean.