Out Spotlight

Today's Spotlight is an actress, comedienne, Academy nominated screenwriter and author. Today's Out Spotlight is Fannie Flagg.

Fannie Flagg was born Patricia Neal September 21, 1941 (although some say 1944), in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of Marion and William Neal,Jr. Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a small-business owner and projectionist.

She began her theatrical career at age eight with her own play entitled The Whoopee Girl which caused her to be expelled from school because it contained the word 'martini'. Seven years later, she resumed acting career, appearing in more than 30 plays with the Town and Gown Theatre, and then on her own local tv show in Birmingham. Just 18, Flagg co-hosted the locally produced "Morning Show" on WBRC-TV.

At 20 she went to New York to start her acting career. Flagg couldn't use her birth name since there was already a well-known Oscar-winning actress named Patricia Neal, and choose the name Fannie Flagg. While in New York trying to jump start her career, she wrote and appeared in comedy clubs.

She honed her writing skills by creating her original sketches, first as a determined contestant in the Miss Alabama contest (which she finally won on her sixth attempt). Flagg herself was a contestant in the Miss Alabama pageant for seven years. She never won the title like her character does, however, she did win Miss Congeniality.

She got noticed in the NY comedy club circuit and got hired as a staff writer for Allen Funt's Candid Camera, and she later became Funt's co-host on the syndicated 1970s weekly version of the show.

She went on to more than 500 network television appearances to her credit, including "Jackie Gleason," "Johnny Carson," and "The Dick Van Dyke Show".

During the 1970s, Flagg became a fixture on game shows, which showcased her quick wit and sassy Southern personality. She is best known for her appearances on the game show Match Game, where she was a fixture in the lower right-hand seat next to regular panelist Richard Dawson.

She was also a regular on The New Dick Van Dyke Show, where for two seasons she played Van Dyke's character Dick Preston's sister. Another memorable role was Cassie Bowman in the 1980-81 sitcom version of Harper Valley PTA, starring Barbara Eden.

Flagg was not just a small screen star, she made her film acting debut in the movie, "Five Easy Pieces" with Jack Nicholson in 1970, and went on to star in "Some of My Best Friends Are...","Stay Hungry", "Grease", "Rabbit Test" and "Crazy in Alabama".

And her talent was showcased on stage with roles in "Mary, Mary", "Private Lives","Once More With Feeling", "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean". Flagg also starred in "Patio/Porch" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" on Broadway.

During the 1960s and '70s, Flagg wrote and recorded two comedy albums, "Rally Found the Flagg" for RCA and "My Husband Doesn't Know I'm Making This Phone Call" for MGM Records. Some of her skits included many parodies of Lady Bird Johnson and Martha Mitchell.

She has spoken publicly about her dyslexia, saying she was enormously challenged as a writer because she "was severely dyslexic and couldn't spell, still can't spell. So I was discouraged from writing and embarrassed". She put her writing career on hold for most of the 1970s because of being discouraged and her anxiety. She overcame her fear and completed several novels and screenplays on her way to an even bigger career as writer.

Flagg is probably best known for her book "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe". In 1991, collaborating of screenwriter Carol Sobieski, she turned the novel into the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes".

The story is a gently feminist portrait of two women growing up in the Depression-era rural South, the film, excised the lesbian content of the book's story.

The film starring Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary Louise Parker, and Cicely Tyson garnered Flagg a nomination for an Academy Award for her screenwriting debut. It also earned her the coveted Scripters Award and a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Screen Award. For her reading of the audiobook, she received a Grammy nomination.

Fried Green Tomatoes was not her first novel. Her first was Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man (originally titled Coming Attractions). She went on to write after Fried Green Tomatoes, including "Welcome To The World, Baby Girl!", Standing in the Rainbow, A Redbird Christmas, and Can't Wait to Get to Heaven.

Her first novel, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, was on the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks. Her second, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, praised by Harper Lee and Eudora Welty, was on the Times list for thirty-six weeks.

Coming off the success of the book and the movie, Flagg went on to write a nonfiction collection of recipes entitled "The Original Whistlestop Cafe Cookbook".

Her most recent book, "I Still Dream About You: A Novel" was published on last November.

Flagg was at one time married to fellow actor Dick Sargent, who he himself was also gay. They both hid their sexual orientation at the time, and appeared on Tattletales as a couple. They were divorce,Sargent going on to marry again before finally coming out shortly before his death. Flagg went on to have a relationship with author, activist,and feminist icon Rita Mae Brown, who wrote about her relationship with Flagg among her other past lovers.

She continues to write and divides her time between homes in California and Alabama.

Out Spotlight LXXXIII

Today's Outspotlight is actor Dick Sargent.

He may be best known for his role as the second Darren (or Durwood, if you are Endora) Stevens, on the iconic television show Bewitched. He was cast as the straight man to the kooky cast of characters that came with marrying his witch wife Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery). But on National Coming Out Day in 1991 Dick Sargent gave up the role of "straight man" in real life and became known for an entirely different reason.

Sargent was born Richard Cox in Carmel, California on April 19, 1930. His mother, Ruth McNaughton Cox, had been an actress in silent films. His father, Colonel Elmer Cox, had served with distinction in World War I.

Sargent auditioned successfully for a lead role for Bewitched but couldn't to accept it because of contractual obligations to Universal Studios. He eventually did take the part in 1969 when actor Dick York, who originally played the role, had to withdraw for health reasons.

Sargent took over the part of Darrin, an adman who was married to a beautiful witch and who had to put up with the shenanigans of her decidedly eccentric supernatural relatives. He joined a cast that included actress Agnes Moorehead (who has be the subject about much discussion and debate about her own sexuality) and gay actor Paul Lynde, neither publicly came out before their death.

Like many other actors Sargent remained closeted, fearing that the revelation of his sexual orientation would spell ruin for his career. And like others, including Raymond Burr, had done before him, he invented a former spouse, in Sargent's case a fictional divorced wife. Later, he cooperated in fueling media speculation that he was romantically involved with women by being seen escorting starlets to Hollywood parties. On one occasion he posed with actress Connie Francis for pictures that appeared in a movie fan magazine. "We looked passionately at each other, but that was the only time I ever saw her," Sargent recalled in 1991.

Unknown to audiences, Sargent was in a loving and stable relationship with another man, a television screenwriter, whom he later identified publicly simply as Frank. It pained Sargent not to be able to speak openly about their bond and to have to call the love of his life a "business associate." The pair were together for twenty years until Frank died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1979.

Among those who knew of the relationship was Elizabeth Montgomery, the star of Bewitched, who became a good friend to Sargent. She and her husband often went out with Sargent and Frank.

In 1991 with so few actors were openly out as gay men that it made Sargent's made quite a significant impact. Overnight he went from playing roles to being a role model. Sargent said that factors motivating his decision to come out included California governor Pete Wilson's veto of a bill to protect gay men and lesbians from job discrimination and also his concern about the rate of suicide among young gay people, but he was also responding as well to his outing by a tabloid newspaper, The Star, that erroneously reported that he and a new lover had trashed a house and that the police had evicted them. He was not dispute the fact that he was gay, but that the rest of the story was false.

Howard Bragman, a past Out Spotlight topic himself, handled Sargent's PR when he finally came out , 20 years after the Bewitch ended.

Remembers Bragman: "I got a call from a guy named David Smith who was head of PR at the \[LA\] Gay and Lesbian Center at that point. David said, 'Listen, we're all going to march in Sacramento and this week is National Coming Out Day and I have two people who are coming out: Sheila Kuehl (Zelda Gilroy on The Many Loves of Doby Gillis) and Dick Sargent. Can you handle that?' We went to 'Entertainment Tonight' and we gave them Dick Sargent and Sheila Kuehl and Dick was joking: 'I'm in my 60s, who's gonna care? I haven't been on TV in decades.' People did care. A lot of actors had not come out at that point and still, to this day, when an actor comes out it's big news. So, I helped him out of the closet and was there when he passed away."

Sargent found coming out liberating. In a interview he shortly after he came out, he talked about the experience. "It was such a relief. I lived in fear of being found out. Now it's given me a whole new mission in life,"

Once out he became a leader to many through his visibility as well as his activism. In the months to come Mr. Sargent dedicated a great deal of energy to aiding gay and lesbian causes (in addition to his ongoing commitment to The Special Olympics). He a participated in the Lesbian and Gay Public Awareness Project and began speaking out on gay rights issues. 1992 he along with his former Bewitched co-star Elizabeth Montgomery, served as the Grand Marshals of The Orange County Pride Parade of 1992.

Sargent was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1989, despite going under extensive radiation treatment he passed away on July 8, 1994.