CRUISING THE PAST: “LUSCIOUS” LUCIUS BEEBE ON TODAY’S NEW YORK SOCIAL DIARY – “LUSCIOUS” LUCIUS BEEBE by Michael L. Grace
From the 1930s until his death in 1966, Lucius Beebe was the image of celebrity. An author, journalist, historian, raconteur, gourmet and bon vivant extraordinary – this extraordinary personality was one of the first gay men to have a publicly open relationship.
Columnist Walter Winchell called him “Luscious Lucius.” Beebe is perhaps best known for having coined the term “Cafe Society,” a group of which he was undoubtedly a member. A columnist for the New York Herald-Tribune in the ’30s and ’40s, he was elegantly turned out and very decadent for a journalist. More than 1.5 million New Yorkers read him every morning.
Beebe made the cover of Life magazine, owned a newspaper, private railway cars and is memorialized in the musical number by Rodgers and Hart.
Click here and go to New York Social Diary to read the rest of the story.