The Gateway Club: history

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Franz Ferdinand
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The Gateway Club: history

Сообщение Franz Ferdinand » 02 фев 2022, 19:56

The Gateway Club was a famous lesbian nightclub located at 239 King's Road at the corner of Bramerton Street, Chelsea, London, England. It was the longest surviving such club in the world, opening as early as 1930.
Ted Ware took over the club in 1943 after allegedly winning it at poker. He allowed the club to become a meeting place and welcomed a wide variety of people who lived in the area. Both gays and lesbians were regulars at the club, as well as blacks and other minority groups who were discriminated against elsewhere.

Ted married Gina Serrato, a glamorous actress, in July 1953 when he was 55 and she was 31. She came to London from Italy to pursue her acting career. She and Ted had a daughter. Gina gradually took over the running of the club in the late 1950s.
Her assistant Smithy first appeared at the club in 1959 and eventually began running the club with Gina. She was an American servicewoman originally from California and decided she wanted to stay in London with Gina and Ted.
"The Gateway was one of the few places in Britain where lesbians could meet openly from the '40s through the '60s. Sometimes men were allowed in as well, but from 1967 Gina made the club women-only. For many women, attending the club was their first introduction to lesbian life.
In the mid-1960s, many lesbians in the club stopped mimicking male and female roles. Nevertheless, the club was still a haven for lesbian butch/femme couples during the era of harsh separatist feminism of the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s. The bar's owners worked hard to keep feminism out of the bar, it was supposed to be for friendly and loving gatherings only.

In its heyday in the 1960s, it was popular with artists and celebrities such as Diana Dors and Dusty Springfield. Maggie Hambling described the club as: "Full of the smell of so many people dancing in a small space, which was very exciting." It was the atmosphere created by so many lustful women that made the club so special. Incidentally, the club's entourage of regulars made its mark in the 1968 film The Killing of Sister George, starring Beryl Reed, Suzanne York and Coral Brown, which was one of the earliest popular lesbian films.
In the 1970s, many gays and lesbians became more politically motivated, constantly protesting at the bar. Feminists didn't like the club either because it wasn't political enough.
In the 1980s many gay and lesbian venues had already opened in central London and big gay discotheques were in vogue, but the Gateway remained a quiet place for its own people. The area around Chelsea became very upscale, and in 1985 the club lost its license because of complaints about loud music and was closed.
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