Book Description
When Colgate-Palmolive and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) decided to inaugurate a new golf tournament in 1972 under the name of TV star Dinah Shore, who expected all those lesbians to show up? Golf? Who said anything about golf? Within a decade, the tournament week became crowded with comedy concerts, pool parties and tea dances. Promoters reserve entire hotels for the huge flock of lesbians that migrate into town each year, and the dance parties are so large an airplane hangar is required for the 5,000 sunbaked gals. The Dinah Shore tournament is merely an excuse for the year's biggest pool party. This lavishly illustrated, oversize book celebrates all things Dinah, including:
A history of the tournament highlighting the main players-with gaydar ratings for each.
Interviews with club promoters, bartenders, and -partygoers on the evolution of the "Gay Dinah."
An exploration of responses to the phenomenon by the LPGA brass, the golfers, the Mission Hills Country Club, and the city of Palm Springs.
"Dinah Style"-a look at the changing couture, including how to get your polo shirt collar to stand up.
"The Dinah Guide," including how to get to Palm Springs and its vicinity, how to secure lodging and tickets, directions for getting around, and a tourist guide to the area.
Longtime journalist and freelance writer Michele Kort is the author most recently of Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro and the collaborating writer with Chastity Bono on The End of Innocence.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
As for the lesbian hoopla surrounding the tournament, it certainly gives the LPGA and Nabisco the heebie jeebies, as one writer put itbut the powers that be do their best to seem nonplused, or even bemused.
To what do you attribute the migration of lesbians to the desert? a reporter once asked former tournament director Mike Galeski. Unlike Canada geese, he replied, its not a North-South issue.
Current tournament director Terry Wilcox gave the perfect noncommital response to the Dinah-palooza: Whatever happens in that world [lesbian stuff] we try to stay away from. We dont condemn it, we dont promote it. Were not trying to move it forward or set it back. We dont want to start it or stop it. Its an issue in society wherever people are.
Since the name Dinah Shore was removed from the tournament in 1999, lesbians cant be blamed for imagining conspiratorial explanations. Rumors have it that the sponsor and the LPGA wanted to disconnect Dinah from Dinah! at least in the public eye. (Amy Alcott, although she personally dislikes the name change, thinks that the corporate sponsors wanted to connect the tournament to their brand name rather than to Dinahs.) Of course if the disconnect was for homophobic reasons, its been spectacularly unsuccessful: People clearly understand that the golf tournament, whatever its called, has little to do with the Dinah Shore Weekend, which has taken on an entirely separate life. No ones thought of calling the event The Melissa Etheridge or Ellen De Generes Weekend, even if the youngsters in attendance have little or no idea who Dinah Shore really was.
Whats surprising, though, is that Dinah Shores family and friends have never tried to step in and change the name of the event. Perhaps they have just as much of a sense of humor about it all as Dinah had about herself, and dont see the point of giving it any more publicity by trying to be party poopers.
Home
