Wednesday, May 07, 2008
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The Guild International Roll Call

Glenn Michael Turner: The Life

  Glenn Michael Turner was the most charming, funny & sex-crazed man on earth. He was a talented writer, cabaret performer & in general, the life of the party in Washington, D.C. All this despite being physically & mentally abused by his mother as a child. Basically Glenn was a shy person who always felt unattractive, unloved & unsure of himself. Feelings drummed into him as a child, were based in no way on reality. People fell in love with Glenn within minutes of meeting him. He captured them with his wild sense of humor, his wit & his charm.

  In 1978, Glenn was handing out backroom tokens in an adult bookstore in D.C. Someone was talking to the manager about starting a new Gay publication & needing an editor. They were referred to Glenn & the now legendary, totally original STARS Magazine (not that wimpy thing by the same name now on newsstands), was born. Glenn possessed great writing skills, but hadn't a clue about photography, layout & a direction for the magazine. The first 3 issues were bombs created by the blind leading the blind. Inspiration hit with issue #4 in 1980. Glenn had the vision to see that while Gay mags lacked humor; he had tons. He put in comics, the biggest & best personals section, the "Jerking Off" section (taking pot shots at the establishment) & a demonstration of his detective skills (Glenn's passion was detective & mystery stories. His desire, to become a private eye - he settled on keeping his eye on young men's privates!) He located & obtained an exclusive interview with Jeffrey Rignall - the only know victim to have escaped John Wayne Gacy's slaughter. STARS was now on the map!

  In 1982, Glenn was in NYC for a publisher's convention when he got the call that D.C. police had raided the offices of STARS terrorizing the staff & removing boxes of material (laughing aloud that they were putting these fags out of business!) Upon discovering Glenn was out of town the Gestapo went to his apartment & tore it to shreds. As he heard this news, his hair began falling out literally. Glenn had been 'raped'. He returned to D.C. & notified his lawyers. The Reagan administration didn't like there being a Gay magazine in D.C., esp. one that was two blocks from the Chancellery/Bunker, and screw the Constitution! It being the eve of an election, what better time to strike. Illegal & unjustified, was what it was. Glenn was ALWAYS very careful to be sure ALL models were of age. He operated fully within the law, unlike Ron & Ollie. Glenn couldn't go back to his apartment so Man-Age cover model Tommy Wilde & friends moved all his things into a new place. Democracy was dead in D.C., with the 'republicans' in charge, so STARS moved out to San Francisco to the former Drummer building in 1993. It took the lawyers a year, but all of the things the police had illegally taken from the office were returned. Glenn's hair grew back, but the psychological damage from the violation never did.

   Glenn spent his life looking for love in all the wrong places (he loved country/western music!) He would come to NYC a few times a year & go to the MINESHAFT. There he would strip, hop into a tub & be urinated on all night. At closing the staff would wake him up, shower him & put him into a taxi back to THE BROADWAY ARMS bathhouse. In D.C. (& later in San Francisco) Glenn played casting couch with every young man who came in looking to pose (well actually with almost anyone who just happened to walk by, including the staff!) He checked I.D., took a few Polaroid SX-70 snaps & had sex. (Glenn's big trick was being able to eat a guy out & correctly guess the brand of lubricant they had last been fucked with!

  He also claimed he could sit bare ass on a coin & tell you the year!) Far more guys had sex than were photographed for the magazine. Glenn was into everything except SafeSex. He thought he could beat the odds & for once be a winner (he was a winner but never felt it.) When he got to San Francisco he got the news he had A.I.D.S. & it unhinged him. His mother's legacy had finally taken the ultimate toll. He gave up on his beloved STARS and let it fall apart. In 1985, the owner fired him & took it back. It went from publisher to publisher, but it's soul was gone & it never again was worth looking at. Good friends like John Rowberry & David Hurles tried to help him, but he was spinning out of control & doing things that would have repelled the true Glenn.

   In December of 1985, his little brother, Timothy Langley Turner, financed his return home to D.C. His best friend, John Cox, was starting a new magazine, OUTCOME, and wanted him as editor. Glenn was overjoyed to have triumphed by helping to create STARS' true successor. He created GUILD INTERNATIONAL as the studio name for the pictures he had taken during STARS run; did the only interview ever done with CHAMPION, wrote his last Donn DuVall column & gave OUTCOME his blessing. He was very weak & needed a lot of rest. In March of 1986, he returned one last time to San Francisco to wrap up business. He then returned to D.C. & moved in with his ex-wife & beloved daughter. He pushed all his friends & family away & died on August 12, 1986.

   This exclusive, unpublished interview was conducted by Glenn's best friend John Cox on Glenn's last visit to NYC before moving STARS to Drummer's old building in San Francisco (1983). It took almost 3 years for John to get backing for OUTCOME & by then Glenn was in bad shape & died in August. In September a fire cremated John's home. He had started copying the interview tapes for Glenn's brother the night before & they were destroyed. John Rowberry ("Inches") had most of Glenn's papers & discovered the transcript of the second half of the interview. (The first half --lost at the moment--covered Glenn's childhood, abuse at his mother's hands & his time working for the Democratic National Committee as a messenger while in High School. Glenn was stationed in Evelyn Lincoln's office in President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's White House.) The ARCHIVE presents this for the first time along with some of Glenn's pictures & magazines. Glenn was not a great photographer. He was a very special part of our family & has a place in history. Glenn created the first national Gay 'slick' with a sense of humor. Mags before & after STARS took themselves just too seriously. Glenn made us laugh! We hope when you look over the pictures of the beautiful young men Glenn photographed & serviced on his casting couch, you'll THINK OF HIM & SMILE!

Interview © 1986 Outcome Magazine/Man-Age Press all rights reserved. All images © Glenn M. Turner/Guild International, All rights reserved. Images may not be published, reproduced, or used in any way, shape or form in any manner or media without the written permission of Man-Age Press.

(We've added bracketed notes to help viewers know who the people are being talked about. Not only is Glenn dead but just about everyone they talked about is dead too; coincidence?)

TALES OF THE FAMOUS TURNER BIRD

GLENN: Every high school has its coterie of intelligentsia. The kids, you know, are going to be really obnoxious because they are entirely too bright. I think they're all dead of overdoses now. I went with a few girls. I had my first girls in high school. Where we actually went "all the way," you know. And that was only because one of the cheerleaders found out I was blowing her boyfriend. I think she smelled my breath on his dick. And she decided to make a man out of me, so I let her. And all of her friends. Because I was never getting off with these guys. I was blowing them but then I'd jerk off. So fucking their girl friends behind their backs, while I was blowing them behind the girl's back, was a nice way of having it all. I dunno I pre-dated 'hippie' by a least 10 years. They used to send letters home "Dear Mrs. Turner, Doesn't Glenn have any normal clothes?" And of course I did. My Mother would dress me in a Banlon shirt & a pair of polished cotton work pants and Hush Puppies. By the time I got to school I had black high heeled boots with pointed toes, bell bottoms-in 1960 if you can imagine such a thing-the heavy wool Navy surplus things that nobody wore & what we called 'Tom Jones shirts'. They had huge collars & big puffy sleeves. I looked like a bull dyke Rita Hayworth. I still look like a bull dyke Rita Hayworth, except I'm prettier than Rita now. Back then she was prettier than me.

OUTCOME: You can't pick on Rita Hayworth, she's ill now.

GLENN: That's true.

OUTCOME: She isn't doing well.

GLENN: We'll leave Rita alone. I was always the most notorious person anywhere I went. Until I became an adult and got out with all the other notorious people. Then I became a very small fish in a big pond. But all through childhood & early adulthood I was, if not popular, everyone knew me on sight. People I'd never laid eyes on knew who I was when they saw the clothes, the style. I pre-dated exhibitionistic faggotry by an incredible number of years. It's a miracle I wasn't killed. I should have been killed. The way things were then in heavy red-neck southern Maryland, somebody should have taken a shot at me. I never got beat up. People were almost protective of me. And I think it was because I was so weird. I was just so fucking weird, and that was because I was getting heavy and I didn't think anybody liked me because I was queer & that was something I couldn't help and they were going to have to learn to live with it. So I figured if you can't hide it, you amplify it. Make it so obvious that no one can accuse you of being anything but honest. No one's ever said I was a hypocrite. Now that's a hell of a story. I've never heard that! In one piece like that.

OUTCOME: We'll have to talk about the Stray Cats since you're so freaky about them.

GLENN: I love the Stray Cats! I want to eat Brian Setzer's ass & I hope you print that I want to eat Brian's ass. I want to stick my whole head up his ass & lick inside everything!

OUTCOME: I'll take the picture & we can sell greeting cards.

GLENN: I want to chew his arm pits! I want to suck his dick till his head caves in!

OUTCOME: "Marry Glenn, Brian; & you'll never again have to take a bath in a tub!" We must say something evil about that cunt, Britt Eklund. She takes such joy in going out with young guys & humiliating them, like she did poor Simon Turner.

GLENN: Britt Eklund, well she deserves Slim Jim. Jim Phantom is pretty. Oh I'd let him fuck me in a minute.

OUTCOME: That's probably how long it would take, too. I saw him in person with the bitch & he isn't pretty.

GLENN: He's pretty for me.

OUTCOME: I guess someone who fell in love with Tracy would think so.

GLENN: But I like Brian & the other one better--Lee Rocker. Now we know that's his real name. I'm sure he was christened Lee Rocker, right. I wanna eat Lee's ass & Brian's ass. I want them to piss in my ear. I want them to take a dump on my chest & rub it in.

OUTCOME: You're a class act, capital K.

GLENN: I'd chip it off, put it in a plastic bag & sell Stray Cats' shit.

OUTCOME: Their record labels' doing that now. The Rock Cats are a lot prettier & Smutty Smif is the one to go crazy over. Pretty little "boy" with tattooed arms & one of those 50s hair styles that are slicked except for the front which is long and swings over the eyes. He's right out of Fizeek magazine.

GLENN: I've never seen them.

OUTCOME: Smutty is really, really cute! Their music is great too. Their pictures used to pop up a lot in that Top Man rag edited by the speed freak.

GLENN: Right, have you seen Michael's Thing (a tiny bar rag published in Manhattan that people used to read) by the way? (Bronx cheer) I don't mean the magazine, I mean Michael's 'thing'!

OUTCOME: I sold my microscope.

GLENN: Anyway, enough of that; we don't want to get him mad at me; yes we do! Who gives a fuck?

OUTCOME: Who cares!

GLENN: I don't care. He doesn't mention me anymore anyway, since George Sardi left.

OUTCOME: Michael's the only one who reads his magazine anyway.

GLENN: That's true, you can't read that magazine. There's nothing to read in it.

OUTCOME: He only publishes it so he can run pictures of himself all the time.

GLENN: That's it! Shaking hands with Liza Minnelli before she had her nose fixed or relined. I hear she's had to have it relined twice. They're going to cut off so much of her sinuses, that her nose is going to be concave.

OUTCOME: Liza Chaney starring in an all female version of "The Phantom of the Opera."

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