Arthur Bell papers

1970-1978 D

Arthur Bell was a journalist, writer for the VILLAGE VOICE, and gay rights activist. Arthur Bell (1939-84) writer, journalist and gay rights activist, was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Bell, was a manufacturer of children's clothing. His mother, Claire Bodan Bell, was a designer. While he was in junior high school the family removed to Montreal. Returning to New York in 1960, Bell became director of publicity for children's books at the Viking Press (1960-68) and afterwards at Random House (1968-70). Joining the struggle for gay rights, he was one of the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance and served for a time as chairman of its publicity committee corresponding under the pseudonym "Arthur Irving". In 1970, having accepted an offer by Simon & Schuster to write a book about his experiences in the gay liberation movement, Bell resigned from publishing to devote full time to writing. A year later he also ceased his activities with the Gay Activists Alliance. In addition to his book Dancing the Gay Lib Blues: A Year in the Gay Liberation Movement (Simon & Schuster, 1971) Bell also published: Kings Don't Mean a Thing: The John Knight Murder Case (Morrow, 1978). During the last decade of his life he wrote many articles for the gay and mainstream press including Gay Power (for which he wrote a bi-weekly column), Gay, Esquire, Playboy and the New York Times. From 1970 he was a feature writer and columnist ("Bell Tells") for the Village Voice. In his reporting on the gay movement Bell was known for his lively, highly personalized, almost novelistic style which he proposed as an alternative to what he regarded as a lackluster journalism then in use.