American writer and critic Parker Tyler was BOTD in 1904. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana to an impoverished Southern family, he was largely self-educated. In 1929, he became an editor for the literary periodical Blues, where he met fellow writer Charles Henri Ford. The two became lovers, moving to New York City together in 1930, where Tyler grew his hair long, wore velvet jackets with ascots and cravats and retained his Southern accent for dramatic effect. Relocating to Paris, they became part of Gertrude Stein‘s literary salon, socialising with Natalie Clifford Barney, Man Ray, Janet Flanner, Peggy Guggenheim and Djuna Barnes. In 1933, he and Ford co-wrote and published The Young and Evil, an experimental novel about young bisexual artists in New York, written in homage to Barnes and Stein. Returning to New York at the outbreak of World War Two, he joined a largely homosexual social circle including Carl Van Vechten, Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes, Lincoln Kirstein, Orson Welles, George Balanchine, e. e. cummings, Cecil Beaton and Salvador Dalí. In 1940, he and Ford co-founded and edited the avant-garde magazine View, commissioning contributions over the next seven years from writers Jorge Luis Borges, Henry Miller, Jean Genet and Albert Camus and artists Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee and Joan Miró. He also collaborated with filmmaker Maya Deren on her 1944 experimental film At Land, and published a poetry collection The Granite Butterfly. In 1945, he met aspiring filmmaker Charles Boultenhouse, who became his life partner, living together for the next 30 years. After View’s closure in 1947, he became a film critic, writing for Film Culture and Film Quarterly, championing underground filmmakers and collaborating with Boultenhouse on the experimental films Handwritten and Dionysus. Tyler published a number of books on film history, including Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies, one of the first books about homosexuality in cinema. He received a boost in popularity after being referenced in Gore Vidal’s cult 1968 novel Myra Breckinridge, leading to many of his books being republished. (Vidal later commented that “I’ve done for [Tyler] what Edward Albee did for Virginia Woolf“). Tyler lived with Boultenhouse until his death in 1974, aged 70. His film criticism influenced later generations of queer critics, including Vito Russo and Camille Paglia.