Monroe Wheeler 
Glenway Wescott 
George Platt Lynes
This week I’m featuring three men who for nearly twenty years lived in a polymorous relationship in the first half of the 20th century. Monroe and Glenway first met in 1919 at the Poetry, Club of the University of Chicago when Monroe was twenty and Glenway was eighteen. In 1927 the two would meet George and form a unique bond. Back in 1998 a picture book of this thruple’s travels through Europe between 1925 – 1935 called When We Were Three “The Expatriate Years” was published. It is amazing to think the eyebrows these three must have raised wherever they went.
Monroe Wheeler (1899 – 1988) was an American publisher and museum coordinator. He would spend the rest of his life with Glenway Wescott and die one year after Wescott’s passing, requesting that his ashes be buried with his lifelong partner.
Glenway Wescott (1901 – 1987) was an American poet, novelist and essayist. He mixed with many American expatriates in Europe and was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
George Platt Lynes (1907 – 1955) was an American photographer who worked in the 1930s and 1940s, producing many photographs that featured gay artists and writers. These were acquired by the Kinsey Institute after his death in 1955.
I dedicate this weekly post, featuring vintage gay photographs, to the men and women who lived in a more critical time where being true to yourself and loving who you want wasn’t always an option and came at a great price. Do you have a photo you would like to share? Email me at bosguymail@gmail.com.
