Page 238 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

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in the ointment until the night Drummer was burgled and the typesetting
machine that Marge Anderson had driven up from LA was stolen along
with other items necessary to the production of Drummer. We were robbed.
Our little sanctuary of art and sex had been invaded. Alarmed, I asked
Embry, “Have you called the cops?” He said, “No.” I asked, “Why not?” He
shrugged mysteriously and walked away.
That broke one bond of trust. A publisher should be a protector giving
artists and writers and staff safe space to create. In that den of thieves, I was
not about to leave my manuscripts and my Fritscher-Sparrow photographs
in a desk in a tres gay office to which so many temporary boyfriends and
momentary slaves and disgruntled employees had keys.
From all that the media has written about Begelman and Caudillo,
who was guilty and who was innocent? Was Begelman Mafia? The book
Indecent Exposure: The True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street written by
David McClintick characterizes Caudillo as a bureaucrat, “a stocky man in
his early thirties with thinning hair...who rather enjoyed pricking wealthy
show-business personalities with little government forms.” (Pages 9 and 10)
While Caudillo was pricking us unpaid mag-business workers with cost-
cutting concerns meaningful only to bean counters, my concern was only
how the creative side of Drummer could continue because so many of our
monthly contributors, like Ed Franklin, were beginning to hold their future
writing and pictures hostage for want of back pay. Caudillo’s boss Begelman
had led a long, secret life as a thief who had also tried to shake down stars
like Judy Garland until Oscar winner Cliff Robertson called the cops. In the
1960s, Begelman had been Garland’s agent at his company Freddie Fields
Associates. He was also the suicidal Garland’s lover who bandaged her wrists
and pushed her out on stage to sing live.
No one can even allege that Caudillo was the thief who burgled
Drummer; but, Caudillo seemed a nasty moment in time. I found out later
that during 1976 he was president of the “ACLU Gay Rights Chapter of
Southern California” which, if he were like Embry infiltrating the H.E.L.P.
organization, seemed little more than a political maneuver to drum up busi-
ness contacts. Did he bring out a deeper venality in Embry? From Caudillo’s
first arrival, the publicity hungry Embry bragged that Caudillo was “a star
in a big Hollywood scandal.” It was on the nightly news for months. The
complicated legal case involving the IRS whipped up a variety of media
speculation including the laundering of Mafia money and embezzlement.
Who knows the truth of what Caudillo did or did not do before, during, or
after Drummer, but several books and articles pro and con have investigated
the complicated scandal.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-16-2017
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