1. Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian, and author.
21 Facts About Vito Russo
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Vito Russo is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet, described in The New York Times as "an essential reference book" on homosexuality in the US film industry.
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Vito Russo was born in 1946 in Italian Harlem, Manhattan.
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Vito Russo obtained his undergraduate degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University and earned his Master's in film at New York University.
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Vito Russo developed his material following screenings of camp films shown as fundraisers for the Gay Activists Alliance.
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Vito Russo traveled throughout the country from 1972 to 1982, delivering The Celluloid Closet as a live lecture presentation with film clips at colleges, universities, and small cinemas such as the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco and the Hirschfeld Biograph in Dublin.
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Vito Russo worked for a time for The Emerald City on Channel J, where he interviewed public figures including John Waters.
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In 1983, Vito Russo wrote, produced, and hosted a series focusing on the gay community called Our Time for WNYC-TV public television, that was co-hosted by Marcia Pally.
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The Vito Russo Award is named in his memory and is presented to an openly gay or lesbian member of the media community for their outstanding contribution in combating homophobia.
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Vito Russo was actively involved in the AIDS direct action group ACT UP.
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Vito Russo appeared in the 1989 documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt as a "storyteller," relating the life and death of his lover Jeffrey Sevcik.
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In 1990, Vito Russo spent a year in California at the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching a class, titled "The Celluloid Closet".
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Vito Russo enjoyed being a professor, spending lecture breaks smoking and joking with his students.
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Vito Russo was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.
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Vito Russo's work was posthumously brought to television in the 1996 documentary film The Celluloid Closet, co-executive-produced and narrated by Lily Tomlin.
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Vito Russo's memorial was held at the Rutherford Congregational Church in Rutherford, New Jersey.
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Vito Russo appeared in the film Voices from the Front, a feature-length documentary in 1991 on AIDS activism in America created by the video collective Testing the Limits.
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Vito Russo's papers are held by the New York Public Library.
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The documentary film Vito Russo had its festival premiere within the 2011 New York Film Festival, went on to screen at the Maryland Film Festival, and had its television premiere on HBO on June 23,2012.
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From 1969 until his death, Vito Russo lived at 401 West 24th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan.
21.
In June 2019, Vito Russo was one of the inaugural 50 American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City's Stonewall Inn.