Legacy of Voices is an oral history project created in 2008 by Lara Spotts and Brian O’Donnell, inspired by their realization that to better understand their own lives, they could turn to LGBTQ+ community members who had gone before them. From 2008-2012, Lara and Brian recorded interviews with gay and lesbian elders over age 70 in New York, Pennsylvania, and Montreal. Hearing the stories of these elders with their passions and beliefs, failures and successes, and reflections moved Brian and Lara deeply, and helped them chart their own paths forward. Meanwhile, the actual interview tapes sat in a box in Brian’s closet for over a decade, until Brian discovered OUTWORDS—a unique opportunity for these remarkable, nearly-lost stories to be seen, heard, studied, and celebrated by queer people and allies around the globe. OUTWORDS thanks Lara Spotts and Brian O’Donnell for their visionary work, and for donating thirteen Legacy of Voices interviews to OUTWORDS.

Shirley Scully, who went by Scully, was a figure of fascinating contradictions. An employee of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations who disliked militant activism, a talent agent who professed not to care about theater, and a firebrand liberal given to racism and ageism, Scully was a vivid reminder that the queer community, like any other, is populated by flawed, problematic humans. 

Scully was born in Manhattan in 1928, and remained there for the rest of her life. She first discovered her attraction to women at age six experimenting with another girl, and later stayed up nights reading the seminal 1928 lesbian novel The Well Of Loneliness under the covers in her room. 

After graduating from Adelphi University in 1950, Scully worked various jobs while plunging enthusiastically into Greenwich Village nightlife. In her early 20s, someone told her parents about Scully’s visits to a Village lesbian bar called L’s, and her father turned up to take her home; Scully forced herself to leave calmly, not wanting to make a scene. While she knew people who were swept up in police busts of gay bars, Scully herself never was. And while she admired aspects of the post-Stonewall liberation movement, she never attended a march, later asserting, “I still wouldn’t.”

Scully enjoyed dating as a gay woman, recalling, “Straight people always courted… we didn’t have to go through all that. If you wanted to go to bed, you went to bed.” But she was always unhappy in relationships, which she largely attributed to her chronic jealousy. She did date a few men—one even proposed to her—but recalled that she “always counted my laundry” during sex with them.

In 1959, the renowned Hollywood and Broadway agent Gus Schirmer Jr. hired Scully as an assistant. Over the next decade, she learned a tremendous amount about the New York theater scene, and started her own agency in the 1970s with a friend named Pat. They had a major early success submitting actors for the 1979 premiere production of Sweeney Todd, getting four of their clients into the show. One of her favorite compliments came from a woman who worked with director Hal Prince, who told Scully, “We will always see anybody that you send, because you always send people that aren’t ridiculous.”

Seven years later, Scully and Pat were no longer enjoying the representation business and shuttered their firm. Scully joined the staff of Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS in 1985, then later took a position at the AIDS advocacy organization Body Positive. After the latter went out of business, she found herself retired, which she despised: “Everyone I know who retires, dies.” Shirley lived a good while longer, eventually passing away in approximately 2017.

In her interview, Scully deployed racist language about New Yorkers, and spoke about younger generations in ageist terms. When OUTWORDS received Scully’s interview through the Legacy of Voices collection, it sparked extensive conversations about how to handle the content. On the one hand, we didn’t want to whitewash the historical record by categorically excluding Scully’s interview. On the other hand, we were keenly aware of the harm that this interview could cause if we didn’t in some manner forewarn those who might stumble across its inflammatory words. This led us to create a rigorous Content Advisory initiative, not just for Scully’s interview, but for our entire archive, which we are now in the process of implementing.

That Shirley Scully’s racism and ageism led us to a higher standard of care for our audience is just one more way in which Scully was a living contradiction, and remains one posthumously.

Bio Author: Mac Rogers