Bob Hull

Robert Booth “Bob” Hull

Bob Hull, 1936
Born	May 31, 1918
Died:	May 1, 1962
Role:	Founder of the Mattachine Society

Biographical Profile

by David Hughes
Submitted to C. Todd White on October 26, 2008

In November 1950, Bob Hull co-founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles with Harry Hay, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, and Rudi Gernreich. The Mattachine set the stage for the gay liberation activism of the 1960s and 1970s, but because of his suicide in 1962, Hull wouldn’t see the movements, marches, and militancy that would soon follow.

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Early Life

Bob Hull grew up in a rural suburb of Minneapolis. Neither politics nor activism were themes in his early life, but he may have participated in a 1936 student walkout in support of a popular principal. Despite being open about his homosexuality, he proposed marriage to a fellow student at music college, abruptly transferring to the University of Minnesota’s Chemistry program after her refusal. During this first term he met Chuck Rowland, a graduate student, and they became lovers briefly. Upon graduating in 1943, Hull entered graduate school and became a research assistant until leaving the University in 1947.

The Mattachine

After the war, Rowland became a Communist organizer, recruiting Hull who accompanied Rowland on house visits. At some point, the two discussed organizing homosexuals, a dream of Rowland’s since childhood. Rowland left the Party in 1948 and moved to Los Angeles, followed by Hull. Still a Communist, Hull attended a local labor school through which the two met Harry Hay, who taught musicology. In mid-1950, to avoid the anti-Communist witch-hunts, Rowland, Hull, and another CP member left for Mexico, intending to relocate, but returning by fall. Re-enrolling in Hay’s class, Hull received from Hay a blueprint for a homophile support group, which Hull showed to Rowland and Hull’s lover Dale Jennings (another Communist). Enthusiastic about Hay’s prospectus, they met with Hay and his lover Rudi Gernreich on 11 November 1950, the first of many meetings that failed to attract other principals—until the spring of 1951 when Jim Gruber and his lover Konrad Stevens joined, bringing the core group to seven.

The Mattachine Foundation and its underground counterpart, Mattachine Society, were the manifestations of Hay’s original prospectus, which conceived of homosexuals as a cultural minority—a theoretical underpinning embraced by Rowland but questioned by Jennings and others as disregarding significant differences between individual homosexuals. Mattachine was taken from a subject of Hay’s class: a medieval “society of fools” (Hay’s original choice for a moniker), whose contrarian ways seemed a fit for the new organization. It’s possible that Bob Hull, recalling the name from the class, suggested it in lieu of Hay’s choice—the name’s obscurity allowing for both anonymity and the opportunity for careful explanation to the curious.

Unlike Hay, Rowland, Jennings, and Stevens, Hull isn’t remembered for his involvement or commitment, but he did contribute—by leading discussion groups (the organization’s initial stock-in-trade) and his role in the group’s written propaganda. He was nicknamed “Viceroy” of the Mattachine due to his ability in meetings to render understandable the content of heady discussions. As his involvement grew, Hull stopped attending Communist Party meetings. He also stopped seeing Dale Jennings: according to Harry Hay, it was that breakup in early 1952 that led Jennings to cruise Westlake Park, resulting in his arrest, but more significantly, leading to the cause célèbre, and court victory in June, that would put the Mattachine on the map amongst homophiles in Los Angeles, in California, and eventually in the country at large.

Mattachine Meltdown

Less than a year later, due in part to this exponential growth, the founders faced opposition by Northern California members who didn’t share the radical roots of Hay, Rowland, Hull, and Jennings. At a statewide constitutional convention in April and May 1953—held at the First Universalist Church where he later would become organist—Bob Hull is remembered as having questioned whether the founders could withstand an investigation conducted by, say, a Senate Committee tipped off by red-baiting northerners. Just as Harry Hay had left the Communist Party in 1951 for the greater good of both organizations, the core group agreed to step aside for the long-term benefit of the Mattachine. One can imagine Bob’s ex-lover Dale Jennings taking bittersweet satisfaction in this turn of events, having himself questioned what he had in common with right-wing members of Hay and Rowland’s “cultural minority.”

Post-Mattachine

With his departure from the Mattachine, Hull seems to have shed a skin. Leaving activism behind, he continued to socialize with people like Chuck Rowland, Jim Gruber, member Martin Block, and psychologist Evelyn Hooker. Along with a longtime best friend, and a new (and last) lover, Bob contributed his talent to Rowland’s short-lived, homophile-friendly Church of One Brotherhood. Bob even joined the Universalist Church where he moonlighted as organist. He and his lover enjoyed outdoor camping, performing chamber music, and spending holidays with Bob’s mother and relatives.

Later Years and Death

Bob Hull is described by his last lover, a psychologist, as being a depressed type. During years in therapy, Hull’s psychiatrist actually employed an amphetamine-type stimulant in order to overcome Bob’s reluctance to open up. Returning home after these sessions, Bob was animated to distraction, and used alcohol to come down—an emotional and psychological seesawing routine that, undertaken on a regular basis, surely took a toll. When his lover of seven years felt the need to separate from Bob for personal reasons, Bob was faced with either living alone, which he couldn’t abide, or seeking out a new mate, which he found daunting as he approached middle age. Although his best friend stood by him, Bob allowed a crippling introversion, and an aversion to confrontation—nurtured in childhood by his excessively pacific mother—to prevail. Just days after finding himself single, and a month before his forty-fourth birthday, Bob Hull killed himself. It was May 1, 1962: International Workers’ Day.

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Text by David Hughes. Copyright (©) by David Hughes, 2008. All rights reserved.
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