Newport, February 1919, Chief Machinist’s Mate Ervin Arnold is transferred to Naval Station Newport. Arnold has severe arthritis, and he almost immediately checks into the hospital for medical attention. There, he overhears snippets of a thriving underground subculture within the Navy: drinking, partying, drugs, cross-dressing, and queer sex. Enraged, Arnold “takes it upon himself to start a sting operation to eliminate anything queer in the Navy” and proceeds to launch what would become one of the first government-sanctioned policing of gay people in the military, says Matthew Lawrence. Later, Arnold’s actions would become known as the Newport Navy sex scandal of 1919.
The concept feels like a Hollywood drama, and from the creative minds of Lawrence and Jason Tranchida, it basically has become one. Lawrence and Tranchida, a collaborative artistic team based in Providence, are the co-creators of the immersive video experience “Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza” that tells the salacious true story of what happened to Newport’s queer Navy Sailors in 1919. “Scandalous Conduct,” a documentary musical that promises to showcase the drama, absurdity, and all the many twists and turns this century-old scandal, premiered at The Great Friends Meeting House September 12th.
“This was supposed to be a six-month project,” remembers Lawrence, thinking back to 2019 when he and Tranchida first heard about the historic narrative. The team had read about an artist who had commissioned a series of prints about the scandal, “and with Matthew being a Rhode Island native, we were like ‘how did we not know about this?!’” Tranchida recalls. They started digging, reading more about it from a scholarly article published by the University of Connecticut. Originally, the team thought it could be an article for “Headmaster,” their queer art magazine, but deeper they dug, the more they realized this wasn’t a story that could fit into just ten pages. Lawrence and Tranchida combed through the Rhode Island Archives, the Naval Historical Collections Archives in Newport, and even the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Another struggle occurred in the process of properly conceptualizing how to tell this story. A linear progression couldn’t quite capture its grandiosity, tension, and drama – the scandal is filled with many different characters with their own motives, desires, and actions on local, regional, and even national scales. To capitalize on his vision of eradicating queerness within the Navy, Arnold teamed up with welfare officer Lieutenant Erastus Hudson from the hospital and got the green light to begin his investigation by the Assistant Secretary to the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt.
Arnold recruited fourteen enlisted Sailors and took them into the basement of the hospital to give them a most important spy mission: “have gay sex with suspected ‘fairies’ and write daily reports about it,” sums up Tranchida. Hundreds of those daily reports can be found in the National Archives. Those “caught” and reported as queer were imprisoned on a decommissioned ship in Newport Harbor, surviving for months in brutal conditions.
During this same period of time, the Navy produced a “drag-show” musical called “Jack and the Beanstalk: A Fairy Extravaganza” in an effort to get young men who lived in New England excited about joining the Navy. It was, in effect, “like another sting operation that was happening simultaneously [to Arnold’s plot],” Lawrence explains.
Then, the scandal broke. A “Providence Journal” editor, John Rathom, had been following the Navy trials of Sailors and community members accused of sodomy and “scandalous conduct.” He had a “personal vendetta” against the Navy, and with his influence in the press, launched the proceedings into national headlines, explains Lawrence. Arnold’s operation, which was tentatively serving as a pilot program to expand into other Navy bases, ended in disgrace.
“Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza” draws upon elements from vaudeville-style Navy musical, the daily reports of Arnold’s spies, archival photographs of Navy Sailors to create this video project. Audio of real daily reports will play over recreated shots of the archival photographs, and to add a bit of satire to the piece, the more serious moments will be intercut with musical theatre performances of the original “Jack and the Beanstalk: A Fairy Extravaganza.” Lawrence and Tranchida found the score at Brown University, and the team assembled a small theatre troupe and a ten-piece band – including Claire Annette, a Providence-based drag queen and professional clarinetist – to recreate the musical. Altogether, the piece will be showcased on three screens, like a triangle, playing non-simultaneous video. The show “found the form it needed to be,” says Tranchida.
The experimental video installation is produced with support from the Brown Arts Institute as a part of the inaugural IGNITE Series/PVD+ Projects festival that was launched with the opening of the Lindemann Performing Arts Center in October 2023. The show, which is about one hour long, will play on a looping schedule every Thursday through Sunday until October 6 from 12-4 p.m. Special evening hours will be held on September 21 for an artist talk with the creators. On October 1, 6:30pm, the RI Historical Society, 110 Benevolent Street, Providence, will host a discussion with Lawrence and Tranchida about the making of “Scandalous Conduct”. While registration is required for the special events, admission to the show is free and open to the public. Register here.
This story originally appeared in What’s Up Newp. We have updated it here.
Ruthie Wood is a recent graduate from Johns Hopkins University and burgeoning writer. As she works on her dreams of becoming a novelist, you can find her writing about Rhode Island living for What’sUpNewp. She has also written articles for Hey Rhody, Providence Monthly, The Bay, and SO Rhode Island magazines.
