David Wilde (1917 - 2001) writer, publisher.

David Wilde was born to rich parents in New York. He was an avid cross dresser from childhood. After doing a degree in English Literature at Yale University he married Mary Scott. They had two daughters. He became a news writer and film critic. For several years from 1949 he published The Record, a weekly in the Westchester County village of Bedford. Later he worked in public relations.

Gail in 1961

David and Mary separated in 1960, and David moved to an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan and then later to another in Greenwich Village. As Gail he subscribed to Virginia Prince’s Transvestia, and became a New York contact for the Foundation for Full Personality Expression, (FPE). Those who knew both David and Gail found Gail to be less abrasive, but both personae were negative about gays and transsexuals.

Gail met Katherine Cummings at Susanna Valenti’s D’Eon Resort, and met Darrell Raynor when the latter used the contact listings in Transvestia. Gail’s antique-filled apartment was open as a meeting place for transvestites, and she would answer the phone with “Downtown Branch” in recognition of Susanna’s uptown location.  At this time David was the publisher of Girl Talk, distributed free in beauty parlours.

In 1968 David met Joan Bennett (1910-90), the film star and member of the New York acting dynasty, at a party.   Joan had been in Bulldog Drummond, 1929, Little Women, 1933, Trade Winds, 1938, Scarlet Street, 1945. Her third husband, Walter Wanger jealously shot and injured her agent in 1951 which almost ended her career. She finally divorced Wanger, who served four months for the shooting, in 1965.

When she met David she was appearing in the occult soap opera, Dark Shadows, 1966-71. They dated for ten years. When David told her about Gail, she was initially dismayed, but afterwards she was unperturbed. David asked Harry Benjamin to talk to her about cross-dressing.

They married in 1978, shortly after she was in Dario Argento’s Suspiria, 1977. Only a few weeks later they awoke to find their Scarsdale house on fire. The police decided that it was arson, and even suspected David, but no-one was ever arrested.

David and Joan remained married almost 13 years, during which David did no cross-dressing as such, although he maintained a longtime friendship with Katherine Cummings whom he wrote to as Gail.  In 1989 David berated her when she was about to have surgery, and tried to talk her out of it for the harm that she was doing to her family.

Joan died of a heart attack at age 80. Afterwards Gail was quickly resurrected.

David committed suicide at age 84 in despair at how the world was going.

*Not the pianist/composer, nor the cricketer, nor the writer for Rolling Stone
* Not Girl Talk the pre-teen magazine.

• Darrell Raynor. A Year Among the Girls. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966. New York: Lancer Books, 1968: 32, 42-3, 45-53.
• Brian Kellow. The Bennetts: An Acting Family. Lexington, : University Press of Kentucky, 2004: 428-9, 440-1.
• Katherine Cummings. Katherine's Diary- the Story of a Transsexual. William Heinemann Australia 1992. Revised and updated 2008: 133-8, 151-2, 195-6, 277, 317, 391.
• The Peerage: Page 29808. http://thepeerage.com/p29808.htm#i298078.