What a new docuseries about The Blazing Saddle reveals about Des Moines' LGBTQ history

He had a title but no show.

That's how Iowa filmmaker Kristian Day and his closest friends began their yearlong journey to creating "The Last American Gay Bar," a six-episode docuseries on The Blazing Saddle, Des Moines' oldest gay bar that has become a cultural and community fixture for LGBTQ+ Iowans. The first three episodes — which premiered June 13 at the Varsity Cinema — showed a sold-out crowd a glimpse of how a group of gay Iowans navigated life spanning decades, as their city, state and nation changed.

Part of an episode recounts the iconic moment when a gay activist threw a pie in the face of celebrity and anti-gay activist Anita Bryant during a 1977 press conference in Des Moines and the fear that overshadowed the community after local public school teacher Ken Eaton was murdered in 1988. The show also touches on the impact of the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s.

Day, whose small team started the project last October, said up until that point, what he knew about Des Moines' gay community came from his barber, Rick Adkisson, over at the Dreamers Roosevelt Barbershop. Adkisson was among the first people to tell Day about 1970s Des Moines and the handful of gay bars that cropped up along Court Avenue that have long since shuttered such as the P.S. Lounge, The Country Cove and City Disco Park.

In those days, Adkisson sidelined as a cab driver while attending barber school, Day said.

"He talked about like there's an old gay bar downtown, like off Sixth Street, I think it was The Blue Goose, and he would pick up guys back then," said Day, a writer who also hosts the segment "Iowa Basement Tapes" on 98.9FM KFMG - Des Moines. "I'm just like what was it like, you know?"

"And he's just trying to explain to me like it's very different than it is now," said Day, who later wrote a few stories for the publication CityView based on what he learned from Adkisson. "(That bar) didn't really advertise itself as a gay bar. You just knew it. If you were part of the community, you knew what it was."

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From there, one thing led to another, Day says, and the door opened to meeting more prominent individuals in the community whose personal stories unfold in the docuseries that officially airs July 3 on the LGBTQ+ streaming channel OUTtv. Among those interviewed are Blazing Saddle founder and co-owner Bob "Mongo" Eikleberry, former bartenders Gary Moore and Greg Chamberlin, Rick Miller, veteran educator and interim president of Des Moines Gay Pride Center, and John Schmacker, former president of the Gay Coalition of Des Moines.

Here's what else you need to know about the series:

Telling the story of a community in hiding

Many individuals featured in the series spoke openly about being young and gay in Des Moines and in Iowa during the 1960s and 1970s with virtually no places to publicly gather. Back then, consensual sexual acts between LBGTQ people were criminalized.

The Saddle, which opened in 1983 in what is now the historic East Village, was seen as a beacon with Eikleberry as a mentor, confidant and father-figure to many, Moore said in an episode.

"I never wanted to be a living legend!" Eikleberry said in the show. "I just wanted to be one of the guys."

Throughout the series, many echoed what Adkisson had told Day about gay bars before The Saddle — they were discrete places where people feared being outed. Some used fake names, and no pictures were allowed at the bars, they said.

The lack of photos documenting those previous bars became a challenge for Day and his team who sought for visuals to supplement the interviews.

A Q&A panel held after the screening Thursday gave Day the chance to fill in a 200-plus audience on the technical side of the process. He relied on participants such as Eikleberry who willingly offered up family photos and other images of personal milestones. Throughout the film, younger versions of Eikleberry, including his service overseas during the Vietnam War and early years of The Saddle, flashed on the screen.

Day said his team had to be creative, stringing together grainy footage and rummaging through newspaper articles, including from the Des Moines Tribune and the Des Moines Register, to better illustrate the time periods and give more context.

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So, where did people meet?

Laughter from the audience filled the theater, as Moore and many more recalled Margo Frankel Woods State Park in Des Moines as a hookup spot for gay men. The park and The Blazing Saddle were among the few places listed in the Damron Travel Guides, a coveted resource since 1964 that offers details on hotels, resorts, bars and nightclubs for LGBTQ+ people.

More laughter came as Moore in the series dropped a tidbit about meeting other gay men at a "glory hole" in Merle Hay Mall's bathroom stall or "dirty bookstores" that once lined Court Avenue.

"We were still having to deal with the stress of telling your mother you're gay," said Chamberlain, adding everyone in the 1970s was "very much in the closet."

Some may find those details raunchy, but those threads illustrate what it was like for men to be gay decades ago and how they tried to find companionship and came to learn about their sexuality, Day said. Imagine, he says, having to do that all before computers, smartphones and dating apps.

"I always have to remind myself that our parents were young and our grandparents were young," said Day, adding the docuseries is rooted in understanding "who we are and who we were." Being part of the LGBTQ+ community may look different today, Day said, but there are things that have gone unchanged.

"A lot of the things that young people go through now, these people went through then," he said.

How to watch

"The Last American Gay Bar" will air July 3 on OUTtv, a Canadian English streaming channel that serves LGBTQ+ communities, and syndicated to other services such as Amazon Prime.

F. Amanda Tugade covers social justice issues for the Des Moines Register. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @writefelissa.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How you can watch new series about Des Moines gay bar Blazing Saddle