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Don’t Quote Me – Dinah Shore Weekend

“Dinah Shore’s dead. She died back in ’94. And, actually, the word is that she hated her snooty little golf tournament turned into a spring break for lesbians. Refused to acknowledge it.”

The L Word‘s Alice Pieszecki enlightening a carload of Dinah-bound buddies last season.

Whether Dinah Shore smiles down appreciatively at the thousands of lesbians that invade Palm Springs every March under banners bearing her name, or whether she considers us one giant, collective zit on the ass of her legacy, we’ll never know for sure. But, more importantly, few of us seem to care.

We think of Dinah in the way she thought of us-not so much.

“Who the fuck was Dinah Shore?” is a question I was asked a few times by the inebriated the year I went to the infamous party known simply as Dinah. And it’s a fair question given that one of Shore’s major contributions to society was a hit from the 40’s, unfamiliar to most lesbians-a little ditty called “It’s So Nice to Have a Man Around the House.” Not exactly “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”

The Q & A usually went something like this:

“Dinah was an entertainer,” I told one young woman.

“Was she at Stonehenge?”

“Hmm.” I thought about that. “Maybe. But I think you mean Stonewall.”

“No. No, I mean Stonehenge.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the Great Stonehenge Lesbian Upheaval?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“No, she wasn’t there; that was Dinah Washington.”

“Who?”

I shouldn’t toy with the young, drunk and naïve who are trying to wrap their foggy heads around the stupid name of an event we all love so much, but I can’t help it. It’s amusing and more than a little interesting to me that the Dinah Shore Weekend lesbian blowout is named after a woman who not only did nothing fabulous for the lesbian community, but also never publicly supported us.

As The L Word‘s Alice pointed out, Dinah didn’t embrace the ‘Lesbians Gone Wild’ aspect of her golf tournament. And perhaps for that reason alone the annual lesbian group grope should be renamed The Dinah Score Weekend.

I’m kidding…sort of. I know that names tend to stick, especially the less flattering ones. I also realize that Dinah Shore was no enemy, no Jerry Falwell, and that the Dinah Shore Weekend isn’t the Jerry Falwell Commemorative Anal Sex-Travaganza Weekend. But it’s bizarre just the same that we cling to her name as though we want to rub her dispassion in post mortem, or as if we owe her something for her indifference.

The only common denominator between Dinah Shore the person and Dinah the party is a golf tournament that very few people care about (the Kraft Nabisco Championship) and that’s hosted by an association (the LPGA) that can’t even bring itself to admit that lesbians exist. And I think that’s weird. Where’s the love?

There is none.

Portia de Rossi would have to carpet-bomb the Mission Hills Country Club and then dance naked on what’s left of the 18th green for anyone at the Dinah parties to put down their cocktails or stop throwing balls in the hotel pools. And it’s extremely likely that after being given the details of the explosion, an LPGA spokesperson say, “Really? Portia DiRossi’s a lesbian? We didn’t know that and, well, we don’t really want to know.”

When she founded the Colgate/Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle Golf Championship in 1972, Dinah Shore raised the stakes in golf, literally. She used her influence and charm to make the championship the first important money-winning women’s tournament in the country. But she hadn’t a clue what her hard work and name would eventually morph into.

Had Dinah known her golf classic would become a rather dull backdrop to one of the most popular lesbian parties on the planet, would she have agreed to put her name on it? That’s hard to say for sure, but probably not. It’s clear that the way Dinah lived her life couldn’t be further removed from the largest party to ever acknowledge it.

Dinah Shore was a proper southern lady with only decent intentions.

Unlike the thong-and sports bra-clad lesbians that flock to the desert every spring for the tourney cum drunken orgy, Shore wasn’t the type do body shots off of beautifully tanned strangers at eight in the morning. She reeked of class. She sipped lemonade from crystal goblets, I imagine, and owned a lot of collared shirts.

Throughout her career as a singer and talk show host, Dinah Shore was the quintessential girl-next-door—pretty, white (although rumored, detrimentally, to have African-American ancestry), wholesome, well mannered and cheerful. She is remembered by those who knew her as a woman who oozed goodness straight from the center of her cardigan-draped heart.

If Dinah Shore had a constant craving of the k.d. sort, it was, and still is, a very well kept secret. The only sexually risqué thing that’s ever been written about her is that in the 70s she rose to Demi Moore-like status for being Burt Reynolds’ “older” girlfriend.

Still, she’ll always be remembered as more Mary Tyler Moore than Demi Moore. And that’s important for one reason only: The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song provides a nice segue to the lesbian invasion of Shore’s once homophobic, but well-manicured, turf.

“Love is all around, no need to waste it.

You can have a town, why don’t you take it…”

Um, okay. How about Palm Springs ?

One can try to argue that Dinah Shore, despite her indifference to lesbians, gave us a gift like no other — a reason to gather annually and party like love children of Sappho and Robert Downey Jr. But she really didn’t even do that.

Who did? For the answer to that question we have to go to the drama department. Every large lesbian party has one and Dinah is no exception.

Three women, former business associates, are all responsible for the Dinah we know today — Mariah Hanson of Club Skirts fame, and Robin Gans and Sandy Sachs, the Girl Bar babes. Together they turned the homo-dry Palm Springs desert into a mecca for lesbians, complete with pulsating beats that call us to pray over rivers of alcohol from which we drink heavily—very heavily. Because of them it’s believed that all adult lesbians must make the pilgrimage to Palm Springs at least once in their lifetimes. Okay, as often as possible.

Anyway, it was very Bugsy Siegel of them, only no one got shot.

Which of the partners actually started the event isn’t clear; reports are conflicting. Hanson, according to her website, credits herself with “inventing the modern day Dinah.” She claims “her different concept, an exclusive hotel and parties within walking distance, helped catapult the Dinah Shore Weekend to international fame.”

Gans and Sachs—partners in life, as well as business—aren’t as bold with their claims. With the help of the media they only imply that Dinah is their baby. In May of 2001, the UK Observer reported on the origins of their Dinah parties. “Eleven years ago, Sandy Sachs and Robin Gans, owners of the Los Angeles lesbian club Girl Bar, came to the tournament, were bored rigid, and saw an opportunity. They started promoting hotel packages, music clubs and pool parties during the golf weekend… Over the past few years, due largely to their efforts, the weekend has turned into a lesbian bacchanal…”

As life, luck or some other L word would have it, after years of working together to provide lesbians with a dream oasis, the three have split up. And the divorce has been messy. Hanson filed suit against Gans and Sachs last year.

According to a report last month in the Palm Springs’ Desert Sun, “In her lawsuit filed in October, Hanson alleges a litany of charges that include claims Sachs and Gans hid assets such as ticket sales and customer lists; made disparaging remarks about her to vendors and used the trade name ‘The Dinah Shore Weekend’ without permission.”

See what I mean? Cling.

I know, I know; it’s business. And, of course if someone has cheated someone else,then that someone should pay. But the name? Let it go, ladies. Slap something else on a

T-shirt. No one gives a flying football what the party is called. Just keep bringing the booze, the music and the entertainers to Palm Springs — build it and we will come. And we’ll come back, every year…for the rest of our lives…until we die.

Really, we will.

Regardless of what happens in a courtroom, we will love Hanson, Gans and Sachs just the same because we’ll continue to benefit. There will be twice as many events this year as a result of their disagreements, and that could mean twice as many women. Let’s hope there are also twice as many bartenders and bathrooms.

The one thing we’ll never have to hope for, though, is that men won’t crash the party. I’m pretty sure we lesbians have got that one weekend in March locked up, and I’m happy about that.

Dinah Shore probably wouldn’t be so happy, though. She might have enjoyed the company of women golfers, but she was extremely fond of men.

“I owe everything—my success and happiness—to men,” she once said.

Well, not everything, Dinah.

For more on the Dinah Shore Weekend, go to thedinah.com or dinahshoreweekend.com.

Kim Ficera is the author of Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: An Unonventional Life Uncensored. Her bi-weekly column Don’t Quote Me is dedicated to all the folks in and out of Hollywood who talk without thinking or who don’t know when to stop talking. Email her at [email protected].

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