PERKINS 28: Testimony from the Secret Court Files of 1920
Background
In 1920, Harvard University convened a secret court to interview, charge and discipline students suspected of homosexuality. Thirty-seven men testified before the Court including a tutor, an assistant professor, Harvard students and several Boston men. After two weeks of testimony, eight Harvard men were forced to withdraw, one of whom committed suicide. The incident was kept secret for more than eighty years until The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, exposed the trial on November 13, 2002.
Characters
- Eugene Cummings, Harvard Class of 1922. Left Harvard College on June 5, 1920. Committed suicide at Stillman Infirmary on June 11, 1920.
- Kenneth Day, Harvard Class of 1922. Resident of Perkins Hall. Former roommate of Cyril Wilcox. Left Harvard College on June 5, 1920.
- Stanley Gilkey, Harvard Class of 1923. Resident of Perkins Hall. Left Harvard College on June 5, 1920. Readmitted to Harvard College in 1921.
- Joseph Lumbard, Jr. Harvard Class of 1922. Resident of Perkins Hall, Room 24. Roommates with Edward Say. Left Harvard College on June 11, 1920.
- Ernest Weeks Roberts, Harvard Class of 1922. Resident of Perkins Hall, Room 28. Left Harvard College on June 5, 1920.
- Harold Saxton, Harvard Class of 1919. Employed as Harvard College tutor. Banished from Harvard College in 1920 without recommendation.
- Edward Say, Harvard Class of 1922. Resident of Perkins Hall, Room 24. Roommates with Joseph Lumbard, Jr. Left Harvard College in June 1920. Killed in a car accident on July 13, 1930.
- Keith Smerage, Harvard Class of 1922. Resident of Perkins Hall. Left Harvard College on June 9, 1920. Committed suicide on September 8, 1930 in New York City.
- Nathaniel Wollf, Harvard Class of 1919. American serviceman in France during World War I. Left Harvard College on June 5, 1920.
Production
Based on actual testimony, PERKINS 28: Testimony from the Secret Court Files of 1920 is a dramatic reenactment of the closed room trial, nine intense episodes of testimony before the Court. As an educational document of discrimination in the early 20th Century, the film was shot entirely on location in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an all-male cast of Harvard undergraduates portraying their academic forebears, both the defendants and the members of the Court. Written, produced and directed by Michael Van Devere. (Fabular Films, 2008)
Publications
From The Harvard Crimson (Nov. 13, 2008): With this emphasis on loyalty to the actual events—as well as to the men they affected—the screenplay draws from the documented testimonies of the defendants. Van Devere does not depict the frequent parties the group held in Perkins 28, nor the suicide of one of the trial’s targets, Dental School student Eugene R. Cummings. “I decided that recreating those events would be false, whereas the testimony is right there, ready for exposure,” he says. “The film looks like one interview after the other, more or less talking heads. I think that was truer to the events within the office of the court as opposed to creating fictionalized, sentimental, romantic portraits of these men.”
References
PERKINS 28: Testimony from the Secret Court Files of 1920 on YouTube
Silenced Voices Finally Speak Out in 'Perkins 28' on The Harvard Crimson
