FRANK WEBBER (AKA BASTILLE)
A MEMORY
BY TED TITOLO

Bastille (Frank Webber)
L'Asile, 1987
Gouache on board
11.5 x 5"
Founder's purchase

Ted Titolo
Sailors, Coney Island
B&W photograph

Ted Titolo
Frank on the way to Chartres
B&W photograph

Ted Titolo
Frank and Angelo
B&W photograph

My first meeting association with Frank Webber (later known as Bastille) was in the early 1940s when my family moved from rural NJ to Westwood so that I could attend high school. Webber and I worked on the school yearbook together. He lived at home with his bedridden adoptive mother but never mentioned his father. He was a sweetheart—friendly, generous, fun-loving, soft spoken, easygoing—a natural artist and an avid reader. In 1943-45 we, the younger students, looked up to the school heroes, those who had died in the war and the older classmates ready for war. Maybe it was the war that pulled us all together with no snobbery—rich and poor farmers’ kids, bankers’ kids—we all got on with open affection. Although Webber and I very much enjoyed working together, we weren’t buddies—I was too busy with my heartthrob/sex buddy, Skip.

After college and my army discharge—mental problems—I went through an internal tug of war. Doctors insisted I have sex with women as a way to treat my symptoms, but girls bored me. Then I ran into Webber at the Westwood Library where he had an abstract painting in a group exhibition. He and his lover, Paul Janke, introduced me to the gay world of Newark and New York.

In 1958, Webber’s mother had died, and he sold off the house and its contents, keeping only the books and his mother’s wheelchair, which he used all his life. He said it was most practical for moving around when painting or drawing, but I thought it had a symbolic meaning too.

After Webber graduated from Pratt Institute, he had immediate success as an illustrator for top publications, especially Esquire, and a notable, ad campaign for PanAm. At the time, Duane Michals was working at Time magazine and the two met. Janke, Michals, Webber, and I often drove out to Coney Island so we could cruise sailors. We took lots of photos on these excursions. Webber introduced me to Sherrie Murakami, an editor at Esquire (she and her family had suffered in the Japanese internment camps during WWII). She was a charmer, and we all began to pal around together.

Webber moved to Paris in 1959, and Murakami and I went to visit him. We stayed in his pensione. He already had a steady boyfriend, who arranged for a beautiful French/Spanish friend, Angelo, to be my date. Webber worked at Citroen, but he bought a Karmann Ghia, and often we all made trips to secret gay restaurants outside Paris. Then we drove down to Chartres; a beautiful happy time. Murakami returned to New York, and Webber, Angelo and I headed for Geneva, Bologna, and Florence. In Geneva’s gay bars we encountered German boys and bull dykes playing S&M games with high boots, monocles, and riding crops. While in Florence we took advantage of an introduction from a New York colleague of mine to visit a rich socialite composer in his villa in Fiesole. At the Piazza Michelangelo we all parted company. It was sad leaving Florence, and I had fallen in love with Angelo who swore eternal love to me. Webber couldn’t stop laughing at my easy seduction.

At about the same time Duane Michals bought a camera, quit Time magazine, and went to Russia. He had an exhibition of these photos in the early 60s in New York—simple Pop art portraits of Russian wrestlers and sailors: an instant hit.

In 1963, Webber visited me when I lived in Columbia Heights in New York. He brought a new boyfriend, who couldn’t speak English, and who pouted and cooked French fries for hours. Webber already had a long-running relationship with a dominant older American guy who lived in Europe. In Paris Webber was part of the circle of the porn filmmaker, Halsted. I used Webber’s description of dinner at Halsted’s in a play I wrote in the 1970’s "Fantasy Street," an S&M version of suburban life and corporate executive competition.

When Webber moved to the south of France, we continued to correspond. He began his erotic illustrations and sent me copies of them and occasionally an original drawing. I donated one of the drawings to LLGAF.

Another visit from Webber when I lived in Hell’s Kitchen was probably 1982. I had a dress mannequin for the first section of “Delusions of the Real World—Dance Around a Mannequin of a Tyrannical Child” (later shortened to “Mannequin Dance” for the video). Frank and I put on frumpy Woolworth housewife dresses and gossiped like our mothers in the 1940s. He named the mannequin “Bebi,” in typical French style.

Also in 1982 he sent me photos of polished S&M paintings, sort of science fiction shit scenes and incroyable muscle nudes. He then arranged to have them exhibited at Stompers (10 or 12 paintings). Along with Stompers owner, Lou Weingarten, we visited the Mineshaft. Webber had heard of its reputation, but once there he relaxed for a beer and we all then left. I hate to think that was his last night in the USA. I then lost track of Webber. Numerous letters were returned. It was only recently that I learned that he had died in 1990.

Ah! Frank. One of the truly special people you meet in life—talent and grace.
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Ted Titolo is a longtime friend of The Foundation. He has donated the entirety of his art from his long and creative life to The Foundation. He continues to create art and to write. He is a frequent contributor to The Archive.