Was Varian Fry Gay? What His Son Said About Varian Fry’s Sexuality?

Sunny Anderson
Apr 08, 2023
Apr 08, 2023

This scene in episode two of Transatlantic will remain with viewers for a long time: Cory Michael Smith as Varian Fry is seated at a desk as a long line of desperate refugees wait to speak with him. He takes notes on each individual's plight as they plead, "Can you help me? I need a safe place. Please help me leave." Fry has to then ask them, "Are you a professional artist, politician, or published academic?" Knowing that he can't help most of them, he is overwhelmed and must repeatedly tell them, "I don't think we can help you." After one conversation, he leaves his office deeply affected. Upon learning of Varian Fry's story, viewers will be motivated to share it with others. There are many rumors left about Varian Fry, including his sexuality.

#1. What is known about Varian Fry?

Was Varian Fry Gay Source: IMDb

Born to an affluent Protestant family, Varian Fry (1907-67) graduated Harvard with a degree in classics, becoming a journalist and then a political-book editor. In 1935, he spent several months in Berlin, where he witnessed bloody anti-Jewish riots. The chief of Hitler’s foreign press division told him candidly that the Nazi party was divided on whether to relocate the Jews or exterminate them. Appalled, Fry reported the interview in The New York Times.

Was Varian Fry Gay Source: People

Five years later, Fry, only 32, returned to Europe as an agent for the private Emergency Rescue Committee, notwithstanding his lack of experience in refugee work, diplomacy, or spycraft. From a base in Marseille, he and his devoted staff helped refugees escape France by any means, legal or illegal. Fry pleaded for visas from the American consulate, but also arranged for fake passports and identity cards, bribes, and covert escapes over the mountains or by sea. A sympathetic American vice consul in Marseille aided Fry, but otherwise the State Department obstructed Fry’s work; it wanted to protect America’s neutral diplomatic status, as well as keep American borders closed to refugees. After his forced return to the United States, Fry wrote a hard-hitting article, “The Massacre of Jews in Europe,” for The New Republic, but this, like other reports, failed to soften American refugee policy.
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#2. Was varian fry gay?

Was Varian Fry Gay Source: USA Today

According to Fry’s son, Fry was a gay man at a time when it was impossible to lead an openly gay life. To show how agonizing this was, Orringer invents a past lover, Elliot Grant, who finds Fry in Marseille and asks for help in saving a friend’s son. Soon Fry and Grant have rekindled their secret romance, and Fry is questioning the morality of his mission to rescue prominent intellectuals. The fictional Fry ponders whether human beings are less worth saving if they can’t “write a perfect novel or make an enduring painting.”
Some reviewers have criticized Orringer for fictively speculating about Fry’s inner life, claiming that recent history, particularly Holocaust history, should not be muddied. In response, Orringer contends that a novelist may delve beneath the historical record in search of truths that a person couldn’t tell during his or her lifetime. Orringer’s fictional inventions are not history, but she hopes they help illuminate history as well as human complexity. The Flight Portfolio succeeds splendidly on both counts.
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