Before “gay” became an identity, there were “temperamentals.” Los Angeles, 1950. Homosexuality is a crime, careers can be destroyed by accusation alone, and gay men have learned to recognize one another through coded words and carefully guarded gestures. Against this backdrop, Communist organizer Harry Hay and Viennese refugee and fashion designer Rudi Gernreich fall in love and embark on something even more dangerous: creating an organization in which homosexuals can find one another and begin demanding a place in American society. That organization becomes the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest and most influential gay rights groups in the United States. But building a movement means risking exposure, livelihoods, friendships, and love itself. Jon Marans's acclaimed play The Temperamentals brings a nearly forgotten chapter of queer history vividly to life through the men who lived it. At once a political drama and an intimate love story, the play captures the courage, compromises, humor, arguments, and desires of men attempting to imagine a community before such a community was supposed to exist. Witty, moving, and deeply human, The Temperamentals reminds us that Stonewall was not the beginning. Years before a movement took to the streets, a handful of men met behind closed doors and dared to believe they were not alone. Features a foreword by actor Michael Urie and an afterword by Michael Bronski. David Mixner provides the introduction, and Joel Nikolaou provides an essay on Rudi Gernreich. A Chelsea Station Edition title. A Stonewall Book Award Honor, Barbara Gittings Literature Award.