Another guy-meets-guy love story

While God's weatherman, Pat Robertson, says it's due to demonic possession, here's another story of a couple who met, fell in love, just lived their lives, and the earth swallowed no one up, no straight people's marriages failed, no religious faith crumbled:

          New Yorkers tend to believe that creative people trapped in America’s hinterlands hunger to come to their big, pulsating city to fulfill their dreams. In the case of Cris Alexander, it was true.

          “I came to New York because I thought they were waiting for me,” he once said, recalling how he fled Tulsa, Okla., in 1938 with a high school classmate, Tony Randall.

          Mr. Alexander didn’t reach the peaks Mr. Randall did, but he did land a major part in “On the Town,” the 1944 musical that introduced Broadway to its composer, Leonard Bernstein; Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who wrote the book and lyrics; and Jerome Robbins, the show’s choreographer.

But rather than on the stage, Mr. Alexander made it in New York as a photographer, taking portraits of the likes of Martha Graham and Vivien Leigh; having gallery shows; working for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and the New York City Ballet; and providing droll pictures for the best-selling 1961 satire of a movie star’s memoir, “Little Me,” written by Patrick Dennis and later adapted for the Broadway stage by Neil Simon.

          And he found love. When same-sex marriage became legal in New York last year, he married Shaun O’Brien, the celebrated character dancer with the New York City Ballet. They had been together for more than 60 years and died less than two weeks apart — Mr. Alexander on March 7 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at age 92; Mr. O’Brien on Feb. 23 at 86. They shared a Victorian house in Saratoga Springs.

          “If there is a cause of death, it’s a broken heart,” his friend Jane Klain said in confirming Mr. Alexander’s death. “It’s as simple as that.”

     For Shaun O'Brien's Obit, click here.