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Title: Jerry Terranova papers
Dates: 1977-1998
Collection Number: 1998-26
Creator/Collector:
Extent: 1 manuscript box
Repository:
GLBT Historical Society
San Francisco, California 94103
Abstract: The Jerry Terranova papers contain materials related to this gay counterculture figure, actor and writer. A native of New
Jersey, Terranova (1949-1998) moved to San Francisco in 1972. He was involved with many theater groups, including the Julian
Theater, and was the male lead in Curt McDowell’s film, “Sparkle’s Tavern.”
Language of Material: English
Collection is open for research.
[Identification of item]. Jerry Terranova papers. Collection Number: 1998-26. GLBT Historical Society
Gift of Thomas J. Mayer on May 2, 1998.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Jerry Terranova papers contain materials related to this gay counterculture figure, actor and writer. A native of New
Jersey, Terranova (1949-1998) moved to San Francisco in 1972. He was involved with many theater groups, including the Julian
Theater, and was the male lead in Curt McDowell’s film, “Sparkle’s Tavern.” Terranova moved to Los Angeles in 1978, where
he acted in plays and made his living as the editor of several alternative AIDS and health newsletters. He also co-founded
the alternative AIDS group CureNow. Terranova moved back to San Francisco in 1994 and died of AIDS-related lymphoma four years
later. The collection includes personalia; issues of the newsletters he edited and wrote for, “Passages,” “Praxis,” and “Pacific
Currents: A Quarterly Publication of Pacific Clinics”; photos, newsclippings, film calendars and a VHS copy of “Sparkle’s
Tavern”; and published and unpublished writings. There are copies of “From a Burning House,” a book of essays published by
the AIDS Project Los Angeles Writers Workshop, which features Terranova’s “Hospice Chronicles”; two unpublished manuscripts,
“The Art of Life by Number: Healing Yourself through the Power of Number Symbols,” and “AIDS Divas: How these Four women Are
Transforming Our Perception of the Crisis and Helping to Bring about a Healing” (1991); and a screenplay, “The Caren Karpenter
Story: Born to Be Medicore.”
GSSO Linked Terms: http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/GSSO_000374; http://purl.bioontology.org/ontology/MESH/D008091; http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/GSSO_000521;
http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/GSSO_004301
Gay men
Literature
AIDS (disease)
Theater