I have an odd little footnote about Fred Ebb. In the 1960s and early 1970s, NYC’s gay scene was very small and it seemed like everyone in it knew one another. Geary Arlen Guest was from the Midwest and came to NYC and did fairly well working as an accountant for an ad agency. He lived on West 69th and he became friends with Gary Greenwood who lived on West 72nd and worked as Fred Ebb’s assistant—which is how Guest met Ebb and became chummy with that set. Ebb lived in the San Remo on CPW.
When Geary was in his early 40s in the early 1970s, Geary met a guy named John Wayne Wilson. Wilson was what used to be referred to as a drifter...moving from state to state & supporting himself with petty crimes and hustling. They hooked up and Geary was smitten. They had the Midwest in common and over the next few years Geary supported him on and off, sometimes having sex, sometimes not. Wilson was in his early 20s and very troubled but very hot.
On New Years Day night in 1973 John Wayne Wilson and Roseann Quinn ended up at Quinn’s apartment on West 72nd Street and he stabbed her about 20 times. Roseann Quinn was the “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” victim.
Wilson went to Guest’s apartment later that night and woke Guest up and confessed but Guest thought he was bullshitting to get money to visit his pregnant girlfriend, so Guest gave him money to leave. Shortly after that, the murder hit the papers. This murder was a huge deal and there was a giant manhunt.
Guest was extremely freaked out and he called the most connected people he knew: Fred Ebb and Gary Greenwood. He said he had a big problem that he could not talk about on the phone but had to tell them in person. They were in Ebb’s Bel Air house (which used to be Rhonda Fleming’s house) for Christmas and Guest flew out to them.
He told Ebb and Guest about Wilson and the Quinn murder. They wanted to talk to a lawyer but didn’t want to involve Ebb. They had the idea to contact Guest’s therapist in NYC and tell her because they assumed there would be patient/therapist confidentiality. They asked the therapist to find an attorney for Guest. She did, and the lawyer and therapist advised them to send Guest back to NYC at once.
Guest’s lawyer brokered a deal with the NYPD for Guest’s immunity in exchange for Wilson’s whereabouts. The NYPD literally had nothing and accepted the terms. Wilson was arrested by the NYPD by the second week in January and hung himself in his cell in May.
The entire situation fucked Geary Guest up and he became an alcoholic. He died in a fire in his apartment at 47 in 1979, presumably caused by his passing out while smoking a cigarette.
This has always been a weird case because it was huge yet had scant details, primarily because Quinn’s (huge) family—and her friends and co-workers—never gave interviews about it, plus the police were very hush-hush. But the media cannot handle a void and ran with a lot of innuendo.
Ebb’s name was entirely kept out of the media and even Guest maintained anonymity. Then the books and the movie added to confusion by mixing truth and fiction.
Judith Rossner wrote “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” in 1975 and the movie came out in 1977.
In 1977, Lacey Fosburgh, a NY Times reporter, wrote a true crime bestseller about the case called “Closing Time” in which she changed everyone’s names, including Guest’s, in a manner which would never fly today.
There was no mention of the Ebb connection in Fosburgh’s book.