Women's History Month Profile: SLC Alum Lesley Gore

Credit: Sarah Lawrence College Archives

Women’s History Month is particularly special for a school like Sarah Lawrence that for the first forty years of its existence was an all-women institution. To celebrate, here’s a quick look at the life of Grammy award nominated singer/songwriter Lesley Gore, class of ‘68.

Have you ever found yourself falling apart in public and feel the urge to sing: “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to?” If you have, you were quoting one of our SLC alumna. Lesley was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. According to her biography, “You Don’t Own Me” by Trevor Tolliver, Lesley loves music from an early age, eventually enrolling in private schools in New Jersey with excellent music programs and taking private lessons in Manhattan. In 1963 when she was sixteen she was discovered by the famous music producer Quincy Jones. Her single “It’s My Party” charted at number one almost immediately after it was released, hurtling the teen into doo-wop stardom. Her second chart-topper, “You Don’t Own Me,” came out right before she got to college. Though her family was Jewish and working class, the image her producers and the media constructed of the young girl was one of secular wealth and aloofness. Paired with her innate shyness, this image caused Lesley’s peers at school and in show business to give her a cold shoulder.

Like many students before and after her, Lesley found the Sarah Lawrence liberal arts approach appealing and matriculated in 1964. Her first don was Harold Wiener and her second don was Curtis Harnack, both literature professors, and she mostly studied music and theater. Like for many freshmen, her first year was a chaotic one. According to her biography, her star status and stiff public persona made some students wary of her. Even so, in the October 1964 edition of the Sarah Lawrence student newspaper, The Establishment, Lesley was named the “Janet Auchincloss Modest Celebrity,” a joke award named for the half-sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis who was in the same graduating class.

In the same year, Lesley joined with other first years to perform a skit in the Freshman Follies that poked fun at her celebrity. According to her biography, “her character was a clumsy ballerina who, after a disastrous rehearsal akin to a scene in I Love Lucy, is thrown out of the dance studio, only to have the others onstage, including the ballet instructor, drop their own formal airs and start dancing around to a recording of ‘It’s My Party.’” The skit helped break the ice with other students. Lesley directed at least two shows while she was at SLC. In her junior year she co-directed “The Way You Like It,” a charity vaudeville performance staged in Reisinger Auditorium in her junior year that featured a humorous cameo from SLC president Esther Raushenbush. In her senior year, she created a stage show satirizing late-night television called the “Lesley Nite-Nite Show.” Both events were covered in the SLC student newspaper that succeeded The Establishment called Emanon.

Lesley continued to do concerts and record music throughout her college career, causing her major stress and anxiety. On top of homework, public events, and record production, Lesley was exploring her sexuality. A year after graduation, Lesley met jewelry designer Lois Sasson who would eventually become her life partner. Lesley was not open about her sexuality until the early 2000s when she hosted some episodes of In the Life, a PBS show on LGBT issues, and when she came out officially in an After Ellen interview. Lesley’s songs have continued to have cultural relevance, mostly as nostalgic examples of post-war Golden Years. Her defiant, hopeful song, “You Don’t Own Me,” went on to become a feminist anthem. Lesley Gore died on February 16, 2015.

For more information on Lesley Gore, check out “You Don’t Own Me: The Life and Times of Lesley Gore” by Trevor Tolliver. Special thanks to the Sarah Lawrence College Archives for information on Gore’s dons. For more information on Sarah Lawrence College Student Newspapers, please refer to the Sarah Lawrence College Archives website.

Ceylan Swenson ‘20