On this date in 1970, media personality George Hahn — fashion maven, writer and former actor — was born to Lynda and George Hahn in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio, where he grew up and attended Catholic grade school and a Jesuit high school.
He studied advertising design and layout at Boston College, another Jesuit school, where he got involved in theater and decided to accept and stop hiding that he was gay. “I was a classic Catholic closet case, tightly wrapped in fear, guilt and shame. If anything or anyone came close to exposing me and my proclivity, I’d do what many do: run and shun.” (blog, April 29, 2020)
After graduation he worked in Boston and New York as a hair salon receptionist, night club personality and actor. “My cousin Kathryn Hahn eventually joined me behind the reception desk where we both charged New York’s wealthiest Prozac-stoned women thousands of dollars for highlights, bang trims and manicures that didn’t make them look any younger.” (Ibid.) Kathryn went on to star as grief counselor Lily Lebowski in the NBC crime series “Crossing Jordan,” launching a successful acting career.
Hahn garnered connections forged in salons, as a waiter and on “both sides of the bar” into landing minor TV roles in episodes of “Sex and the City” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and in the 2001 movie “Kate & Leopold.” From 2004 to 2012, he owned and operated a graphics and web design business focusing on entertainment. He used his comedy skills to work as social media director for Joan Rivers. In 2011 he had launched georgehahn.com “as the blog that I wanted to read: a journal designed for men who weren’t millionaires, but who also wanted to look good and live well.”
“How George Hahn, Urban Raconteur, Spends His Sundays” said the headline on a New York Times feature story (April 16, 2021), detailing that he has over 128,000 followers on Twitter, including entertainers Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes. “But he still has his day job — as a patient concierge for a cosmetic dermatologist,” the story said, adding that Hahn lives with his dogs Smokey and Lenore in a 360-square-foot converted hotel room in Manhattan. He became a correspondent for the syndicated TV newsmagazine “Extra” in 2021.
Hahn, who is gay, mused in one blog about how his father would have come to terms with his sexuality: “He was a somewhat conservative guy, and I always sought his pride and approval. But if the Catholic construct of heaven does exist, then he is in an enlightened and loving state of grace with everything.”
He got tougher on religion in a tweet about a petition drive to remove U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress: “If I believed in god, I’d pray for this freak’s removal. My belief in freedom *from* religion (and cults) leaves me to rely on people with reason to get their shit together and get rid of this nut bag so we can get on with a more effective government.” (Twitter, Jan. 29, 2021)
