Beer pong, Greenpeace, and Watergate

Dorothy, n. More fully friend of Dorothy, this is a slang term for a gay man, after Judy Garland’s character in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

I think this is misleading.  Dorothy is not a short form of friend of Dorothy, they are two different expressions used differently.  “Dorothy” is used as a form of nickname address or reference to a particular gay man, as in the OED’s “When’s Dorothy and Toto getting here with the chest of drawers?” The phrase friend(s) of Dorothy refers to gay men as a group, or a single gay man as a representative of that group ("He’s a friend of Dorothy [if you know what I mean]"), without regard to the individuality of the person under discussion.  This should become clear if you try to imagine talking about gay men as “Dorothys.”

Scammer, meaning “con man” appears in Life Magazine, Vol. 55, No. 2, July 12, 1963, page 66:

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“I’m the greatest scammer in the business,” says Steve. (That means con man.)

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http://books.google.com/books?id=K1IEAAAAMBAJ&q=scammer#v=snippet&q=scammer&f=false

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I have a feeling it may be found still earlier.

Thanks. I’ve complete redone the lines on Dorothy. It seems also that friends of Dorothy doesn’t come along for another decade, so just Dorothy is not a clipping as I had thought.