Hadleigh - Hollywood Gays

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Copyright 2013 by Boze Hadleigh

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To Ronnie

Table of Contents

Introduction: Inside the ShowbizCloset

Hollywood Gays first came out inhardcover in 1996, when the possibility of legalized gay marriagewas just a pipe dream (gay marriages have existed as long asheterosexual ones, only usually bullied into silence). The book iscomprised of ten interviews with gay and bisexual men of themovies. This version features eight of the original ten, plus twomen familiar to most TV viewers and film buffsone, thanks to astill-rerunning sitcom with special gay resonance, the other fromthe oft-aired movie that made Marilyn Monroe a megastar.

Now for a bit of updating:

Cary Grant: Some superstars ofyesteryear are forgotten, others arent. Grant remains a symbol ofsuave, of gentlemanly romance (as opposed to crude passion),and mid-Atlantic cool. Word of his gayness or bisexuality hastraveled far, despite the determined efforts of some biographersand memoirists, including an ex-wife and his daughter. The moreadmired the celebrity, the more resistance to their beingaccurately labeled as other than heterosexual. The unadmired, thestereotypically gay, and those who died of AIDSunless theyd alsoacquired a wife and kidsare more readily accepted as gay by astill vastly biased media.

When cable channel A&E, which used toactually run arts and entertainment programming, advertised adocumentary on Cary Grant, it trumpeted that rare photos had beenprovided by the late stars familywhich obliged the show to adhereto the familys official version of the icons sexual orientation.The long-awaited 2012 sexual memoir Full Service bylegendary procurer-to-the-stars Scotty Bowers became a mainstreambestseller by recounting and reaffirming the usually closetedtruths about Grant and his longtime lover Randolph Scott, also themutual bearding of Katharine Hepburn and a bisexual but usuallyalcoholically impotent Spencer Tracy, among others.

Liberace: The showman who puteverything out there but the truth became known as the queen ofdenial via his death from AIDS. A memoir by his ex-lover ScottThorson became a movie, Behind the Candelabra, directed bySteven Soderbergh, some of whose previous films have not lackedhomophobia. Michael Douglas starred as Lee and Matt Damon asThorson (Douglass late half-brother Eric was gay). The movie airedon HBO in the U.S., where gay-themed feature films rarely do wellat the box officeand whose fault is that, kids?but overseas wasreleased into cinemas.

The most authoritative of various Liberacebiographies is Liberace (2000), subtitled An AmericanBoy, by Darden Asbury Pyron. Seven pages of the thick tomepresent yours truly as a leader of some kind of anti-Liberacemovement, stating that I refused to disguise his contempt for theperformer in Hollywood Gays and Sing Out!: Gays &Lesbians in the Music World (originally published as TheVinyl Closet). Is one supposed to honor the memory of a man whosued or tried to sue every time he was correctly labeled as gay andwhose political affiliation was with the party that not only deniesgay people equal (not special) rights but still doesnt even wantgay people to exist?

Anthony Perkins: There have since beenbiographies about Perkins, but he turns up more often in booksabout Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. One, about the making ofthe film, became a movie, Hitchcock, starring AnthonyHopkins as the Master of Suspense. In it, Perkins is briefly andmatter-of-factly portrayed as gay. When Perkins died of AIDS, oneLos Angeles newscaster tried to present the late actor asheterosexual, in view of his wife and children being at his bedsidewhen he passed. I wrote him a letter of rebuke and noted hiscloseted hypocrisy (the family man was known to frequent gay barsin the San Fernando Valley, minus his on-camera toupee).

Though one of Perkinss two sons became anactor, both seem to live out of the public eye. Coincidentally,Berry Berenson Perkins also died a horrific and highly publicizeddeath on 9/11, when the airplane in which she was traveling wascrashed into one of the World Trade Center towers by Muslimterrorists.

Paul Lynde: What can you say about PaulLynde (waggle-waggle)? The gay author of one of the Sal Mineobiographies is at work on a composite bio of three late gaycomedians: Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Alan Sues of Rowan& Martins Laugh-In. Paul, not a movie star, is lessremembered today than in 1996, except by gay men of a certain age.Yet he turns up in small but indelible roles in films aired onTVe.g., The Glass-Bottom Boatand of course onBewitched as Uncle Arthur. When Bye-Bye Birdie wasrecently revived for Broadway, the either taste-free orgay-allergic director made a public point, practically an issue, ofcasting Lyndes old role as Harry MacAfee with as minimal a campquotient as possible. Bully for you.

Cesar Romero: The press, including thegay press, is of course not without flaws. When The Advocatephoned me about an item they wished to run about Romero havingorally serviced his pal and sometime employer (on The Lucy-DesiComedy Hour) Desi Arnaz, the reporter asked to hear thatportion of the interview before the magazines days-away editorialdeadline. I said Id be glad to share the tapenot loan it, a sureway to lose a high percentage of tapesbut I couldnt get hold ofit that soon, as I was flying east next morning and the tape was ina bank vault. When the item ran, the reporter mendaciously claimedI didnt seem to know if I had a tape! I demanded a retraction,which ranbut in a vague way that still left room for needlessdoubt.

Brad Davis: The actor remains bestknown for Midnight Express. His authorized biography waswritten by widow and former agent Susan Bluestein, who presentedBrad as totally straight (if heterosexuals are called straight,are gay people thus bent, warped, crooked? why should gays giveheteros the monopoly of a word with only positive meanings, such ashonest, trust-worthy, drug-free, sober, and pure). Some of themedia inaccurately described Davis, who wasnt heterosexual and whohad drug and alcohol problems, as the first straight star to dieof AIDS.