Hollywood Gays (32 page)

Q: Billy De Wolfe.

A: Fussbudget! He was good. Funny. Not
that
funny, but Ah never saw him in drag, and he was famous for it.

Q: What about those who say drag puts gay people down?

A: The whole
world
does
that
. Doesn’t mean gay people can’t let their hair down and party. Straight guys have locker-room humor, which is
vicious
, honey! Ah’ve had firsthand reports.
We
don’t do vicious, we don’t hurt nobody. Anyway, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

Q: Bette Midler’s line.

A: No, she
borrowed
it!

Q: What’s the difference between heterosexual and homosexual humor?

A: Ah just said! Men are vicious. Gay men aren’t. Where’s the harm in a Dynel wig?

Q: As opposed to locker-room talk ruining a woman’s reputation.... How about Arthur Treacher?

A: Oh, yeah. Merv Griffin’s sidekick. Well, Treacher was always the butler, till he ganged up with Merv. I’ve done Merv—his
show
. Who was that other English guy who did butlers? In the old movies.

Q: Eric Blore?

A: That’s the one. See, honey, Ah’m from the South. Ah don’t find servants funny, I’m sorry.

Q:
Richard Deacon
, or dare I ask?

A: Ah loved him on Dick Van Dyke’s show. What else can Ah say? Honey, can Ah ask you a personal question? Did you ever go to bed with him?

Q: No.

A: Just wonderin.’ Ah guess nobody did. Ah’d love to know if under that old stiff upper lip there was any...
you
know.

Q: You mean you can tell about a man from his upper lip?

A: (Laughs.) Honey! You’ve been around!

Q: The mulberry bush.
Edward Everett Horton
.

A: Ah
loved
him! Best thing in those boring Fred Astaire movies! He was priceless!

Q: The “boring” Astaire-Rogers movies?

A: Don’t make it sound like they was filmed in parchment, honey! They are
dull
. Granted, the dances are magnificent, but the plots? You could plotz from those plots. And old Fred had all the sex appeal of a gnat. Though I grant you, next to Miz Rogers, he did look good!

Q: Wasn’t it Katharine Hepburn who said he gave Rogers class, and she gave him sex?

A:
If
she said it. Ah grant you, it’s a little true. Ginger needed acting classes, and Fred needed macho lessons. Every time he danced, they had to pair him with a framed photo of some girl or with Miz Rogers.

Q: Or with a female coat rack. You know, I read where Astaire once called Horton a “pansy.”

A: Look who’s talking! Mr. Macho mincing-toes! Puh-
lease!

Q: What did you think of Danny Kaye?

A: Danny
Gay
? Ah heard a rumor or two....He was funny—not side-splittin’. When he was
young
. He got older and lost it. It’s kinda like sex appeal, is laugh appeal—some people lose it once they’re older. But
un
like sex appeal, you can
get
laugh appeal once you’re older.

Q: Can you give an example?

A: Nancy Walker. She did a few movies in her youth. But she was homely, not funny, sorta pathetic—played these desperate, man-hungry characters. Then she shows up, years upon years later, as Rhoda’s mom. And she’s great, and unless she wants to be, she’ll never be out of work again.

Q: Wayland, what makes you laugh?

A:
Me!
Madame! Madame is me, and I’m Madame.

Q: Like Flaubert said about
Madame Bovary
.

A: Madame
Ovary?

Q: The French novel.

A: Sure, Ah heard of it. But
Flaubert
sounds like a runny relative to Camembert.

Q: Moving on to women....

A: Honeychile, the only women who’s skirts Ah’ll willingly put my hand up are my lady puppets. It’s true! Ah always keep women at arm’s length.

Q: That’s funny! You mentioned Nancy Walker, Tomlin, and Rivers. Are funny women very different from funny men?

A: Oh, honey, who
cares?
Do you know this is the cruisiest shoppin’ center in La-la-land? Half the guys workin’ here are
gay!
Gorgeous critters. Looky there at
that
one....

Q: They could recruit for
Dynasty
in this place. But moving on to women—

A: Bite your nasty tongue, boy!

Q: Are women funnier?

A: Gay men are funnier.

Q: Why?

A: Ah’m gay. Paul was. All the men you said: their names, they were gay. Name some funny heterosexuals. Go on.

Q: (Jokingly.) How about...Shecky Greene?

A: (Seriously.)
Augh!
I’ve seen him in Vegas. Typical Shecky joke: “What’s the difference between my wife and an ice cube with a hole in it? My wife retains water....”

Q: Oh, God. What do you think of Pee-wee Herman?

A: He has Venus envy,

Q: Huh?

A: We’re talkin’
straight
comics. Anyway, you get my drift. Does anybody not heterosexual honestly find Steve Martin funny? Or gutter-mouth Eddie Murphy? Now, Ah grant you, the
women
are funny. Bea Lillie was aces. Androgynous, too. She’d have been no funnier if she was a gay man—and I heard
those
rumors, too! Lucy was funny, but she got less funny the older she got. Of the newer ones, Ah like Elayne Boosler, also Judy Tenuta, Roseanne Barr, and...that’s it. But Ah like people who aren’t vicious.

Q: Women comics don’t tend to be vicious about womankind anymore.

A: No, but some lesbian ones go way overboard, they do a whole routine about me-chasin’-a-man. They do it to
pass
. A gay comic can’t do that; if he made jokes about his wife, no one would believe it.

Q: That sounds like you’re saying gay funny men aren’t masculine, and masculine gay men aren’t funny.

A: You catch
on
, honey.

Q: You really believe that?

A: Was Tyrone Power funny? How about Rock Hudson? Or—

Q: I get the idea. You do have
some
thing there.

A: Ah got a lot here, honey....

Q: Wayland, about Paul Lynde. Why do you think he’s become a cult figure?

A: ‘Cause he’s dead.

Q: That’s all?

A: No, but Paul had a huge gay following. Everyone always asks me, “How come there ain’t any other gays as funny as Paul Lynde was?”

Q: What’s the answer?

A: Ah think gay comedy died with Paul. He was the end of that line of comedy great gays (sic). All those guys you named—Horton and Pangborn and the rest. Paul was one of them, and he was the last one. The last great one.

Q: Then, in your opinion, what killed gay comedy?

A: Cock Robin....
AIDS
, honey. And demographics—you gotta appeal to the scum o’ the earth if you wanna do movies, also TV—my show didn’t have a chance; people loved it, but not enough people...and if you do TV, you gotta keep it clean or have Paul’s gift for staying clean but soundin’ filthy. These are seriously aggravated times, honeychile!

Q: The Aching ‘80s.

A: Don’t Ah know it.

RANDOLPH SCOTT

(1898-1987) 

“‘Bout the most famous thing about Randolph Scott these days is those rumors ‘bout him and Cary Grant. ‘Course, I wouldn’t know ‘bout any of that. I worked with fellers like Gene Autry and other genu-ine cowboy stars. It’s kinda hard to believe ‘bout Randy Scott, but Cary Grant came from England, so I don’t know as much ‘bout him...” So said western character actor Pat Buttram, known to TV viewers as
Green Acres’
Mr. Haney.

I’d corralled the garrulous actor lunching in a booth at his Studio City hangout, The Sportsmen’s Lodge. He was comparing various western stars, saving highest marks for Autry, his most frequent employer. (His comments on Eva Gabor and other Green Acres co-stars were hilarious but mostly unprintable.)

Despite Buttram’s reference to “gen-uine cowboy stars,” Randolph Scott was a major western star who, unlike his contemporaries, typically headlined in A-list
color
westerns. As time wore on and his face became more leathery from the sun, his preference for westerns increased, and he limited himself to that genre—a genre that was virgin territory for Cary Grant, six years Scott’s junior. In Hollywood, the inseparable—by Tinseltown standards—pair was known as Damon and Pythias, after the hopelessly devoted classical Greek couple.

Scott made nearly 100 films between 1928 and 1961, but his other claim to fame was wealth. Unlike Archibald Leach, “the gentleman from Virginia” (buried in North Carolina) was born into affluence. In the mid 1980s columnist Lee Graham reported that due to shrewd investments in oil wells, gas, and real estate, Scott was worth an estimated $100 million. If Bob Hope was the richest actor—eventually displaced as showbiz’s richest individual by openly gay mogul David Geffen—then Randolph Scott was the richest ex-actor.

No, Scott never came out as gay or bi (surprise). And his resume included a brief marriage to a “forceful, tweedy” female DuPont—to use a Grant biographer’s words—who was one of America’s richest women, back when Randy and Cary were an item and living together by the sand and surf of Santa Monica. After the contractual union ran its course, she settled millions on him. In middle age, there were a lengthy marriage, a daughter, and a son. But Scott also kept a treasured scrapbook of his golden days (and nights) with Cary Grant in the 1930s.

(When Kenneth Anger published his 1984 sequel to
Hollywood Babylon
, one chapter mostly comprised handsome, sexy photos—but no legally risky descriptive text—of housemates Cary and Randy hanging out and relaxing together, with and without shirts, sharing a diving board, a breakfast table, etc. According to Grant’s banker, Cary was shocked by the spread but “doesn’t dare sue, for what could he sue about?—and it would only magnify a very obvious, even cozy truth” suppressed for decades.)

However, the first Tinseltown tattle linking bronzed, blond Scott with another male was after he got hired as dialogue coach for fast-rising star Gary Cooper. The Montanan was enthusiastically indebted to the Virginian, for although never as monosyllabic as his image, “Coop” was uncomfortable as a speaker or a reciter of several lines in a row. The charismatic, well-endowed, and initially beautiful Cooper was the subject of much whispered comment in his early years (only), regarding the casting couch, favors received and given with such as Scott and William Haines, also via a brief live-in relationship with a young homosexual millionaire, and a same-sex affair with gay actor Anderson Lawler that was partly concurrent with Coop’s openly publicized affair with “Mexican spitfire” actress Lupe Velez.

Talk continued to swirl about the homey and lasting relationship of emerging hunks Randolph Scott and import Cary Grant. To be sure, the men did go on arranged dates with studio females and made sure to invite notable and noted actresses (like the bisexual Dietrich) to lunch by their pool. In time, Scott made two films with Dietrich that also co-starred John Wayne, with whom Marlene had a reported affair. Asked by the press how she’d chosen between “getting to know” one handsome star over the other, she carefully replied: “I socialized with Mr. Wayne while Randolph Scott was seeing someone else behind the scenes.” Behind the camera? Perhaps. Behind closed doors—certainly.

Noël Coward, a reported early lover of Grant’s and later a guest at Scott and Grant’s beach house, refused to divulge what all Hollywood of the time knew but “protected.” He noted cagily, “I would only admit or confirm what there was between them if they both admitted or confirmed it first.” Both ex-stars were still alive, as was Coward’s loyalty to the code of silence.

Howard Hughes may have been the first to urge the comely Scott toward Hollywood. The two Southerners, whose families apparently knew each other, remained friends over the years (though by all accounts Hughes became closer to Grant). For instance, when Hughes piloted his TWA’s inaugural flight on February 15, 1946, his select VIP passenger list included Scott as well as Grant, also Tyrone Power, certain trophy wives, and a few female stars like Veronica Lake. Decades after, Lake told the British press, “Throughout our friendship, Howard never laid a hand, or a glove, on me. I don’t know if he ever had sex with many people, but I kept hearing that with women Howard liked to be dominated, while with men he liked to be the dominator—to keep his ego intact in front of Hollywood actors, I guess.”

To what degree, if any, did Randolph Scott’s associations with Cooper, Hughes, and especially Grant help label him a “light leading man” in the film industry? Or the fact that he’d been a male model, then a highly suspect business (for those who enjoyed suspecting inevitable human differences). Screenwriter Luci Ward wrote mostly westerns, including such Scott vehicles as
Badman’s Territory
(1946) and
Return of the Bad Men
(1948): “They used to call him the poor man’s Gary Cooper. Unfairly, I thought. There were parallels—attractive, taciturn, unwavering—but they were very different.” Scott and Cary Grant were also sometimes referred to as men’s men. Did Scott’s sidelining himself into more and more westerns stem from his trying to differentiate his career and image from the urbane Cary Grant’s? Or from a desire to “prove” himself in that most traditionalist and man’s man of genres?