Hollywood Gays (4 page)

Grant set the bottle on the coffee table. It was moist and left a ring on the table, which I wiped quickly with a pillow the moment Grant got up, later. “I really can’t stay,” he said. “Say, do you have a couple of glasses here? What did you say your friends do?” The semi-mansion belonged to a husband-and-wife medical team. Then he asked me how much they each charged for house calls; I didn’t know, but gave him their business cards.

I opened the bottle, and he poured. We’d transferred to the sunny, cozy kitchen. The living room was large and impersonal—like Grant’s body of work. And its picture window was, for me, marred by the grillwork that served to keep would-be robbers at bay.

Later in our session together, Cary Grant asked, “You’re not an interviewer, are you?” He had on a very small smile.

I too smiled minimally, aware of his suspicion. Then I couldn’t help myself, and smiled wide. ‘‘I’d make a lousy interviewer,” I said. “I only ask questions
I’m
interested in—the sort of things they’d never publish....” I wasn’t lying, for I knew this interview, done unawares, couldn’t legally be published, and so it freed me to ask things I found of interest, rather than something like, Do you still believe in marriage, Mr. Grant? Or, Have you ever feared aging?

“Very sound, very sound,” he repeated himself. He reflected a bit over the bubbly, then said, “It’s true. They [journalists] don’t ask the interesting things, do they?”

“Not if they’re afraid of the answers,” of getting at the awful truth. “I think conversation is especially stimulating with somebody who’s really lived....”

“True. The young really have lost that art, haven’t they?” he asked, as if I were no longer one of them.

“Well, I feel that one doesn’t learn anything new by talking to oneself.” It was a trite observation, but he found it most amusing, and laughed, then giggled. I said nothing more, as we had liquid seconds.

At length, he asked, “What do you do with your time?” He seemed eager to know. Why? Somehow I felt nervous. Was I really sitting here, talking about time with Cary Grant? Then I remembered that for some reason I’d never understood, he had been one of the first celebrities to try LSD, under controlled circumstances. What did that mean?

“Oh, let’s not talk about me,” I said. I didn’t want to have to lie and say I wasn’t a journalist, if he knew something.

“All right.” He cheerfully changed the subject. “Let’s just drink and talk....What do you want to talk about?” He was wary.

“You probably get so bored talking about your career.”

No, he said, he didn’t.

1 didn’t need any more urging than that. I refrained from anything more than sipping, and began asking some of the questions—those I could think of—that I’d long wondered about.

Q: What was it like working with the director Josef Von Sternberg?

A: How do you mean? (I found out that he needed very specific questions.)

Q: He was reputed to be a tyrant on the set, but also a genius. What about that? True or false?

A: Yes, he was a tyrant. Genius? I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any such thing.

Q: It’s just another word for great talent?

A: Joe had the good fortune to be directing Marlene in film after film. She was very popular, until he got her into too many weird films.

Q: Too esoteric?

A: He was American, liked to pretend he was Old World. You know, stuck the Von in front of his name—if that was even his real name, I dunno.

Q: And his films were too static, too glamorous, for American audiences?

A: (Ignoring my question.) After that censorship came in [in 1934], he had to lighten up, and that wasn’t his style. Joe was very dark, moody. Introspective.

Q: Was he an unhappy man?

A: Well, I don’t think introspective means unhappy (glaring at me).

Q: Neither do I. But he seemed a tormented man.

A: (No response.)

Q: Did you ever read his autobiography,
Fun in a Chinese Laundry?

A: No, can’t say as I have. (I felt like asking whether he ever read, period.)

Q: Dietrich was gorgeous in that movie.

A: Yes. She appealed to everyone. Men, women alike.

Q: That sequence in
Blonde Venus
(costarring Grant) where she enters in a gorilla suit, then is revealed—the birth of the blonde Venus—is one of the most stunning in pictures.

A: Yes....

Q: Was Dietrich easy to work with?

A: .Not easy, not difficult. Mostly, she did what Joe said she should do.

Q: Did you?

A: Had to. (For Grant was then a neophyte in film, and in 1932 he made seven films—the ones unseen by Mae West.)

Q: How would you compare Von Sternberg’s working methods with Mr. Cukor’s?

A: George
likes
actors (Grant used the present tense, though Cukor was by then recently deceased). He
likes
them. He’ll always share the vision he has of a character, and he’ll even play it with you. Joe never did that. He kept secrets. He’d just give you a minimal direction. Maybe
he
didn’t know what he wanted, either—the actor sure didn’t.

Q: Why do you think Cukor had a higher regard for actors?

A: Didn’t you know? He started out as an actor. That always makes a difference.

Q: Didn’t I read somewhere that Von Sternberg also began as an actor?

A: Could be. What does it matter now? Point is all directors are frustrated actors.

Q: Of course, Hitchcock’s the one who said he treated actors like cattle....

A: Not
this
actor. (Indignantly.)

Q: What was Hitchcock really like?

A: Do you mean, sexually?

Q: (Surprised.) I meant personality-wise, but yes, sexually as well. That is, he seemed sexless. Was he?

A: Never came on to me! (Laughs.) Nor to any actress I ever saw.

Q: Even though one’s read about how he tried to flirt with or even seduce Tippi Hedren in
The Birds.

A: Did he really? They printed that?

Q: Something of that sort, yes.

A: Well, I never saw it. Of course you know (warningly) I wasn’t in
The Birds.

Q: Of course not. You were in Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca
. (I caught myself a moment after saying it; Olivier had starred in
Rebecca
, opposite Joan Fontaine; and Du Maurier had written both
Rebecca
and the short story upon which
The Birds
was based.)

A: (Gales of laughter.) Do you
often
confuse Larry and me? Oh, how marvelous! Really. That
is
funny. Do you think I’m anywhere as good an actor?

Q: (What could I say?) It’s appalling you never won an Academy Award.

A: Yes, well, let bygones be bygones.

Q: All right.

A: (Laughs.) Bye-bye, bygones! Now, where were we?

Q: I guess we were comparing some of your brilliant directors?

A: Oh, they’re dull. Let’s speak of something else.

Q: We will, but first, can I ask if you were ever tempted to direct a film yourself?

A: No, why should I be?

Q: Beats me. You know, Charles Laughton directed a film, an unforgettable one,
The
Night of the Hunter
, with Robert Mitchum. Did you see it?

A: No, was it good?

Q: Good, I don’t know. But fascinating. And rare to see Mitchum as a bad guy. You never really played bad guys. Did you avoid doing so, Mr. Grant?

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: Because then the audience won’t like you.

Q: Do you think they dislike, say, Vincent Price?

A: No, but he has a certain...manner. He’s sarcastic, isn’t he? In a likeable way.

Q: I think he has great humor. Do you know him?

A: Not well, no.

Q: You worked with Charles Laughton in a film I’ve never managed to see on TV, and which isn’t on videocassette.
The Devil and the Deep
, with Tallulah Bankhead and you and Laughton and Gary Cooper (Grant had the smallest role of the quartet). What a cast!

A: Yes. Who do you want to know about?

Q: I’ve heard so much about Bankhead and Laughton. What about “that divine Gary Cooper,” as Ms. Bankhead called him?

A: Handsome fellow, wasn’t he?

Q: Frankly, yes. Extremely. Did you think so, then?

A: (Smiles.) Yes, I did.

Q: He’s the sort of person—like Ms. Dietrich—whom I can imagine anyone developing a crush on, male or female. Did you?

A: .Have you ever heard of
Confidential
magazine (which in the ‘50s used to scoop the private lives of stars, particularly gay ones)?

Q: (Untruthfully) No.

A: Oh. Yes, everyone was very fond of Coop.

Q: May I bring up—as it were—something, um, indiscreet?

A: Oh, do be indiscreet (sarcastically)!

Q: Coop’s girlfriend Lupe Velez said he was...well, extremely well-endowed. And she’s not the only one who said so.

A: Are you asking for a verification? Do you mean, did I ever urinate alongside him? Well, I suppose I must have done.

Q:
And?

A: Yes, I heard the same rumor. The Montana mule, they used to call him. Say, do you have a size fetish?

Q: No. Do you?

A: No. Good heavens, no! Still, I’d hate to be Napoleon (smiling again).

Q: Kenneth Anger and others have said that when he was working his way up the Hollywood ladder, Cooper wasn’t averse to a male-to-male affair now and then, with a big star.

A: Do you mean with Rod La Rocque?

Q: He was a big star in silents, wasn’t he?

A: I don’t know his exact measurements, but he was a prominent star in silent pictures, and he was said to be one of the lavender brigade.

Q: “The lavender brigade.” It sounds like a fire station—on Fire Island. (No reaction.) But wasn’t he married to Vilma Banky? I mean, I shouldn’t say “but”—it may well have been arranged.

A: I don’t know. If it was arranged, I mean. Yes, he married Vilma Banky. Hungarian.

Q: Which leads us to Rudolph Valentino, for Banky co-starred with him in one of those Sheik movies, I believe. Now, he was gay, wasn’t he?

A: That’s what I always heard. The subject interests you, doesn’t it?

Q: Doesn’t it you?

A: Well...somewhat. One can overdo on that sort of thing, you know. You want to be an actor, is what I’ve heard. Right?

Q: I’ve been in plays since 18, just about every year. I love to act.

A: (Drily.) We all do.

Q: Do you have any advice—not necessarily for me—for struggling actors?

A: Are you struggling?

Q: Not really. I don’t need it to make a living.

A: That’s a very smart attitude. Hollywood gives the jobs to those who don’t need it. Need is a
killer
, my boy. If you’re desperate, you’re out.

Q: Did you ever meet Valentino?

A: Did I ever meet Valentino? (Repeating or remembering?)

Q: Well, did you?

A: No. I knew a friend of his. A silent actor, Norman Kerry.

Q: And?

A: They were very close.

Q: Sexually, too?

A: Yes. That’s what I was led to believe. But I don’t see that it’s anyone else’s concern.

Q: No, not really. But I mean, did Kerry say so to you—about him and Valentino?

A: Why?

Q: Because I want to know? Why not? Would anyone object if I asked if X, Y, or Z were heterosexual? I don’t see why people want to be so skittish.

A: Frankly, I don’t care. But now that you ask, Kerry didn’t tell me about their relationship; someone else did. Ramon Novarro told me about him and Valentino. Seems they were a very hot pair, for a while. Two hot Latin temperaments! Oh, I can well imagine it, can’t you?

Q: I’m trying.

A: Do you like to watch? That sort of thing?

Q: Voyeurism?

A: Mmm.

Q: I’ve, uh, never watched.