Hollywood Gays (43 page)

A: I wonder what he was thinking about….

Q: I don’t know, but the emphasis was homophobic, and right after the next commercial break, Blake announced that they’d just heard by phone from Liberace’s lawyers, and that he hadn’t meant anything derogatory. He apologized, saying, “I love ya, Lee.”

A: How do ya like that!

Q: It was strange, going out of his way to make a homophobic joke at the expense of a living star. Same thing when Chevy Chase was on Tom Snyder’s talk show three or four years ago and for no reason he began insulting Cary Grant via anti-gay stereotypes. Grant sued, said that he had to, to defend his “reputation” (eventually dropping the suit).

A: I guess not all bitches are women.

Q: May I ask one more question about Marlon Brando?

A: (Stares, smirks, winks.) The photo?

Q: Yes! The rumor is there’s a photo floating around—the world—that allegedly shows Brando with, purportedly, a mouth full of his very close friend Wally Cox. Do you believe it?

A: Have you seen it?

Q: I’ve seen it, and I can’t help questioning it. First, Wally Cox.

A: Singular.

Q: I beg your pardon?

A: One cock. (Leers.)

Q: Bisexual?

A: I’m sure. So’s Marlon. You know he publicly said he had sex with men.

Q: Yes, in France while filming
Last Tango in Paris
. That movie, however, has a very homophobic sequence. Which he, as the star, didn’t have to agree to.

A: Oh…yeah, I remember.

Q: Everyone who sees the movie sees the bigotry. Not everyone read that Brando admitted to bisexuality—most newspapers would refuse to print that. (A 330-page 1987 Brando biography by Charles Higham also omitted the fact. Higham later came out as gay.)

A: I guess most people don’t want to hear.

Q: Well, maybe most people don’t want to hear about other things, but they’re told regardless. The suppression of facts about gay and bisexual people amounts to propaganda.

A: Status quo, right?

Q: Yes. Anyway, back to the photo. Do you think it’s really Brando?

A: (Smiles widely.) I’d like to. I think so.

Q: Because it’s a side view and it could be him or it might not. It’s very hard to tell.

A: Very hard…the object of the man’s affection.

Q: Which brings me to the other, bigger point…I mean…well, the point is that the erection is several shades darker than the other man’s face. It looks brown. Wally Cox—singular—was quite pale.

A: So you don’t think…?

Q: I too think it would be intriguing if it were Brando and…whoever. But
is
it? Looking at it doesn’t prove to me that it’s Brando, let alone Wally’s…Wally Cox.

A: To each his own. I guess. (Takes a sip.)

Q: Did Brando ever admit—

A: You know, that photo’s supposed to be from the 1950s. I can’t say definitely. But I think…that’s prob’ly enough about Marlon now. We got other things we can talk about. (Winks.)

Q: Of course. Is it more satisfying, artistically, to work on the stage, even in smaller roles?

A: Ah…A smaller role in a play is still often larger than a small one on television. Everything about television is small. Including most of its stars. Right from early TV days, most of the people who became its stars were ones who couldn’t become stars in movies. (Milton) Berle, (Jackie) Gleason, years of trying on the big screen. They weren’t big enough for it. It’s a lot tougher to fill that giant screen, ya know.

Q: Do you remember any of your reviews for
The Seven Year Itch
—either the play or the movie?

A: I got raves for the play and real good notices for the movie, except that Marilyn got most of the press. I remember the (New York)
Daily Mirror
gave me a backhanded compliment, said I’d been kicking around long enough, it was high time for me to get a break in pictures. They said my “gait” was “ungainly.” And my features were “pliable.” But then they decided I did a tremendous thing in “stealing” the movie from Miss Monroe, so that was pretty breathtaking to read.

Just getting that degree of attention—national attention—it was real new for me. I was ready for more! So I did a movie soon after,
The Girl Can’t Help It
. No Billy Wilder, no Marilyn. It had Jayne Mansfield. With respect and sympathy for Miss Mansfield, but she was no Marilyn Monroe. And if Billy Wilder’d been directing
The Seven Year Itch
but without Marilyn, it still wouldn’t have hit the bullseye.

Q: She was the essential ingredient.

A: She was.

Q: Do you think or know whether Marilyn knew you were gay?

A: Gay-sexy, not gay-happy? (Shrugs slightly.) She knew, everyone did, that I was married. That gave me immunity. Not that I had much to hide. You start off trying to do what you’re supposed to do.

Q: What they say you’re supposed to do.

A: Well, things’ve changed, but…no, Marilyn was very friendly. Treated me like a Dutch uncle.

Q: What is a Dutch uncle, as opposed to other kinds?

A: I think someone who gives you advice.

Q: Like a father or mother.

A: But he’s your uncle, so you don’t have to pay attention. But Marilyn was interested, she asked me a lot about the stage, about New York. She was a sweet kid. She liked that I listened to her. She didn’t like that Billy Wilder liked to treat her like a well-endowed joke.

Q: May I say, for what it’s worth, that I never wondered if you were gay? At the time, I didn’t know you were married. In fact, you had a first marriage that lasted about a year. Was it because…?

A: That was hardly long enough to bother commenting on. And kinda private. The second (from 1948 on) is the lasting one. Now let me ask the interviewer a question. How come you never wondered about me that way?

Q: Honestly? I think with comedians, one wonders less. Also with fat people. Perhaps one subconsciously assumes they have no sexuality, or at least no sex life. I know that some gay males, when they hit puberty and have been brainwashed enough to be that uncomfortable being gay, they choose to get fat, using the fat as a shield. Then they don’t have to compete for girls or go to dances or on dates, and people wonder less often.

A: I knew a boy like that, long time ago. I’m sure he didn’t like girls.

Q: Didn’t like them sexually.

A: Yeah. To sleep with. He didn’t get fat till he was 14 or 15, but then some time in his twenties he lost the fat. Turned out to be a looker. What he did with his personal life, I dunno. Opened a gas station, though…. Wait, now. So, you just assumed I was straight?

Q: Yes.

A: Oh…I see. (Smiles, satisfied.)

Q: It’s interesting that when an actor is very handsome, we always assume one sexuality or the other, sometimes wondering, sometimes wishing.

A: You don’t forget to wonder about him!

Q: No, probably because we can more easily picture him in a sexual situation. With some performers—not you—one never thinks of them in a sexual or romantic way. Again, especially if they’re there to make us laugh.

A: Yeah…well, I didn’t have to live in fear, unlike—you’re right—the lookers, those boy pretties. They had to hide and usually get married off, which is like a life sentence if the wife’s not understanding. If she’s demanding, ya know, and gets fancy ideas.

Q: Such as?

A: Oh, I dunno. Who knows what comes into women’s heads? Another thing with women, they don’t keep their bodies as long as men do. So’s (sic) only natural if a guy’s horny, that after a period of time he’s gonna go looking for a younger body, male or female.

Q: Working on the stage, at least there you didn’t have the potential blacklisting worries of actors who worked solely in movies or TV.

A: You mean in the ‘50s.

Q: The whole witch-hunt era, from the late ‘40s into the early ‘60s. The stage was more accepting and fairer than the mass media.

A: Hollywood always had its eye on the big prize. They tried to sell to the average man. But the median’s often mediocre. The New York stage—more so back then—was trying to sell to an urban audience, sophisticated. It was more varied, and many of its members wanted to think, not just be entertained.

Q: You were in the movie
Adam’s Rib
. What light can you shed on the rumored Hepburn and Tracy relationship?

A: It is rumored….I gotta be careful. She’s so damn admired. Usually, a woman beards a man. Sometimes it’s the other way. All right, then? (Scowling.)

Q: You were in
The Great Gatsby
with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, but—

A: The remake. There was already a
Great Gatsby
starring Alan Ladd. You said “but,” so you know it was a fiasco, for me and for I’m not sorry to say the ones who made it. (Ewell’s scenes were cut from the final release.) Did you see that movie?

Q: With all the publicity, one felt almost obligated. More for the music and the period look than the two stars. I remember Mia Farrow as Daisy was the first celebrity on the cover of a new magazine called
People
.

A: That rings a bell. Boring movie, huh?

Q: I thought so. It flopped big.

A: It shows they can’t publicize a movie into being a hit. Public’s more important than any damn publicity.

Q: Your first film (in 1940) was
They Knew What They Wanted
.

A: I didn’t do much on screen in the 1940s. The ‘50s was my decade to sizzle, celluloid-wise.

Q: You were in
State Fair
(1962), to my mind one of Rogers and Hammerstein’s lesser efforts.

A: That was another remake. The original was better. This one had Ann-Margret. But it also had Pat Boone. (Makes a face.)

Q: Openly homophobic.

A: Religious nut. Sometimes they’ll call someone “devout” when they mean fanatic. Ya know he’s got four or five daughters….

Q: A lot.

A: Only daughters..

Q: And…the point?

A: Some study somebody went and made. Not all men, but a lot of ‘em, when all their kids are girls, and they got at least three.

Q: I know what you’re saying. A friend of a friend is a man in Sacramento with five daughters, no sons, and he’s gay. He left their mother, lives with his male partner. Is that what—

A: I’m just saying, not about anybody in particular, what the study said: when a man has several kids and they’re all daughters, chances are….

Q: Johnny Mathis, who sang “Chances Are,” came out in
Us
magazine a few years ago.

A: Another thing, there’s more proof now that when men are homophobic over and over, you know—

Q: Focusing obsessively on homosexuality while proclaiming they’re “straight.”

A: How often those men are, as they say, closet cases. Politicians, preachers, whatever.

Q: There’s yet another tendency, from two studies I’ve heard of: when a family has several sons, the youngest son is often gay. It’s the case with my own partner, who’s the youngest of four brothers (has two sisters), and with Eric Douglas, Kirk’s fourth son, and others I know of. It doesn’t mean all youngest sons are gay, and when they are, it doesn’t mean there’s a thing wrong with it.

A: I think labeling people is wrong. People are complex.

Q: True, but most people do fit a category. Like right- or left-handed. It’s just a fact. What’s wrong is punishing people for the category they fit into.

A: Yeah, people are always ready to look down their noses.

Q: Yesterday I was in a memorabilia shop, and I mentioned to a young woman who works there and seemed intelligent the increasingly prevalent rumor that Jodie Foster’s brother is publicly implying she’s gay. She said, “What a terrible thing for him to say!” She sure plummeted in my estimation. What’s terrible about it?