Which stars of Hollywood's Golden Age were genuinely homophobic? PART TWO

So, Charlie Ruggles - family? How about Erik Rhodes from the 2 Astaire-Rogers films?

Clark Gable was rumored to work as a rentboy before working as an actor. There's the oft-repeated story that he disliked George Cukor because Cukor knew his secret, and so had Cukor replaced by Victor Fleming on GONE WITH THE WIND. Gable's blustery homophobia may have been a cover-up.

Has there ever been talk of a Gable having a same-sex affair once he became famous?

Also, why isn't more known/documented about his good friend/FWB Joan Crawford's lesbian dalliances? Joan was highly sexual and allegedly had a number of female partners over the years (including Marilyn Monroe, according to gossip). Details, anyone?

I've read Susie Hayward was homophobic, but I'm thinking it was more of a "different time then" thing than some deep-seated hatred.

I've always found it interesting that The Valley Of The Dolls (the book much more so than the movie) takes a much nastier tone about gay men than gay women. Supposedly Susann had several affairs with women, so maybe that's why the parts of the book dealing with Jennifer's years-long affair with Maria in Europe was depicted so tenderly. Whereas the gay men are referred to as if they're all screaming queens.

r2 A friend of mine, who was a regular at Cukor's Sunday afternoon pool parties, once asked Cukor directly about the Gable rumor. Cukor, always discreet, declined to confirm anything. However, revealingly, he said that was a subject on which he preferred not to comment. I knew Cukor and was a guest at a few of his parties, but I was never bold enough to ask him myself. I certainly wondered though.

Another acquaintance, the costume designer Howard Shoup, once claimed to have given blow jobs to Gable several times in the thirties, about the time Gable was becoming a big star. At one of Shoup's birthday parties (I think his 70th), he referred to a brief relationship with Gable. Edith Head, a lesbian herself, was there and became rather grim when this was brought up. Otherwise, she and Shoup were good friends. Shoup was beginning to bald and had newly grown his hair long and a bushy mustache. His hair was snowy white. This was new to Edith. When she arrived and saw Shoup, the following took place:

EDITH HEAD: "Oh! Shoupie! You look just like Mark Twain!"

HOWARD SHOUP: "You knew him, of course?"

Shoup was a pretty successful costume designer...did he have any other gossip about who was family?

r5 No, I don't have any more Howard Shoup stories. I can't call him a friend since I was only in my late teens when I first met him. I met him at this party, and I'd gone along as a guest of a friend. I did see him a few more times, but I was just 26 when he died. That party I was at couldn't have been for his 70th birthday, as I thought it might, since I was only about 13 when that occurred. As I recall from other situations, he mainly just gossiped about funny events in his life, particularly when he worked at Warner Brothers at the same time as Orry-Kelly. I mainly remember stories about how, during WWII, they sometimes had to cannibalize older costumes for fabric and beads due to wartime shortages. Although I'm not particularly interested in costuming, I remember that he spoke very admiringly of Bill Thomas, who mainly worked at Universal. He particularly liked a costume Thomas had designed for Jane Wyman, in All That Heaven Allows. There was a scene in which Wyman receives an emotional setback, and glistening tears in her eyes are carefully lit. In the next scene, she's in a beaded evening gown that literally looks like it's covered in tears.

Edith Head story: She lived in a house in Beverly Hills that had been built in the late 19th- or early 20th-century. It had a simple rectangular shape, and she and her husband precisely doubled it in size by extending its length. It was still quite a small place. You couldn't tell the old part from the new. She collected antique sewing machines and they were all over the house. The look of the house inside and out was early California. I remember she had a nesting set of Mexican terracotta pots, about 15 or 20 of them. They were mounted on the outside rear wall of the house in an arc, from smallest to largest. Years later, the first time I was invited to Carrie Fisher's house, I was shocked at the address. It was Edith Head's old house. When I got there, I was really pleased to see that the array of Mexican pots were still in place, so they sold with the house. My memory wasn't completely accurate, however, since there were two sets of pots, arranged in two arcs.

More Edith: She was a good cook, and especially liked to bake cakes. Nothing fancy. My brother and I loved the grapefruit cake they used to have at the Beverly Hills location of the Brown Derby restaurant. Edith made a version of this, and hers was better. She and her husband often dropped by our house and she almost always brought us a grapefruit cake. Edith started working at Paramount and was there for several decades. I was sad when she left to go to Universal, partly at Alfred Hitchcock's urging.

Great stories. R4/R6. I love this stuff.

I've heard speculation that the (married) Edith Head was gay, and she certainly presented herself as someone who could be. But are there any accounts of female lovers?

I know she was a favorite of Barbara Stanwyck's, but that may have been strictly professional. Head knew how to make Stanwyck sexy and glam onscreen.

Anthony Perkins was a nasty piece of work.

He knew that his boyfriend Tab Hunter wanted Warner's to buy the rights to 'Fear Strikes Out', a drama Hunter had done on live TV. Perkins then went behind his back and convinced the studio to buy it for HIM.

r7 It was just generally "known" that Edith Head was a lesbian, but I never heard any specific gossip about her. I think I only saw her in social situations or in visits to our house. She was always accompanied by her husband, Wiard. They seemed very comfortable together. She was known for being very tough, but also very political. In a way, she reminded me of a schoolteacher (which she was before getting into design). She survived in Hollywood in a lot of situations where less forceful, less political people wouldn't make it. She wasn't a "yes" woman, but she knew how to play the game. Here's a story I heard that may be apocryphal, but still perfectly illustrates her manner of working:

At a pre-production conference, they're discussing the look of the leading lady:

EDITH HEAD: "I see her mainly in black, with white touches."

BIG TIME PRODUCER: "Hmmm, I was thinking of her mainly in white, with black touches."

EDITH HEAD: "That's what I said."

Here is the recipe for the Brown Derby's grapefruit cake:

^ That looks delicious

Grapefruit CAKE? Gag me with a Cagney and Lacey.

Can it be made with another citrus, like an orange? That cake looks lovely, but grapefruits tend to be bitter.

Thanks to all who have contributed! DickieGreenleaf, I would kindly love to hear your take on Scotty Bowers, Tracy & Hepburn, and Henry Wilson and his stable: Hudson, Wagner, Delon etc.

Willson, excuse me

r14 Your request is for so much that it almost feels like a homework assignment. But what the hell, I have the time. I've previously written on DL on another thread that I was from a family that really didn't gossip much. Nevertheless, I heard many stories about film people that were closer to being just matter-of-fact talk from my parents and grandparents, who also were in this business. This is information I believe implicitly. I've also worked in the film business all my life and, of course, have heard lots of things from less discreet people. Some I believe, and some I don't. If I'm going to repeat something I've heard, it's more likely that the gossip is benign, not malicious. I knew Scotty Bowers as did, it seems like, half of LA. Scotty had a basic honesty and decency (I mean that in the best sense of the word) that I believe anything he ever said or wrote. I know that some amazing and fantastic stories are in the book, Full Service, but I can't help believing all of them. Scotty wasn't the kind of person who would lie. This is in contrast to Kenneth Anger, whose Hollywood Babylon books contain a lot of unsubstantiated rumor. Also, I'm sorry to say, not all of Gore Vidal's Hollywood gossip can be believed. He was also a friend and I spent many evenings at his house on Outpost Drive. I think, deep down, he did not like being gay and some of his gossip was simply fueled by hostility and self-loathing. In the last decade of his life, in particular, he began having some pretty crackpot ideas about people and the world.

As for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, I think everything Scotty said and wrote about them was true. You have to hand it to them though, they maintained a consistent, fairly believable fiction of a loving relationship for decades. Even my benign mother thought their relationship was the longest-running fiction in Hollywood history. Actually, my mother thought that to have maintained the image of their "love story" for so long, they must at least have liked each other. I think that's the most positive thing that can be said about their relationship.

As for Henry Willson, I was just a teenager when he died and, as far as I know, never met him. He has an unpleasant reputation and could be quite ruthless and nasty to people he did not like (which means people who could not benefit him in some way). You mention "Delon." Are you referring to Alain Delon? As far as I know, he was never represented by Henry Willson. Also, I heard that Delon has made a number of homophobic statements in his life.

A number of people seem interested in the Brown Derby's grapefruit cake. If any of you live in LA, you can get a very good recreation of it from Valerie. I order it all the time. They don't ship, but will deliver to the LA area for a reasonable charge. I'll include a link to their website.

Sorry, you destroyed a lot of your credibility with the Scott Bowers comments. The guy claimed he was playing matchmaker for lesbians as a ten-year-old in the Great Depression. He might have been a personable guy but that doesn't mean everything out of his mouth was true. Gore Vidal may have been a dick, but he was also a mover and a shaker who hobnobbed with the rich and the famous

What Perkins did to Hunter re: Fear Strikes Out was bad, but I saw a clip of Hunter from the TV version and he wasn't very good. He was really too lightweight for the part. But he did at least look like he could be a baseball player.

Perkins was a much better actor but he was too skinny to play Jimmy Persall.

Thank you DickieGreenleaf for your attention! It is strange the power of the Tracy & Hepburn fiction, yet the various other interpretations are almost as fantastic. One last question (I swear): Mia Farrow?

Tab Hunter did a good job playing a ball player in "Damn Yankees" for the most part. He sang nicely enough, though not up to the standard of original Broadway role originator Stephen Douglass. Plus Tab was nice eye candy. There's a wonderful documentary that Tab made a few years before he died that he cooperated on about his going along with the Hollywood system and hiding his love affairs with guys, including his relationship with Perkins. Hunter comes off like a really nice guy.

Love this thread. It reminds me of DL past, when actual gossip surfaced once in a blue moon.

Whatever one thinks of Scotty Bowers--and I had my own reservations, reading his book and watching the documentary--I'm glad the old man didn't live to see Ryan Murphy do such a hideous job with his story in the HOLLYWOOD series on Netflix. I also hope Murphy paid Bowers good money to re-tell his story, albeit badly. What a missed opportunity!

What shocks me about the Hepburn-Tracey fiction (so aptly described upthread) is its staying power. Both of them are long gone. Yet I'd say the vast majority of the movie-watching public (the ones who could even ID either of the stars) would be shocked, then completely dismissive of the truth, now documented by a number of sources. They were two closeted homosexuals in a public love affair of convenience, and there were others like them.

It's amazing that they added a bit of a kind of scandal of the supposed love affair while working together on the screen so much, since Tracy was married to someone else who apparently wouldn't give him a divorce. It might have been easier if they were married either to each other, or to someone else (like the Lunts) and just did their affairs like they wanted to. This substituted a layer of false heterosexual almost-scandal while hiding a homosexual lifestyle for both. It complicated things, though by adding that extra layer, kept the truth hidden better -- at least for the most part for the general public, until they died.

The Lunts should have been added to next to "married to each other", which they were -- not to other people. Wish this had an edit button.

Spencer didn't have a "homosexual lifestyle" - he had affairs with tons of women

Kate Hepburn was bi

They did have an affair, although the media made it into a bigger deal than it was, because the idea of two A-list stars in a torrid, decades long forbidden affair makes good copy.

I grew up in the 70s hearing stories from my extremely Catholic, extremely moralistic mother about Hepburn and Tracey: they had been "madly in love" for decades, but Tracey was Catholic and married to a Catholic and with a "retarded child" (as they were called then) so he could never leave his wife.

And my mother found all of this incredibly moving and romantic and (perversely) admirable.

Now THAT is effective Hollywood PR.

r19 I really don't know anything about Mia Farrow. Her mother, Maureen O'Sullivan, was a friend of my parents and shared their liberal politics. I vaguely remember her, but nothing about her is memorable. I probably met Mia and the rest of the family (there were a lot of them), but I don't remember anything in particular. All the Farrow children were much older than me, so we weren't natural playmates. If you're wondering about the Mia Farrow/Woody Allen controversy, I don't think Farrow coached her daughter with the accusations, but I definitely think Farrow has encouraged her, not always with the most altruistic intentions. There's something "off" about her. Woody is creepy, too (never met him). This is just me as a civilian talking.

Much has been said about Spencer Tracy's purported affairs with his co-stars, including Loretta Young, Joan Crawford and Ingrid Bergman. I am skeptical about these because Tracy himself was a fall-down drunk once the cameras stopped rolling. Although Loretta Young got pregnant by Clark Gable, at the end of her life she described the incident as date rape. She was otherwise known as a devout Catholic, so the idea of a roll in the hay with the drunken, married Tracy doesn't make sense. Crawford, maybe, since she was having marriage problems with Franchot Tone when she and Tracy made their one film together in '37. But Crawford also had Gable as a lover, and he seems more her type. Bergman is a cypher - she was married and the mother of a young girl when she did Dr. Jekyll with Tracy. I can see her falling for Rossellini for many reasons, but I don't know why she would give Tracy the time of day.

Hepburn was the ideal partner for him, mutual bearding to keep suspicious eyes at bay.

I wonder how much Hedda and Louella , et al, knew about what was really going on?

r27 From what I've heard from many parties, including my most trusted sources, my grandfather and father, Hedda and Louella knew absolutely everything. But they were enthusiastic parroters of the big studio line and were willing to go along with every sleazy hypocrisy. They were both quite malicious, but would play the game, unless some personal or political slight caused them to turn against someone. Then, either would go all-out to destroy whoever was in their sights. If possible, Hopper was worse than Parsons. They were both extreme right-wingers. To think that they didn't know about Tracy and Hepburn is ludicrous. Roddy McDowall, Mr. Placid himself, would get animated talking about Hopper and Parsons. By the time I was born, both Hopper and Parsons were no longer active, but their stench remained in Hollywood.

Thanks again DickieGreenleaf. I asked about Mia Farrow because I’m now watching the entire Peyton Place TV series on YouTube and it sounded like your families may have been acquainted.

Have we talked about Cary Grant? I picked up the first James Bawden interview book mentioned in the other thread and in it he really comes off as such a sad man. He says that the one time he played himself (in None but the Lonely Heart) nobody wanted to see the real him. And even if he was gay, why all the marriages? Also the range of women- Barbara Hutton? Dyan Cannon??

For Dickie.

r30 Thank you! I've got a big bag full of names I can drop right here beside me. More in a box upstairs.

r30 More from my star-studded childhood: Our house cleaner was a former Goldwyn Girl.

R30 is the type of cunt who complains that there is no real gossip on DL and then mocks someone when they provide it.

R24: "They did have an affair, although the media made it into a bigger deal than it was..."

Replace 'the media' with 'Hepburn', and you've got that correct. My god, the only time she talked about someone other than herself was when she was mentioning 'Spence' ad nauseum.

R29, " And even if he was gay, why all the marriages?"

Uh, to cover the fact that he was gay?

I had dinner at her NY home in the spring of 1984 with Katharine, Sydney Guilaroff and Phyllis Wilbourn.

It was obvious as the evening went on that she and Phyllis were a couple. Phyllis was far more than her companion, the title often used. After we left, Sydney confirmed that they'd been together since the early 50's, several years after her "fling" with Spence turned into strictly a friendship.

I've never understood people who say, "I can understand ONE marriage to cover it up if you are gay, but not several."

Marriage involves two people. Not everyone wants to be married to someone who doesn't find them sexually attractive. They get tired of being in an arrangement and move on. This necessitates finding someone else. And then someone else if you want to keep up the illusion.

Phyllis looks remarkably like Spence!

Excuse me, but Phyllis Willbourn was my SECRETARY!

I worked in the Turtle Bay area in the 90s and occasionally saw Kate and Phyllis on East 49th street, going from the house into a waiting car. They both looked old and frail at that time. Last time I was over that way, a couple of years ago, I think there was a For Sale or For Rent sign on the empty brownstone.

Was Stanwyck's secretary, Virginia, her partner? I once heard Debbie Reynolds mention them in a conversation backstage in Vegas and to my ear it seemed that she recognized them as a couple. She wasn't gossiping about them. She wanted to phone them.

[quote]Our house cleaner was a former Goldwyn Girl.

Then I bet you can sing We're in the Money in Pig Latin.

[quote][R30] is the type of cunt who complains that there is no real gossip on DL and then mocks someone when they provide it.

Um, no, I'm not. Perhaps it is because I've authored a couple of books on old Hollywood and helped research about a dozen others and these stories and information aren't new and some can be found online. So I'm not saying they aren't true, I justly don't believe they are. This is an anonymous forum with plenty of facades and bullshit.

Scotty Bowers lost me very early on. He referred to George Cukor as a nice guy---even his friends wouldn't have said that.

[quote]He referred to George Cukor as a nice guy---even his friends wouldn't have said that.

Rude people are often nice to people who can provide them things they badly want.

To lose the entirety of Bowers message because of one subjective remark about George Cukor says much about you, Sir.

George treated many people in a way that was always respectful. Katharine Hepburn adored him as did many others in the business. He could be driven, demanding, obstinate and even cruel at times, but he worked very hard and was harder on himself than anyone else.

I have no doubt he was a nice guy to Scotty and he was only expressing his own opinion. Through the years I heard enough supporting remarks from various individuals to know that most of what Scotty wrote was verifiable and accurate.

Believing everything Scott Bowers ever wrote says a lot about you

His accounts aren't verifiable. When asked for evidence, he always has an excuse.

"I don't have a little black book, I never wrote anything down, I magically remembered everything!"

"Tennessee Williams wrote a book about me, but he destroyed it, so you can't read it!"

^^ Begone, Troll.

I wasn't there, so I don't know whether Bowers is telling the truth or not.

But some of you seem strangely invested in demanding that we don't believe him.

As we have posted for many years one of our best friends was a famous Southern California architect (we think he is now dead, we have lost track of him, he disappeared). He knew Cukor well and used to attend his parties. This was when he was young, before he had his career. One of his houses he built was the pink mansion in the Beverly Hillbillies movie. He told us lots of stories, he knew Ethel Merman, Marlene, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and lots of others. He told us the Cukor told him that Spencer Tracey was gay and so was Hepburn and their romantic relationship was a fake. He also told him Tracey was a drunk. He told us this in the early 90's long, long before Bowers book. He was a very handsome, masculine and talented man. He was backstage with Marlene and saw how she put on her face before the show. He had Merman driven around in his limo for a day. He attended parties for the Windsors (I assume they were in LA) and knew them personally.

R50: You seem awfully invested in believing him.

R49, why am I a troll? I never said that there weren't any gay people in Hollywood, just that it seems pretty weird to automatically believe a guy who makes outrageous claims and can't back up 99% of them

What do you want, Rose, signed documents from participating homos? Give it up. Scotty produced plenty of photos at his places of work and with celebs. In addition celebs have talked of his omnipresence in Hollywood at the time.

Your ignorance is not appreciated here.

What pictures with celebs? I can't recall seeing him ever photographed with a really big celebrity

There's always some troll who wants to believe Scotty's "memory" of long dead people who couldn't sue him.

[quote]You seem awfully invested in believing him.

I just wrote that I don't know one way or the other.

Let it go, Diane.

Bogging down an otherwise interesting thread, boys.

R48, "His accounts aren't verifiable". Maybe not ALL of them but to lump them all together just because YOU haven't taken the time to try and verify them while others have, is just stupid. This has been discussed ad nauseum on the DL and elsewhere and many of his stories have indeed been verified, whether you insist they haven't or not.

Bob Benevides' conversation with the L.A. Weekly, then, was something new: fact-checking. Reached by phone, previously unaware that he was even mentioned in the book, he confirmed everything.

Yes, Benevides admitted, it was Bowers who first “introduced” him to actor Raymond Burr in 1959.

Yes, Bowers frequently “introduced” young gay guys to older men like Burr.

Yes, Bowers took no money for making the “introduction.”

“Scotty just liked to make people happy,” Benevides says.

In fact, Benevides confirmed three of the most controversial claims in Full Service: that Bowers, now 88, was the go-to procurer for many Hollywood stars — gay and straight — in the pre-sexual revolution, pre-AIDS, pre-Craigslist, postwar era; that he gladly shared his sex partners of both genders; and that he was not a “pimp” in the traditional sense because he collected money only when he personally serviced the customer.

And at a signing at Book Soup, a man who claimed to be the grandson of actor Walter Pidgeon, Bowers' very first star trick, in 1946, said he was impressed by Bowers and did not dispute anything he wrote. A man who claimed to have had a six-month affair with Rock Hudson in 1958 agreed that Bowers got it right. And noted writer and historian David Ehrenstein, who said he had researched director George Cukor's archives for his own book, reported that Bowers was mentioned frequently by Cukor — who introduced him to Tracy and Hepburn.

R59, his defenders lump them all together and say they're ALL true. But Scott would never lie! He's a saint! (BTW, everybody lies)

R61, that's the exact opposite of what R48 said. HE'S the one that said they're all lies.

Is that true Clark Gable killed a man?And Ginger Rogers had an affair with Walt Disney and she was supposed to play in acting version of Alice in Wonderland? Or John Garfield died of overdosing cocaine?

I thought Walt Disney was into young boys.

R64 Dunno, but I heard Fred Astaire was into young boys...

-

I met Scotty while dining out with Sydney Guilaroff at the Wilshire Regent in 1982. Sydney was a client of Scotty's although I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was just meeting a friend of Sydney's. Sydney noted that he and Scotty went "way back". Sydney is referenced in the book so I have little reason to doubt Scotty's veracity. I saw enough other things to know that a lot is not as it appears in the movie business, back then.

If he knew Sydney Guilaroff that means everything he wrote was true!

Late in her life, Liz Smith confirmed Katharine Hepburn had lesbian relationships. After keeping her mouth shut for decades, her attitude was "They’re all dead. What the hell does it matter now?”

Neither was true R64-R65. Absolute rubbish.

Disney was an out and out homophobe though...

^ and a racist. And anti-Semitic.

Zip it, M. You don’t know what you’re talking about!

There was a time when gays were not allowed in Disneyland, so yeah, homophobe.

Yup, Tommy Kirk lost his very successful career, thanks to Uncle Walt. Some people say it was his drug use, but that came about as a result of being fired.

"Disney knew they had one of the most popular male actors in the country under contract.

Then something happened.

Kirk was gay. He had an affair with a teenager he met at the local pool; the boy’s mother complained to Disney, who fired Kirk. Money counted, but the brand name of Disney counted more."

Which leads us to Jane Wyman, one of Hollywood's Golden age, and a Homophobe.

"Kirk also had trouble with Jane Wyman, saying: "She was very mean to me. She went out of her way to be shitty...but she was a total bitch and I think she was homophobic."

He was in many movies after Disney fired him R73. As a matter of fact Disney rehired him for another movie. More than likely his career went as far as it could and he eventually became a businessman. It is not unheard of for something to be mildly successfully and than actually quit and go into another career.

R74. I remember reading an interview Rex Reed did with Wyman in which she said she would never play a lesbian—“Not this kid,” which surprised me, as she always seemed extremely butch to me.

(r) 169 Actually Margaret was 50 when she died in 1960.

Jane Wyman may have been heterosexual but those bangs were definitely at least bi-curious...