Amanda Blake...did she die of aids?

Yes, she did, OP. I have no idea how she got it. Probably a blood transfusion.

She got it from her much younger husband who was a well known gay man who also died of aids. I guess he fucked the old girl at least once.

RIP, Ananda...

Miss Blake was not very fond of the very concept of gay men after her husband infected her.

Apparently her husband was rather obviously gay, but where there ever rumors about Amanda? Was the marriage a beard? By the way, she left all her money to animal rescue, and during its entire run she never allowed fur to be shown on the show.

I thought I'd read that she was infected from a blood transfusion she got when she had oral surgery.

Husband was on the white guy version of the downlow

"By the way, she left all her money to animal rescue, and during its entire run she never allowed fur to be shown on the show." She never allowed muff to be shown either.

She was a lonely old fish who wanted companionship, so she hooked up with Mark Spaeth, who was a developer on the Austin City Council. I lived there when all this was going on. Spaeth was a notorious homo, and not too much on the DL, contrary to the idea of the good story that makes. And though all the early reports wanted to make it out to be that he gave her the virus, everyone who knew them knew that old queen bottom could never get it up for fish. The dental hypothesis came later and is widely believed to be much more likely.

Festus got it from the Marshall and gave it to her.

A little info on Mark.

Since so many gay men on Datalounge have claimed they occasionally dip their wicks in female poon, it's highly likely that she and her gay husband did on occasion have sex. I guess it can never be verified, but she may well have gotten AIDS from him.

Poor Martha Raye married a flaming fruit named Mark Harris; he was 42, she was 75. She was wheelchair-bound, both legs amputated, but when Harris was straight-out asked if they had sex he giggled and breathlessly stated "YES!" DID they really? Well, maybe they did engage in some sort of sexual activity (truly a ghastly image, isn't it?); it certainly wouldn't have taken a lot to satisfy the half-dead old woman. And probably Harris thought she deserved a little lovin', seeing as how rich he would be after she died (she left him 3 million dollars).

Lonely women who marry gay men. Amanda Blake did it. Martha Raye did it. Judy Garland did it at least twice. Liza Minnelli did it at least twice. Supposedly Bette Davis considered it. What a terribly sad thing it is.

But Martha Raye was a multiple times married bisexual-lesbian type. Judy was crazy, Liza is a lesbian, sometimes bisexual. Getting the picture?

Obit from the 80's

Amanda Blake Died of AIDS, Doctor Says AP Published: November 8, 1989

. .SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 7— Amanda Blake, the actress who played Miss Kitty on the long-running television series 'Gunsmoke,' died of AIDS-related complications and not, as a hospital and her friends reported at the time, of cancer, her doctor says.

The doctor, Lou Nishimura, a Sacramento internist, said Monday that Miss Blake, who died at age 60 on Aug. 16, did have throat cancer. But he added, 'That wasn't the reason that she died.'

Dr. Nishimura spoke after a report by television station KRBK in Sacramento, where Miss Blake was a longtime resident, quoted her friends as saying now that her death was related to AIDS. He said that she had suffered from AIDS symptoms for about a year but that he did not know how she had contracted the disease.

Miss Blake's fifth husband, Mark Spaeth, a developer and City Councilman in Austin, Tex., died of pneumonia in 1985 at age 45. They married in April 1984, and divorced a short time later.

After Miss Blake died at Mercy General Hospital, a statement by the hospital and her friends reported the cause of death as cancer.

Miss Blake's death certificate, however, listed the immediate cause as cardiopulmonary arrest due to liver failure and CMV hepatitis. CMV, or cytomegalo virus, hepatitis is AIDS-related, said Dr. Nishimura.

Native Austinite here who lived there during the '80's when the Spaeth-Blake marriage and deaths occurred. In this case, mhb is - astonishingly - probably correct. Spaeth was notoriously out in the early '80's. My sheltered Republican parents and their country-club cronies even laughed about it. Look at the marriage and death dates. I wouldn't be surprised if Blake and Spaeth both had been diagnosed already when they married.

Noooo, if she and he mnarried both knowing that they were ill...then why divorce in a few months? Wouldn't the premise then be to care for each other, the Queen and the Misses? I'm more inclined to believe that she was old and lonley and he was livley and funny and made her laugh and feel young...so she was prolly in denial about the gay part (you know the old 'everyone in the room can see the obvious except me' deal, ecept this case it was the whole town) ...maybe they tried it once (sometimes that's all it takes) or twice, and then she either caught him with a man or she realized the obvious and humiliated, promptly divorced him. It's soooo obvious, that's why the article is pointing it out, people were in the know.

I remember her death and I think it is so sad. She must have been lonely to marry a fairy. I have an uncle by marriage, who is now my aunt%E2%80%99s ex-husband, who has a gay brother who married a very wealthy old lady who was very lonely. She died and left him millions. He got her mansion and her ranch and all of her personal contents of course. He now travels all over the work and stays in the finest hotels. %0D %0D BTW, my uncle's brother went around San Francisco wearing makeup, eye shadow, lipstick, etc. with his beard. People called him the bearded lady.%0D

So sad! I lived in Austin at the time as well. The Down Low, Low Down, Deceitful Mark Spaeth infected most of Austin's male population... I onlu wish Ms. Blake had not met the sorry something!!! She was worth more than that.

R12, are you aware that Martha Raye was a lesbian?

Lesbian Liza Minnelli did it at least THREE TIMES:

Peter Allen, JACK HALEY JR, David Gest

Tubby guys can be gay, you know.

Judy Garland did it THREE times, too.

Vincente Minnelli, Mark Herron and, as anyone in Cleveland and Fire Island will tell you, Mickey Deans.

In the list of older women celebs marrying gays, you forgot Margaret Whiting. Also, in their later years, Tallulah Bankhead, Mae West, and Betty Hutton (while not married to) were all attended to by the gays. Interesting, no? What's up with that?

"are you aware that Martha Raye was a lesbian?"

If she was a lesbian, then why didn't she hook up with a FEMALE golddigger instead of a male? The golddigger could have posed as her "nurse" and when she died she could have left all her money to the "nurse."

Consider the era as I share all of this. Please note I am not trying to be mean.

Her husband died of "pneumonia" in 1985. Think of how things were like back then.

Amanda Blake died of AIDS in 1989 and was obviously rather ill (with more than oral cancer) well before that.

[quote]Those who knew Blake insist she never used drugs and was not sexually promiscuous. How, then, did she contract AIDS? A strong possibility is that she received it from her last husband, Mark Spaeth of Austin, Texas. A developer and city councilman, he died of AIDS four years ago at age 45, shortly after their marriage of less than a year ended in divorce. According to fellow city council member Charles Urdy, "They had been good friends for years. The general perception was that she was sort of down and out, in some financial difficulty, and that was the reason for the marriage. Spaeth was fairly well-off." And, says Urdy, "He was definitely perceived as being a homosexual. He was accepted as being gay, and his close friends were known to be gay."

It's so sad when the innocent ones die.

The odds of The Dentist Gave it to Her are extremely slim to none.

Or, r23, she could have 'adopted' a much younger woman. That's not unheard of.

I think Martha was senile in her last years, and she was also in a big feud with her daughter(s). Martha always presented herself as heterosexual with numerous marriages (including with one of Judy's exes); maybe with what was left of her mind, she thought Mark Harris would save her.

"Tallulah Bankhead"

Another lesbian, r22.

[quote]Poor Martha Raye married a flaming fruit named Mark Harris; he was 42, she was 75. She was wheelchair-bound, both legs amputated, but when Harris was straight-out asked if they had sex he giggled and breathlessly stated "YES!"

Yeah, take it! TAKE IT!

Take it from the Big Mouth!

[quote] in this case misshelenbedd is correct

Truer words have never been spoken

[quote]Martha always presented herself as heterosexual with numerous marriages (including with one of Judy's exes);

David Rose divorced Martha to marry Judy a year after the Wizard of Oz premiered. First big scandal of Judy's career.

wasn't he gay? He looked a little gay.

Amanda and Mark

Everyone is innocent, including Mr. Spaeth. In point of fact, she thought she was dying of cancer from 1982, so she may have known he had AIDS, only he hung on long enough that she divorced him.

She guest starred on Edge of Night, of all shows, in 83 or 84 for a string of episodes. Looking back, it was probably to keep her health insurance in tact.

Women are not fish, mhb. Stop the hate.

[quote] The odds of The Dentist Gave it to Her are extremely slim to none.

I'll say!

Did her dentist fuck her in the ass? That gives new meaning to "Open Wide."

13 posts later and no one is going to slap the shit out of r25 ? Fuck you r25 , I hope you're joking. Otherwise you are despicable.

r39, yes, I was only joking. During the height of the epidemic, I used to cringe when I'd hear someone refer to children, hemopheliacs, or wives of the infected as the "innocent victims," as if having sex with another man was some sort of punishable crime.

Ok, sorry I called you despicable.

She also has a fun part in "The Boost" the film with Sean Young about coke addicts, she smokes rock in it.

She did an episode of "Brothers". That was the "Queer As Folk" of its day.

Didn't she try and claim she caught it off a toilet seat in Tijuana?

What is up with her right hand in that photo at r33? Is she wearing a glove? Liver spots?

Who said she was antigay? totally made up.

That was the most nightmarish of times. It's amazing what it takes to force me to remember. I was in SF and so very thankful for the help provided by the lesbians. They will never get their due, but none other were more deserving.

Aside from how she died I loved Miss Kitty in Gunsmoke. She was an ass kicking, taking names, kind of gal. That character should be a feminist icon. Amanda did a great job in the role. She more than held her own playing opposite Bette Davis in an episode. Go to about 7 minutes in.

So where can I meet these rich old ladies?

Tho Mark Spaeth's queerness was pretty much an open secret in Austin, at the time Austin was pretty much a small city. Spaeth was ambitious, and some of us suspected he had his hat set on someday running for state office. He was handsome enough, and what Texas could have resisted voting for the man who married Miss Kitty?

Not on DL where shit heads like R9 term women as 'fish'. He probably terms black people as monkeys, as he seems to like choosing an animal species to describe the 'inferiors'. Silly fucker.

Oh, he was also associated with Jerry Smith, the former Redskin football player. Smith also died of AIDS-before that, he co-owned a gay bar in Austin...

R53 = bigot

I think your all so immature to speak of one so popular in American tv culture . She shouldn't be condemned but maybe you should be. Grow up.

Poor deluded mhb. Yes, yes, it's so much more likely that she contracted AIDS from her dentist than her slutty gay husband at the height of the AIDS epidemic. LMAO.

Also, to the rube up thread who thinks Mark Harris fucked Martha Raye simply because he said he did, are you really so dim as to believe anything a gold digger says? Every word they utter is a lie.

WHO REALLY CARES!!!!

I was friends with Mark Spaeth and attended the wedding in Austin. Both Mark and Amanda brought same-sex dates to the wedding. Mark brought some twink that he was doing and Amanda brought Rusty Warren, the comedienne. Everyone stood on the chairs for toasting with Mark at one end of the table and Amanda at the other. Amanda and Mark had a running joke about the house having two wings, one for Amanda and one for Mark and his tricks.

Mark Spaeth was openly gay; he and his male companion in 1982-83 were going to the gay clubs a lot; both were notorious. His companion was a flamboyant older gay man (one of those that you immediately suspected of being gay); he was in the news (as was Mark) a lot: the companion was an interior decorator, theatre critic, or something like that.They were known to be together, maybe not to the general public (MY grandmother had no clue Mark was gay and talked about him all the time). I do not remember the companion's name and if anybody knows please contact me with his name. The companion died of HIV Aids sometime between June- November 1983 at Brackenridge Hospital. At the time the companion died, we all knew in the drama dept that Mark would probably get it. We whispered about it. When Amanda Blake showed up, I remember thinking "oh they are just friends." When they got married, I was shocked. I didn't know her so who was I to tell her any of this but hoped someone would. I think nobody told her. It was simply second hand info to me but told to me by people who knew both Mark and his companion intimately. I even think I met the companion once in the UT Theatre Department lobby as he appeared to love hanging with the "young men." I always thought if was the companion who most likely gave it to many in Austin. For a promising politician, being associated with a man that died of Aids would have been the "kiss of death" politically. Everyone seemed to forget about the companion when he brought her to town. It was obvious to all of us at the time that he married her to dispel rumors that he had been associated intimately with someone who died of Aids complications so he could run for office. Suddenly he began playing straight (while still trying to placate the gay voters who ended up mad at him for doing so). I don't think it was so much to cover his being gay but to cover his association with an intimate partner that died of the disease. He had big ambitions of running for Governor and she was there to cover for him among the more conservative voters, the police department, fire department, all those that were big fans of the show. AB was extremely popular with people and everyone who knew her adored her, she was the main reason he won an election he had been losing prior to her arrival on the scene. AB knew what she was getting into to, she was down on her luck, had not been successful in the marriage dept with straight men. I think she was naive about the disease. She had been out of the mainstream Hollywood scene for sometime and probably thought HIV Aids was something the 4 H group got in NYC. The first person to die of it in Austin was in June/July 1983. People only whispered about it like cancer in a Tennesee Williams play. No doubt, they had sex (I mean you are married, trying to appear married, living together, playing both sides of the fence, you have a few drinks and.... she didn't have to have actual intercourse either to get the disease). He was sick by the summer of 1984 and fell down and broke his arm and wrist in a hospital in Houston (Mayo clinic, maybe). He could have been sick, bled on something, thrown up and she cleaned it up as the dutiful wife. I once volunteered in an children's Aids ward and we had to be very careful about body fluids, sneezing, etc. Remember back then, people treated it like the recent Ebola crises - scared to be in the same room with someone, drink from someone's cup, use someone's towel, or shake hands even. Remember Rock Hudson didn't die of it until 1985 which was the wakeup call for actors in Hollywood and the straight actresses who worked with him were all worried that maybe they had gotten it from him for awhile. It was a sad situation and one really bad decision I wish she had not made. Spaeth may have been in denial but he certainly didn't tell her about the previous companion or she would never have made that decision to marry him. She left town about the time he broke his arm in the hospital which is probably when he found out he had the disease and never looked back.

She knew and she didn't care because she thought it would be ten years before she'd get anything and she was already old.

And then it hit faster than expected.

Maybe she was broke and felt she had no choice.

[quote] Apparently her husband was rather obviously gay, but where there ever rumors about Amanda? Was the marriage a beard?

Apparently not for her, since she fucked him and got AIDS..

[quote] She was a lonely old fish who wanted companionship, so she hooked up with Mark Spaeth, who was a developer on the Austin City Council. I

Was he related to Merry Spaeth, wealthy wing nut and star of The World of Henry Orient?

Martha Raye and Mark Harris, for all you young 'uns.

[quote]as if having sex with another man was some sort of punishable crime.

But it was. You must be young. You'll never know the fun of being an outlaw.

There was a biography of Amanda Blake (available on amazon) that described her frequent trips to Africa. She was an animal rights advoate and used to travel there frequently --- apparently on photographic safaris and in the interests of supporting animal sancutaries. She was also described as a woman who enjoyed sex. Regularly.

The implication in that book was that she was not without sexual partners on those frequent trips, and that that was where she probably contracted the virus.

She got it from her husband, even my dead grandmother knows that. Why did some fucker say she got it from a blood transfusion?

It looks like she already had AIDS before she married him, and it was a marriage of convenience. Back in those days, people who "freebased" cocaine were often infected with the virus, for some reason (maybe like meth it made for questionable sex for drugs). Also, dentists had legal access to legal cocaine. Prominent dentists were suppliers. I know of one ("heterosexual" with children) prominent dentist who was involved with it, and he died of AIDS. Dentists were also common transmitters and infected due to less than hospital level precautions. You have to remember those were very different times. Nobody even knew how to test for it.... Anyway, it was a tragic time of loss. I hope today, people are not just taking PREP and transmitting / getting infected without care. It will only be a matter of time before a worldwide catastrophe happens.