Born On This Day- April 4th... Closet Case Anthony Perkins

''Of course we'd heard he'd married,'' says artists Don Bachardy, a long time friend of actor Anthony Perkins. ''I thought that was just awfully odd behavior for him. Did he honestly think that marriage to Berry Berenson (sister of actress Marisa) could make him a heterosexual?'' Perkins had affairs with a number of men, in the1950s & 1960s, including Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Rudolf Nureyev, Stephen Sondheim, & dancer/choreographer Grover Dale, with whom Perkins had a 6 year relationship before his marriage to Berenson.

He was a very talented, Oscar nominated actor of stage, screen & TV, but one unforgettable movie-1960's Psycho resulted in the kind of typecasting that kills a bright career. The heir apparent to James Dean after a string of star making stage performances in Tea & Sympathy & Look Homeward, Angel, by 1981, Anthony Perkins was reduced to doing Psycho sequels & commercials in Japan.


Perkin's era, shared with Tab Hunter & Rock Hudson was an especially claustrophobic period for gay actors. Tab Hunter says it was ''the excruciating dance of the 50s''. There were the Times Square gay porno theaters where Perkins sometimes passively watched other men have sex , the arranged dates with starlets for Modern Screen, & the fear gay actors had that magazines like Confidential would expose them, the way it did with Tab Hunter, one of Perkins' first lovers. It was the 1950s, a public person could not go public, even if he wanted to, & Perkins didn't want to.

Perkins was nothing if not ambitious. ''Nothing was going to get in the way of his career,'' says comedian Alan Sues. He lived platonically for years with a domineering older woman- Helen Merrill while enjoying sex with a long line of male lovers.


Yet Perkins' puzzling (at least to his friends) marriage to Berenson in 1973 seemed more than just a marriage of convenience. Berenson, who'd had a schoolgirl crush on Perkins, pursued him relentlessly, & the couple eventually had 2 sons- Osgood & Elvis. Perkins was devoted to Berenson & his boys, though his gay friends privately doubted his claims that he was faithful to her. Perkins, in trying to convince Hollywood he was straight by marrying, may have actually brought himself real happiness. ''It was a real sense of marriage between them,'' wrote Dominick Dunne. ''Whatever they had, it was wonderful. I mean, it was a real & loving family."

Perkins acknowledged he had AIDS posthumously, in a statement dictated to his sons, Osgood & Elvis: ''I chose not to go public about this because, to misquote Casablanca, 'I'm not too much at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of one old actor don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy old world.''' Perkins died at age 60, on September 12, 1992, from complications of AIDS. He was cremated, & his ashes were given to his family. His widow was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, during the September 11 attacks in 2001, the day before the anniversary of his death.