Born On This Day- August 19th... Malcolm Forbes

The personality trait I most deplore in others? Entitlement. Here is a little tale:

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes probably means nothing to anyone under 40 today. Yet when he died 21 years ago at the age of 70, he was one of the most famous men in America, the result of his shameless, showy smarts at self-promotion.

Forbes inherited Forbes Magazine from his father, its founder, B.C. Forbes, in the late 1950s when he was 38. The magazine had long been a successful business magazine with a strong personality identification with B.C. Forbes. By the early 1970s, Malcolm Forbes, now sole owner, turned it into a hugely successful business monthly magazine. One of his great sensations was the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 Richest.

In the 1970s & 1980s, Forbes lived a luminous, lavish lifestyle, separate from his sedate base on his inherited estate & his large family. In those years he became more prominent & took to the bright lights of NYC.

That was also his public image, although mainly because of his large yachts, his private jets, his residences around the world, & his planeloads of famous, powerful friends.

In late August of 1989, on a weekend, from the 18th to the 20th, Malcolm Forbes gave himself a 70th birthday party in Tangier, Morocco where he owned a palace, the Palais Mendoub. 800 guests were flown in on a chartered Concorde: famous friends, wealthy associates , USA governors, CEOs of multinational corporations, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Robert Maxwell, & Forbe's “date” for the event-Elizabeth Taylor.

It was a party of glitter, glamour & guise, comparable to Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball 23 years earlier. It was well publicized in the fashion & society pages, with a big whack of fairy-dust in the daily papers. It was good for business, mingling advertisers & potential advertisers with the elite of London & Manhattan & his “date” Elizabeth Taylor. It was good for his social reputation, transporting & taking care his very rich friends for free & in style in an exotic country with a Mediterranean climate. The party entertainment was on a grand scale: 600 drummers, acrobats & dancers, a fantasy with a cavalry charge which ended with the firing of muskets into the air by 300 Berber horsemen. The cost of this shindig was more than $3 million.

Forbes died less than 6 months after his party, at home on his estate in Far Hills, NJ. Shortly after he died, he was “outed” as by gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile. Forbes was long known as gay by some & unknown to many. In his later years he became quite the partyer, making up for lost time. The “outing” was a shock, especially to his friends who were not aware, or chose not to believe, that he was gay. Signorile published the story more with intention of showing how acceptable a gay man is without the predictable pale of prejudice. In this case, the band did not play on…

When Forbes died, he was held up by many conservatives as a great American capitalist. Signorile felt that the historical record also needed to show that he was homosexual; he interviewed many people who knew Forbes as gay, some of them men who’d been intimately involved with Forbes.

Highlighting how heated it was at that time to report on the undeclared homosexuality of a public figure who was dead, let alone living, many newspapers viewed Signorile's Forbes story as shocking & scandalous, & it took months for some papers to report on it. The NY Times ran the story 4 months after the fact in a story about outing, & still would not identify Forbes by name, saying that a 'recently deceased businessman' had been 'outed'. Years later, the NY Times would finally report that Forbes was gay, in a story about his son Steve Forbes’ run for the presidency. Steve Forbes has courted the Conservative Christian Right & has come out publicly against gay rights & same sex marriage while campaigning.

Born On This Day- August 5th... Tom Drake

Alfred Sinclair Alderdice was born on this day- August 5^th, in Brooklyn. At some point in his stage career & after several other name changes, he became Tom Drake. He made films starting in 1940 & continuing until the mid-1970s, & also made many TV appearances. Drake was deeply closeted, easily given to despair, never known to have a serious romance (although he bedded Rock Hudson & James Dean), with a profound drinking problem & lived a life of fear of being found out. Sound familiar?

1942 &1943 were years of tremendous change at MGM. The majority of the great stars groomed by Irving Thalberg during the 1930s departed the studio. Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Lew Ayres, Mickey Rooney, Robert Montgomery, & James Stewart joined the armed services & were away from Hollywood for the duration of WW2. Greta Garbo & Norma Shearer left the business. Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Eleanor Powell, Myrna Loy, Margaret Sullivan, & Robert Young fulfilled their contracts & then left for other studios & other pursuits.

These stars were replaced by young "boy & girl next door" types: June Allyson, Van Johnson, Robert Walker, Esther Williams, &Tom Drake. Drake was enormously popular with a primarily teenage audience for a couple of years, although he was eventually overshadowed by the more ebullient Van Johnson. Tom Drake was excused from serving in WW2 due to health problems.

After a number of films, Drake had his best role as John Truett, the boy next door, in the classic musical- Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) with Judy Garland. He appeared in more than 40 films, including Mrs. Parkington(1944), The Green Years (1946), & Words & Music- MGM’s top budget production of 1948. Ironically, Drake was cast as the very heterosexual composer Richard Rodgers to Micky Rooney’s Lorenz Hart, who was gay in real life). He was good in the part, but the film was over produced & purported to tell the life stories of the famous partners, but the screenplay was entirely fictional.

Words & Music does contain the songwriting partner’s great songs: My Heart Stood Still, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Small Hotel, The Lady Is A Tramp, & Where or When taken from their shows: Babes In Arms, I Married An Angel, Pal Joey, & On Your Toes. Guest stars performing the various musical numbers included Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Lena Horne, Mel Torme, & Cyd Charisse. These greats stars’ take on the musical numbers make this movie worth viewing.

Drake returned to the stage in 1952 appearing briefly on Broadway & he toured in 1953 in a stage version of Stalag 17. His friend, Elizabeth Taylor, persuaded MGM to cast him as her brother in Raintree County in 1957.

Later that year Drake traveled to England to star in a film- Date With Disaster (also the name of a chapter in my memoirs- Jockstraps &Vicodin: The Early Years). He remained in Europe for over a year, living most of the time in Rome. Drake returned to California with his drinking problem out of control. He was also a very heavy cigarette smoker.  But, a determined Drake managed to kick both habits. He continued his career on TV, & with occasional movie roles such as The Sandpiper, with his friend Elizabeth Taylor, The Singing Nun&The Red Tomahawk (by coincidence, a nickname given to me in college).

Never able to fulfill his potential, Drake continued into the 1970s playing small roles in 'A' pictures, the occasional lead in low-budget films, plus guest roles in numerous different TV drama series in almost every year from 1950 onwards.

A classic example of how talented people could fall between the tracks of the studio contract system, Tom Drake spent his final years with a job as a used car salesman. His health began to deteriorate & he was forced to give up work. Tom moved in with his sister & retired from acting. He died alone & mostly forgotten of pneumonia in Torrence, California in 1982.

An Anecdote: Drake loved to eat garlic. The garlic caused a problem during filming of Faithful in My Fashion, in which he was co-starred with Donna Reed. Tom had eaten a heavily garlic dinner the previous night, & the 1st shot in the morning called for him to romance Reed while dancing &singing softly in her ear. Reed strenuously objected to the strong odor that seemed to exude from Drakes's every pore. It made her physically ill. Production was suspended for the day, & Drake was ordered not to eat garlic while working on a film. Donna forgave Drake & they remained friends during the rest of their lives.

Born On This Day- July 20th... Douche Larry Craig

My nomination For Under The Stall Hall Of Shame

Who: Larry Craig, Republican, & tap dancer, who maintained a staunchly conservative record in Congress. In June 2007, he was arrested in a men's restroom at a Minnesota airport for lewd conduct. Craig's infamous "wide stance" defense didn't save his political career, or save him from the butt of many, many jokes. He served as chairman of Mitt Romney's 2208 presidential campaign.

What:Soliciting sex from an undercover cop in an airport bathroom

The Shame: Craig voted 2 times against adding the words “sexual orientation” to the federal hate crimes law. Craig also voted to give states the right to refuse to recognize gay marriage, a right they already had, but the Senator wanted to really, really prove he didn’t like gay people.

Words Of Wisdom: “I am not gay, I don’t do these kinds of things.”

Today is his birthday. He turns 67 years old, which is 113 in motherfucking teabagging douche nozzle years.

Born On This Day- July 11th... Tab Hunter

Arthur Andrew Kelm Gelien was an equestrian & figure skater before his agent, Henry Wilson turned him into Tab Hunter (the same agent that came up with the name Rock Hudson). Tab Hunter has appeared in over 40 films & has worked on stage & TV. My favortite Tab Hunter role is as Joe Hardy in the1958 film version of Damn Yankees. He was the only one in the film version who had not been in the original Broadway cast.

In the year of my birth-1954, Hunter, then 23, blond & blue eyed, the perfect product of a popular perceptibility, as free from cynicism & care as a sky can be cloudless & clear, was the #1 male star at the box office with the film- Battle Cry. By 1957 he was also #1 on the pop music charts with Young Love, topping Elvis Presley.

By 1959 his ride was ending. Troy Donahue was invented & he became the next Tab Hunter, & Hunter at 28 was more or less done. Hunter began a 46 year descent into actors’ hell: spaghetti westerns (Hunter describes them as - "short on the meat sauce"), TV guest shots, dinner theater, infomercials, & the film Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood.

Then, in the 1980s, after the long trip through the depths of drek & a heart attack, Hunter was rediscovered by Post Apocalyptic Bohemian- John Waters. In Polyester (1981), Waters used Hunter, who had starred opposite John Wayne as well as Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren & a bevy of beauties, to play opposite Divine as Francine Fishpaw.  His work in Polyester reinvented Hunter as an ironic illustration of his own Hollywood iconography.

Hunter said Hollywood in the 1950s had its version of "Don't ask, don't tell": "Don't complain, don't explain." Let the studio take care of the actors, & let the public draw its conclusions.

Hunter: "Hollywood will just take you, chew you up, spit you out, dump you on the side & go on to the next, & it's kind of tragic." In 2005, Hunter released a terrific & very readable memoir- Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of A Movie Star where he finally publicly came out of the closet. Hunter: "Life was difficult for me, because I was living 2 different lives at that time. A private life of my own, which I never discussed, never talked about to anyone. Then my Hollywood life, which was just trying to learn my craft & succeed..." the word 'gay' wasn't even around in those days, & if anyone ever confronted me with it, I'd just kinda freak out. I was in total denial. I was just not comfortable in that Hollywood scene, other than the work process. There was a lot written about my sexuality, & the press was pretty darn cruel."

Hunter enjoyed long term relationships with actor Anthony Perkins & champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson before settling down with his partner of 30 years, Allan Glaser, a producer. The couple live in Montecito, California.

He was one of my first crushes. I think Tab Hunter was & is a blond bombshell. I don't hate that he is a Republican… but I do hate his Republicanism.

Born On This Day- July 6th... Mervyn Edward Griffin, Jr.

When Merv Griffin died, he left behind: Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy & its theme song, hotels, real estate ventures, more than a billion dollars, & a great deal of speculation. According to Merv Griffin: A life in the Closet by his friend Darwin Porter, Griffin’s 1st crush was Errol Flynn, whom he saw passed out naked on a couch. He was a  roommate with Montgomery Clift for 2 years. He lived with Roddy McDowall at the famed Dakota in NYC, where he introduced Eddie Fisher to Elizabeth Taylor. He had an affair with Rock Hudson, whom he met through Henry Wilson, Rock's agent, & who advised him to keep his sexuality under wraps, & there was a young James Dean selling his sex for cash. He had a relationship with Judy Garland's Meet Me in St. Louis boy next door- Tom Drake. There was golden age stars Peter Lawford, & Robert Walker on his list of conquests, & a sexual tryst with Marlon Brando. He was famous in gay circles for his all-male pool parties with hired porn stars serving up goodies.




I used to come home from elementary school, & let myself into our house with my key, practice the piano & then settle in to watch the Merv Griffin Show. I was already zany for show biz & I was big on Merv’s guests including Moms Mabley, Mrs. Miller & Pamela Mason. Merv's secret gay life was widely known in showbiz, but not to his viewers.

The issue of his sexuality became an issue in 1991 when he was targeted in 2 lawsuits: by Dance Fever host Denny Terrio, alleging sexual harassment; & by his personal assistant- Brent Plott seeking $200 million in palimony. Both suits were eventually dismissed. Eva Gabor played his beard. Nothing was discussed in the media or in his own circles, particularly straight political circles. Though he quietly led a gay life, & had his pool parties filled with hot young men, & a parade of boyfriends, it was viewed as "private" information that was not discussed in mixed company.


In the last years of his life, Griffin deflected the gay questions with a quip, determining that his private life remain private. He felt that he needed explanation, but maybe he owed it to himself to open the secret he'd been forced to hide throughout his adult life. But, Griffin had a place in the Hollywood firmament at a time when being gay was unthinkable & the allegation alone would ruin a career.


I would think that the public would have been more tolerant about his being gay as he grew into old age? Even in Hollywood where homosexuality isn't exactly a rare phenomenon, being gay is rarely spoken of in an honest way. Griffin's brush with tabloid scandal probably only drove him deeper into the closet.


Griffin's closet kept him shockingly silent while he had access to the President of the United States as gay people were dying. He was close with the Reagans (Nancy Reagan in particular, they share a birthday today) during the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s, with few treatments available & fear-mongering having gripped the media. Griffin's friends, his lovers, gay men across America, & around the world suffered & met horrific deaths. Griffin was closeted, & it is highly unlikely he ever made the connection for the Reagans, pointed out the government negligence, or even talking openly as a gay person. They likely knew he was gay, but it was unspoken. Maybe the Reagans rationalized that Griffin was not like "those people", & that maybe it wasn't true anyway... maybe he was actually dating Eva Gabor. Griffin stayed silent about the epidemic in the media, ironic because he was at the center of the media industry & in shaping the TV industry, when his voice would have made a huge difference.

Griffin died in 2007, at 82 years of age. He left behind an immense fortune & many unanswered questions.

Born On This Day- July 1st... Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton had a most interesting & troubled career in Theatre & Film. Possessed by a silver voice with astounding command, he was responsible for some of the most recklessly flamboyant characterizations the screen has seen. & yet his doubts crippled him. Recognized in the 1930s as the screen's true creator of larger than life characters, his career declined into inconsequential movies. He sometimes mocked the parts he was playing, & found himself with a reputation for being unmanageable.

He was an artist with deep, volatile feelings who only occasionally found work in which he could believe. There is an almost brutal contrast in his films between artful invention & unchallenged emoting. A large, ugly actor, he was sometimes incapable of escaping the beastly man he often played. Laughton was a homosexual, tortured by the need to be secret & truly guilt-ridden because of it. He came to see his own looks as warranted punishment; he was his own hunchback.

Within a year of leaving RADA, he had found his 1st professional acting role on stage in The Government Inspector. With the theatre enjoying a resurgence after the hard war years, Laughton found work easily. In 1926, his 1st year of professional acting, he performed in 5 different plays. While performing in a London, he met Elsa Lanchester. From a bohemian background, Lanchester was lively & strong willed. She fell for the reserved & sensitive Laughton, & despite his suppressed homosexuality the pair began a courtship. The couple worked together in a few silent films before they married in 1929. In 1933, his large figure & pudgy face, along with classically trained acting skills, won him the title role in The Private Life of King Henry VIII. He starred alongside his wife, who played Anne of Cleves, & the role won him much public acclaim. In 1933 he won an Oscar for Best Actor, & The Private Life of Henry VIIIwon Best Picture.

Hollywood was anxious to use him for serious character roles. Laughton went on to play the uncompromising & brutal Javert in Les Miserables, the eccentric Captain William Bligh in Mutiny On The Bounty& the slightly unhinged artist Rembrandt in a biopic of his life. Great roles were now being offered Laughton & in 1939, he was the obvious choice to play the lead role in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Laughton was hesitant to play the role. Having long detested his own looks, the character of Quasimodo was maybe a bit close to home. He did take the role & despite not winning the expected 2nd Oscar, The Hunchback of Notre Dame became Laughton’s best-known film role.

In 1955, Laughton directed (but did not act in) the great thriller- The Night of the Hunter,starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters & Lillian Gish. The film is often cited among today's critics as one of the best of the 1950s, & has been selected by the United States National Film Registry for preservation in the Library of Congress. At the time of its original release, it was a critical & box-office failure, & Laughton never had another chance to direct. I am very affected by the film’s lyric & expressionistic style. I would put it in the top 10 scariest movies I have ever viewed. I give it an A on the Steve Report Card.

Only 2 years into the marriage, Lanchester learnt of her husband’s homosexuality. She was initially shocked & deeply upset, but over time the couple began to develop a relationship based on friendship. They decided to remain married. They both took lovers, but were constant companions, looking after & supporting each other. Laughton’s relationship with his sexuality was difficult. He had several lovers, but never had a significant male partner. Laughton still loathed his sexuality. Even at the height of his fame, Laughton’s sexuality remained a tight secret. Lanchester managed to keep that secret safe.

Charles Laughton died in December 1962, after a battle with kidney cancer at age 63. His cremated remains of Laughton are interred in a marbled crypt of the Court of Remembrance courtyard, at Forest Lawn Cemetery in L.A.

He Made It Through The Rain To Sing The Songs The Whole World Sings

Today is the 69th birthday of Barry Alan Pincus of Brooklyn NY. He wrote a whole bunch of songs & along the way sold over 360 million records as writer, producer, arranger or conductor, up there with Sinatra, Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen.

Maybe Barry Manilow will never be ready to take a chance again. During a 2004 concert in NYC, just as he started to sing a duet with Brian d’Arcy James, Mailow joked to the audience: “Of course, we're not going to sing it to each other—that would be creepy.”

His own website diminishes the fact that he began his career in a gay bathhouse, despite the fact that he’s admitted ripping off his tuxedo & jumping into the bathhouse’s pool with lots of gay nude men. He blamed losing his inhibitions on the drinks & joints that had been passed to him. Manilow: “That’s such a bit of misinformation. There was just 1 bathhouse called the Continental Bathhouse & I worked there for 2 weekends with Bette Midler & that was it. I accompanied her for two weekends there & then we went on to a lot of nightclubs around NYC, Chicago & L.A. & she exploded like a year later. So it really wasn’t ‘gay bathhouses.’ I don't know where that came from.”

On the plus side, he canceled an appearance on The View because of Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s ultra-conservative stance. Manilow: “I strongly disagree with her views, I think she's dangerous & offensive. I will not be on the same stage as her.” When Manilow was being honored in Palm Springs for his AIDS awareness efforts, he stated: “I've had 4 personal assistants in my career since the ’70s, & 3 out of the 4 have died of AIDS. My personal assistants have always become my best friends. They are my brothers.”

Manilow complained that when the Reagans became his neighbors in Bel-Air: "I thought it was pretty hot, but the secret service was all over the place. I always know when they are coming home because of all the helicopters. If I am out there sunbathing in the nude, I go, shit, the Reagans are coming home.”

When Elizabeth Taylor asked him the early 1980s for help raising money to fight the disease he was there. Manilow: “Her friend, Rock Hudson, had died. She was the first one to try to make the public aware of this disease that was infecting everybody, & she was throwing a big dinner party. She called her entertainer friends, & they all turned her down. I don't know why. But I got the call & said, ‘Of course.’ But my band wasn't around. I just went there & played piano & sang for a good hour. It was the first one she had, & it was the first time I had ever done anything like that.”

I have never been, nor do I suspect that I will ever be, a Fanalow. Even with my egalitarian & encompassing musical tastes, I never did find myself on the Manilow journey. The closest to an exception was when I was working for ASCAP in NYC, circa mid-1970s. I was engaged in listening to 6 hours of commercial radio play & entrusted to identify all the music played: commercials, bridges, lead-ins, cues & songs. I would not listen to songs all the way through. I was paid a bonus for finishing more than the 6 hour tape. Yet, I was very taken with an AM radio hit. I knew the song in the first 3 notes, but I would listen all the way through. I began to think it would be an effective ballad in my own act. The song was Weekend In New England sung by Barry Manilow.

I think it is unfortunate that Manilow suffers from the same fear of fan rejection that Liberace did. It would have been fun to have him be an out & proud gay man. For 25 years, Manilow has lived with his "manager" Garry Kief in homes they share in NYC, Bel Air & Palm Springs. Could It Be Magic?

In & Out

For more than 50 years, he squandered his considerable intelligence, talent & beautiful baritone, to play a rube & hillbilly. Jim Nabors denied his gayness for the sake of his career, even partying with the Reagans. Hard to forgive? Nabors lives alone in Hawaii. He turns 82 years old on this day.

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The Husband & I felt that The Kids in the Hall, the Canadian sketch comedy troupe that Scott Thompson joined in 1985, had been produced just for our sense of humor.

The actor/comedian & his 4 fellow Kids gained the attention of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, who brought them to NYC to develop the groundbreaking TV series that bore their name.

Thompson’s characters were unforgettable: the South American diva Francesca Fiori; the Queen of England & gay raconteur Buddy Cole, whose monologues were as sharply written as they were politically incorrect.

Thompson went on to play Hank Kingsley’s assistant on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show & revisit The Kids In The Hall for a feature film & sold-out live concerts. Then he seemed to disappear. Thompson’s alter ego Buddy Cole has recently been popping up. He is always welcome at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia. Thompson turns 53 years old today.

Born On This Day- May 21st- Actor Raymond Burr

Perry Mason reruns have been playing on a Portland TV station every day for the past 44 years. No another U.S. station has continuously broadcast Perry Mason as long as KPTV, where the show debuted 15 days after ending its 9 run on CBS. It's among the least expensive shows to buy, even as KPTV has moved from showing it on film reels to 1-inch tapes to digital tapes & now digital with closed captioning. Station Manager-Patrick McCreery: "Most markets don't want it; they figure that with high-definition sets & 5.1 stereo sound, what viewer is going to want to watch an old B&W show? We've found very loyal viewers. It's the linchpin of our daytime programming." 

A deeply closeted Hollywood lifestyle is not a unique club, but the back story of Raymond Burr’s career holds interest. Typecast as a “heavy” when he landed in Hollywood after World War II, his imposing presence & brooding manner made him a perfect choice for film noir & crime dramas. He played the chilling homicidal husband across the courtyard in Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window (1954) & the district attorney who took apart Montgomery Clift’s testimony in A Place in the Sun (1951).

Burr was never an A-list movie actor. He became a star in the brand new medium of television. As Perry Mason & the wheelchair bound detective on Ironside, he became one of TV’s best paid & best known faces. Burr returned to his most famous role in 1985 for the beginning of a decade long run of made-for-TV movies beginning with Perry Mason Returns. 

Throughout his life, Burr was unfailingly generous to charities & gave away much of his time, when he wasn’t keeping a grueling work schedule; he was known to be popular & kind to cast members & crew.

Knowledge of his homosexuality would have ruined Burr’s career. He remained intensely private to the very end. Burr invested an enormous amount of energy to remain closeted, & the efforts took their toll physically & psychologically. He believed he could ensure privacy by creating an imaginary world to hide his homosexuality & his 40 year relationship with fellow actor Robert Benevides, who he met on the set of Perry Mason in 1957. He invented 2 dead wives, a dead son, & false reports of his service during World War II to fill out the blank spaces in his life story. He repeated the stories so long & so often that they found their way into his obituaries.

 In the 1950s Burr was “romantically linked” to Natalie Wood. They were genuinely fond of each other & remained friends until her death in 1981. Burr & Benevides shared a passion & a business for orchids, which they bred on their private island in Fiji. Later they would own & run a successful vineyard in Sonoma. At their home in Palm Springs, the couple was known to throw all male pool parties along with their friend Rock Hudson. The couple were together 36 years, until Burr’s death in 1993.

Best Theme Song Ever?

Born On This Day- May 17th... Wladziu Valentino Liberace

“You know that bank I used to cry all the way to? Well, I bought it.”

Here is the craziest part.. the Husband & I briefly lived in Las Vegas (long story), & even nuttier, we didn’t have an automobile. I would actually walk in the 100 degree heat to the theatre that I was working for. There were no sidewalks. It was just me & the lizards. My route took me right by the Liberace Museum, just a few blocks from our condo. I always glanced in & I enjoyed the camp factor.

When someone seems too obviously & outrageously gay, & yet people in my life seem to not get it, my response is often- “He attended Liberace  Community College”.

Overheard on the Max Train:
Older Gay Guy: That guy is so gay.
Other Guy: Totally gay.
Older Gay Guy: Liberace gay.

Ironic then, the man spent his life time hiding the truth & denied being gay to the very end.

Liberace was an international superstar dating back to the early 1950s. He averaged $5 million a year in income for more than 35 years. The 1978 Guinness Book of World Records identified Liberace as the world's highest paid musician.

He was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace in a Milwaukee suburb in 1919 to poor parents. He was classically trained on the piano as a youth & made his concert debut as a soloist at age 11. As a teenager during the depression, he played piano in speakeasies to make money for his family.

In 1940, Liberace moved to New York. His charm & piano skills paid off. Within 7 years he was touring the hotel clubs. The story might have ended there, except that Las Vegas & TV discovered Liberace’s charms. By the late 1940s he began playing extended runs in Las Vegas. He would appear at the casinos in Vegas regularly for the rest of his life. As Sin City grew, so did Liberace's fame.

Liberace appearances on TV cemented his superstar status. In the early 1950s, Liberace had a variety show on TV, where he would play his elaborate piano, sing & dance a little, & praise his mother Frances, who was always in the audience, & make jokes about the show’s band leader his brother- George. His TV show was a huge hit, & was carried by more stations than I Love Lucy.

In 1954, the year I was born, Liberace played to capacity crowds at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, & Soldier Field in Chicago. In 1955 he opened at the Riviera in Las Vegas for $50,000 per week, becoming the city's highest paid entertainer. Liberace became a true superstar. He bought lavish mansions, remodeled them extravagantly, & filled them with ornate pianos, antiques, & over the top furniture. He even had a piano shaped swimming pool.

Liberace's musical repertoire included a unique mix of classical, movie themes, cocktail jazz, & sentimental ballads. He knew thousands of songs & could play almost any request from the audience. He would edit classical pieces to under 5 minutes: "I took out the boring parts. I know just how many notes my audience will stand for. If there's any time left over, I fill in with a lot of runs up & down the scale."

He commissioned more elaborate costumes as the years went by. Eventually he was spending $40,000 every year on bigger, flashier, & more opulent costumes. On various tours, he wore a cape made with $60,000 worth of chinchilla, a tuxedo embedded with diamonds spelling out his name, & a King Neptune costume covered in pearls & sea shells weighing 200 pounds. He had large rings shaped like a candelabra & a grand piano, each studded with diamonds. He was the Elton John of his time.

He added showgirls, jugglers, singers, giant water fountains, light shows, a full orchestra, & even an elephant. During many of his shows he flew above the stage from a cable in a feather cape. He toured with a grand piano covered with thousands of glittering mirror tiles.

Liberace emphatically denied his homosexuality throughout his career. He evidently thought that coming out of the closet would hurt his popularity, & his female fans refused to acknowledge the obvious. But his denials unraveled when Liberace was sued for palimony in 1983 by his “chauffeur”- Scott Thorson, who had been living with Liberace for years. Liberace had Thorson on the payroll, dressed him up like himself, & paid for plastic surgery to have Thorson look like a young version of himself. But even this bizarre scandal didn't  put a dent in Liberace's popularity. The case was eventually settled out of court for less that $100,000.

In the 1970s, Liberace moved to Las Vegas, where he was the highest paid performer in the city. Las Vegas is a city built on fantasy, superficiality, & unbridled spending Liberace's calling cards. Both Las Vegas & Liberace proved the same motto: Nothing succeeds like excess.

Liberace was at the apex of his career in the mid-1980s. At Radio City Music Hall he had 3 extended engagements. From 1984-86, he sold out 56 straight shows. Liberace called his Radio City shows "the fulfillment of a dream & the culmination of my forty years in show business." Liberace’s massive fortune continued to grow. He owned houses all over the world & had all of his clothes made especially for him. He even had the front of a Rolls Royce attached to the front of a VW Beatle so he could drive both of his favorite cars at once.

Liberace was in a steady relationship with Jamie Wyatt when the gay world was shaken by AIDS. Liberace discovered that he was HIV positive. In the press, he attributed his weight loss to the popular watermelon diet. After a last tour to promote his new book- The Things I Love, Liberace fell gravely ill. He spent 4 days in hospital before it was decided that the best thing would be for him to go home & die comfortably in his own surroundings. Liberace spent his last days at home with his 27 dogs, watching episodes of The Golden Girls. His family & partner were by his side when Liberace died of a cardiac arrest, brought on by HIV, on February 8th 1987. Only then did the world find out about his hidden life & illness.

Liberace chose a life where showmanship & flamboyance were his mainstay. His lust for everything fabulous, his showmanship & his talent, touched the hearts of his many fans & influenced a long line of artists from Elvis to Adam Lambert. Liberace proved that being fabulous can be a life unto itself.

Steven Soderbergh's movie version of the Liberace/Scott Thorson story has finished filming starring Michael Douglas & Matt Damon.

Tyrone Power Bottom

Tyrone Power was born on this day- May 5^th in 1914. He was a true matinee idol & one of the most beautiful men to ever appear in American films & on Broadway. He was a major star at 20th Century Fox where he fought for & was given great roles that allowed him show that he was more than just gorgeous.

Tyrone Power was married 3 times & had 3 children. He had a hugely heralded affair with Lana Turner & a reticent romance with Judy Garland. Power was so beautiful that everyone wanted him. In the biography Tyrone Power: The Last Idol by Fred Lawrence Guiles, his first wife, the one name only French actress- Annabella, stated: "Ty just couldn't say no!" It seems that Power said yes to quite a few gentlemen.

According to Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood & the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers, which I read in February, Power had steamy movie star sex with the writer & joined in on 3 ways with Bowers & another man & a girl. According to Bowers, Power was a sex machine & a sweetheart, a winning combo.

Power had liaisons with many men during his career, including Lorenz Hart & fellow actor Cesar Romero. Handsome Power had his pick of many of the most attractive men on the studio lots. Power was not afraid to be seen in public with men known to be homos: George Cukor, Clifton Webb, Reginald Gardner, Van Johnson, & bi-sexual Howard Hughes. In Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, author Charles Higham reports that Power had a sexual relationship with Errol Flynn. He was so loved by the Hollywood community that they all gaily looked the other way.

But my research points to Power enjoying his greatest gay love affair with a technician at 20th Century Fox, whom he had a sexual & romantic relationship that lasted for decades.

Power came from a theatrical family that dated back to the 1800s. He was just 22 when he received fourth billing in his big break-Lloyds of London.  In the late 1930s & early 1940s, Power had a string of hits, including great work as the starring role in The Mark of Zorro & as the doomed bullfighter in Blood & Sand where he battled with Rita Hayworth to be the most luscious star.

Power left Hollywood in 1943 for the Marines. When he returned to Hollywood in 1946 he enjoyed having an unlikely smash hit with The Razor's Edge, my favorite of his films, based on the popular gay writers W. Somerset Maugham novel. Power played a man on a quest for the meaning of life that leads him on a spiritual journey ending in India. His co-star was the nearly as gorgeous Gene Tierney & Anne Baxter won an Oscar for this glossy film version, the top grossing film for Fox, & one of the truly transcendent films from Hollywood's Golden Age.

At this point Power insisted on doing the film noir Nightmare Alley where he played a conniving carnival geek.  As directed by the great gay director Edmund Goulding (Dark Victory), this film gave Power the best role of his career & his reviews were excellent, but Zanuck would not publicize it & the film vanished quickly, only to become a cult favorite in the next century. I caught it on AMC in February.

In 1946 Power & Annabella had grown apart & the marriage ended. He was still a marine, but he managed a 6 week trip to South America with his on-again off-again lover- Cesar Romero. Upon his return, he entered into a tempestuous relationship with Lana Turner, who was then the queen of MGM & between husbands. The Turner romance was too drama filled & to satisfy the studio, he married Latin starlet Linda Christian. The couple had 2 daughters before that marriage ended in 1955.

Power would only get one more great role playing the charming murderer  in the terrific Witness For The Prosecution, directed by Billy Wilder & co-starring the awesome hammy & homosexual- Charles Laughton, Power's performance was a revelation.  Power died the next of a heart attack while filming Solomon & Sheba with director King Vidor on a hot Spanish summer afternoon. He was only 44 years old.

In his career of 25 years, Power had made 50 films  Like most bi-sexual & homosexual Hollywood stars, Power lived in fear of being outed. Although studio head Darryl Zanuck liked Power personally, he was afraid of losing Fox’s resident matinée idol & biggest moneymaker, if the movie going public were to know that Power enjoyed sex with guys. But, Power continued to have sex with both men & women. Sure, he had that affair with Judy Garland, but what gay male celebrity of the time didn’t?

His name was invoked in an underwear commercial by spokesman Wally Cox who said: "I may look like Wally Cox, but inside I'm Tyrone Power".

A Sad Song From The Closet

Slick, overproduced, modern R&B is not my favorite genre, but there is no denying the luscious, lustrous instrument of Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr, who was born in 1951, on this day- April 20th. He may have been the premier male R&B singer of his time. He won 8 Grammys including for Song of the Year in 2004- Dance With My Father.

He started as a first rate backup singer for: Diana Ross, Roberta Flack, Carly Simon, Chaka Khan, Todd Rundgren, Donna Summer, Bette Midler, Chic, Barbra Streisand. Vandross toured with David Bowie in 1974 & sang backing vocals on the Young Americans album Vandross was mentored by Roberta Flack, who thought he has the makings of a great artist.


Vandross had a series of strong selling solo albums & collaborations in the 1980s, 1990s & early aughts.


Vandross' career he was vexed' by questions about his sexuality. He remained, & he was never romantically linked in the media with women. He never explicitly denied being gay, but he never publicly acknowledged it either. He claimed that he was too busy with his career & “it was not what he wanted.” Vandross' homosexuality was an open secret in the music industry, but never seems mentioned in the list of great gay artists.


Vandross suffered from diabetes & hypertension. His weight fluctuated wildly throughout his career. In 2003 Vandross suffered a stroke at his home in Manhattan. Except for accepting his 2004 his Song of the Year Grammy in 2004, he was never seen in public again. On the video Vandross stated: “Whenever I say goodbye it's never for long because I believe in the power of love.”


Vandross died in July 2005 . He was just 54 years old & reportedly had never fully recovered from the 2003 stroke. He died peacefully, surrounded by his family & friends. He would have been 61 years old today.

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, Stephen Rutledge,  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. Alan Sues (rest his soul): ''Nothing was going to get in the way of his career". 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.Dominick Dunne (rest his soul): ''It was a real sense of marriage between them. '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.

The Doctor Is Out! Born On This Day-March 31st... Richard Chamberlain

Is it embarrassing that I shared a crush with my mother? 50 years ago, my mother & I would settle in to watch Dr. Kildare. It aired on Thursdays at 8:30pm, a school night. I am not sure how I got away with that, but I enjoyed that thrill of dreamy Richard Chamberlain making my head spin, my heart thump & a pajamas stir… all in black & white on NBC.

Richard Chamberlain has had a 4 decades long career in film, stage, pop music & TV as well. Chamberlain co-founded a Los Angeles-based theatre group, Company of Angels, & in 1961, blue eyed & dreamy Chamberlain gained fame & the attention of 7 year gay boys as young heartthrob intern- Dr. Kildare. The show established the handsome Chamberlain as a romantic leading man, & made him an overnight sensation, & his pin-up status was solidified by his singing ability which led to several hit singles in the early 1960s. I owned his album- Richard Chamberlain Sings & I would listen to him warble The Theme From Dr. Kildare & Love Me Tender, while getting all moony over his cover shot.

Chamberlain appeared in some of the most widely seen projects in TV history: Shogun, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Centennial, & of course- The Thorn Birds. 110 million viewers watched the tale of Father de Bricassart’s doomed love for Meggie, the Australian sheep rancher, making The Thorn Birds among the highest rated mini-series ever.

Chamberlain’s cinema career consisted of an crazy mix of projects: The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers, The Towering Inferno, The Swarm, The Three Musketeers & my favorite Chamberlain performance in Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (rent this film!).

Deeply closeted for most of his life, Chamberlain was outed by the French magazine Nous Deux in 1989, but it wasn’t until 2003, at the age of, ironically, 69, that he acknowledged his homosexuality in his memoir- Shattered Love (which is oddly a chapter title on my own memoir- Jockstraps & Vicodin: the Early Years).

Chamberlain has continued to work in TV: Will & Grace, Chuck, Nip/Tuck, Desperate Housewives, & as the HIV-positive love interest of Ron Rifkin. He starred on Broadway in a revival of My Fair Lady, in the title role of Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge: The Musical, & as King Arthur in Spamalot.

Last year, Chamberlain broke up with his partner of 40 years, hansome actor-writer-producer Martin Rabbett, with whom he shared a fabulous home in Hawaii since mid-1970s.

Last year, in an interview in The Advocate, Chamberlain says : “I wouldn’t advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out. There’s still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture. For an actor to be working is a kind of miracle… so it’s just silly for a working actor to say, ‘Oh, I don’t care if anybody knows I’m gay’ — especially if you’re a leading man… Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don’t pretend that we’re suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.” In an era when the President of the United States signs a bill repealing a law banning gay soldiers from serving openly in the military, Neil Patrick Harris plays a ladies man on a popular TV series & hosts awards shows, & Ellen is the #1 daytime star, Chamberlain’s words gave me just a little pause. Maybe the key is stay in the closet until you are too old for leading man roles, & hope that the publication of your memoir will give your career a boost.

After that little diatribe, I have to admit that I stood at the stage door after his potent performance as Richard II at The Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1971 & nearly fainted from his handsomeness & talent. I so wanted to show him my special appreciation when I was 17 years old… & I think I might still go for the chance. Maybe we could star together in gay versions The Gin Game & On Golden Pond. Chamberlain turns 78 today.

Born On This Day- March 30th... Tracy Chapman

In spring of 1988 ,Tracy Chapman released Tracy Chapman, the surprise #1 album that would revitalize the folk-rock genre & go on to win 3 Grammys. She wasn't out then & she is not really out now, but after 7 studio albums & another Grammy in 1997, she opened that closet door a crack when she has mentioned her past relationship with Alice Walker. Chapman: "I have a public life that is my work life & I have my personal life. In some ways, the decision to keep the 2 things separate relates to the work I do." But, when it most mattered the most, Chapman moved away from her policy of not giving money to political causes & in 2008, she gave money to defeat Prop 8 & discussed her decision with the media. Her 8th album was released a week after Obama was elected & Prop 8 passed by a wide margin. The album’s title: Our Bright Future.

Chapman picked up the guitar at the age of 8 years old & began to change the world one chord at a time. Her modest upbringing in a single-mother household with very little money or resources propelled Chapman to dig deep & deal with her harrowing experiences through songwriting.

She was accepted into the prestigious & private, Wooster School before attending Tufts University. She graduated in 1987 with a B.A in anthropology & African studies. Years later, in 2004, Tufts University would award Chapman with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree to celebrate her committed contributions to society throughout her music career.

Chapman was invited to sing her first hit off her debut album, Tracy Chapman, at the televised Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert in June 1988. Fast Car would bring Chapman a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1989. I know that I couldn't get the song out of my head. Chapman also was awarded Grammy Awards for: Best New Artist, Best Contemporary Folk Album for Tracy Chapman & a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song for Give Me One Reason in 1997.

While she has never chosen to publicly discuss her sexuality with the press, instead focusing on her music in interview.  When the subject of their affair in the 1990’s came up in an interview with Alice Walker for The Guardian, Walker said: “Our affair was never really a secret. It was quiet to you maybe but that’s because you didn’t live in our area.” Walker has kept journals recounting her romantic relationship with Chapman & hopes to release them in the future.


Love her!

Born On This Day- March 28th... Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde

The billboard outside the Odeon cinema, Leicester Square, said: "Michael Redgrave & Dirk Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them". Passing by, Noel Coward said: "I don't see why not. Everyone else has."

Dirk Bogarde was romantically linked to line of beautiful young actresses, but his interest was with men. Bogarde had first met fellow actor Anthony Forwood when they worked together in 1940. In the 1950s, Forwood divorced his wife- actress Glynis Johns, with whom he had a son, to move in with Bogarde & become his ‘manager’. The pair were inseparable until Forwood’s death from cancer in 1988. “They were closer than most married couples” recounts openly gay actor- John Fraser, who was working in the same era. “It was abundantly clear that their relationship was deep & strong, but there never the slightest inappropriate gesture between them. No brush of a hand, no touch of a shoulder. Even their conversation was guarded”. In the 1950s, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence, Bogarde & Forwood had good reason to be reticent about their relationship. Many homosexuals of the time were blackmailed, & Bogarde’s outing would undoubtedly have meant the end of his career.

John Frasier tells in his memoir- Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales: “I visited Bogarde at his loft where he greeted me on a high-revving static Harley-Davidson motorcycle while gazing at a poster of himself clad in crotch-hugging leather trousers as a Spanish bandit in the 1961 film- The Singer Not The Song.  Bogarde said : 'This is my playroom' & he rode for 10 minutes & his expression was like the rapture on the face of a medieval saint. Afterwards, he slumped over the handlebars. Dismounting, wiping sweat from his forehead, he said: 'Now you know'. It looked like a Narcissus fantasy come to life. Bogarde lived in a wonderland sustained by doting fans."

He played an embittered working class manservant in the homoerotic screen version of Harold Pinter's The Servant; a former Nazi SS officer caught up in a sado-masochistic relationship with a former inmate of his prison camp in The Night Porter; & a man dying of cholera who becomes obsessed with a beautiful youth in Death in Venice.



In a 1961 film- Victim. Bogarde plays a respectable married lawyer, who also happens to be gay. His character, Melville Farr, is being blackmailed & stands to lose everything. The film highlighted the pressures that gay men faced, including ruin, violence, self-hatred & suicide, because of  the criminalisation of homosexual acts. Victim became an important vehicle for changing the attitudes towards gay people in Britain in the 1960s, & is one the first films where the word homosexual was uttered.

Even after the threat of imprisonment was long over, Bogarde still refused to admit his relationship with Forwood. He claimed in interviews to be straight & to have had affairs with the French actress Capucine, & Judy Garland.

Bogarde wrote 7 volumes of memoirs without mentioning that he was gay or of Forwood. As a gay man who lived in the fear filled period when homosexuality was illegal & as a matinee idol whose adoring fans probably could not deal with their favorite actor being a poofster, Bogarde kept his private life very private. Nevertheless, by accepting roles in films like Victim, Death in Venice, & The Night Porter, Bogarde pushed the boundaries of what a star could be far further than many of his generation. & my, oh my…he sure was handsome!

In September 1996, he sufferd a pulmonary embolism following heart surgery. At the end of his life, Bogarde was paralyzed on one side of his body, which affected his speech & left him wheelchair bound. Still, he would finish a final volume of memoirs, that explored the stroke & its effect on him. He spent some time the day before he died with his good friend- Lauren Bacall. Bogarde died in London from a heart attack at 78 years old. He never came out of the closet, even after Lawrence Harvey & John Gielgud did reluctantly, & John Frasier & Ian McKellen did blazingly.