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".

The Saddest Song

Eleanora Fagan was born on this day in 1915. Eleanora cut school so often she was sent to live at the House of the Good Shepherd, a home for “colored girls” run by the Little Sisters of the Poor. She was returned to her mother after a year, but in 1926, 11 year old Eleanora was raped by a neighbor & sent back to Good Shepherd. But the nuns refused to keep her for long.


At only 11 years old, Eleanora earned money cleaning at a whorehouse. The madam let her listen to the records of Louis Armstrong & Bessie Smith. Eleanora was able to express her feelings with music & she began singing at various storefront churches.


As a young teenager, Eleanora moved to NYC with her mother, to pursue a singing career, instead she found work as a prositute in Harlem.


Billie Holiday was the self creation of young Eleanora Fagen. She began to get small gigs & out of the way clubs, but Holiday was gaining popularity with fellow musicians. After years of touring with Count Basie, Holiday was offered her first steady job at Café Society in 1938, earning $75 a week. She went on to be featured soloist at clubs all over the country, acquiring the nickname “Lady Day.” Her distinctive voice, which she used like a musical instrument, transformed jazz singing. Holiday: “I don’t think I’m singing; I feel like I’m playing a horn.”


Holiday had many affairs with both men & women, but was known as a lesbian among many of her peers in the jazz world, where she aquired the moniker- Mister Holiday, because she was seldom seen in the company of gentlemen. Holiday: “Sure, I’ve been to bed with women… but I was always the man.” Who else can you think of who had an affair with both Orson Welles & Tallulah Bankhead?


Billie Holiday was unlucky in life, unlucky in love & dead from drink & drugs at the age of only 44.

By the late 1930s, Holiday had married small-time drug dealer Jimmy Monroe, who introduced her to opium & heroin. In 1947, she spent a year in prison for possession of drugs. After she was released Holiday had difficulty finding work & she had a string of relationships with maniacal men & a decline into dependence on drugs, a roughening of her voice & a physical decline.

On 10 July 1959, Holiday died in hospital in NYC of cirrhosis of the liver. In a characteristically cruel turn she had been arrested on her deathbed for possession of narcotics, & spent her final days under police guard.


The life & legend of Billie Holiday seems to point to a victim, a problematic, profane & pushy woman. She was after all, a junkie & an alcoholic; she had sex with a great many men & many women.




I like to think that Billie Holiday was a determined woman with a great appetite for life, who lived it on her terms in a man’s world. Holiday was never able to capitalize on her amazing talent to live a life as a music superstar. She couldn’t break the pattern of abuse from others or herself, but that fed her genius. Her brand of self destruction was a plea for the love that ironically her bad behavior pushed away. But that voice, that perfectly imperfect gift, will always be loved & will always break my heart.

Born On This Day- April 3rd... Marlon Brando

“Homosexuality is so much in fashion it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me.”

Marlon Brando’s bisexuality was not a secret in the Broadway community or in Hollywood.

Brando was a tough guy who was also a ravishing beauty. He was expelled high school for riding a motorcycle through the hallways. He came to the rescue of a skinny kid being bullied by schoolmates, picked him up, threw his arm around him & stated: “I’m your new best friend.”

Brando’s love affair with Wally Cox would last a lifetime & beyond. After Cox died in 1973, Brando kept the ashes for safekeeping. On Brando’s death in 2004, in accordance with his wishes, the ashes of Cox & Brando were mixed together & scattered in Death Valley ceremony.

Brando possessed of an insatiable libido, among his main courses: Burt Lancaster, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Leonard Bernstein, Noël Coward, Clifford Odets, Stephen Rutledge,Tyrone Power, Montgomery Clift, James Dean & Rock Hudson, & for dessert:  Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner, Gloria Vanderbilt, Hedy Lamarr, Tallulah Bankhead, Ingrid Bergman, & Edith Piaf.

“If Wally Cox had been a woman, I would have married him and we would have lived happily ever after.”

Born on April 2nd

Alec Guinness

born April 2, 1914

"remember: the force will be with you always...”

In his biography Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor reveals that Guinness was arrested and fined 10 guineas for a homosexual act in a public lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness avoided publicity by giving his name as "Herbert Pocket" to both police and court. The name "Herbert Pocket" was taken from the character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations that Guinness had played on stage in 1939 and was also about to play in the film adaptation. The incident did not become public knowledge until April 2001, eight months after his death. The authenticity of this incident has been doubted, however, including by Piers Paul Read, Guinness's official biographer, who believes that Guinness was mixed up with John Gielgud, who was infamously arrested for such an act at the same period, though Read nonetheless acknowledges Guinness's bisexuality.

On Friday, September 23, 1955, Guinness was at the Villa Capri restaurant in Los Angeles, and found no table available. The actor James Dean, then filming Giant, invited Guinness to sit at his table. During lunch, Dean talked about his new car, a Porsche 550 Spyder. On leaving the restaurant, Dean insisted on showing off the car to Guinness, who said "Please never get in it. If you do, you will be dead within a week." Dean died in a crash in the Porsche the following Friday, September 30.

Guinness won the Academy Award as Best Actor in 1957 for his role in Bridge on the River Kwai. He was nominated in 1958 for his screenplay adapted from Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth and for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in 1977. He also received an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980. In 1988, he received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Little Dorrit.