Hollywood Gays (12 page)

A: Mildly put.

Q: You’ve also said, in an interview, that she somehow made you afraid of women? How did that happen?

A: Is it so astounding?

Q: For one thing, there’s more to be afraid of in men than women.

A: But we grow up in a society where motherhood is...it’s redolent with good vibrations. Nothing negative can be said about one’s mother. Why is criticism so shocking? A kid doesn’t arrange his mother’s behavior. And my situation is anything but unique. Gore Vidal didn’t love his mother, to name one. Or...any number of people. It’s the father that usually gets the bad rap.

Q: I hear what you’re saying. Fathers may be good, bad, or indifferent, but a mother is hopefully wonderful. I should hope so, since she’s the first foundation.

A: Let’s move on from mothers. I don’t want to talk about anyone’s mother, least of all my own.

Q: I’m sorry.

A: I’m over it.

Q: I understand you’re a minister? (No reply.) Of course you played a minister—who wasn’t unlike Norman Bates (drag and all)—in
Crimes of Passion
. For the record, although what’s one going to say, are you at all into transvestism?

A: No, I am not. I’ve played a few TVs, and that sticks. I played a minister, I became a minister. So? You know, in England they used to call boys “master.”

Q: Right. There was a Bette Davis movie,
The Nanny
. She kept calling the boy “Master Joey.”

A: That English actor, Alan Bates...a friend of his said he used to be called Master Bates (guffaws).

Q: Hmm. You are a minister?

A: In America, anyone can get a license to preach.

Q: Like going into politics?

A: Like write to an organization, send in your $10 fee, then you can give your blessing to things.

Q: What things?

A: Marriages and such.

Q: Certain kinds of marriages. I heard you “blessed” the last marriage of your
Crimes of Passion
director Ken Russell.

A: That’s what I did. No “I do’s” or such; we had poetry, prose...it was lovely.

Q: No “I do’s”?

A: Only “I’ll try’s.”

Q: That’s realistic. Do you know, you did do drag before
Psycho
? Shirley Booth was fantastic in all her few movies, and you were both in
The Matchmaker
.

A: (Actually smiles.) Mm-hmm. It was
Hello, Dolly!
without the music (by Jerry Herman).

Q: A piece of Americana, like
Our Town
, by Thornton Wilder, who was gay. I was in
Our Town
in San Mateo, but I didn’t know Wilder was gay till Christopher Isherwood and others said it.

A: Everyone knew in New York.

Q: That’s a New York specialty, knowing things.

A: What part did you play?

Q: What else?—the journalist. Not a very imaginative director. He was also the casting director.

A: You didn’t act for him again.

Q: Once more. A play he wrote about Charles I.

A: What did you play?

Q: The bishop who, as it were, blesses his execution by the anti-royalists. I’d auditioned for Charles I, but a professor got the role—this was in college—because he was the right age. But the wrong accent: American.

A: They always cast me as Americans.

Q: I wonder why. I found amusing one of your lines in
Mahogany
, where again you were a tortured and villainous bisexual of sorts.

A: That movie
had
a memorable line?

Q: Yes. You said, “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”

A: I thought Freud said that.

Q: Or Diana Ross.

A: (A sudden thought.) About ministers...as a newly ordained minister, I was able to bless or solemnize Ken’s ceremony, but I wasn’t able to marry them. In the movies, kids who watch them must grow up thinking ministers and priests can actually perform marriages, which they can’t. They don’t have that legal authority.

Q: Religious ceremonies are more visual than a marriage at city hall, so I can understand that cinematically. But what you’re pointing out is the propaganda. Marriage isn’t only supposed to be about religious sanctions and prejudices. As you say, movies—and TV—always tie in marriage with the church. They make it more biblical than it is, and link it, at least subconsciously, with procreation, which makes it easier to leave gay people out in the cold, despite being citizens and taxpayers with human and constitutional rights.

A: I couldn’t have put it better myself. It’s very archaic. But marriage isn’t primarily about procreation.

Q: Legally, procreation should have nothing to do with marriage. That’s a choice between a woman and a man. But it’s used as a homophobic excuse against legal, social, and economic recognition of same-gender marriages.

A: Gays can adopt.

Q: Usually not, legally, but the point is, most don’t want to. Marriage is two people in love joining together for life. Children shouldn’t be a condition of marriageability.

A: Not all straight couples have kids. Some by choice.

Q: Exactly! The radicals on the religious right—
that’s
redundant—cite “family,” meaning offspring—only—to them, as the aim of contractual marriage. If that were so, the marriages of childless or child-free heterosexual couples would have to be dissolved. And that would be ridiculous too.

A: I see. You’re not talking about adopting or having kids.

Q: Not at all. Before two people legally marry, they’re not asked, “But are you gonna have kids?” Even if the man and woman were unable to procreate, they wouldn’t be denied their marriage license. But that’s precisely what happens to gay or lesbian couples.

A: I see that. It’s funny that so many lesbians want to be mommies. A lot more than gay men do, but that’s a gender thing. Then there are all the people who’re against homosexuals adopting because they think they’ll influence their kids to become homosexual.

Q: That’s like saying that having heterosexual parents influences their kids to become heterosexual. It doesn’t work that way. Individuals are who they are.

A: And there’s too much reproduction as it is. Especially with the people who can least afford it.

Q: One would have thought such tragically overpopulated nations as China and India would become less homophobic out of common sense and practicality, but... (India finally legalized homosexuality in 2009; it wasn’t illegal until the British took over.)

A: Common sense isn’t that common.

Q:
Touché
.

A: Particularly when religion enters the picture.

Q: You said it, minister, not me.

A: (Grins.) Did you say “child-free”?

Q: I’ve lately seen interviews and articles where a woman who’s chosen not to have a child is called “childless,” and she corrects them with “child-free.”

A: If she doesn’t want a kid, she’s child-free. If she wants one but can’t have one, she’s childless.

Q: That’s a good definition. It applies to males too.

A: I think the word “unnatural” applies to these constant efforts to make infertile people fertile. All these pills and hormones and things—with so many kids already in the world—so that a woman can end up having five kids at a time.
Shit
!

Q: Or where a woman of around 60 can now reproduce again. Some progress, eh?

A: Quantity, not quality. And at this rate, we’ll have to go colonize the moon, to begin with.

Q: And then ruin the other planets too?

A: I don’t think humans will last that long, to be able to replicate on other planets. I think...don’t you think it’ll all end with chemicals or viruses or something deficient in the genes? They say human sperm counts are way down.

Q: One would never know it from the population explosion. The year before
Psycho
, Hitchcock did
North by Northwest
. Cary Grant was paid a reported $450,000 for his role. You were paid $40,000 for
Psycho
. Any comment?

A: I also got a percentage of the gross once it passed a certain amount. All I can say is Grant was overpaid.

Q: Or you were underpaid.

A: And our movie’s an ensemble thing, and it wouldn’t have worked in color. No one dominated
Psycho
. Grant dominated that other film, and it was drabsville.

Q: In a way, it was Hitchcock who dominated
Psycho
. And you. He said it wasn’t supposed to have any superstars in it.

A: The
story
was the star (in a strained tone). And it did a lot better than
North by Northwest
. People liked it more. Now let’s get off this
Psycho
kick. I did do other movies.

Q:
Matchmaker
. Robert Morse. You played coworkers and buddies.

A: Bosom buddies.

Q: Did you know he came out as bisexual?

A: Uh-hunh.

Q: And he’s a father.

A: Yeah.

Q: It hasn’t hurt his career....

A: I like Bobby. But he was never a movie star.

Q: In one
Matchmaker
scene, you dance together.

A: He danced divinely. Go on.

Q: Stephen Sondheim isn’t an actor. All of Broadway knows that he’s gay, and he doesn’t attempt to hide it. So why doesn’t he come out?

A: Ask him.

Q: He’s not easy to get to.

A: He’s lucky. He doesn’t have to do publicity.

Q: He also seems like he doesn’t want to.

A: It’s not the same as an actor’s ego. Being interviewed is a nice way of getting stroked. Though not the nicest. (Leers.)

Q: Control yourself. It wouldn’t hurt Sondheim’s career to come out, do you think? (He has, since.)

A: I don’t know. Would it?

Q: It hasn’t hurt Jerry Herman (
La Cage Aux Folles
;
Mame
;
Hello, Dolly!
). But why so often the homophobia in Sondheim’s work? Not just
The Last of Sheila
(he frowns), but in lyrics—using the anti-gay f-word, etc. Why that hate, and self-hate?

A: You’d have to ask him.

Q: You don’t have an opinion on that?

A: (Shrugs.) Ask me what I’ve been reading. (I don’t.) Well, nothing lately, but I was talking with a friend who says he should do a movie set in Rome. When they had emperors. He said he saw me as a Roman poet. I said I’d rather play an emperor.

Q: Which one?

A: I checked out a history about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire—there were so many!

Q: If that’s the famous work by Edward Gibbon, he was as biased and of his era as they come.

A: Anti-gay?

Q: Anti-truth. Not willing to accept that bisexuality was a tolerated fact of life then. With him, the “bad” emperors were gay or bi, the “good” ones were all heterosexual.

A: It’s never that simple.

Q: It is for too many historians.

A: Everyone thinks historians know it all.

Q: Those teaching or writing history are often reinforcing their own biases, not necessarily presenting what truly happened or who people were.

A: It’s all because of men being the historians, isn’t it?

Q: Well, they say history repeats itself, and historians repeat each other.

A: History’s more interesting in the movies.

Q: Than in books? I beg to differ. History books may be flawed, but compared to movie presentations, they’re filled with integrity. Which doesn’t mean costume movies aren’t fun.

A: Just funny about the truth. (Chuckles.) You know, I got such a hoot out of your George Cukor interview (in
Conversations With My Elders
). He was so funny. Such a closeted old queen.