Hollywood Gays (13 page)

Q:
He’s
closeted...?

A:
Was
—he’s dead. (Grins widely.)

Q: A great director. I’m glad you enjoyed my book, or chapter.

A: I never knew Nancy Reagan’s godmother was a lesbian till Cukor said it in your interview.

Q: Yes, a Russian lesbian, at one time MGM’s top-paid actress, Alla Nazimova.

A: I heard something about her. But I thought she was German.

Q: You can’t judge a celebrity by their surname.

A: You can in my case.

Q: You’re pretty rare.

A: (Grins.) That’s how I like my meat.

Q: Don’t let your meat loaf.

A: Safe-sex again? (Rolls eyes.) You and Larry Kramer...

Q: I haven’t met the gent.

A: Don’t bother.

Q: I’ve read him.

A: I haven’t.

Q: He says some important things.

A: Depressing things. Now let’s eat. Enough talk.
Brother!

Anthony Perkins reportedly found out that he had AIDS via the
National Enquirer.
He hadn’t tested for the virus but saw a doctor for another reason, and the doctor secretly tested his blood, knowing Perkins was gay. The incredibly informed tabloid leaked the information. Perkins considered suing, but wife Berry suggested he get tested, to confirm his HIV status. However, until the very end, the actor—afraid of losing work and probably of being sexually uncovered—ignored the entire issue and kept an extremely low profile, avoiding the media, which occasionally chronicled his growing gauntness.

Ron Vawter revealed, “Mr. Perkins was contacted about taking part in some AIDS fundraisers, and he still could have done so, but he wanted nothing to do with it. A lot of fear there....I don’t know whether he imagined his silence could posthumously buy off the truth. Of course, merely being married and a dad insured a mostly heterosexual slant in the [news] coverage of his death. For that, he was given more respect than Liberace.

“But the unavoidable fact is that Tony Perkins almost certainly contracted AIDS from homosexual sexual activity engaged in after his marriage in the early 1970s. The man’s relationship with his family can be respected, but his utter hypocrisy cannot be.” From his deathbed Perkins issued this nonspecific statement, posthumously broadcast around the world:

“I have learned more about love, selflessness, and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life.”

LIBERACE

(1919-1987)

In a way, the following statement encapsulated Liberace:

Explaining in a memoir why he declined the role of Mr. Joyboy in the movie
The Loved One
(1965), he wrote stereotypically, “He was an effeminate mama’s boy, ten feet off the ground at all times. A great actor could get away with playing the part....”

In Liberace’s case, he wouldn’t have had to
act
. Second, he was never offered the lead role, which was enacted by then-leading man Rod Steiger. Director Tony Richardson responded, “Liberace’s off his chump if he truly believes he was up for the starring role.” A
lie
. Third, Liberace did appear in
The Loved One
, in a small and surprising role—in view of his above comment and his closetedness—as a flamingly gay casket salesman! A
contradiction
.

(The camp cult movie, from Briton Evelyn Waugh’s novel about the Southern California way of death, also featured Robert Morse, John Gielgud, Roddy McDowall, and Tab Hunter. Screenwriter Christopher Isherwood noted, “I think most of us on both sides of the camera, this time around, are gay or bisexual.” Richardson, aka the ex-husband of Vanessa Redgrave—whose father was bisexual Sir Michael Redgrave, so acknowledged by daughter Lynn and son Corin—fathered actresses Joely and Natasha Richardson, and died of AIDS in 1991.)

In his unctuous 1986 book
The Wonderful Private World of Liberace
, the man described in the book as “undoubtedly America’s most beloved entertainer” wrote that he’d turned down many a nonmusical movie role because his public would “be disappointed if I did a straight acting role.” Not to mention amazed.

The effusive pianist did a handful of film roles. In his first film, starring Shelley Winters and Macdonald Carey, he played, of course, a pianist. In the tropics. He recalled, “Don’t remind me! It was called, I think,
South Sea Sinner
(1949), and my hair was unbelievably bad. They hired me for my ability to play, not for my looks, but jeepers! Somebody should have been looking after me....” Carey later stated, “The guy has talent. But for Hollywood, that isn’t crucial.

“Apart from his private life, which is up for grabs, he has a very different type of persona. I think he’s smart; he’s stayed in the musical arena and thrived there.”

The “very different” personalities—and physicalities—of music stars like k.d. lang and Michael Jackson prevent their musical popularity from translating into movie popularity. Actors
act
(well, many do), but several musical luminaries are forever their unique, a-traditionalist selves, at least outwardly (Jackson, a walking contradiction himself,
wished
to project an ultra-traditionalist image).

Isherwood commented, “Lee’s [Liberace’s] hopes of any sort of movie career must have been passed by the time of
The Loved One
, or else he’d never have taken that part....The one thing which seems odd now is that he ever did have one vehicle tailored around him [
Sincerely Yours
, a 1955 misnomer]. In it, he had not one but two love interests, both of them actresses. Proving once again that on the silver screen, fiction is stranger than truth.”

Regarding fiction, in his book—not his first, though supposedly “my most personal gift to my public”—Liberace offered his recipe for Liberace Sticky Buns (no comment necessary), confided that Mae West once requested him for a “gift,” and vaguely purported how he lost his virginity at 16 to an “older woman” named Miss Bea Haven. Such was Bea’s impact, that she forever spoiled Lee for women his own age!

The book’s illustrations posed him beside “friends” like Michael Jackson, Debbie Reynolds, and the Reagans, and his (companion and final love) chauffeur Cary James (the 24-year-old blond was with him at his deathbed). The book also featured a close-up of Liberace’s first screen kiss, from
Sincerely Yours
with Dorothy Malone. The flop film’s monumental bad taste was later lampooned in books like
The Golden Turkey Awards
.

When I asked the pianist who his favorite movie actor was, he hesitated, then said, “There are
so
many wonderful movie legends. It’s
so
hard to choose.” Finally he named Clifton Webb (best known for
Laura
, 1944, which made him a screen star in his mid-50s). Why? Because Webb was gay? Never wed (like Liberace)? Was a witty, waspish, unique performer? “I liked him because he was very good to his mother.” (When Webb’s mother died in her nineties, he carried on so loud and so long that pal Noël Coward drily sympathized, “It must be tough, being orphaned at 72.”)

Like Webb, Liberace well-remembered Mama, beyond her death in 1980. The Sheik-loving Frances had named her youngest son Rudy (his offspring would be disinherited by Uncle Lee) and given son Wladziu
Valentino
for a middle name. (Did she ever suspect the Italian “sheik” seldom if ever entered a lady’s tent?)

Her eldest son she simply called George.

Wladziu Valentino Liberace, aka Lee, the Wizard of Ooze, King of the Stardust Ballroom, the Sultan of Glitz, and the Grand Poobah of Kitsch, worshipped his “Queen Mum,” for whom he fashioned a special throne. ‘‘I’m proud of my mother; and she’s very proud of me,” he said more than once. Indeed, in the 1950s and ‘60s he elicited frequent derisive publicity for his devotion to his mother. Strange then, that he couldn’t conceive—on paper anyway—of playing “an effeminate mama’s boy.” Perhaps he identified more as a butch or macho mama’s boy....

* * *

Hours before flying to Mexico City in late 1978, I got a telephone call: “Hello? Is this Boze Hadleigh?” the voice drawled. It sounded almost like a cartoon.

“Yes, speaking.”

“This is...Liberace.” A pause—the pause that impresses. I nearly said, “Mr. Liberace?”

He went on to say that he was regretfully declining my request to interview him for
Talk
magazine. “All those lovely ladies under the hair dryer will
have
to struggle on without me,” he chuckled. Then he thanked me for the sample piece I’d enclosed on Audrey Hepburn, whom I’d interviewed about her movie comeback in the undeserving
Bloodline
.

“I
really
enjoyed that. She’s
such
a lovely lady.
Tell
me,” he hush-asked, “is she really as thin in person as in the movies? She’s
so
wonderful.” The first paragraph of the article had pointed out that it was a phone interview.

“She’s quite thin,” I said, stating the obvious (the camera might add pounds, it doesn’t take them away).

“Isn’t that wonderful? Of course,
some
of us have to
work
at being thin. I think Audrey’s one of the lucky ones.” Pause. “How about you? Are
you
thin?” I said yes. “Not
too
thin, I hope. Young men shouldn’t be too thin.” I’d heard he liked some meat on his men. “Well, you’re young. Of
course
you’re thin.” How did he know I was young? Come to think of it, had I enclosed my phone number with the request? (One usually had the celebrity’s publicist call
Talk
in New York to confirm and to arrange about illustrations, then the publicist or my editor called me to set the date.)

“How old did you say you were?”

“Twenty-four.”

“
My!
So
young!
Have you had any training in journalism or anything?”

“My master’s degree is in mass communications, journalism specifically.”

“Ooohh! So young...
already
. That sounds very impressive—a
master’s
....Well, we’ll probably meet when you’re a little older. “
If
,” he chirped, “you’re persistent.”

“It’s very nice of you to call.”

“Not at all, it’s
my
pleasure. Now, don’t work too hard. Good-bye!”

* * *

The second major star to die of AIDS, Liberace passed away In February, 1987, days before my first interview book,
Conversations with My Elders
, went to press. Removed, via the publisher’s attorneys, were a few references to Cary Grant, including Rock Hudson’s comments on Grant’s 1930s love relationship with Randolph Scott and how they’d shared at least four different houses in Los Angeles and had all but scandalized Tinseltown by showing up at film premieres together; Paramount finally put a stop to their togetherness under threat of non-renewal of the rising stars’ contracts.

Sal Mineo had declared, “If I had a real and lasting personal partnership like that, I’d have told the studio to go fuck itself....Why doesn’t anyone ever threaten to sue and expose the studio for practicing that kind of crap?” Probably because if money talks elsewhere, in Hollywood it dictates.

Grant died weeks before
Conversations
was published, and Scott weeks after. I’d already not included in the manuscript some quotes about “Lee” from Rock, for who could have known that Liberace would die a few months before sixty-nine—”
soissante-neuf
,” as he called it in
Cue
magazine, adding, “I just love all things French. Except rude Parisians and sauces that are wickedly caloric!”

Conversations
includes a passing reference—excuse the pun—to Liberace by Hudson. A non-sexual one. But when Rock had casually alluded to an affair with Lee, I thought he must be pulling my leg. “Really?” I asked. He nodded. “When?” He paused before answering. “You really want to know about this? You can’t
use
it, you know.” He went on:

“It was just a few weeks—a fling, fun while it lasted.” But “Lee was very patronizing. A kind man, generous, and we shared an interest in classical music. His piano-playing knocked me out. But he was quite patronizing even then, and he treated everybody like his protégé.”

I asked Rock if they’d remained friends. “We’re on good terms, but not friends. For instance, if I went to one of his concerts or he came to see me in a play I’m doing, people might talk. It would be noticed.”

The hard-to-imagine affair, he said, happened in the “very early ‘50s.” At that time, Hudson was a struggling Universal contract player, something of a handsome lump. In his first film, in 1948, he’d reportedly required dozens of retakes to deliver a simple line. A few years later, he was better known as the Baron of Beefcake—he was an enthusiastic poser—than for his screen roles. Liberace, on the other be-ringed hand, was a TV star. His piano-centered variety series was seen in more homes at the time than
I Love Lucy
. Of course, Lee was yet a pale sartorial shadow of the glittering icon of excess that he would become.

Then, as later, Liberace preferred “rough trade”—gay, bi, and sometimes financially wanting heterosexual men of rough aspect and typically blue collar. Hudson was a former truck driver and mail carrier; Lee would often take fiscally disadvantaged but hardy young males and employ them as chauffeurs, assistants, or masseurs. “Men are
my
kind of people!” he informed me.