Hollywood Gays (20 page)

Q: To pass.

A: Yeah, so you’re already doing a role as a kid or a teen. We all act, but if you’re not straight, you act even more. And acting’s exciting. I think most gay kids look at their parents’ lives, and they want more.

Q: You played a sailor in
Querelle
. Did the uniform aspect of the project or role appeal to you?

A: Is that what you’ve heard? Did Rainer say that?

Q: Many people fancy a man in uniform.

A: Or, better, out of it! (Grins.)

Q: Were you eager to play a sailor?

A: To tell you the truth, every sailor I’ve ever known wasn’t heterosexual or homosexual. I think most of them are bi. In Rainer’s movie, it went mostly homo, so that wasn’t so accurate either. But it kind of made up for all the Hollywood movies where every guy who ever wore a uniform was heterosexual.

Q: Despite many of the actors and stars playing them. (Davis notes the reportedly bisexual Gene Kelly in
On the Town
and other musicals.)

A: Hollywood never shows homosexuals in the army.

Q: Not quite true. Remember
Reflections in a Golden Eye
with Brando and
The Sergeant
with Rod Steiger, to name two of the ‘60s ones? And a few more since, including British and Continental. Interestingly, almost nothing on lesbians in the military.

A: That’s funny, ‘cause I’d bet the average dyke’s more interested in enlisting than any average gay guy.

Q: Well, who wants to wake up that early?

A: Are you doing a book about it? Gay movies or something?

Q: You guessed. It will include
Querelle
. And many other movies, mostly nonmilitary.

A: Right on. Send me a copy, will you?

Q: Yes, but don’t hold your breath. Most editors love the manuscript, which I update every few years, but they feel Vito Russo’s book captured the whole market. They’re wrong.

A: Someday I want to write a book.

Q: About what?

A: The actor’s life. This actor’s life.

Q: Nonfiction?

A: (Grins.) Yeah, mostly. I’ve encountered a lot of very interesting people.

Q: And vice versa.

A: Thanks.

Q: Were you intimidated, preparing to play Bobby Kennedy?

A: I don’t think so. Not in any way that showed.

Q: What do you mean?

A: I just...it was a good script. I loved starring in it. But I knew he was taller than I was. Which you can get around that...like, I always heard Alan Ladd was bi, and he was real aggressive, like trying to make up for both things. Being shorter too. But what I meant was, Bobby Kennedy was supposed to be hung like a mule—down to his knee....

Q: I never heard that.

A: I doubt to his knee, but....

Q: The size of caught fishes—or fish—and men’s appendages, even if already impressive, is so often exaggerated.

A: Nothing physical is ever big enough. Most people would say.

Q: You know which one is really stupid? “You can never be too rich or too thin.”

A: Oh, no, I’d like to be too rich.

Q: Too rich is debatable, but too thin—that’s a thoughtless statement.

A: You know, nobody ever asks actors about aging. Actresses get asked all the time. What I really dislike about movie acting is it’s
all
physical, and by the time you learn how to make a juvenile character, a young lead, interesting, by then you have one too many lines on your face, and those big roles get yanked away from you. Older roles are better. Better written. But younger roles get the most build-up and the most money.

Rainer was always saying Hollywood’s too youth-oriented and too establishment-oriented, and he was right. He usually was right about things, and he used to give good advice to his friends. If you worked with him on either side of the camera, you were his friend. That was his world. He really didn’t move through the outer world, it was all just moviemaking for him.

Q: He was unique. It’s too bad he didn’t take much of his own good advice.

A: He didn’t think he was worth it.

Q: He was an actor too.

A: He did everything. Theater too. And TV, I think.

Q: With all he accomplished, it’s hard to believe he had such low self-esteem.

A: It
is
hard to believe.

Q: He wasn’t physically handsome, as you are. In what way are you more secure than Fassbinder, and how are you insecure?

A: Uh-oh, we’re going deep! Well, I’m more secure than Rainer was about my being—you could tell he was willing to throw it all away. The work was important to him, but not his own self. And he had to have work.
Had
to. I could do without work emotionally, but not financially. But I don’t have anywhere like his smarts or his confidence about what he could do. I think Rainer was a true genius. (Eyes have misted.) Does that answer it?

Q: In what way are you insecure?

A: Well, the future. Every actor’s insecure about that. Even stars. And if you’re different in any way, that doesn’t contribute to being very confident. Like if you don’t measure up in some way.

Q: You mean physically?

A: Like height? Well, yeah, but...everyone’s insecure in different ways.

Q: But hopefully not just about differences or nonconformity, especially when conforming wouldn’t be natural.

A: No, it’s just that ... sometimes one does get pretty down and blue. It doesn’t matter what job you have or how you look. I think most human beings with any amount of sensitivity get a lot more depressed than we ever let on.

Q: Laugh and the world laughs with you?

A: Yeah, and everyone’s got his own little cluster of specialized troubles.

Q: That most people are happy in the same way, but sadness is a specialized, individual thing...?

A: That’s it. You keep your blues to yourself, and you smile at the world.

Q: When you feel like it.

A: Or when you think you should.

Q: What makes you laugh?

A: The past.

Q: What about the past?

A: Things other people wouldn’t find funny. Things I can laugh at now, alone.

Q: What makes you cry?

A: I like this kind of catharsis. You should get a couch.

Q: But I couldn’t charge you.

A: You could take it out in trade.

Q: So what makes you cry?

A: Injustice. Like in
Midnight Express
.

Q: What makes you happy?

A: Well, one thing is good food—served by cute waiters. Or waitresses.

Q: What makes you scared?

A: Casting directors and the IRS.

Q: Interesting.

A: You didn’t ask what makes me horny?

Q: Good food, and you’re thinking about sex? Okay, what makes you horny?

A: Do you want to go to the restroom together?

Q: Is that the answer to the question?

A: No, but it could be the start of something big. Don’t you think we’ve talked enough?

Q: We haven’t finished our dessert.

A: We can eat later....

Q: But—

A: No buts.

Q: Literally.

A: (Laughs.)

Q: Listen, I have to put away the machine and my notes. Why don’t you go ahead and start without me?

A: You won’t be too long?

Q: Can anyone be too long?

A: (Leers with cocked eyebrow.) See ya. (Rises.)

Q: Uh, likewise...I think.

CESAR ROMERO

(1907-1994)

Never a superstar, Cesar Romero was nonetheless a household name and had several claims to fame. His first was as a grandson of Cuban liberator Jose Marti. Then as the latest “new Valentino” imported by Hollywood—from back east, not Cuba (New York-born Cesar attended high school in New Jersey)—to fill
the
Latin Lover’s shoes. Another claim to (whispered) fame was as Tyrone Power’s on-and-off lover and lifelong friend.

Another was as a “dancing fool.” He began as a dancer, dancing on screen with Betty Grable and others, and was a favorite escort of Hollywood actresses from Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, and Carmen Miranda to, in latter days, older actresses like Jane Wyman, Ginger Rogers, and Anne Jeffreys. At nightclubs and parties, awards ceremonies, and other events, from the 1930s through the ‘80s, the “confirmed bachelor”—as gossip columnists usually described him—was always in demand. One source explained, “It was well known that Cesar could be counted on to be charming, to be an excellent dance partner, and to be discreet.” He was, and had to be, discreet, for often he would escort an actress to a public spot, later depart with her, drop her off at some pre-arranged rendezvous with her male (or female) lover, and then drive to the arms of his own current male paramour.

On screen, the 6’3” hunk with the flashing smile found fame neither as a professional Latin nor an acclaimed dancer, though occasionally he enacted either role, sometimes simultaneously. Rather, he became a busy character actor, essaying both villains and chums to the male lead, with or more typically without a foreign accent. He worked with most of the stars of the golden age of cinema, from Dietrich and Shirley Temple to William Powell, Henry Fonda, and “Charlie Chan.” He appeared in a handful of classics and dozens of enjoyable A- and B-movies. His more reflective film titles include:

The
Shadow Laughs; Cheating Cheaters; The Thin Man; The Good Fairy; Uniform Lovers
(
Hold ‘Em Yale
in the US);
Strange Wives; The Devil is a Woman; Nobody’s Fool; Love Before Breakfast; Dangerously Yours; Always Goodbye; The Gay Caballero; Tall, Dark and Handsome; A Gentleman at Heart; Deep Waters; Love That Brute; Street of Shadows
(
Shadow Man
in the US);
The Leather Saint; All’s Fair in Love; The Story of Mankind; If a Man Answers; A Talent for Loving; How to Make It; Soul Soldier
; and
Now You See Him, Now You Don’t
.

When television hit motion pictures in the back of the knees, Cesar Romero took to the small screen in over 40 years’ worth of varied guest roles—and one brief series of his own,
Passport to Danger
. In the 1960s he won a new generation of fans as the campy, green-haired, ever-cackling Joker on
Batman
. And while his golden-era contemporaries retired or died, Cesar soldiered on, looking great. He commented in
California
magazine, “People are starting to call me Dorian Gray!

“But whatever else I may or may not have in common with Oscar Wilde, he did not create me and I was not a personal friend of his! Nor did Rudy Valentino give me my first break in pictures, as has been rumored. When he died, I was in my teens.” So, Cesar’s latest claim to fame became his enduring looks. In 1968,
TV Guide
dubbed him one of the most “beautiful men in the world,” with “hair the color of stainless steel,” an alert, “erect” posture, and charm to spare. Unsurprisingly, he launched a chain of men’s clothing stores in California.

As he became elderly, his lifestyle didn’t. Romero was known as Hollywood’s most party-going citizen. At most any celebrity event—at the opening of an art gallery, a fashion exhibit, or a function commemorating Old Hollywood—Cesar was there, with or sometimes without a female celebrity in tow (not just glamour gals; often it was matronly Los Angeles philanthropist Sybil Brand). People joked that Cesar Romero would attend the opening of a napkin. Most nights of the week found him out on the town, away from the Brentwood condo that he shared with his sister Maria, whom he outlived.

Cesar continued going out—when he wasn’t attending a function, he was likely at a dinner party—until the very end. The last time I saw him was in late autumn, 1993, in Beverly Hills at a tribute to our town’s late honorary mayor, Will Rogers (killed in an airplane crash in 1935). The event tied in with the L.A. production of the Broadway hit
Will Rogers’ Follies
, and Cesar was seated, grinning from time to time, on the dais. He was 86, and his one notable physical flaw was a brownish discoloration on the middle of his nose. Sometimes he covered it with makeup, but frequently let it go, explaining:

‘‘I’m not quite that vain now. It’s just how it is, no big deal. Of course when I work, the makeup man or girl covers it for me. My lower teeth aren’t perfect either. I’ve been advised I can get them changed or capped or whatever, but to me it’s no big deal. And who’d want to sit still that long?”