Hollywood Gays (21 page)

To friends, he was known as “Butch.” Certainly he acted more butch than stereotypical, though his off-camera humor was often self-mocking (e.g., after taping a TV talk show also featuring a female beauty queen, he instructed the technician removing the guests’ clip-on microphones, “You can do the young lady first—the young queen before the old queen!”). His nickname was given to him by George Murphy when both were hoofers. The future Republican senator reportedly felt that as a dancer, Cesar could stand a more virile nickname.

“I told him ‘Butch’ Romero would be his fast ticket to posterity, but then all the studio bosses thought it sounded peculiar for a ‘Latin Lover.’ I figured for a dancing man, ‘Butch’ would be smarter than going with an ancient Greek’s [sic] name. But you can’t second-guess Hollywood, and I guess that’s one reason I left the place.”

In 1933 the Cuban-American was transported to Hollywood, where MGM didn’t know what to do with him. By then, during the depths of the Depression, male foreigners—as Romero was considered, because of his name—were fast going out of style. Louis B. Mayer’s notorious homophobia may have played a part (he’d already been defied by MGM star Ramon Novarro after repeating his request that the gay Mexican take a wife). At the more Euro-oriented Paramount in 1935, “the new Valentino” was costarring with Marlene Dietrich in Joseph Von Sternberg’s Spanish extravaganza
The Devil Is a Woman
. Had it been a hit, he would likely have gone on to romantic leading roles rather than Fox and such Shirley Temple vehicles as
Wee Willie Winkie
and
The Little Princess
.

Woman
was probably too exotic for mid-American audiences, who in any case hardly got to sample the final Dietrich/Von Sternberg collaboration. As the director put it in his memoirs, “The film was banned by the Spanish government, which in turn was banned by Generalissimo Franco.” Spain’s protestations led Paramount to pull the picture from release and agree to destroy most of the prints. Cesar’s big break was thus negated. Said Von Sternberg, “Most who saw it were Hollywood minions, before the few extant prints were shelved, to gather dust except for [being seen at] MOMA, then a screening at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, and finally a limited circulation in 1961.”

But rumor had it that, pre-release, the homophobic director had already cut Cesar’s part—to favor co-male lead Lionel Atwill—after learning Cesar was gay. To this writer’s knowledge, Romero never acknowledged the rumor. Ironically, Elsa Lanchester, widow of closeted gay star Charles Laughton, told me, “When Charles was doing [the aborted]
I, Claudius
for Herr Von Sternberg, who was an American and
not
of aristocratic origin [
Von
indicates Teutonic nobility], he gave Charles his unsolicited opinion of Señor Romero. He said Cesar was a bit on the ‘fancy’ side and ought to find himself a wife if ever he expected to get anywhere in the picture business. The kraut said this with a straight and obviously naive face to our Charles.”

Apparently the next time Romero’s career suffered from homophobia was after he inherited the role of the Cisco Kid (including
The Gay Caballero
, 1940). The Hispanic hero was derived from a 1907 O. Henry short story and in 1929 won the second Best Actor Academy Award for Warner Baxter. Fox turned it into a popular early ‘40s series that didn’t sit as well with moviegoers in nations to the south. James Horwitz in his book
They Went Thataway
explained:

“Romero was no cowboy, but one of those Brylcreemed Latin Lover types, and played the Kid as a smarmy dandy and fop, while Chris Pin-Martin’s Pancho (the Kid’s sidekick) was a gutbucket slob. Latin American sensibilities were offended by this unlikely duo. An international incident nearly occurred. Diplomatic cables flew back and forth between Latin America and the State Department. The Cisco Kid, as portrayed by Romero, was, so to speak, queering America’s south-of-the-border foreign policy. Darryl Zanuck at Fox was more or less ordered by Washington to change Cisco’s style or stop making the pictures. He decided to drop the series altogether.”

The series was later revived with heterosexual Mexican sex symbol Gilbert Roland. But the replacement of the “mincing Romero” with a “lecherous Roland” proved unpopular with US
and
Latin audiences. Horwitz described the new Kid as “a typical Rolandesque cigarillo-smoking, hot-sweat-of-passion, lusty, mucho macho caballero. The films bombed out.” It was the allegedly Rumanian Duncan Renaldo who eventually struck the right note of asexuality and nonviolence, becoming the most famous Cisco Kid of all—with a big plug from TV.

The publication of the above explanation in my 1990 book
Hispanic Hollywood
put an almost two-year chill into Cesar’s and my friendship and interviews (since 1977, usually at the fabled Chateau Marmont). We were to have appeared together on a local TV talk show, but Cesar canceled when he discovered it would feature not my other current book (
The Vinyl Closet
, about gays and lesbians in music) but
Hispanic Hollywood
.

Pre-publication, I’d asked Cesar if he would pen a foreword to my book about Latins in motion pictures. He politely demurred, and so Edward James Olmos wrote it. As for the Cisco Kid material from Horwitz’s book, I photocopied it and sent it to him care of Morgan Maree, his business manager. No reply. Later, when we began speaking again, I asked why Cesar hadn’t gotten back to me if he didn’t want the factual, already printed information in my book. “I never got your letter.” End of subject.

By and large, Cesar Romero was an excellent interviewee. Sadly, he was seldom sought for interviews. Almost never was he asked about his private life. True, he never officially came out of the closet, but for one of his generation he was relatively open about his sexual and affectional orientation, and he rarely took steps to disguise it. His avoiding contractual marriage, as he pointed out, was a statement in itself—one that the mass media had no desire to give voice to.

The first time we met, at the Marmont, I couldn’t resist, and greeted him with “Hail, Cesar!” When I later called him Mr. Romero, he flashed a smile and insisted, “Mr. Romero was my father. Don’t make me feel so old!” I asked what should I call him’! “You can call me ‘Butch’ or Cesar.” I couldn’t help feeling both were too familiar, particularly on such short acquaintance, and compromised with the honorific
Don
Cesar (now and again we spoke Spanish together, especially when the waiter or nearby customers weren’t meant to understand).

Cesar—as I eventually called him—was an avid and thoughtful conversationalist on most topics. On one he was unwilling and protective: “my close friend, my dear friend, Ty Power.” He never stated what most of Hollywood knew at the time—that they were lovers. When he spoke of Power on TV, he would mention Tyrone’s wives or girlfriends—real or imaginary—and although he admitted to me that Power was “bisexual,” even that was uttered reluctantly. A semi-closeted movie actor friend—best known for his role on a TV police series—himself also legally (if not actually) single, declared, “I gather Ty was rather tortured about it. He was a prominent movie star and icon. He wanted to be straight, but more than that, he was terrified of being found out.

“Cesar’s not a movie star and never had the same pressure or fears. And I think he’s more comfortable within himself, he’s a survivor [Power died at 44].... When Cesar talks about Ty, he feels he’s being loyal to him, even if those same pressures and fears don’t exist anymore. Or not to the same degree.”

The year I met Don Cesar, he turned 70. He still flirted and had a zestful gleam in his eye. But whether in his 70s and 80s he had affairs with anyone, I have no idea. A few times, in the 1980s, we watched some porno videos together. In 1991, after Paul Rubens (
né
Rubenfeld), aka Pee-wee Herman, was arrested at an “adult theatre” in Sarasota, Florida, Cesar joked on the phone, “Think how much grief he could have saved himself if he’d stayed home or in his motel and played with his
toy
in front of a video machine!” I wondered aloud why Rubens had bothered to go out to a porno theatre.

“I guess to see other toys in action,” Cesar chuckled. “Poor fellow—such hypocrisy [from the media]. I wonder if Sarasota has a
gay
adult theater.” When in 1992 a tabloid ran the story of “Pee Wee’s Gay Wedding... & Jim Nabors Sang at Secret Ceremony” he clipped it and sent it to me, noting, “I knew I liked this guy. And Jim Nabors’ voice!” When next we met, Cesar said that a lesbian official from the national Hispanic organization La Raza in Washington, D.C., had informed him that Rubens’s sister was (reportedly) a well-known gay rights activist back east. “Young people are all right,” he intoned.

* * *

Q: Where does one begin with as colorful a life and career as yours?

A: You mean as long (grins).

Q: How many movies have you been in?

A: I’m pushing 100. Oooh, I don’t like the sound of that! If it isn’t 100 movies, it will be soon.

Q: But now you seem to do more TV than movies.

A: Undeniably true.

Q: Because of...age?

A: Age and because there’s more work on the small screen. What it’s missing in quality it makes up for in quantity. From an actor’s selfish point of view.

Q: Speaking of quality, it varies wildly in movies too. You’ve been in classics like
The Thin Man, Springtime in the Rockies
, and
Around the World in 80 Days
. But you’ve—

A: The last one doesn’t count. Everybody in Hollywood was in that. If you weren’t, you left town and made up an excuse.

Q: Not just everyone in Hollywood. Noël Coward was in it, and for a day’s work he received an automobile, a Bonnard. A reporter visiting the set was flabbergasted and said, “Just for a day’s work?” and Noël Coward replied, “Not at all, madame. For a lifetime of experience.”

A: (Laughs, claps hands together.) Classic Coward. I think a few other guest stars got paid in automobiles.

Q: Yes. Sir Noël said that Ronald Colman got a Cadillac.

A: Said to you or...?

Q: (Smiling.) I got to interview him. By then he was—belatedly—Sir Noël. He wasn’t in 1956.

A: And you weren’t born, I’ll wager.

Q: I beg your pardon. I was a toddler.

A: You got to meet Sir Noël Coward? I met him too. Didn’t know him well. But you are lucky.

Q: I know I am. He was not only brilliant, he was kind and down-to-earth.

A: Sometimes that happens with celebrities. (Grinning.)

Q: What I meant is, most people like that aren’t so...sincere.

A: Well, you know what they say in Hollywood—the most important thing is being sincere, even if you have to fake it. They also say the camera never lies. It lies (leaning closer) every day.

Q: Do you mean actors playing characters unlike themselves?

A: Yes, yes. A pompous ass playing a concerned hero, a bitch playing the girl next door ... but also tricks about aging or emotional insincerity—project a mask, and people can project onto it whatever they think you’re feeling.

Q: Or want you to be feeling.

A: Yes. A good rule of thumb in acting for the camera is not to emotionalize. Keep your expressions pretty still.
You
have very expressive eyes. If an actor’s face is more of a blank, he can let the audience do the acting for him.

Q: Like who?

A: Spencer Tracy. Not to take anything away from him, but many a morning he came to the set hung (over), and during a line—or particularly when he had no lines—he’d present an expressionless face to the camera. People would read all kinds of reaction into it, but Tracy told me himself that half the time he was just standing very still, trying to look sober and composed. (Shrugs.) That takes nothing away from him. The fact he got away with it was a tribute to his talent.

Q: He’s become known among younger actors for his advice about just saying your lines right and not bumping into the furniture.

A: Aha! That is wrong, and we can put this on record. He did say that too, but it didn’t come from him. He very rarely did interviews, but in one interview long ago he said that he got that advice from Noël Coward! He gave Coward the credit.

Q: And now others give Tracy the credit.

A: There was another thing I remember Noël Coward said—I should remember more, and I have a pretty good memory. He said when he was very young, in his twenties or thirties, the critics would complain that he was “precocious.” That’s the word. And Coward said, “How do they think I could be clever and not know it?

Q: Makes perfect sense. Which is worse—a critic’s bad review, or not getting mentioned in a review?

A: What do you think?

Q: Silence is the worst insult.

A: You said it.

Q: Getting back to the uneven quality of movies—

A: Movies I’ve been in?

Q: Actually, yes. But hey, it’s a living. Anyway, you’ve more recently done films like
Sergeant Deadhead, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
, and
Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood
....

A: (Grinning.) That last one is a classic dog.

Q: A classic dog movie?