Hollywood Gays (22 page)

A: No. A classic dog. (Nods.)

Q: Yet they say movies—still—have more prestige than TV.

A: It’s also harder to get into them. Not that television is so easy. It’s all uphill now.

Q: Mmm. But enough about TV. More about your background. Let’s go back to the very beginning.

A: All right. What do you want to know about the Civil War?

Q: Funny. You were born in the US....

A: Which many people still find hard to believe. And if you can believe it, Hollywood wanted to change my birthdate. I was born after Valentine’s Day, so they wanted to change it to February 14. You know why?

Q: Latin love and romance?

A: You said it. A Latin lover
should
be born on Valentine’s Day. I said no.

Q: You know who else did? Elsa Lanchester. She was born around Halloween, and when she starred as
The Bride of Frankenstein
(1935), the publicists wanted to change her birthday to October 31.

A: And not being a
real
witch, she refused.

Q: Yes (both laugh). Your first movie wasn’t
The Thin Man
(1934)?

A: No. I did a handful in ‘33 and ‘34, then I got the buildup in 1935.
The Thin Man
was a good break, because it was highly popular. I played a gigolo in it.

Q: There’s Latin typecasting for you.

A: Yes. And no. His name was Chris Jorgenson. An Anglo gigolo—but at least not a transsexual (like Danish-American Christine Jorgenson).

Q: You were a Latin from Manhattan. So, before movies, you had to be on the stage.

A: Oh, of course. We all came up through the theatre—or in some cases the thee-ayder. I was in a show called
Lady Do
, late ‘20s. My big break, my Broadway bow, was
Dinner at Eight
. I played Ricci (spelling it). That was very popular.

Q: But you didn’t get into the movie version, which was helmed by the gay George Cukor...?

A: No. And I didn’t
know
about him then (nods significantly).

Q: Could that have helped you, if you had?

A: It’s possible. I don’t know at what point Cukor supposedly or actually started favoring particular young actors with roles...perhaps not just then (in the early 1930s). He was starting out himself. He had to be careful. By the ‘50s, I know, he was giving big breaks to—

Q: Big newcomers?

A: (Laughs.) So I often heard.

Q: Like Valentino, you began as a dancer. How and why?

A: Well, first—and I should only have been as lucky as Valentino, in the movies—
I
didn’t have to be a gigolo. In real life.

Q: And Valentino did?

A: People who knew him in Italy said he engaged in male prostitution there. Could be. But in New York, he was a paid dance partner and a gigolo for older ladies of affluent means.

Q: Would that have involved sex?

A: More probably not. But it was widely known that those boys were either queer or went both ways.

Q: As far as it’s possible to know, Valentino was apparently gay or bisexual.

A: Yes. And his two lesbian wives. But without any question, he had sex with men. From choice. So he was one or the other.

Q: Did you ever know anybody who made love with him?

A: I did. One heterosexual who later gave up acting. He was very young, experimenting, and quite flattered when “the Sheik” made clear his interest in him. And I knew several gay actors who...
knew
Rudy, including my good friend Ramon Novarro. He was almost as popular a star as Rudy was.

Q: Novarro was stunning—they called him “Ravishing Ramon”—but he also seemed very nice.

A: A gentle, sweet man. His murder (in 1968 at the hands of two hustler brothers) was so gruesome and bloody, it was so senseless—one of this town’s greatest tragedies. (Even so, the self-avowed heterosexual brothers have long since been released from prison.) It was the biggest shock I had since Ty’s death (in 1958 from a heart attack on location in Spain).

Q: I imagine the murder scared most sensible gay men in Hollywood off of using hustlers?

A: Anyone with any sense. That and the murders of Sharon Tate and her friends helped make us all extremely wary. A lot of paranoia set in.

Q: Stars are increasingly being targeted.

A: All kinds of celebrities, political ones as well. In this country, with all the countless guns.

Q: However, in Novarro’s case, it had more to do with robbery and gay-bashing—that extra viciousness directed against a gay man—than his being a celebrity. Correct?

A: Yes, I don’t even think those two brutes knew who he was. He hadn’t been a movie star for a very long time. His name wasn’t known to young people.

Q: Except via
I Love Lucy
, where Lucy’s mother still had a crush on Ray-Monn
Navarro
, as she pronounced it.

A: (Smiles; frowns.) But those two barbarians did know that he kept a lot of cash in his house, whoever he was. That’s what they were after. During the murder trial, it was the dead man who was put on trial, as if he’d corrupted these two barbarians.

Q: It’s an ongoing travesty of justice. Victimizing the victim of anti-gay violence. The basher or murderer tries to justify the violence by saying. “But he came onto me,” whether true or false.

A: Whether he did or not, nothing justifies a violent reaction. Unless it’s an attempted rape, and even then.

Q: If every woman reacted the same way to sexually eager men, there’d be few heterosexual males left!

A: It’s true. It’s awful, the unfairness. But that’s why one must stay out of trouble.

Q: And why the laws must be changed, and people elected who aren’t mere conservers of traditional injustices....

A: Amen. But...oh, it’s depressing. We were talking about...dancing. Much less depressing! (Sighs in relief.) Several of those fellows working in the dance parlors, I forget what they called the places, they had to live down the reputations they got there, for years after. George Raft. He may or may not have gone both ways, but he was very sensitive to what they said about him, and it was one factor why he decided to play all those gangsters in the movies.

Q: One rumor is he had a crush on mobster Bugsy Siegel.

A: (Laughs.) The mobster with the beautiful blue eyes. I know Raft did have some genuine affairs with actresses.

Q: So he may have been bisexual. Or heterosexual.

A: In reality he may have been...”bi.” But in common parlance, in or out of our business, if a man has a marriage or an affair with a lady, he’s thought of as heterosexual.

Q: As though everyone is only hetero- or only homosexual.

A: They go by what they can see.

Q: And they force the sexual minority to hide what they do and feel, so that the public assumes almost everyone’s heterosexual. How were you able to evade pressure to marry?

A: I wasn’t able to evade some pressure—we all had some pressures brought to bear on us—but I did evade the noose. I mean the knot! Freudian slip.

Q: More like a Freudian slap.

A: (Laughs.) But that brings us right back to dancing. You see, very, very often, I was out dancing with one actress or another. And that got press. Even when it didn’t, the whole town knew I was a dancing fool, and since I couldn’t very well dance with a man, they saw me dancing with a lady, and...

Q: And they assumed the rest.

A: That’s it. What they saw was what they got in their heads. Now; as to how I started dancing. I’d learned with my sister—we learned from our cook, who was Puerto Rican. I liked dancing, it was fun and expressive, and I was good at it.

Q: And it was socially approved.

A: You said it. Again, it put any doubts out of most people’s heads. But I’ll tell you something not for public consumption in my lifetime....All right? That’s how I...found out. That I was different. While dancing...you understand?

Q: You mean that you weren’t sexually turned on to your partners?

A: (Nods, smiling.) I enjoyed dancing, I enjoyed the girls I danced with, but...that was all. I wasn’t distracted by them, and on the dance floor, I could see other partners I would rather have had....

Q: Males.

A: (Nods.) So I had to keep from laughing when a male relative of mine became concerned about how often I danced.

Q: What, he thought you should be outdoors playing sports?

A: Mentioning sports, I was very good at tennis. Not quite championship level, but.... No. This well-intentioned relative told me confidentially that so much dancing was bound to make me, ahem, frustrated. (Grins.) So I shouldn’t do too much dancing. Or else I’d be bound to practice self...abuse. Frequently!

Q: “Self-abuse.” What a misnomer for self-pleasure.

A: (Smiles.) Lovingly practiced the whole world over.

Q: Indeed. If anything, it’s the norm—autosexual, and part of the time heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual....

A: I think that covers it (grins). Anyway, I told the poor fellow not to worry. He thought I’d get sick or drain myself of all energy and not be able to conduct a business career. Which I would have been miserable at. But due to a big bust in Cuba, my father’s business suffered badly, so I was free to choose my own career. I became a professional dancer, and I went on the road and started making real money.

Q: I hope you don’t mind this question, but why, in the movies, didn’t you become another Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly?

A: Thank you! (Mock-bows, smiling.)

Q: “Thank you”?

A: You’re presuming I had enough talent to compete with those excellent dancers. (Shrugs.) I don’t know. I may have had. But being a Latin, that wasn’t what they were grooming me for. I was supposed to be a romancer, either wooing the leading lady or competing with the leading man for her.

Q: Did male dancers of star stature have to have a more mainstream image?

A: That is perceptive of you, because in this country men dancers have always been viewed with suspicion. If you were an actor, a star, and a dancer, you had to be, or have a name like...as you said, someone “mainstream.” You can name the top three (male) dancers in the movies, can’t you?

Q: Fred Astaire (born Austerlitz), Gene Kelly, and Dan Dailey. Dailey is gay.

A: Yes. As well... (A warning finger; end of subject.)

Q: One clarifying question. When
you
say gay, do you mean homosexual or bisexual?

A: Either.

Q: Ah. Well, to me it means homosexual. And bi means bisexual. There can be a difference.

A: In Hollywood, I agree. I don’t know about out
there
anymore. But a Hollywood actor can genuinely enjoy sex with either.

Q: Why?

A: Beauty. We have the most beautiful people in the world here. Of both sexes.

Q: Look at Tyrone Power. In his heyday, he was, I’d say, universally desirable. As were some of the goddesses.

A: Ty was the most beautiful of all, man or woman. He was matchless. And you know; people often mistook him for Latin, from his dark hair and brows and eyelashes.

Q: And probably because he played Latins in films like
Blood and Sand
and
Captain from Castile
.

A: (Beams.)
Captain from Castile
...wonderful memories. At that time, we had several beautiful, glamorous Latin American stars. They were the best fun at parties and clubs, we always got along great. There was a whole colony—the handsome Hispanics, like Ramon, Gilbert Roland, and others. (Sighs.)

Q: Those wonderful Latin looks, eh?

A: I’m not the only one. You know who had a crush on Gilbert? Lucille Ball. I don’t know if they had an affair; but several people in this town believed they would end up married.

Q: Instead she married another Latin—and you worked with him, didn’t you? (He grins.) A renowned, or notorious, ladies’ man. Did you ever have a crush on Desi Arnaz?

A: (Nods.) Desi loved sex. He couldn’t get enough.

Q: How about that syndrome, the Casanova thing, where a man—a Don Juan—who has hundreds of female lovers, at some point along the way also has a few male ones?

A: Well, of course! An erection’s an erection. It just wants satisfaction. Wasn’t it...was it Gertrude Stein who said a mouth is a mouth is a mouth?