Hollywood Gays (23 page)

Q: Could be. There didn’t used to be surveys on this topic, but now they indicate that more men enjoy oral sex—receiving it—than the standard male-female sexual position, the “missionary,” for want of a better word.

A: They may prefer it, but until not so long ago, a man, a regular married man, didn’t know where to get it. Mostly, they had to do without. Wives or girlfriends wouldn’t do it. Guys had to go to a professional and pay her.

Q: Or...?

A: Or something like a highway rest stop where the truckers go. “Glory holes,” they call them. Which gives a new meaning to the old expression, “gone to glory.” (Smirks.) So, anonymous oral sex—no names, no faces. So that the fellow can still think of himself as...living a completely normal life. Right?

Q: It helps him think of himself as just one category, instead of as simp1y sexual. The Greeks, for instance, didn’t have words for “heterosexual” or “homosexual.”

A: Smart people, the Greeks. You mean the ancient Greeks?

Q: Of course. Not the Greek Orthodox. So did Desi Arnaz ever know how you felt?

A: He’d have been rather slow if he didn’t. He knew he was pretty irresistible—I mean well before
I Love Lucy
, and even then. And he knew about me, and...I guess he could see it in the eyes. When someone’s acting for a scene, they can fool the camera. But in everyday life, unless you’re watching and censoring yourself every minute, or spending all your time in the company of ladies, what you feel is bound to show in your eyes. Sooner or later.

Q: Men
look.
Most men, any type.

A: Yes. And to make a very pleasant story short, one day Desi said to me, “All right, we both know what you want. Let’s get it over with.” We did. End of story.

Q: Just once?

A: (Grins widely.) Men aren’t potato chips....

Q: But I’ll bet—

A: Desi said “one time only.” For our friendship. Neither of us made a big deal out of it, excuse the pun, and we never referred to it again.

Q: Do you think Lucy ever knew?

A: Of course not! It would have been the least of her worries, later on. And I know I wasn’t the only one; Dorothy Kilgallen’s husband (Arnaz’s Broadway co-star Richard Kollmar) was another man. Desi loved pleasure. Who doesn’t? He wasn’t “compromised,” as they say. He received the pleasure, for a change. I mean, Desi screwed women, and he never got screwed—physically; in Hollywood,
everyone
gets screwed—so how much more heterosexual than that does anyone have to be? Besides, it didn’t harm anyone or create problems. Later, when he was cheating on his wife all over the place, in addition to his problem with alcoholism,
that
led to heartaches for poor Lucille.

Q: It’s certainly true that if a man with a wife goes outside—

A: The expression used to be “steps out.”

Q: If he “steps out” for...a frolic with another man—and there’s any number of things either or both can do, or not do—it should cause no problem. But if he steps out on her with another woman, he may later decide to leave his wife—and their kids—for her, or he may impregnate the girlfriend or mistress.

A: As well as spending household money on the mistress!

Q: Right, and all of that would certainly create problems and heartache.

A: When it’s same-sex, no one gets pregnant. Before there was the pill, and before women made themselves so sexually available, that was a big consideration.

Q: It’s still a big one in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Heterosexual sex, because of pregnancy, must occur within legal marriage. Thus, young, unmarried men often have sex with each other as relief and an alternative.

A: You said it. But you know something? They don’t think of themselves as gay. I’ve heard it over and over.

Q: Denial. Even though it takes two people to perform one—

A: —homosexual act. Yes! When they could just think of themselves as flexible. Or just plain sexual. But there’s something you younger kids don’t realize. In the, uh, old days (cocks an eyebrow)...how shall I?...fellatio was a big status symbol. If someone was willing to do that for you, you felt like a king. Few would have said no.

Q:
Once.

A: Yes. Twice might be embarrassing.

Q: I think it was Voltaire who said, or wrote, “Once, a philosopher. Twice, a sodomite.”

A: (Laughs and claps hands.) Very good! But I think he must have been referring to that other activity?

Q: Well, that particular biblical word is both judgmental and inaccurate.

A:  And not even limited to homosexuals.

Q: Right. Getting back to the dance floor, you escorted Lucy a few times, didn’t you?

A: Oh, we had several dates. She loved to dance. And she loved Latins.

Q: Do you think she’d have known you were...just there to dance?

A: You know, I have no idea, and I wouldn’t have cared. We went out because that’s what we beautiful young movie people did! We were encouraged to. We were living the high life, it was very glamorous and elegant, it was wonderful fun. And far more innocent than now. Less sex, less drink, absolutely less drugs—if someone did
that
, it was unusual, and it was private. Today, half the girls powder their noses from the inside!

Remember, I was much younger then. It was all before the war; I was in my late 20s and then my 30s. But what did happen was if you went out together several times, those columnists —there were dozens of them then—they’d link you romantically, on paper. It meant nothing, but if it kept popping up in print, someone at the studio might suggest that you make it legal.

Q: So you didn’t need publicists then?

A: They called them press agents. Today they’re very, very professional...liars. Mostly. Back then, a press agent would be better for pressing pants. All the top columnists had leg men, and when you showed up somewhere, it automatically got covered. Most of the time.

Q: And again, what the public read about, and saw photographed, was what they took literally.

A: Yes. But there really were, in those days, several gay, carefree bachelors. In the old meaning of the word. Someone once told me “gay” now stands for “Good As You.” But people weren’t at all as suspicious as now.

Q: No, because it was so suppressed and invisibilized, that average people thought somebody gay was one in a million. Worse, gay people, especially away from the big cities, were made to think so too.

A: Or people thought they were mostly foreign. There was a lot of that thinking too.

Q: Yes, the over-emotional Latin, the effete Englishman. But you know the word “bachelor”? Originally it meant a young knight who had served under another knight’s banner.

A: That sounds interesting. So it had...connotations.

Q: In days of old, when knights were bold.... But by the time you reached 40, people must have begun to suspect?

A: (Nods.) By that age, almost everyone had married. Me, Ramon...Clifton Webb, very few of us hadn’t tied the knot.

Q: Not to contradict, but there were several others, though most of them weren’t stars.

A: Most of them worked in comedy.

Q: Funny men.

A: Watch it! (Laughs.) But by the time I was 40, everything was winding down. It started after the war. On the plus side, there was
more
...more plenty, more products and technology. But for me (shakes head), the nightlife was winding down, the glamour, the fun. The
movies
—and how! Times were getting tough.

Q: The witch-hunts. They passed you by?

A:
Ave Maria!
I was Latin. Communism and Latins? There was no Castro then.

Q: Lucky Cuba. Although Batista (his predecessor) was terrible too.

A: You said it. Unless you were terribly rich.

Q: You know one of the worst things about communist regimes?

A: The food?

Q: Be serious. They’re always rabidly homophobic.

A: Ah. Yes, that’s true. But in Hollywood, with the witch-hunts, most of the targets were intellectuals and Europeans.

Q: And a huge percentage of them were Jewish or gay. Two of the extreme-right’s ongoing targets.

A: Many weren’t even communists. Just liberal.

Q: Much of it was a backlash.

A: You mean against the Iron Curtain going up?

Q: Yes, and the Bamboo Curtain, but domestically a backlash against Democrats. After almost four terms of Franklin Roosevelt, and then Truman.

A: It was awful. A terrible, terrible time.

Q: As Lillian Hellman called it, “scoundrel time.” Though I must add that her defense of Stalinism was terrible.

A: I agree! But let’s wash our hands of politics. I’ve avoided it. I always prefer to leave it alone.

Q: It would be nice if one could. But the only type of person who can afford to ignore politics is someone who’s male, white, heterosexual, and Christian—”preferably” Protestant.

A: You’ve hit it on the head. It’s true. But at my age, I think I can beg off politics. I try to vote, but...I’m too old to get involved with it. (Smiles.) The young people can do it.

Q: Young people must do it.

A: (Shakes head.) Yes. There
are
good things now, but there were good things then. Those nightclubs! The way we dressed up! And it was safer then. Muggings—what muggings? If you weren’t in the mafia, you didn’t have to worry. It was carefree, it was beautiful and glamorous. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Q: But
your
nightlife’s never ended. You must never watch TV.

A: I don’t miss it, either. I do miss the nightclubs—those wonderful spots are almost all gone.

Q: And the people.

A: Yes. Those beautiful-looking people.

Q: You were at the head of the line. I’ll bet most of the women you squired got crushes on you.

A: (Smiles bashfully.) Oh, I don’t know. Could be. But people had very good manners then. If you were out on a date, that’s just what it was. You didn’t have people throwing themselves at each other or trying to do a mating dance.

* * *

The 1990 book
Lucy in the Afternoon
by Jim Brochu was a fond reminiscence by a young fan who befriended and interviewed Lucille Ball toward the end and got to play backgammon with her in the afternoons. In the non-biography, Lucy revealed her sympathy for Hedda Hopper, because the columnist’s son William, best known for TV’s
Perry Mason
—and a husband and father of two—was in love with another man, unnamed in the book (for, Raymond Burr was alive then).

Ball also told Brochu, “Cesar’s a great guy. I had a real crush on him, and he was terrific fun on a date. The best dancer in the world. One night we went to Mocambo, and we both had too much to drink. I thought that maybe he’d make a pass after all the times we went out, but he didn’t. He’s a real gent. The best. As we danced, he started to cry. I asked him what was the matter, and he just said, ‘I’m strange.’ I told him that we were all a little strange, and then he really broke down.” Whether the story or reportage was exaggerated or not, its point was to indicate, but not state, Romero’s sexual orientation—like Burr, Cesar was still alive at the time.

(Lucy also recounted a date with acerbic writer-actor Oscar Levant, whose oft-expressed homophobia may have been a veil for sexual insecurity or latency. Afterward, in the car, he felt compelled to explain why he wouldn’t be making a pass at Ball, claiming, “I have syphilis.”)

The difference between Cesar Romero and Raymond Burr was that, although Burr lived with another man for over three decades, he remained mentally closeted. He’d wed a woman once, but later fabricated—and kept doing so in interviews—two additional wives and a son. Amazingly, Burr’s 1993 obituaries typically printed his lies but omitted any mention of the man with whom he spent most of his adult life. Such non-journalism included
Variety
, also known as the showbiz “bible.” But that’s Hollywood—where the truth lies...still. Deadly still.

* * *

Q: Cesar, I have a clipping from the
Hollywood Star
(1981). It asks the sartorial question, “Who’s the most clothes-conscious actor in Hollywood? Cesar Romero, we’ve been told...” (he leans forward), but not by me, I’ve never been in your closet—

A: Nor my bedroom, so far.

Q: We don’t want to spoil a beautiful friendship.

A: It might spoil it for you, it would heighten it for me.

Q: Oh, tut-tut.

A: He was before my time. Believe it or not (frowns).