Hollywood Gays (25 page)

A: I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so. (Shakes head.) I certainly hope not. Though I’d probably have married once.

Q: As Rock Hudson did.

A: A good example. But remember another thing, Boze. When there’s a mutual motive, things can be...properly arranged. I won’t name names, or say which ones we’re already discussing. But more than one star of gay persuasion—whatever; homosexual or bisexual—has married a lady, famous or not famous at all, who had little or no interest in the male sex.

Q: Wasn’t Ty’s first—

A: End of story. (Puts finger to lips.)

* * *

Predictably, during and after Tyrone Power’s lifetime, the media dwelled far more often and speculatively on Cesar’s more visible socializing with actresses. One of his closest pals was Joan Crawford, whom he met in 1932 while on Broadway in
Dinner at Eight
. They began dancing right away; like Romero, Crawford started out as a hoofer and later admitted that she never minded if her dancing partners were gay, since she even preferred dancing to sex. The friends danced almost weekly for years, and Cesar said, “It was the best therapy. Dancing together helped Joan get over her second and third divorces.”

In between her marital liaisons, while conducting her ongoing but hidden affair with the oft-married Clark Gable, Crawford would be seen and photographed nights dancing with “eligible bachelor” Cesar Romero. Their mothers were also friends—Madames Romero, LeSueur, and, yes, Power were members of the Motion Picture Mothers Association, a social group that met frequently, mostly to verbally bask in their famous children’s successes. “Joan got her mother Anna to join, primarily to get her off her back. Joan never had much luck with her relatives,” including her alcoholic (and bisexual) brother. By contrast, Cesar was close to his mother, Maria Mantilla, as was Ty to Patia Power.

Another good friend was sexy blonde Carole Landis, who later took her life after married- man Rex Harrison—”a pompous cad and an ambitious creep,” felt Cesar—jilted her. In the press, Romero was sometimes hinted to be romancing his actress dance partners. He was even announced to be “engaged” to Sally Blane—”We were just good friends,” she later allowed—and, separately, to Landis. He told me, “I might have considered marrying Carole. We were the best of friends, and she’d had lots of problems with abusive or two-timing men—a rather sorry lot of husbands....We had plenty in common.” Landis was bisexual. Reportedly, one of her female lovers was costar Martha Raye (whose final, far younger husband is now openly ‘bisexual”). Another was future novelist Jacqueline Susann, who based one of her three
Valley of the Dolls
heroines on Landis (played in the movie by Sharon Tate).

Yet another terpsichorean date and fellow spirit was Carmen Miranda, “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat.” Ironically, the most famous photograph Cesar ever appeared in focused on his fellow player at Fox. The “Brazilian Bombshell” favored a no-panties feel; one could scarcely call it a
look
, though it was captured on film once. Hollywood’s most celebrated suppressed photo—until the one mentioned but not shown in
Hollywood Babylon II
of Marlon Brando allegedly performing fellatio—was of Carmen doing a dance turn with her costar in
Springtime in the Rockies
(1942). Photographer Frank Powolny recalled:

“It was a hot July day, and Miss Miranda knew the photographs would call for her to be quite active.... At one point in the action, Cesar swooped her up and twirled her about.... The entire session was very gay, with two such animated performers from south of the border. But nothing, or so I thought, out of the ordinary.” Powolny returned from his summer vacation after the roll of film had been developed. He found Fox in an uproar, for one of his shots revealed all—in one thought-free moment of
cuanto le gusta
, Carmen, suspended in midair, was on total display through the slit of her full-length skirt! The still was clandestinely circulated around Hollywood for decades.

Much later, Cesar said, “I believe Carmen was lesbian or a latent lesbian.... I do know that she was very close to her lady friends, who weren’t actresses and weren’t necessarily all Latinas.” Miranda didn’t wed until toward the end of her life—a producer who reportedly beat her. Cesar felt the brief marriage “was a business thing, for mutual benefit. I doubt he was anything but straight.... I think she married, after the war, because her career was in a serious downturn.

“We’ll never know the exact truth about Carmen. But I know she could take or leave men, and was much more passionate about her lady friends, one of whom was a socialite known to be lesbian, even though long since married. But above all, Carmen’s career came first.”

* * *

Q: I’ll bet if you’d had to marry an actress, it would have been almost anyone but Carmen Miranda. Am I right?

A: Yes. And you know why, don’t you? A Latin was expected to marry a non-Latin.

Q: As happened with Gilbert Roland, Dolores Del Rio—two gay husbands—Lupe Velez (the “Mexican Spitfire”) with Johnny Weissmuller—

A: What a beauty!

Q: Her or him?

A: (Grins.) Both, but I meant him. Lupe knew how to pick them.

Q: Cesar, you’re one of very few Hispanic gays—and I mean mostly
off
-camera—who hasn’t been a husband and a father.

A: I think there should be a compliment in there.

Q: There is. You’ve been true to your nature. I know several Mexicans and other Latin men who are gay, but all have been married and have kids, and they’re still in the closet—in their thirties or forties, fifties, seventies...

A: Well, in Latin cultures, only a screaming drag queen doesn’t get married.

Q: All that invisibility probably convinces them that every man is basically hetero, don’t you think?

A: In some ways, it’s a very...backward culture. I can say that. Half the men in those macho cultures despise femininity, and the rest of them fear it.

Q: Which spills over into how they treat women.

A: Also how they treat gays, because it’s mistaken, but they connect gay men with that. You know the thinking: If women are attracted to men, then other people who are attracted to men must be like women.

Q: When does such stupidity cease? And what’s so supposedly awful about women?

A: (Shrugs.) Nothing. But it won’t cease in my lifetime. I guess it stops when we stop going along with them.

Q: You didn’t go along. You didn’t wed, and you’ve shown that obviously most gay men are not “women-haters.”

A: (Beams.) I always had a feeling, or...resistance. I remember one fellow, a family friend, a Cuban, when I was about 30 he told me, “You
have
to marry!” He was so vehement. Hostile, as if I’d personally injured him. I said nothing, but then he almost shouted, “You have to marry a
woman!”
And before I walked away, I thought, that makes no more sense than if I told him, “You have to marry a man!” But, of course, I said nothing.

Q: Yet you didn’t give in to his ill-founded advice.

A: You said it! He might have thought he was well-meaning, and back then I might have thought he was against me—me, personally—but later I realized that it came from neither good or bad, it was just conformity...uniformity.

Q: Ignoring individuality and diversity.

A: Yes. He didn’t mean bad, or badly, but if I’d have followed his advice—or even Ty’s—that would have been bad for me.

Q: And the woman lured into the relationship.

A: Oh, I agree. (Pause.) After all, there’s more to a wedding than the coming of the bride and the swelling of the organ....

Q: You said it!

A: But now you tell me something. When I got that letter from George Hadley-Garcia, about
Hispanic Hollywood
, I didn’t connect him with you. Of course, I knew you speak Spanish, and your
abuelito
(mother’s father) was a Mexican general and diplomat....

Q: And author of over 40 books—my father’s also an author. Well, of course in the U.S. only one surname is used—the father’s—so you didn’t know my
Garcia
. While “George” is my father’s first name; I went by that, mostly, growing up—to my mother I was
Jorjito
. We had a maid who mispronounced it “Hirohito”! And my given first name is ancient Egyptian; I never use it, though it means “the well-protected one.”

A: And Hadley’s the American for Hadleigh?

Q: Yes. For that familial pseudonym I shortened it, otherwise, three names and a hyphen, it would be too long. But I wanted Hispanic readers to know the book was by somebody who shared the culture. I found in my research that over 95 percent of all Hollywood films with Latin themes or characters were written by non-Hispanics. So no wonder there’s not much reality in those depictions.

A: True. It’s an excellent book—for the most part (half-frowns). As you say in it, one should encourage the young Latinos—

Q: And Latinas.

A: That’s why “Hispanic” is a better word. It’s not...sexist. And none of us speak Latin, most of us speak some Spanish.... Anyway, as you said, encourage the young Hispanics to become writers and producers (and directors), not just actors. So they can shape the material and bring some truth in.

Q: Now, now. What did you think of Liberace’s death? Not so much that it was AIDS—at 67—but all the cover-ups?

A: Yes, rather old for that. But very sad. About him, and for him. He said he lost weight on a watermelon diet, all right, it’s understandable. He knew how they’d react if he’d said AIDS.

Q: But when it became known that Rock Hudson had AIDS, much of the reaction was compassion. And who cares about the bigots’ reactions? They couldn’t hurt him by then, and being honest would be a good example and a support to non-famous people with AIDS.

A: I guess he just wanted to stay socially respectable.

Q: You mean socially approved. What’s respectable about bigots? Instead, Liberace became even more of a joke, with his denials about AIDS
and
being gay.

A: Mmm. A lot of people liked him, and a lot of people didn’t.

Q: Which is true of most public figures.

A: What was awful was the death certificate being faked, then the authorities digging up the body to prove it was AIDS. I felt sad for him, such an indignity. Of course, I know—if he and his doctor hadn’t lied, they wouldn’t have exhumed...him. But awful, such an indignity.

Q: It was. But dignity begins at home. With being oneself.

A: Openly. I agree. But you know, people like Liberace or this exercise person—the one who’s overweight...?

Q: Richard Simmons?

A: The one and only. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but they’re the sort of people you wish weren’t gay. (Grins.) Or at least not famous.

Q: It wouldn’t matter, if the majority knew there are all kinds of gay people.

A: Yes...the diversity. One hears “the gay community,” but the only thing we have in common is a same-sex preference. Nothing else.

Q: And oppression.

A: Of course. But otherwise, it’s like left-handed human beings. And not only human beings, but animals—apes, and dogs and cats....

Q: Gay sex has been observed in over 60 species of mammals.

A: Apes are basically bisexual.

Q: But back to
homo sapiens
. Your comparison to left-handed people is the most apt, because both groups encompass every gender and nationality and color and religion and personality type.

A: Every culture. Like in your book, just seeing the photos,
there’s
the diversity of Hispanics, past and present. If anything, I’m surprised you didn’t say who else was gay besides Ramon Novarro.

Q: As you know, an even bigger percentage of Hispanic stars were gay, because of the macho attitude against becoming an actor.

A: Tell me about it! I know....Not just gay, but all the ones who go both ways—Fernando (Lamas) went both ways. He was a beautiful man. Very much in love with himself (laughs). I just thought you didn’t name some of us because we’re still alive....

Q: I did note Novarro and Antonio Moreno, both from the silent era. I didn’t name today’s stars... (Cesar then mentions a young gay movie actor, on whom he has “a passionate crush”) ...nor for instance Cantinflas, who was alive but did only two Hollywood movies.

A: You damn near gave
me
away! (Frowns, then half-grins.) You didn’t mention Arturo De Cordova, and he’s been gone a long time. He was beautiful. I think all the most handsome Mexicans, the gay ones and Gilbert Roland, got into the movies.

Q: From early talkies, I touched upon José Mojica. A gay Mexican singing star who worked in Hollywood and supposedly promised his mother on her deathbed that he’d become a priest. Later he gave it all up—the material world—and joined a monastery in Peru.