Hollywood Gays (3 page)

Back on Broadway in the Roaring ‘20s, Mae had become familiar not only with the gay chorus boys she enjoyed putting down, but with their argot, or “secret language.” The word “gay” was occasionally used to mean homosexual, but a more popular term was “sophisticated.” The term “out of the closet” was not unknown either, and in one of the dialogue bits she created for
I’m No Angel
, there was the following exchange between Tira and a male admirer (
not
one played by Cary Grant).

Tira: “I like a sophisticated man to take me out.”

Admirer: “Well, I’m not really sophisticated.”

Tira: “You’re not really out yet, either.”

Like countless actresses before and since, West was not averse to gay escorts. As she once declared, “It’s not the men you see me with that counts, it’s the men you don’t see me with....”

After their two films together, Cary and Mae’s public relationship was stiffly formal, though following a certain Hollywood etiquette. Mae continued to praise Grant’s attractiveness, as proof of her good taste, and continued insisting that she’d discovered him. Cary never contradicted West on this point, and would only carefully, slightly condescendingly allude to their two “really wonderful pictures.” After West’s death, he finally told a reporter that he and others hadn’t cared to be around Mae much, for “she lives in a dream world, and she doesn’t deal with reality, and everyone always had to be so careful about what they said.

“I still think of her in a dream world.” Interestingly, Grant used mixed tenses when speaking about Mae West, as though she were part of his past and yet somehow impinging upon his present. Unusually, West later chose Randolph Scott as one of her two male leads (her movies always had more than one male vying for her affections) in
Go West, Young Man
. But by then, West was no longer big box office, and couldn’t easily reject name actors for her projects.

Scott no doubt knew about Mae’s slighting of Cary, and when in the 1950s he was asked how it had been to work with Grant and with West, his response revealed more than a little: “Working with Cary was always a breeze. He’s a pleasure to be with, and very professional, yet fun-loving…Miss West was quite demanding, but possibly her age had something to do with it. She had a habit of playing characters well younger than herself.”

Scott’s estimation of working with Grant was not shared by all of Grant’s leading women, though few dared buck his image as Mr. Wonderful. Joan Fontaine (they did
Suspicion
for Hitchcock) labeled Grant “an incredible boor.” Ingrid Bergman publicly praised him, but privately told gay British comedian Kenneth Williams, “He was not only stingy, he worried about everything...the vainest man I ever met!” Bergman and Williams worked together in London’s West End, and she told him, “I never had an affair with Cary—but, then, which among his leading ladies did?”

One who claimed to have done so was Sophia Loren. The alleged revelation helped make her autobiography a bestseller, but it was privately (only, for her claim “helped” his public image) denied by him. They did do two movies together, but there was no affair, he said.

Grant, whose lightweight image at times bordered on milquetoast, was very rarely teamed—once he became a star himself—with strong actresses. Bette Davis would have eaten him for breakfast, metaphorically speaking. Ditto Joan Crawford, who once wrote to a gay fan, “No, Mr. Grant and I never teamed together. It was suggested, but we never found the right story...I’m not sure our teaming would have been wise, for either of us, unless it had been a gender-reversal comedy of some sort.” Like
I Was a Male War Bride
, which he did with Ann Sheridan.

George Cukor told me, “Grant was very, very selective about his roles, from the late 1930s on. He needed to play irresistible types, but men who weren’t physical. He could never have played an athlete, for example....Playing Cole Porter, who was gay, was a natural for him—you had one urbane closeted gay man playing another one, with beautiful music in the background and lots of penthouse suites and artifice.”

In real life, Grant aspired to that posh lifestyle and blue-blooded circle, although his education was nearly nil and his background anything but urbane. Cukor felt that Grant wed billionairess Barbara Hutton because “she was not only rich, she was American royalty.” The couple, nicknamed Cash ‘n Cary by the press, didn’t last long.

Grant’s ex, Randy Scott, married a DuPont, and eventually grew wealthier even than Grant, whose estate was valued at over $20 million. Scott was a shrewd investor and had extensive oil and property holdings. He was also one of the few among actors to be allowed to join the blue-blooded Los Angeles Country Club; Scott’s ancestors had settled very early on in Virginia. The club did not admit Jews, and as pointed out in Higham’s book, Grant may well have been Jewish—on his mother’s side.

Grant’s relationship to the homosexual rumors that cropped up was the expected one, though less vehemently homophobic than some. When Kenneth Anger’s book
Hollywood Babylon
noted the infamous “Tijuana Bibles”, erotic comic booklets, one of whose covers featured Cary Grant and the question “Who’s a Fairy?” Grant never considered suing. To do so would have blown the matter up out of all proportion.

Besides, who reads books?

It was another matter when alleged comedian Chevy Chase called Grant “an old homo” on Tom Snyder’s TV talk show. Grant sued, to protect his image, but of course dropped the suit before it went to court. In the ‘80s, when asked about the persistent rumors, he jocularly replied, “Everyone’s been accused of that. And don’t get me wrong, I know some wonderful homosexuals. But I’m certainly not one of them.”

Did Grant join the Republican Party as a beard? Liberal actor Melvyn Douglas thought so. In his autobiography, Douglas explained that when the McCarthy witch hunts hit Hollywood, Grant refused to help fight them (unlike, for instance, Douglas, Bogart and Bacall, Gene Kelly, and Katharine Hepburn). He wanted no part of controversy and was not prepared to “help others. He buried his head in the sand and soon after joined the Republicans.”

Douglas had to edit from his book the fact that “certain personal peculiarities in Grant’s life led him to ally himself with those very forces who might have been the first to condemn him, had he adhered to their self-righteous moral standards.” Douglas was married to Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, who in one political campaign was smeared as a “pinko” by a young Richard M. Nixon.

At the time that I met Grant, I was aware of his bisexuality and his acquired conservatism, but like most—especially pre-Higham—I was charmed by his movie image, never mind how repetitive it was, or how false. I did eventually finagle a meeting with Grant out of banker Bob; I won’t go into the how of it here, except to briefly say that it had to do with business and a potential new client whom I later delivered, in exchange for the meeting.

We met in May, 1984, in a bank conference room, after the dinner for two that Bob had had catered in. I was introduced as “one of our best customers,” although not wealthy—not by Beverly Hills standards, anyway. Grant seemed charmed (or was this his standard how-dee-do?). I was gently disappointed; I had only seen photos of the elderly but dapper Grant, all white-haired with large, black glasses, and looking marvelous for 80-ish.

In person, however, the facial lines—why do I hesitate to call them wrinkles, for that’s what they were—were more pronounced, and of course more mobile than in a photo. But worse, Cary Grant—who was after all an old man; how not?—moved like an old man. He was slow in his motions, as if moving through water. And his voice had a certain hoarseness due to age; it lacked the staccato rhythms often heard in his film heyday.

Still, he
was
Cary Grant, and I was awed. I had to make an effort not to stare, although
he
was staring. He was no longer paying attention to Bob. Neither was I (not to be cruel, but I always wondered what Bob had done to get where he was, or whom he’d known). I wished Bob would go away, so I could talk with Cary Grant—the questions I had to ask would embarrass both of us in front of the banker-man.

No sooner wished than done. Bob excused himself—I was beginning to finally like Bob—to go make a phone call. To Tokyo or somewhere where it was already the next afternoon, though between nine and ten P.M. in California. Beverly Hills, to be exact.

Grant beckoned for me to sit, and went to the sideboard and withdrew a glass for me, then poured into it and into his from a bottle at the table. A green bottle with flowers stuck on it—I knew that Bob only ordered the most expensive food and drink, which the bank was only too ready to indulge him and his clients in.

I’d planned to first ask Grant about how it came to be that he was the first man in movies to use the word “gay” to mean “homosexual.” I refer to the scene in
Bringing Up Baby
(1938) where he is wearing a woman’s nightgown, and is queried why by some old biddy, and he shouts, “Because I’ve suddenly gone gay!” But how could I ask that, as an opener to a conversation with Cary Grant? Besides, this old man, though world-famous, seemed beyond sex—in years, if not in his now-faraway image.

So, for five minutes or more, we talked about costume designer Edith Head and about George Cukor, about whom Grant seemed to have forgotten much. Alas, during that introductory time, most of the interesting things were said by me, so I won’t reproduce them here, for I’m not famous. Halfway through the session without Bob, Grant began looking toward the door, anticipating Bob’s return.

“Good banker,” I inanely said.

“Is he?” Grant answered, but it was a bored comment, not an interrogation. Seconds later, he thought to inquire how I came to “know Bob so very well...?”

“I don’t know him
that
well,” I said. I smiled. “I know
you
much better.”

“A true fan of mine, are you?”

“A fan.” My smile leveled off, as I sensed that Grant was averse to those who liked him too much.

“Do you want to get together again—somewhere...without Bob?” Cary Grant actually asked me. Even though he knew I was a sometime actor. (Even Bob didn’t know I was a journalist, and I never denied that I was, I just didn’t bring it up. Would you, if it meant getting to meet Cary Grant?)

A week or so later, Bob asked me, “Did you ever find out about
it
? Did you
see
it
?”

It took me a while to realize he meant Grant’s cock. He’d misunderstood. “Good grief, I didn’t want to see it or anything—I just was curious. You know how people in Hollywood love to discuss cock size.”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s always interesting to know what actors are biggies and which aren’t.”

“Who’s big?” Bob avidly asked.

“You mean nowadays? I have no idea. Most of them are so dull anyway, it wouldn’t matter. But in the old days, they said that Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart and George Raft were really hung. And, among TV people, Milton Berle and Forrest Tucker. Plus, Rock Hudson certainly is.”

“I heard Nick Adams was too,” said Bob, mentioning a largely forgotten, shortish but attractive actor of whom it was said big things come in small packages. Adams had been the roommate of James Dean and had reportedly hustled while looking for acting jobs in the early to mid-1950s. I would later learn that Adams was one of Bob’s favorites, from some old TV Western or other.

“Do you think Cary Grant is charming?” Bob asked.

It seemed irrelevant, for Cary Grant was Cary Grant. And I didn’t say that, no, I found the actor in many ways disappointingly human yet somehow fascinating—for one thing, his fame had overtaken him, had surpassed his career, and with a legend like that, facts didn’t seem important.

“Are you meeting again?” he asked.

“Yes.” But I didn’t say where, for Bob wanted to arrange the next meeting, if there was one.

I was house-sitting for a friend, and one day I got an afternoon phone call. “Are you alone there?” It was
him
. (I’d given him my friend’s and one other phone number.) I was alone, and so, several minutes later, a white limousine pulled up—a stretch-limo, natch—and a minute or two after that, the chauffeur opened the rear door, and out stepped Cary Grant, with a brown paper bag and two marigolds in his hand.

He walked cautiously up the entry, looked to both sides, and rang the bell. Suddenly, I felt foolish for not having opened the door before he had to ring, but that would have proven I’d been looking for him through the window.

“Come in!” I said effusively, warm about his actually stopping by. But he was not at all a man you’d reach out to and touch, much less hug. We didn’t shake hands, because he didn’t initiate it. He came inside, looked behind him, and handed me the marigolds.

“I was walking in my garden, and I picked these....” It sounded like something he’d said in a movie, for it was the same voice, only an old man’s very good imitation. But somehow I didn’t feel like Ingrid Bergman in
Indiscreet
.

I’d guessed that the brown bag contained liquor. It did—a minor brew, as it were: Cold Duck.
Pink.
(What did he do with all his money, while he lived?) “Do you travel at all, Mr. Grant?” He never told me to call him Cary—and how could I?

“Not as a rule, no.” He held onto the revealed bottle. “Not if I don’t get paid for it.”

“I asked, because I wondered if you ever long to go somewhere where you aren’t recognized.”

That was the wrong thing to say, as I should have known.

“Oh, I’m recognized everywhere,” he stated matter-of-factly. And factually.

I’d asked because in my experience, the more intelligent celebs do travel, while the ones without much curiosity about anyone or anything else don’t. Look at Elvis or Mae West or Lucille Ball—all the money in the world, and they hardly went anywhere. Unlike Shirley MacLaine or Jane Fonda or John Gielgud. To me, an affluent person’s degree of travel tells much.

“Sit down, please.” He occupied the armchair, to my relief. I was on the couch. I’d wondered what might happen if he sat next to me, then nearer to me, then nearer yet. For, this had happened at the home of a 1950s movie star, a faded one—professionally and literally. Tony Curtis had been inebriated during our interview. Without a publicist to run interference, the man had pounced on me with all his former Bronx energy, and I’d had to keep guffawing to pretend it wasn’t really happening.