Hollywood Gays (40 page)

A: I guess he’s too fucking busy. And too busy fucking. Some of the last ones who would ever come out
are
the most obvious ones.

Q: Sometimes extreme wealth is a camouflage—as with Howard Hughes?

A: He had another camouflage—all the actresses he put under contract or was seen with. I think he was sexually...varied.

Q: One hard-to-picture alleged romance was with Katharine Hepburn...

A: (Chuckles.) A few times that I know about, Hughes had all-male parties. Which some columnist would report as a “stag party.” Cary Grant was at one or two of those. But Howard and Kate? They may have gone out—which was all the press needed. But I do know Howard would often fly to the location of George’s (Cukor)
Sylvia Scarlett
to see Cary. In Malibu, I think. Whether Howard used Kate as a “beard,” or she used him, I haven’t a clue. But he went there to be with Cary. Brian Aherne was also in that picture, and he said so too. Brian likes women. Maybe it was a quota situation, and they needed to hire
one
heterosexual.

Q: Do you agree with this? Someone refuses to say that a certain actor is gay because it might “harm” him. Yet that’s the attitude that perpetuates the vicious circle. What do you think?

A: It is a vicious circle, and if no one challenges the belief that something’s bad or harmful, then it stays that way. But with gays, I couldn’t expect the others—the heterosexuals—to change or think any different, or even begin to, unless we do. It’s up to us. They take their cues from us, from how we feel about ourselves, and what we’re willing to put up with.

Q: It’s changing already.

A: But how fast it goes, that depends on us.

Q: On breaking the vicious circle.

A: One of our more famous houseguests recently said to us—I don’t know why he said it to
us—
”A closet is a vertical coffin.” Where he got it, or if he came up with it himself, I don’t know. Sounds good, though.

Q: Who said that to you?

A: (Chuckles.) Oh, he’s an old Hollywood friend:
Anonymous
.

Q: So he knows whereof he speaks.

A: He knows. His closet’s a big one, rich and well-appointed. But I wouldn’t want to live there, and neither would Jimmy.  

TOM EWELL

(1909-1994)

One of the movies of Tom Ewell was titled
To Find a Man
. He did, in gay bars and on the waterfront. Sailors were reportedly a favorite pastime. The rumple-faced comedic actor was one of myriad faces familiar to film and TV audiences that invariably played husbands and fathers and in real life was married and had offspring (a son, in Ewell’s case) but who in truth were gay.

Another such was Leon Ames (1903-1993), never a character star but seen more often because in more movies. After Ames made a pass at a male friend of Doris Day—whose father he played in a few movies—she apprised the younger man, “We don’t discuss his private life. Leon is a very fine actor.” Evidently.

Most of Ewell’s work was on the stage, but he shot to temporary stardom as Marilyn Monroe’s sorely tempted neighbor—a married man whose wife and son are away from Manhattan for the summer—in the then-daring 1955 classic
The Seven Year Itch
. Ironically, Ewell stands in for practically every heterosexual man on earth, at Marilyn’s side in one of the most iconic scenes and stills in movie history: the one where the pleated skirt of her white halter dress (via bisexual costume designer Travilla) gets blown skyward by the wind from a subway grating.

A three-story depiction of Tom and Marilyn could still be seen, in July, 2011, on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles.

Some also remember Ewell for his supporting role in Robert Blake’s detective TV series
Baretta
(1975-’78). His own
The Tom Ewell Show
on CBS in the early ‘60s—as a husband and father, of course—was shorter-lived and followed unsuccessful big-screen attempts to duplicate the magic of
The Seven Year Itch
. The efforts, costarring lesser blondes, included
The Girl Can’t Help It
,
The Lieutenant Wore Skirts
, and
The Great American Pastime
.

After a 1946 first marriage that ended in 1947, Tom Ewell remained contractually wed from 1948 until his death. In time, he became a gay-bar habitué, also alcoholic and a more than occasional gambler. His movie roles diminished in size and frequency, mostly giving way to TV appearances, his final one apparently a 1986
Murder, She Wrote
episode. Some of Tom’s money went to male hustlers. In his memoir
Clone
, porn star Al Parker revealed that his first customer as an “escort” was Tom Ewell, and that the experience was not a success.

Ewell never liked his looks, not just because they limited his career. As a gay man, he found it increasingly difficult to obtain the attention of those he desired. He told a former escort who later became a soap actor that at first he was able to impress “queer New Yorkers” with his stage success, but after he became nationally known through movies he hesitated to make his identity known, for fear of blackmail and possible robbery.

Ewell claimed never to have seen any of his films all the way through, even
The Seven Year Itch
, informing the media that he only caught glimpses of himself while his wife was watching one of his pictures on TV. He was too critical of his looks to enjoy his screen work and suffered, he said, from an acute inferiority complex. One TV producer believed that that and “possibly Tom’s internalized homophobia” were at the root of his heavy drinking.

Like many actors who didn’t end up rich (and some who did), Tom Ewell died in the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, near Los Angeles. He was 85. His mother died four years later, at 105 or 109, depending on the source.

When we met, I’d only seen the actor in the film of
The Seven Year Itch
(he’d performed in the stage version for three years). We met at the home of a film distributor who’d long before given my mother the phone number of Samuel Goldwyn when she needed his permission to show
Hans Christian Andersen
for a benefit at UC Santa Barbara’s Campell Hall. (Andersen, the famous Danish storyteller, was most probably gay, like the star who enacted him heterosexually, Danny Kaye.)

Ewell didn’t stay long at the party, leaving after three drinks. Meanwhile, I’d introduced myself. The first question that Mr. Ewell—as I thought of him in 1984, the year he turned 75 and I turned 30—beamed at me was, “What sign are you, young man?” “Taurus,” I answered, and he immediately enthused, “So am I! We have lots in common. What else, young man?”

I wondered if we’d have been the same astrological sign no matter which I’d named, but later I checked—we were both Taureans. The smiling man was so eager to please, and I’d recently seen
The Seven Year Itch
for the second time, that I pondered meeting him again later the same week—I didn’t live in L.A.—to chat or possibly do a Q/A session if he was willing and would enjoy it.

Next day, when I called to suggest a conversational interview—he’d given me a phone number before leaving—he jumped at it. I’d thought it might be in the lobby of my hotel (the Coral Sands) or at a nearby restaurant. Instead it took place in a secluded booth in a bar…the second one we visited on the day we re-met. More about that later

Q: What are some of the most important facts about Tom Ewell?

A: I was born in Kentucky. You been there?

Q: No.

A: Good old K-Y. (Smirks) My real name…you can look it up. Homework’s good for you. Lemme see…I have a stage background. I am not a creature of Hollywood. I did get seduced by Hollywood’s bastard child, the small screen—actors are only human. I like to drink, but I can control it. I’ve never been in this bar before, cross my heart.

Just a minute. (Goes to the bar, returns empty-handed.) They were out. Never mind. I can have a Seven-Up when I finish this (points to his drink). I’m sure you know my most famous movie. (Smiles, raises eyebrows.)

Q: Who doesn’t? I’ll bet most interviewers want to talk to you about
The Seven Year Itch
a lot.

A: Most interviewers, it’s the only movie I was in that they want to talk about.

Q: How do you deal with that?

A: You havta choose. Either don’t do any damn interviews or do ‘em and expect the usual questions.

Q: What about answering their questions but also bringing up some of your own, about others of your movies and plays?

A: Don’t forget television. (Frowns.) I’ve tried. It works if the interviewer’s polite or afraid of me. ‘Course, the published result is usually still mostly Marilyn.

Q: Not doing interviews—how do you feel about that?

A: Two ways. If I do an interview not expecting to get any work and if it doesn’t lead to any offers, you could say why the hell do it? But it’s attention, maybe a few laughs…a few drinks. Everyone likes attention. Sometimes you get kinda lonely. An interview can be a pick-me-up. Depends on the interviewer.

Q: Do you prefer young interviewers or male interviewers, or is that beside the point?

A: He can be kinda juvenile, say, 20 or 25, like… (Points to me). Nice-looking, like everyone is at that age. I prefer it over some old stuffed-shirt, male or female. What I try and find out aheada time is, do they want to get to know
me
, or is it all gonna be nostalgia about Marilyn?

Q: It must be frustrating, not to mention repetitious.

A: It would be real repetitious if, honestly, I got asked regular. In my heyday, it wasn’t even all that often. Now it’s kinda…seldom. But I don’t mind. (Raises glass, smirks happily)

Q: You have a cheerful smile.

A: Now you’re telling me this. (Shakes head.) For so long, I kept hearing I had a sad face. Smart ones would call it “lugubrious,” in print. So how’d I wind up in comedy?

Q: Maybe they found your “sad” face funny?

A: Even in the theatre, there’s so much damn casting by type. I was a sadsack. A shmo. An everyman, an ordinary joe.

Q: The irony is that your everyman and ordinary guy was sexually a minority. (He frowns slightly.) Did the studios know, and try to cover it up?

A: Not being a front-ranking star, they didn’t have much to worry about me. I wasn’t a big investment. Their thinking was, if I was dumb enough to go get myself caught, then I was expendable. Good riddance. They only worried about the lookers. The handsomer the guy, the more likely he was queer or there’d be rumors he was.

Q: Even now, handsome Hollywood newcomers are often rumored gay when they’re not.

A: Wishful thinking. Rumors come with everybody new to town. They want to figure you out. Want some juicy scandal. If you’re a looker, they want you, period. If a gal’s a looker and a dyke, the straights pretend she’s really straight. Just waiting for the right…you know, some damn guy.

Q: Or mogul.

A: Well, if she’s a lez, he’s gotta be someone to help her career. Otherwise, why do what she don’t want?

Q: Speaking of rumors—

A: I was gonna say, about those new boys—the lookers—and the rumors they’re queer, the rumors don’t mean crap. Aha, but when those rumors don’t die out five, ten, twenty years later…where there’s smoke…you know.

Q: It’s like the old Chinese saying—

A: Which old Chinese? Hung Low? (Snickers)

Q: Um, the saying that the first time you hear a rumor, you don’t believe it. The second time you hear a rumor, you don’t believe it. The third time you hear it, you believe it.

A: Didn’t Oscar Wilde say something like that? And he wasn’t Chinese.

Q: Nor English. He was Irish. I think what he said was that religious doctrine isn’t believed because it’s true, but because it’s repeated so often.

A: You hear a thing over and over, eventually you believe it’s gotta be true.

Q: Like anti-gay propaganda. Did you grow up ashamed you were gay?

A: I wasn’t always “gay.” Sometimes I was down in the mouth. (Snickers.) I was horny a lot. Sex…gets damn complicated. ‘Specially after you get married. They like to pretend everyone’s just the one or the other. You know what I mean?

Q: That people are 100% heterosexual or 100% homosexual?

A: That’s a damn lie. It’s not that easy. Sometimes you do what you don’t really want to, ‘cause…different reasons. Then you feel better about it after, instead of during. Or you do exactly what you want, it’s great, but after, you don’t always feel so good about it. So maybe you take a drink or two.

Q: To cover the guilt?

A: Maybe. Or not. You get older, you get to seeing how there’s so many damn lies. About so many damn things.

Q: Many gay men go into acting to express themselves in a way males usually can’t in a patriarchal society. How about you?