Hollywood Gays (45 page)

The 1995
Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America
wasn’t the first to observe that
Bewitched
had “the queerest cast on TV:” Dick Sargent, Agnes Moorehead as Sam’s mother Endora, Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur, Diane Murphy (one of the twins—she came out as an adult—who portrayed daughter Tabitha), possibly Maurice Evans as Sam’s father, and George Tobias as incurious neighbor Abner Kravitz, husband of the terminally nosy Gladys.

Dick Sargent was born Richard Stanford Cox in upscale, seaside Carmel in northern California and attended Stanford University, acting in several plays before deciding to leave college to become an actor. His mother was Ruth McNaughton, a minor actress whose stage name was Ruth Powell. His father, a reported World War I hero who became Douglas Fairbanks’s business manager, was Col. Elmer Cox. Dick had therefore been sent to military school in Menlo Park (near Palo Alto, home of Stanford). In 1954 he made his inauspicious movie bow in MGM’s
Prisoner of War
. Due to its war theme and his father’s military background, Dick changed his last name to Sargent. Despite the butch moniker, the cute, somewhat shy actor experienced scant big-screen success, sometimes not even receiving billing. In between movie bits he did plenty of television and took on various odd jobs, also spending time in Mexico.

“I grew up with people who meant well but were not very affectionate,” he recalled in 1991, “and in Mexico people hug and smile more, as I like to do. I love that human warmth and contact. I’m not talking just about sex, either.”

Dick had a small but bigger than usual part in the nautical-themed
Operation Petticoat
(1959), starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. At one point, Grant made a pun on the set that embarrassed Sargent, who couldn’t tell whether its purpose was to flirt or not. Cary called out, “All hands on Dick!” (Sargent also appeared in
The Great Imposter
, starring Curtis, primarily heterosexual but sometimes bisexual. When this author interviewed Curtis by phone on the occasion of his first and last published novel, Curtis enthused about John Travolta’s privates, knowing the comments wouldn’t wind up in
Writer’s Digest
magazine.)

Three years later, Cary Grant requested that Dick Sargent be given a role in
That Touch of Mink
(also starring Doris Day, who said Grant was the actor she got to know least of all her costars, as he existed within a wall of aloofness). Dick later disclosed about the deeply closeted Grant, “We had a platonic friendship. He would take me out on ‘friendly dates,’ like going to the Doolittle Theatre and then dinner at Romanoff’s. One night, he let his chauffeur off early and drove me home himself. If anything would have happened, it would have been that night…but it didn’t.”

Sargent worked in films spotlighting figures as diverse as Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan, but lead roles eluded him until he stepped into
Bewitched
. When
The Advocate
magazine asked Elizabeth Montgomery if she’d known her new costar was gay, she replied, “From the minute I met him.”

Q: Elizabeth Montgomery has said she knew right away you were gay. How do you explain that, since most people wouldn’t automatically guess?

A: (smiles widely) I won’t say, “Thank you,” as I might have in the old days, without thinking. There’s nothing wrong if somebody can guess, sooner instead of later. If they can’t guess at all after they’ve known you for some time, then the closeted individual in question must be emotionally constipated and quite terrified.

Q: Acting
all
the time.

A: Right…the way some of the biggest stars in this town did and still do.

Q: So how did Ms. Montgomery know?

A: She’s a woman. Women are generally more astute about people than men. And she’s an actress. Actresses are women who specialize in being women. Like most female stars, she became one because of her beauty, and like some stars, she looks even better in person than through the camera. So put her next to most any straight actor and sooner or later he’ll betray his interest. Usually with his eyes.

Q: Sort of the way gay men can often tell other gay men by eye contact?

A: Right. By the quality and I guess the duration of the eye contact. Eyes can communicate a lot. I simply must have communicated that I wasn’t interested in Liz that way, that I was just there to work and be professional and friendly.

Q: Not a letch.

A: Right.

Q: I interviewed Agnes Moorehead, who was very much the
grande dame
. Paul Lynde said that he knew long ago that she was gay, and Liz Montgomery has more quietly said she rather guessed it but that Moorehead was very difficult to get to know.

A: She was a tough old bird. I later got to like her, but…she could be hard to take. Contradictory, too. She did enjoy being on such a popular TV series with all the recognition and publicity. She did not like, at all, that the younger generation didn’t know her name or that she’d been in all those great movies. She liked the money and was flamboyant in her way. She’d dress in purple or lavender whenever she could. She made sweeping gestures, hated being ignored or not deferred to. I know at times she was unhappy that Liz was the star and the center of attention.

Q: Not to mention young and beautiful, and Agnes was never a beauty. Just a big talent —which you’d think would be a big consolation.

A: Miss Moorehead always liked to be thought of as a lady. A talented, important lady. Kind of eccentric, but a prude. She sometimes carried a Bible around with her. One thing I can still freshly feel is how some months into my becoming Darrin she got very upset and pointedly said, in front of the whole cast and crew, something to the effect that nobody should meddle with success. Meaning me—the replacement. I’d upset the successful formula by becoming part of the team. She was afraid the show would slip in the ratings and maybe be cancelled. Because of me. Regardless of her fears or insecurity, that was a mean thing to say, and so publicly.

Q: Did she ever apologize?

A: She wasn’t one to apologize.

Q: You knew Paul Lynde was gay….

A: As they say, I think a blind man could tell that. Sorry. (Smiles widely.)

Q: No, it’s true. He was very flamboyant and very entertaining. The irony is that he was not potentially a leading man, unlike you, yet he blamed his lack of superstardom on “the Jews,” even though Elizabeth Montgomery’s husband, William Asher—the producer and director of
Bewitched,
who hired him—was Jewish.

A: Also Sol Saks, creator of
Bewitched.
(Saks died in 2011 at 100.) What I’d heard several times was that Paul could be a vicious drunk. That he’d lash out at anybody, including other gay men. He was very funny when he was being funny, but I don’t think he had much fun or much enjoyed his life. It reminds me of a saying I heard as a kid that I’ve never forgotten: “If you say nobody ever gives you a chance, maybe it’s that you never take a chance.” In most businesses, you can try and change your luck, take a chance. But in acting, your face and body, the physicality and mannerisms, are all we have to work with.

Writers are lucky. You can suddenly write a book, say a novel, and it’s unlike anything you’ve written before, and you can have a big new success. An actor can’t do that. How much can we change our faces? Or the way we move and sound?

Q: It’s true. In acting you
are
your work.

A: It’s a writer’s work that gets reviewed, not his looks and voice and how he moves.

Q: I recall Cary Grant famously saying something like, “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” Of course in his case that had an extra meaning. What was he like to know and work with?

A: Smooth. He was very impressive. Whether that was the real him or a long-since-perfected act, who knows? But it had class, and when he focused in on you, you felt quite flattered.

Q: Did you think something might happen between the two of you? You had heard about him, hadn’t you?

A: (Nods.)  If a star was gay and the star was a big star, let alone a longtime star, you’d certainly heard.

Q: Let me see…he was 26 years older than you. Oops. Did you want something to happen? I hadn’t realized there was such an age difference.

A: But he looked great. Certainly he was an older man than me, but he was very attractive.

Q: You’ve stated that nothing happened. Now, is that true, or was that for public consumption and to “protect” Cary Grant’s reputation?

A: (smiles, not widely) I’m not saying there wasn’t any touching and…but there was no…not what I’d call sex. To my mind, it was more romantic than anything. Rather old-fashioned. And very nice.

Q: He retired from movies at 65, still looking great. Do you think in his fifties, when you knew him, he felt maybe he was too old for affairs?

A: Possibly. But I think, more so, it was a case of being able to trust. You almost never hear about the blackmail that went on, or that can still go on, between big stars and some of the younger men they become involved with, to their later regret.

Q: I’ve heard that some gay stars prefer to have an affair with another gay star so that blackmail can’t crop up.

A: Right. They both have the same amount to lose. If it’s a star and a…a nobody, so-called, the star is vulnerable.

Q: The closet breeds blackmail.

A: I have a friend who lived in London that says they made homosexuality legal in England mainly to stop having so much blackmail.

Q: You had a bigger role than usual in
Captain Newman, M.D.
, starring Gregory Peck. I wanted to see more of you in it. I like Peck, but I thought they over-emphasized him.

A: That’s Hollywood’s style. The star is disproportionately emphasized. That leaves less screen time for the rest of us.

Q: What can you say about your appearance in
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
?

A: “Forgive me.” (Smiles widely.) I’m half kidding.

Q: Forgive me for saying this, but I saw
The Private Navy of Sergeant O’Farrell
at the movies with relatives, and I honestly don’t remember you in it.

A: Understandable. It was before
Bewitched
. If you’d seen it after seeing me in
Bewitched,
you’d have noticed me. Unless you went out to buy popcorn. Or unless you were…bewitched by the very handsome Jeff Hunter.

Q: Who died in his early forties. Being that handsome, was he pretty stuck-up?

A: Not awfully. But he did go off on a two-day drinking binge, and yet again it struck me how stars in this town can get away with behavior that anybody else would be fired for on the spot.

Q: You were in
Bernardine
, back when Pat Boone starred in a few movies. Was he into preaching and homophobia yet?

A: I heard he could tell some really dirty jokes, but never had any evidence of that. I didn’t try …he seemed insincere to me. It doesn’t take long to size up if somebody has some actual warmth and a basis or desire for a bit of friendship, or if it’s all façade, all about career.

Q: Your father being a military man, was he at all harsh as a father or person?

A: He liked discipline. He wasn’t…effusive—is that the word? If he was proud of you, you weren’t exactly sure.

Q: You weren’t being pushed toward a military career?

A: (Small smile.) No.

Q: Do you think he knew? Or your mother knew?

A: Mothers know lots of things. Fathers are less observant. But I’d say kids are least of all. When we’re growing up, we’re so wrapped up in ourselves, we’re not really aware of what others think of us. Especially our parents. We’re more concerned with what total strangers think.

Q: It’s true. Growing up, there are so many questions we don’t ask. My maternal grandfather was an army general, and to this day I don’t know if he was politically liberal or conservative —although I heard he didn’t believe in men wearing cologne, which may be a clue—and I never wondered if his father had been in the military or why on earth he got into it.

A: And I could have asked my mother a lot more questions about acting and about her own career. Rather selfishly, I very seldom asked about how it was for her.

Q: Being an actress and one who didn’t make it very big, did she try to discourage you from acting?

A: Having done it, she must have realized that ultimately it had to be my decision. In school, I fell in love with acting, playing other characters. I think a lot of gay young men did, then. We felt bad about ourselves—