Hollywood Gays (9 page)

Q: Or, as an actor, which actors do you admire?

A: The rich ones. Kidding! My father was a famous actor, for New York. When New York counted for much more than today. They’d say, “Let’s go see the new Osgood Perkins play.”

Q: Did you become an actor because of him?

A: For me, that’s not a good question. Too complex.

Q: What other actors do you admire?

A: I like Monty Clift and Cary Grant. Lon Chaney, Jr., in
Of Mice and Men
....Then I found out Cary Grant beat up on his wives. Or not beat up, but he used to hit them.

Q: Where did you hear this?

A: Maybe not all his wives, but he did hit two for certain. I know people who know them or knew them. I didn’t ask, but it all gets broadcast.

Q: I imagine there’s far more of that than ever gets reported.

A: It takes two.

Q: What does?

A: I’m against wife-beating, of course. (Pause.)

Q: We should talk about you.

A: I don’t like to talk about me.

Q: You must tire of questions about
Psycho
?

A: (Yawning sound.)

Q: Is there someone special in your life now?

A: Bad question.

Q: Do you think a friend is more important than a lover?

A: (In a hostile tone.) What do you mean, a lover?

Q: Someone you have sex with, and perhaps love. You know, an affair?

A: Having a best friend is the best, for anyone.

Q: Do you often get asked—and this can be off the record for
Screen
—why you haven’t married?

A: Why don’t they ask people why they
do
marry?

Q: What reasons do you think they’d give?

A: Recurring ones. Like getting away from your parents, giving in to your parents, loneliness... marrying for money, and some people would marry the first person that asks them—

Q: That’s insecurity or very good luck.

A: But don’t ask about marriage. Bad topic.

Q: Do you ever get lonely?

A: That’s not relevant.

Q: Maybe the question isn’t. Not being married doesn’t mean being alone—or single.

A: I couldn’t tell you.

Q: Being a movie star, one imagines there are thousands who’d want you, on various levels.

A: Yeah! Want a piece of you.
Any
star. They want a piece of the star’s fortune, they want a piece of ass, some of the fame, a few memories, something to brag about...or they even want your soul. But that’s usually an agent.

Q: Janet Leigh was Oscar-nominated for
Psycho
, but you weren’t, and your role was more demanding as well as extensive.

A: Right.

Q: You must have been disappointed.

A: I was glad for her.

Q: But hurt?

A: Do you think I was?

Q: Would there be a reason the Academy might shun you? Or shy away from nominating you as Norman?

A: That sort of answers itself, doesn’t it?

Q: Do you ever regret having played Norman?

A: Bad question.

Q: This year you turn 40. What does that feel like?

A: Wait and see.

Q: You’re still boyish, but as an actor, is aging an anxiety or a relief?

A: I feel indifferent to it. I don’t think it’ll affect what they want me to play.

Q: Will you be writing any more movies, perhaps on your own?

A: Of course. Lots and lots and lots of them! (He didn’t.)

Q: Australians still vividly remember Anthony Perkins, as they usually call you. Partly because you went there to film
On the Beach
(1959) with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire.

A: They remember me vividly? (Sarcastically, suspiciously.) What did I do to warrant that?

Q: It’s an expression. The people at the magazine seem to really like you.

A: They haven’t met me.

Q: (“Maybe that’s why,” I’m thinking.) I’m supposed to ask if you have “fond memories” of Australia?

A: I just
love
Down Under.

Q: Do you?

A: Do you want to find out?

Q: You filmed in Melbourne, correct?

A: Melbourne. I’d like to spend some time in Sydney.

Q: Hmm. That new opera house alone would be worth the trip.

A: I’ve been on many a trip.

Q: Drugs?

A: No comment.

Q: Audrey Hepburn is a favorite of mine.

A: Me too. But I worked with her.

Q: I know. That’s what I’m about to say. One of her least known but most unusual and enchanting films is
Green Mansions
(1959), where she plays Rima the Bird Girl. Made in Venezuela, I believe? (He grunts assent.) She was wonderful, and the jungle, the animals—although it was a sad story—and you...were extremely appealing.

A: I was?

Q: Yes. Was it wonderful to make?

A: She was wonderful to work with, like a real person, almost a sister.

Q: And then it failed, commercially.

A: Because it was good but unusual.

Q: I can see why you were a bobby-soxers’ pin-up. Didn’t you record an album for them?

A: Bad topic. Boring topic!

Q: Will you forgive the observation that in your pre-
Psycho
movies you smiled a lot, but since then, not a lot?

A: I might. What’re you offering?

Q: Tea and sympathy?

A: Bad topic!

Q: It’s interesting how the character of Norman Bates is so braided with that of his mother....

A: I don’t know.

Q: You would say he has a mother fixation? (No reply.) Some actors do, don’t they?

A: Mother fixations are a boring topic.

Q: What about father fixations?

A: Boring.

Q: Have you got any interesting fixations?

A: Sexual fixations are fascinating.

Q: Tell me about them?

A: Not for this interview.

Q: You were in a (1963) French film with Brigitte Bardot whose English title was
A Ravishing Idiot
. I don’t think it was released in the USA. What was it about?

A:
She
played the title role.

Q: How did you get along?

A: We didn’t. This is boring, forget her. What a brainless topic! I don’t think any Australian magazine would ask you to ask me about Bardot-dodo.

Q: Most of these are my questions. Do you read, Mr. Perkins?

A: Yes, I learned how in elementary school.

Q: Read any good books lately?

A: No, but I’ve been trying to read one by a French writer, (Jean-Jacques) Rousseau. I hate it, it’s boring and dry.

Q: What’s it about? (No reply.) What have you learned from it?

A: That he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

Q: Is it a geological treatise?

A: (Laughs, finally.) Yes. No. He doesn’t know. This Frenchie wrote pages and pages on how masculine and feminine roles are supposed to be completely natural and heaven-sent, except he’s continually instructing people who read his book on how to get their boys and girls into these roles, how to make them stay in these roles. It’s only the humor that’s kept me reading, but I’m gonna quit.

Q: Then and now, molders of society offer a vision of what they want and what suits them, and present it as if it were “natural” and desired by all.

A: Or even good for everybody.

Q: And the word “natural” and its alleged opposite. Sounds like propaganda. What led you to read it?

A: I can’t even remember the title. I thought Rousseau was a great thinker. But he’s boring!

Q: Sounds misguided but not boring. It’s an interesting topic.

A: Not to me. When I was in France, people younger than me were reading him. I thought he was some revolutionary French thinker.

Q: He may have been progressive for his time. In some things. Few people are progressive across the board. There are usually individual biases and contradictions.

A: Most of what I read, if people recommend it, is dull.

Q: Now some assigned questions. Can you name your favorite actress and actor that you’ve worked with?

A: Think I should? I liked Shirley Booth. And Audrey Hepburn. Melina Mercouri was fun. Janet Leigh. I liked most of the actors. Not so much Gary Cooper or Fred Astaire, they were standoffish.

Q: Your favorite actor you’ve worked with?

A: I can’t say.

Q: You can’t?

A: If I did, you’d say, “Why him?” ‘Cause he’s not so famous, so you’d wonder why I chose him.

Q: For personal reasons?

A: So let’s skip it. Some of the people I liked most, I didn’t work with. Then, being at different studios was like being at different schools, and if you had a thing with someone at another studio, watch out!

Q: Was Tab Hunter at your studio? (Hunter was at Warner, not Paramount.) 

A: No.

Q: One keeps hearing you were close friends.

A: Yeah.

Q: Both very handsome.

A: I don’t know. But he was like a Greek god, except he was blond.

Q: So was Alexander the Great....

A: That’s interesting. We oughta meet and talk stuff over. But now, for the interview, you have enough now? It’s not gonna be that long, is it?

Q: Alas, no. But I would like to interview you again someday.

A: Or meet...to talk, and whatever.

In 1972 Anthony Perkins was interviewed for Andy Warhol’s
Interview
magazine. The photographer assigned to shoot him was Berry Berenson, younger sister of some-time actress Marisa. Brian O’Dowd explained, “Tony was in analysis since before, not after,
Psycho
. Later, he became a client of Dr. Mildred Newman, who’s a...the way I say it is, she’s an evangelist for heterosexuality—a Jewish evangelist. She egged Tony on to have sex with a woman, as well as to try writing a screenplay, and when he met Berry, they became fast friends, and Tony found he could be bisexual, though I believe it was his second heterosexual affair. She got pregnant, and in 1973 they married.

“Emotionally, they’re very close, and they have two sons. Tony wanted, like his father, to be an actor and to be a father and carry on that name, like an acting dynasty.” Older son Osgood was an actor. “Overall, it’s worked out, though for Tony’s part, it hasn’t been all smooth. But I won’t go into that.”

The screenplay with Sondheim was the homophobic
The Last of Sheila
(1973). Playwright and novelist James Kirkwood stated, “After I saw it [the movie], I asked Tony—we have the same shrink—why it was...I mean, not as vicious as some, but backward. He smirked and said, ‘You write for the stage, I write for movies.’“

Sheila
costar Joan Hackett noted, “That film was a nightmare for all concerned. Most of the cast and crew hated each other’s guts, and some of the vitriol from the script’s malevolent atmosphere—the murder and betrayal and blood and gore—just spilled over onto the location filming.”

As for Perkins the actor, he carried on with a procession of sad roles that stereotyped him irretrievably. Said O’Dowd, “He was either a hysterical gay character like in
Murder on the Orient Express
or so many others, or he was, yet again, Norman Bates. Tony thought that branching out into directing, with
Psycho III
, could change his career, but it didn’t. He was wrong to go back to
Psycho
at all. It was just for money.”

Despite the actor’s self-servingly anti-gay and misleading proclamations in a postnuptial issue of
People
, Perkins was possibly bisexual (twice, anyway, with his wife) but still gay, not “straight.” Andy Warhol’s diary recorded, “I love seeing the new
People
magazine with Tony Perkins on the cover, and it talked about him being gay, as if it were all in the past. Isn’t that funny?...Left out Tab Hunter and Chris Makos, but it didn’t say that he used to hire hustlers to come in through the window and pretend to be robbers.” Or, according to three lovers, that he enjoyed sexual foreplay in which he and a male partner enacted boxers, replete with boxing gloves and fake blood smeared on Tony’s “opponent.”