Santy Claus dropped a treat down my chimney this morning: the Dec. 1954 Photoplay, sent via a (gay) friend. Liz Taylor (“Queen of Hollywood”) is on the cover, and inside are feature articles on Montogmery Clift (“You’ve Heard All the Stories About Him”), Tab Hunter (“He admits that he wants to get married–but there are reaons why Tab says ‘Don’t Rush Me!’”) and Guy Madison.
But the cherry on top is the Rock Hudson article: “Shopping for a man is a fine art,” says Rock. “Speaking as a man, I know. I’ve been on the receiving end. And sometimes, as a friend of mine once said, it’s better to give.”
[Here is where I would put the shocked smilie if I knew how to make them]
It’s kinda sad, because you know they published the piece to scare the crap out of the poor guy, but Jesus! “A good leather belt will make any man beam,” says Rock."
Because my grandmother had been a bit player in the 30’s & 40’s, my dad had a dissenting opinion on homosexuality when, as they exhumed John Wayne Gacy’s crawlspace and we adolescent boys were warned about all the killer queers. To him, gay guys were the people who’d give a kid a ride home in Los Angeles, and all they’d want to do is toussle his hair. A lot of these guys were undoubtedly there in Hollywood to make a living in the film industry.
I can’t help thinking that a lot of them asked “why bother?” reaching for the upper rungs of success. Scandal sheets, morals clauses in contracts, blackmailers, etc. Louis B. Mayer even ordered gay men to marry women (a pretty shitty thing to do, actually, but if Mayer had been Catholic instead of Jewish, he might have ordered them to become priests instead). Were Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift and Tab Hunter truly dedicated to their art to endure all that? In the case of Hudson and Hunter, I doubt it. (As I was told, Tab Hunter, sick of juvenile leads, ambushed Mayer outside his office, dropped to his knees and said “please massah, lemme go free!” Mayer said OK, you’re fired, and nobody heard from Tab Hunter until John Waters used him as a novelty act).
I guess they didn’t have anything else as satisfying to fall back on, as had Dick Haines who, when ordered to stop being gay by Mayer, quit and made a good life as a decorator.
Some gay men and women were “out” in that all their friends and coworkers knew: Billy Haines, Alla Nazimova, Monty Woolley, Edward Everett Horton, George Cukor, Farley Granger, etc. But it was understood they remain in the closet as far as the public was concerned, and sometimes gossip columnists and fan mags would dangle hints (as in the magazine above) to blackmail stars and studios into cooperating and giving them “harmless” tidbits. Rumor is the studio married Rock Hudson off and threw Guy Madison to the lions in exchange.
The post-war years were much more homophobic. In the '20s and '30s, gay rumors about George O’Brien, Garbo, Dietrich and Valentino (who, ironically, was probably straight) only added to their mystique and allure.
Jeez, this is turning into a serious thread, I never intended that!
But would the writers of the magazine have known, or were they just working with rumours? And presumably Mr Hudson did the interview and said those things. Wouldn’t he know how they might be perceived - or would they actually have been perceived in a more naive manner at the time?
I doubt Rock even saw the article before it hit the newsstands, let alone gave an interview for it. It was Photoplay’s subtle way of saying to the studios, “we know, and you know we know, so you better grant us access to the stars and photos we want, or else.”
I’m sure Rock, Monty, Tab and Guy had a few sleepless nights 50 years ago this month.
You mean in the same way that today’s supermarket tabloids bother to interview celebrities before writing articles quoting them?
Celebrities are free game and always have been. The only difference is that is the 20s and 30s the studios could put pressure on the magazines to have their made-up interviews come out positively.
Anybody who deals with history has to make the assumption that all quotes of famous people - entertainers, sports stars, even politicians - are spurious in part or whole, fabricated to make them sound good or sound bad, depending on the slant of the publication.
I’ve spoken to two ladies (Anita Page and Esther Ralston) who were interviewed for fan magazines in the 1920s, and both told me the articles then were fairly accurate and used legit quotes.
Well, could doesn’t mean have to. I’m sure than most stars had good relations with the press and few secrets that needed to be hidden.
It was just those other cases when the studio most certainly did throw its weight around. They had goons of various levels of sophistication to keep the reporters - in some cases a courtesy term only - in their places.
The trouble is that unless you can talk to the original characters involved, you can never know which set of circumstances you’re dealing with. And that’s even when the actors weren’t telling tall tales for the fun or it or to clean up their backgrounds or because the booze and drugs had destroyed their memories.
Take the Marx Brothers. The things that Everybody Knows about them - the day in Nacogdoches Texas when they insulted the audience and found their voices; the poker game in which they got their names; Harpo’s start on the harp - probably not one of these is true. There is no record of them being in Nacogdoches at the right time; no evidence of the person in the poker game who supposedly handed out the names; and totally contradictory stories of Harpo’s picking up a harp. No interviewer who went into an interview with the Marx in his or her right mind came out in the same state and all interviews are totally suspect.
And that’s without an agenda. What happened with one we know to be much worse. We can only hope that some of the stuff that made print is true enough to be useful.
What a treasure you got there, Eve. I remember scrounging around old shops on Hollywood Blvd. and picking up old movie magazines for nothing, but I don’t know where any of them (the magazines) are now. And I’m sure the old magazines are a lot harder to find these days too.
I love these old magazines. I found this site which has a lot of magazine covers (but not, apparently, the one you have. I would dearly love to see that!). Do you have a scanner? Could you scan the cover? It needs to be shared, I’m tellin’ ya!
From what I’ve heard, he was a fairly active het. There’s some dispute about his wife Barbara Stanwyck, but he was certainly schtupping Marina Berti while making Quo Vadis?, which led to the breakup of that marriage.
I’d read the studio was taking PR photos of him hunting and fishing to dispell various rumors.
Anyway, are there any movie like Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table about?
I don’t think Tab Hunter was ever under contract to MGM, and certainly not during the Louis B. Mayer era, which ended when Mayer was forced out in 1951. And as you can see from Tab Hunter’s filmography he had steady work in movies and television through the 1960s and 1970s.
But let me share another movie mag article with you, this one a pictorial on a Tab Hunter and Roddy McDowall get-together (more like a date) in 1953, titled “Calling All Girls.”
Page 1: The swimsuit clad Roddy consults a notebook while swimsuit clad Tab is on the telephone. Caption, “Neither Tab nor Roddy really need the help of the little black book for getting dates. Both eligible bachelors, they have pick of film cuties.”
Page 2: Roddy welcomes Tab on his driveway, introduces Tab to his parents, and shows Tab his tape recorder. Caption: “Though Tab and Roddy had just recently met, they both struck off immediately and became good friends.”
Page 3: Captions include: “As with women, the fellows finally got around to discussing clothes. Tab admires newest suit in Roddy’s wardrobe,” and “Roddy’s combination bedroom-sitting room is decorated in a very masculine way.”
Page 4: “Both excellent swimmers and divers, Tab and Roddy take a dip in the McDowall pool. Tab lives in an apartment with his mother, who is a trained nurse.”
“Loafin’ in the midday sun, the boys chat about everything from cars to women. Romance-wise, Tab’s seen most with Gloria Gordon; Roddy’s dates are varied.”
I saw Farley Granger being interviewed for some reason or another just last week. I had wondered whatever happened to him…I still don’t know, but I do know that he’s alive.
There was an interesting TV piece on Cary Grant a couple of months ago and it briefly alluded to his supposed bisexuality. They interviewed Betsy Drake and asked her point blank if he was bi. Her reply, “I don’t know. We were too busy fucking for me to ask him.”
Don’t know much about Hunter, but everything I’ve read about Hudson indicates he knew from the outset that he was not going to make it trying to be a serious actor, but he could make it huge as a Movie Star. His success as a Movie Star brought him everything material he could ever want and his sex life didn’t seem to suffer as a result, but being branded a queer would destroy everything. So it wasn’t a question of being devoted to his art; it was about keeping his life for the most part the way he wanted to live it and making the sacrifices necessary to do so.
Given the dearth of openly gay leading men even today almost 20 years after Hudson’s death, was he wrong in making the sacrifice?
