[QUOTE=buns3000]
Yes. The fact that Dyan Cannon and Cary Grant not only got married but also had sex - and their child is proof they had sex at least once - convinces me that Cary Grant was not gay.
[/QUOTE]
Are you serious, or is this a whoosh? I mean, it’s not like we’re sterile.
Allen Sherman (the Weird Al of the 1960’s) did a parody of the song “Call Me” that ended:
And then, when you reach Cary Grant
Tell him I’d love to, but I just can’t.
It took me year to figure about what those lyrics were really saying.
The picutres of him in Life (I think) magazine with Randolph Scott doing the dishes while wearing matching aprons should erase any doubt 
Yet for all his stinginess/cheapness, he was (from everything I’ve ever read) the only Barbara Hutton ex-husband who wouldn’t accept alimony.
VCNJ~
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
Grant was a very unhappy fellow with many psychological issues and rumors of homosexuality/bisexuality followed him his entire life, but nothing’s conclusive. A lot of what you’ll read about him (including an absolutely ridiculous story that, believe it or not, puts him on the grounds of Sharon Tate’s house banging the gardener at the time of the murders) traces back to two or three malicious gossip sites and or the work of a writer named Boze Hadleigh who released a book of interviews with closeted gay stars entitled Hollywood Gays. According to Hadleigh, his interview subjects (who included Randolph Scott) spoke to him on the proviso he not make voice recordings and not release his books until after they were dead, but a lot of his critics believe (and not without some evidence) that Hadleigh in some cases greatly exaggerated what was said and in other cases just made shit up out of whole cloth about people he never even met, let alone interviewed.
Grant did have openly gay friends (hardly surprising in his line of work) and was a weird fellow in general. He’s also an interesting neurotic: he was notoriously and neurotically stingy (he lived in a mansion but ate cheap TV dinners, bought Cadillacs or Mercedes and remove all the insignia and logos on the grounds that they should be paying him to drive them) but was also notoriously scrupulous about money (he’s the only of Barbara Hutton’s 7 husbands who kept his own accounts and never touched a penny of her money and there’s some evidence he paid some of her bills when she died not-quite-broke but nothing remotely like her previous wealth) and of course he left one of Hollywood’s great fortunes (his daughter had $30 million in her trust fund). He used and praised LSD when it was legal and used in therapy and some accounts say he continued to use it afterwards. Dyan Cannon said in her memoir he could be very abusive when under its influence and that he stalked her for years after their separation/divorce- she would decide at the last minute where to go on a date rather than make plans in advance and yet invariably he’d show up at the same restaurant minutes later. He had huge mother and abandonment issues (he thought his mother abandoned the family when he was a kid, but she was in fact committed to an asylum for 20+ years and he learned she was still alive and hospitalized reading a tabloid interview with a distant relative after he became a star- the relative honestly thought Cousin Archie knew where his mom was).
Whether he was gay or not though- nothing proven and neither answer would surprise me.
I wish I could produce a cite (and one’s probably available), but I read an interview with Chevy Chase once who was still furious about the lawsuit 20 years later. It was settled in private with neither to reveal terms and Grant would imply in interviews that it was settled for an apology, attorney’s fees, and token figure. Chase said “bullshit”- it cost him everything he had and required him to take offers he had turned down, that the attorneys fees (his and Grants together) were alone over $100,000 and the “token” settlement around the same amount and this long before Chase was a multimillionaire. He said his then wife had to go back to work as the settlement left them in danger of eviction and having their utilities turned off and it was several projects before he was right again financially.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=buns3000]
Also, I believe that even though Grant and Randolph Scott - both successful actors at the time with no financial need to be sharing a house with anyone - lived together for years, their motivation in doing so was almost certainly something other than any supposed gay relationship between them, although at the moment I am unable to think of even one other reason for them to have been sharing a home together.
[/QUOTE]
Money. Less paid in rent meant more available for investment, besides which mansions are bloody expensive and high maintenance. Scott’s real estate and oil investments made him one of the richest men in show business (richer than Grant even). And the infamous - photospread - (can’t find the aprons/dishes one but it’s out there somewhere) was staged and arranged by a publicist in a less suspicious time. These weren’t candid shots.
This isn’t saying they weren’t making the judy judy judy with two or one backs, just that there’s a good reason for sharing a house (mansions are expensive) and that they weren’t necessarily doing so. While Dyan Cannon has always struck me as a total flake who’s opinion I wouldn’t trust on anything, Sophia Loren’s affair with Grant was actually kept secret at the time and speaks more to his hetero nature. It’s possible he was bi, but it’s taken too much for granted he was gay.
Well it is possible for two male actors to be very close and not be lovers- for example, Marlon Brando and Wally Cox
[QUOTE=buns3000]
Yes. The fact that Dyan Cannon and Cary Grant not only got married but also had sex - and their child is proof they had sex at least once - convinces me that Cary Grant was not gay.
[/QUOTE]
The hell? Gay men and women have kids all the time - often the other parent of said children is someone from the other gender. I’m pretty certain that at least a few gay men and women have had sex with people of the opposite gender. Gay men and women have even (gasp!) been married to members of the other gender, sometimes for years and years.
This is one of the weirder things I’ve read on the SDMB.
[QUOTE=Snickers]
This is one of the weirder things I’ve read on the SDMB.
[/QUOTE]
I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
Well, Scott and Grant had shared digs when they first came to Hollywood as poor wannabes and became close friends. I can see living with a buddy between marriages. Cox and Brando were childhood friends who lived together in New York, probably for the same money-saving reason. Between the four of them they went through about ten wives and countless girlfriends so, if any of them were bi, they weren’t particularly so.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, thank goodness. I was wondering whether it was everyone else’s Sar-Chasm-Meter that was broken or if my Cynical Module was is overdrive.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I wish I could produce a cite (and one’s probably available), but I read an interview with Chevy Chase once who was still furious about the lawsuit 20 years later. It was settled in private with neither to reveal terms and Grant would imply in interviews that it was settled for an apology, attorney’s fees, and token figure. Chase said “bullshit”- it cost him everything he had and required him to take offers he had turned down, that the attorneys fees (his and Grants together) were alone over $100,000 and the “token” settlement around the same amount and this long before Chase was a multimillionaire. He said his then wife had to go back to work as the settlement left them in danger of eviction and having their utilities turned off and it was several projects before he was right again financially.
[/QUOTE]
According to a mid-1990’s article in Spy magazine, Chase is an heir to the Crane plumbing fixtures fortune. Did the lawsuit predate this?
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
…
The whole thing was a joke- it would be like going on Daily Show and saying “Yeah, I love Jack Nicholson… and I’ve heard he’s a drag queen on weekends… just kidding, he’s too high on crack to go out”. It’s meant to be an absurd throwaway, you’re really not expecting Nicholson to sue you.
[/QUOTE]
Of course not, he’d probably just beat the crap out of you with a golf club.
[sub]I kid, Jack![/sub]
So he shared a house? As strange as it seems today, maybe in the 1930s it was less suggestive than it would be today.
[QUOTE=F. U. Shakespeare]
According to a mid-1990’s article in Spy magazine, Chase is an heir to the Crane plumbing fixtures fortune. Did the lawsuit predate this?
[/QUOTE]
The lawsuit was in 1980, when Caddyshack had either just come out or was in post-production. I’ve no idea when Chase received his inheritance or what the terms are, but at the time he certainly would not have been wealthy from his acting career. He had only done Foul Play and Oh Heavenly Dog since leaving Saturday Night Live, which only paid him $750 per week for performing and a lesser amount for writing.
In a 2004 interview for the Turner Classic Movies production Cary Grant: A Class Apart, Grant’s third wife, Betsy Drake, mocked the rumors, saying, “I didn’t have time to think about his homosexuality. We were too busy fucking”.
Gee, some statements in this thread have made me now virtually certain that every frat boy, boy scout, military guy, etc is Gay. Let’s throw the Rat Pack in the group, eh?
There are lots of reasons to live with someone else. It isn’t all finances. Since time began men have been spending lots and lots of time together in ways that specifically exclude females. However, two handsome, youngish, single stars sharing a big house with a rockin’ pool, probably a killer bar, etc. Sounds like an adult frat house to me.
I’d think that Cary Grant had the earlier day equivalent of the Laminated List. Except he WAS the list. And anyone who approached him that could provide such list, was able to partake of such pleasures.
In a perfect world where we could taste the forbidden fruit, if just to have the knowledge for a moment…
In a perfect world none of us would give a fiddlers about who is doing what with whom.
Was Grant gay? Probably not, no. Was he bi-sexual. Probably not, no. Did he have a homosexual daliance? Who the hell knows.
One of the problems of the internet age is that anything, no matter how questionable the vercity, that even suggests a dead celebrity was gay is considered evidence that indeed he or she was gay. Witness Wikipedia and the tortured efforts by many editors to paint all celebrities as being gay.
I liked Sampiro’s logical analysis. We need more of that.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
[/QUOTE]
Ya think?