[On November 17th, 1925, Roy Harold Scherer Jr.—better known as Rock Hudson—was born. His iconic career and complex life open up a lot of American histories, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of them, leading up to this weekend post on other 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.]
Quick takeaways
from five complex lives (in chronological order of their birth years).
1)
Cary
Grant (1904-1986): Every one of the entries in this post will have at least
some ambiguity, but none more so than the legendary actor who was born
Archibald Leish in Bristol, England, but refashioned himself into one of the
mid-century’s true icons. Grant lived
with a fellow actor, Randolph Scott, for a dozen years, and by all accounts
told
multiple friends and family members that he was in love with Scott. But he also
was married
to five different women across his life. Was he bisexual? Were those
marriages all beards? Biographers disagree, but one thing seems clear: Grant’s
public persona and private life were nearly as distinct as those of the main
character in North By
Northwest.
2)
Liberace (1919-1987): In
the late 1950s, the legendary pianist and showman successfully
sued the British newspaper The Daily Mirror for libel after gossip columnist
Cassandra (the pen name for William Connor) strongly implied that he was gay.
He would similarly
sue and settle with the U.S. gossip magazine Confidential over their
frequent such allegations, including a July
1957 cover story “Why Liberace’s Theme Song Should Be ‘Mad About the Boy!’”
Liberace’s homosexuality is far less ambiguous or disputed than Cary Grant’s,
and so the ambiguity here is what we do with such lawsuits—whether we see them
for example as expressions of his own tortured inner psyche, or as instead the
kinds of media control with which Grant’s agent Henry Willson was so adept.
3)
Montgomery
Clift (1920-1966): In this case of this Hollywood screen icon, who passed
away tragically young from a heart attack, the ambiguity is interconnected with
his most famous professional and personal relationship. Clift
and Elizabeth Taylor were very close, starring together in three romantic 1950s
films and maintaining a famously tight
off-screen friendship (and perhaps more) throughout. So when Taylor said,
while being honored at
the 2000 GLAAD Media Awards for her LGBTQ+ advocacy, that Clift had been
gay, the admission was both surprising and seemingly accurate. Yet the details
of his life and relationships seem to suggest at least bisexuality, another
reminder of how difficult it is to tell the life story of closeted public
figures.
4)
Robert
Reed (1932-1992): As part of a 2000
ABC News piece entitled “The Real Mike Brady,” Reed’s Brady Bunch costar
and on-screen wife Florence Henderson remarked, “Here he was, the perfect
father of this wonderful little family, a perfect husband. Off camera, he was
an unhappy person—I think had Bob not been forced to live this double life, I
think it would have dissipated a lot of that anger and frustration. I never
asked him. I never challenged him. I had a lot of compassion for him because I
knew how he was suffering with keeping this secret.” I’ve blogged
before about sitcom dads, and it’s particularly interesting to think (as Henderson
certainly does in that quote) about the experiences of an actor playing that
kind of iconically heteronormative role while living as a closeted gay man.
5)
Freddie Mercury
(1946-1991): As compared with earlier icons like Grant and Clift, Freddie Mercury’s
bisexuality seems to have become pretty well-established in the years after
his tragic death from AIDS. But not if you watch the recent acclaimed
film biopic Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), which portrays Mercury as
almost entirely gay (with one influential early relationship with a woman).
Indeed, the film’s Mercury says to that woman, Mary Austin, that he “might be
bisexual,” to which she
replies, “Freddie, you’re gay.” Clearly cultural representations of these figures
are just as complicated and fraught as were the stories and lives themselves!
Thanksgiving
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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