When you think of LGBT people in the Hollywood of yesteryear, the first name that comes up is Rock Hudson, who AIDS took out of the closet after his death in 1985. But Hollywood has always had LGBT stars who had to hide their tendency to stay stars, like Greta Garbo and Anthony Perkins, and Lahat directors. In the sea that could afford to be a little less careful, like George Cukor.Over the years such and such rumors have spread about quite a few stars – many of which have remained rumors that are difficult to establish.But there are also some exceptional cases.
Montgomery Clift
Montgomery Clift was one of the most beautiful and talented players ever. His career was short – he died at the age of 45 – but during it he managed to leave an indelible mark on several masterpieces directed by great directors. Already in his first film, he played a lead role opposite John Wayne in Howard Hawks’ “The Red River” (1948). The film presented a conflict between two very different types of masculinity, preferring the soft but strong one of Clift. One of the scenes in the film, in which he and John Ireland exchange guns, is remembered for its homoerotic tones.
In the following years Clift starred in films by Alfred Hitchcock, Vittorio de Sica and Ilya Kazan, and appeared in three films alongside Elizabeth Taylor, who was his secret wife. According to his biography written by Patricia Bozworth, Taylor loved him so much that she asked him to marry her, but he refused. In 1956, in the middle of filming “Reentry County,” he was staying at her house, and when he drove home he collided with a phone page. The accident impaired his beauty and the severe pain caused him to become addicted to drugs that shortened his life. But he returned to the screen and shaped some of his other great and tormented roles.
His homosexuality was a well-known secret in Hollywood, but not outside of it – in the newspapers he was first and foremost the girls’ favorite bachelor. In the above biography it is said that during the filming of “From Now to Forever” he befriended Frank Sinatra, but when he flirted with guys at a pool party at Sinatra’s house, the latter expelled him from there and no longer spoke to him. Jerome Robbins told him that Clift was the one who gave him the idea while the two were dating, but it was not until 2000, at the GLAAD media awards ceremony, that Clift’s homosexuality received public approval from Taylor, who was awarded a prize for her work for the LGBT community. . In her thank-you speech she said her best friend loved men.
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Ramon Novro
The handsome Ramon Smenigo was born in Mexico in 1899 and came to Los Angeles at the age of 14 when his family fled the revolution that was taking place there. In 1923, after six years of small roles, he won the lead role in the costume and sword movie “Scarmosh” and changed his last name to Novaro.
His new stardom made him exposed to the public eye, bringing to an end his affair with Harry Perch, a arranger in the concert hall of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra who was later a well-known composer there. Hollywood on the one hand, and his Catholic upbringing on the other, made it difficult for him to live in peace with his sexuality, and like quite a few other stars he began to drink too much.
Roman Novro and Greta Garbo in “Mate Harry”, 1931. Photo: CC Wikipedia
In 1925, Novro played the Jewish prince Ben Hur in the most expensive film in the history of cinema until then. A year later, when Rudolf Valentino died, he inherited his place as the great Latin lover and maintained his status even in the early days of desert cinema, when he starred alongside Greta Garbo in “Mata Harry” (1931). In the following years his star faded, but he had no livelihood problems because in the good years he invested his money in real estate. Of Richard Chamberlain.
His homosexuality suddenly became public domain in 1968 when he was murdered by two younger brothers. The two called him and offered him sex services – they got his phone number from someone he had in the past – and when they entered his house they beat him to death demanding to know where he was hiding the money. There was no money in the house, and they left with only $ 20.
In one of the scenes in Amos Gutman’s “Infected” (1982), Jonathan Segal recounts that Novaro was murdered using a dildo that was cast in the shape of Rudolf Valentino’s penis and shoved down his throat. This is an urban legend that has long been refuted.
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William Haynes
You’ve probably never heard of William Haynes, and the reason for this is related to the unequivocal decision he made about how he wants to live his life. In 1928 the silent film star, who played a lot of romantic heroes, successfully passed the sound test, and was one of the top five box office stars in Hollywood until 1932. He was beautiful and graceful and the camera loved him, but in 1933 he was stopped by cops when he started with Salt in the park. To a popular meeting point among gays.
Louis b. Meyer, head of MGM Studios, demanded that he sever his relationship with his partner since 1926, Jimmy Shields, and rush to marry a “lavender marriage” to a woman who would give him a straight cover – a well-known trick in Hollywood. In a very atypical place and period, Haynes chose to stay true to himself and his beloved, and his Hollywood career was wiped out. He and Shields have embarked on an alternate career as interior designers, and their clients include some of the biggest Hollywood stars, some of whom have appeared alongside him in films, including Joan Crawford, Carol Lombard, Gloria Swanson and Marion Davis.
In 1936 about 100 Klux Klan thugs dragged Haynes and Shields from their beach house and beat them, following a false accusation by a neighbor that they had offered his son an obscene offer. The case has been extensively covered in the press, but no indictment has been filed against any of the attackers. Billy and Jimmy continued to work and live together until Haynes’ death in 1973 at the age of 73. Shields put an end to his life a few months later. Joan Crawford described them as “the happiest married couple in Hollywood.”
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Dorothy Arzner
Dorothy Arzner was the only director to work in the heart of Hollywood at a time known as the Golden Age, and was the only woman with a membership card in the Directors’ Union. Between 1927 and 1943 she directed 16 films, Silent and Talking, starring the great stars and stars. Her first job in Hollywood was as a screenwriter in the screenwriting department of Fremont Studios, but she always knew that what interested her was directing and was not afraid to demand what she wanted. In 1929, she directed the first Fremont Desert film, developing the first boom (portable microphone).
Her films presented a different perspective on men, women and their relationships, and today they are taught as early feminist texts in their book about independent heroines choosing their path in life and the brotherhood of women, with men usually in second place. Catherine Hepburn, for example, played a squadron in Christopher Strong, and Merle Oberon was a Norwegian spy in World War II, giving up love in the name of her devotion to the Nazi struggle in First Comes Courage. And in some of the films the looks that the women exchange are deciphered today in a way that was hidden from the eyes of many viewers in those years.
Arzner has never hidden her being a lesbian, and in most of her well-known photos she is seen dressed in male suits. She lives in a long-term relationship with Marion Morgan – a dancer, choreographer and writer who created the choreography for some of her films. And there were also rumors of romances with some of the stars of her films. She retired from Hollywood in 1943, perhaps because the sexist and homophobic production code narrowed her steps. In the following years she taught film at UCLA (Francis Ford Coppola was one of her students) and directed commercials for Pepsi Cola at the invitation of Joan Crawford, the former film star, who inherited her late husband’s place on the company’s board.
Richard Chamberlain
In 1976, when Richard Zimmerlein played the prince of Cinderella in “The Glass Sandal”, it was written in “Maariv for Youth” that he had not yet found his princess. Only many years later did the public learn that he had never sought a princess. He was born in 1934 and became the star of the girls in the 1960s as “Dr. Kildier” – one of the first hospital series (1961 – 1966). Between God and his burning desire for the young Nava.
In 1977, when he was 43, Chamberlain met actor Martin Rabett, 20 years his junior, and the two became a couple. They lived in Hawaii, away from the spotlight and paparazzi cameras, and so that they could live together without hindrance (and Rabat could inherit Chamberlain’s assets), the adult actor adopted a son for his young partner, who in the photos looked really similar to him. In 1986, the father and his adopted son played brothers in the film “Alan Quartermine and the Lost Golden City” produced by Menachem Golan Yoram Globus. They separated after 33 years together.
Chamberlain was taken out of the closet by a French women’s magazine in 1989, but he himself volunteered the information only in an autobiography he published in 2003. After years of sparse career, it was precisely the exit from the closet that arranged for him to be a guest on several popular TV series, including “Will and Grace” and “Desperate Housewives,” some of whom first played gay. But when he was interviewed in 2010, the 76-year-old actor suggested to actors who want to win lead roles to stay in the closet “because there is still a lot of homophobia in our culture.”