A week before he turned 30, strapping movie star Rock Hudson married his agent's secretary, Phyllis Gates. The wedding took place on November 9, 1955. In Hollywood it was understood that this was a marriage of convenience, arranged in order to thwart tabloids such as Confidential Magazine from revealing his homosexuality. The marriage produced no children and the couple divorced three years later.
Of course any discussion about Rock Hudson wouldn't be complete without mentioning the movie Pillow Talk (the second highest grossing movie of the 1950's). Here's his racy (by the standards of 1959) split-screen bathtub scene with Doris Day:
At around the same time Liberace was battling similar gay rumors with the print media as Hudson, but rather than marry he sued for libel and won cases in the UK (Daily Mirror newspaper) and the US (Confidential).
CBS aired the Wizard of Oz on TV for the first time on the evening of Saturday, November 3, 1956. Unlike the theatrical release, which magically switched from black/white to color when Dorothy opened the door of her house after it landed in Oz, the TV telecast was shown totally in b/w. Three years later the broadcast of the movie became a cherished annual event (when it began airing on Sunday). In 1999 the movie was acquired by Turner Entertainment where it has aired on its various cable networks ever since.
Although I was well acquainted with the plot, during every viewing I held out hope that Dorothy might make it to the storm cellar in time. And while many other little boys with gay leanings may have been fascinated by the ruby slippers I found myself enthralled by the tornado and hoped that one day one would strike my neighborhood (perhaps its phallic shape also had a subliminal effect). Thus began my fascination with meteorology, which almost lead me to get a degree in it (instead I switched my major to Advertising upon determining I wasn't cut out for countless courses in Physics).
Another beloved movie classic from 1939, Gone With the Wind, wouldn't air on network TV until 1976.
The romantic comedy Pillow Talk, starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson,opened the weekend of October 7, 1959. It would become the second highest grossing film of the 1950's, behind another movie from 1959, Ben Hur. The movie also co-starred Tony Randall as a supercilious skirt chaser and Thelma Ritter as as a drunken housekeeper. Day and Ritter both received Oscar nominations.
Doris plays Jan Morrow a successful interior decorator and Hudson plays Brad Allen a womanizing Broadway composer. Jan quite dislikes Brad because they share a telephone party line and whenever she tries to make a call he's on it talking to a different women. When Jan and Brad meet face-to-face they fall for each other - but Jan doesn't know it's Brad because he tells her that he's Rex Stetson from Texas.
When Jan later brags to Brad about Rex during yet another party line interruption Brad plays with Jan by planting the seed that Rex is a mama's boy and maybe a bit "light in the loafers" (ah, the irony!). Surprise, surprise it all works out and in the end boy gets girl.
The movie is perhaps most famous for the split-screne bathtub scene in which Day and Hudson's characters chat flirtatiously on the phone while each is taking a bubblebath. Considered risque by standards of the bland 50's, even today it's kinda hot. It most surely had gay men back then in a tizzy.
There's also a delightfully corny scene in a restaurant around a piano where Doris sings a silly song titled Roly Poly. Crowd participation ensues along with innane hand clapping between Day and Hudson.
At the time Doris was 35 and Hudson was one month away from his 34th birthday. This was the first of three movies they'd do together. And she was there at his side offering support to Rock during his final months in 1985 when he was battling AIDS.
In the 1920's the New York Yankees baseball team had a lineup that was referred to as "Murderer's Row" because of its hitting talent. The same moniker could be applied to the gay talent behind West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein wrote the music; Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics; Arthur Laurents wrote the book; and Jerome Robbins was choreographer. When the show opened on September 26, 1957 Laurents, at age 40, was the old man of the group while 27-year-old Sondheim was the "baby". Although the show was a hit it would lose the Tony for Best Musical to The Music Man, a show that was more critically embraced and that ran nearly twice as long as West Side Story (1375 performances vs. 732). It also won the first Grammy for cast album.
Pictured from L to R: Sondheim; Laurents; Hal Prince (producer); Robert Griffiths (producer); Bernstein; Robbins
The vast majority of troubled entertainers who have died prematurely, many of whom are gay icons, have been women, e.g., Marilyn, Judy, Billie and Dinah. One of the few men on this list is actor Montgomery Clift. He was found dead in bed in his New York apartment the morning of July 23, 1966; he was 45. The cause of death was listed as a heart attack, but a major contributing factor was the cumulative effect of pain killers and liquor. During the first half of the 1950's Clift was considered one of Hollywood's finest actors, but his life went into a tailspin after he was seriously injured in a car accident in 1956.
He made 18 movies during his career and was nominated for an Oscar four times - but never took a statue home (Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton were each nominated seven times without winning). The movies were:
The Search (1948)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Long before his accident Clift abused pills and booze. Additionally, he was a closeted homosexual in the habit of picking up strangers and male hustlers, often finding himself in trouble that had to be cleaned up by his agent or movie studio. He was moody, insecure and an outsider to Hollywood's A-list. However, he counted Elizabeth Taylor as a close friend (they appeared together in A Place in the Sun; Suddenly Last Summer; and Raintree Country.
We've probably all seen the TV infomercials for Time-Life Records' various music compilations, e.g. "Love Songs", "Groovy 60's", "Mellow Moods", etc. I've bought a number of them, and am glad I did, because they introduced me to some great songs. One in particuar was Secretly by Jimmie Rodgers. It entered Billboard's Top 40 today in 1958 and became a #3 hit. (Rodgers is best known for the song Honeycomb which topped the charts for four weeks the year before.)
It's a pleasant tune, typical of so many songs from this vanilla decade, but what got my attention was its gender-neutral lyrics. In my interpretation the song tells the story of two men who, due to the mores of the 1950's, must conduct their romance "secretly". Here's the chorus:
"Wish we didn't have to meet secretly
Wish we didn't have to kiss secretly
Wish we didn't have to be afraid to show the world that we're in love
'Til we have the right to meet openly
'Til we have the right to kiss openly
We'll just have to be content to be in love secretly."
Of course, these lyrics could also apply to a West Side Story situation between a boy and girl of different races or ethnicities. Still, I thought the hidden message was a bit daring for the conformist 1950's. (Reminds me of the secret delight I got when I first listened to the Village People's innuendo laden songs.) I'm curious whether the song was popular with homosexuals at the time.
Of course, there have been other gender neutral songs such as Secret Love by Doris Day and the Beatles' Do You Want to Know a Secret? but their lyrics don't have an air of illicitness to them. One that does, however, is the disco classic by Madleen Kane, Forbidden Love, from 1979. In the song's opening line Kane sings, "How can you stop a trembling hand, reaching for another hand, even though it is forbidden love?"
Here's a wonderful video/photo montage from a website called "GayTwoGether" that has been set to the very song discussed here:
Alfred Steele was Joan Crawford's fourth, and last, husband (it was his first marriage). She was 50, he 54 when they married in Las Vegas on May 10, 1955. Steele died of a heart attack four years later. (Interestingly, all of Crawford's marriages lasted four years.) Besides being Alfred's spouse, Joan also served as a tireless worldwide ambassador for the soft drink. (At the time of their marriage Crawford's adopted daughter Christina was 15.)
Crawford's marriage to Steele was portrayed in the movie Mommie Dearest, which resulted in two classic scenes. In the first, Crawford (played by Faye Dunaway) is overseeing the renovation of her and Steele's Manhattan apartment and orders the builders to "Tear down that bitch of a bearing wall and put a window where it ought to be!". Then, when the Pepsi board of directors tries to remove her from the board after Steele's death, Joan has one of the most memorable lines of the entire movie: "Don't fuck with me fellas, this ain't my first time at the rodeo!"
Twenty-five years before the wedding of Charles and Diana another fairytale wedding had the world aflutter as 26-year old Oscar-winning movie actress Grace Kelly married 32-year old Prince Rainier III of Monaco. (Three months after their nuptials the last of her eleven movies, High Society, was released.)
Unlike Diana's tumultuous life, Princess Grace's with Prince Rainier was seemingly a happier one. However, like Diana, Princess Grace died young (age 52) in a car accident - but under different circumstances. Princess Grace was behind the wheel when she suffered a stroke and the car plunged down an embankment. Her death came a year after Diana's marriage and Princess Diana represented England at the funeral.
March 24 is fashion designer Kenneth Cole's birthday; he was born in Brooklyn in 1954. Although he's not gay (he's married to one of Mario Cuomo's daughters) he's been a true friend of the gay community. Since shortly after starting his company in 1982 Cole has supported gay causes, especially those dealing with AIDS research and prevention. He's done this through fund raising as well as advertising messaging and is presently chairman of amfAR.
I'm familiar with Cole's store at Grand Central Station/42nd St. (pictured, left) because it was in my work neighborhood. Over the years I've bought shoes, ties, a couple of suits and a briefcase there. (His product line reminds me of Banana Republic's.) Earlier in 2011 the company closed two of its Manhattan stores in prime locations, at Rockefeller Center and on Columbus Ave.
Rather than dripping with sex or using high profile celebrities, Cole's ads are better known for their clever wordplay and commentary about world events. And, unlike Calvin Klein, the ads aren't homoerotic in the least (but the pro-same-sex marriage ad to the right is very touching - and powerful).
The bane of Hollywood's existence, television, was embraced tonight as the Academy Awards was televised for the first time - on the occasion of Oscar's 25th anniversary. With Bob Hope serving as master of ceremonies, it aired on March 19, 1953 on NBC at 9:30PM on a Thursday evening.
Gary Cooper won his second Best Actor Oscar for High Noon (John Wayne accepted for him), Shirley Booth won Best Actress for Come Back, Little Sheba and Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth won for Best Picture (many film buffs consider it one of most undeserving movies to get an Oscar).
Today the Academy Awards is jokingly referred to as the Gay Super Bowl, but it's doubtful any playful moniker was attached to the Oscar telecast back in the 1950's, a time when homosexuals were hardly a topic of everyday conversation.
