Born On This Day- August 27th... Tom Ford

“I don’t think of myself as gay. That doesn’t mean that I’m not gay. I just don’t define myself by my sexuality.”

Not only am I inspired by people who, along with tremendous talent, are able to "brand" themselves, but I also want to follow in their footsteps. I have provided past posts that include: Martha Stewart, Andy Warhol & Keith Haring.

I would like to have my own line of products: nipple clamps made from re-purposed office supplies, cocktail mixers, & a magazine- Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Lifestyle. There would be a STEVE! TV network, which would only show films & series re-runs that I appear in, or that I love, or that feature : Steve Allen, Steve Buscemi, Steve Reeves, Steve Carell, or Steve McQueen. I want my own fragrance- Douche by Stephen: nutmeg, whiskey, dirt & a hint of desperation.

Tom Ford has not only made himself a part of his own product, but he is his own muse.

Each time I have come upon a print ad for Tom Ford, a man who has the right stuff & designs beautiful clothing; I have earmarked the magazine ad & said to the Husband- "Wow, can you believe how beautiful he is? Plus... the clothing & accessories are gifts from a genius". The Husband concurred.

Ford: "I think I detach the physical from the spiritual. It’s my business to make a woman or a man beautiful, & I’m working with a model in a fitting, & I’ve objectified them to the point that they become an object."

"They’re something that I’m modeling or shaping or sculpting, but I’m very aware that even though I make them physically beautiful, their soul & personality & character is somewhat detached from that. It’s great when you have a combination of the two- that’s what makes a true beauty. Some people are physically beautiful but yet they’re completely uninteresting, & thus they’re not beautiful. I detach the two. ... That’s why I think gay men make better designers."

Today is Tom Ford's 51st birthday. I would be very pleased to be snowed-in at a mountain cabin for a few days with Tom Ford. I would try my best to leave him inspired. He is Daniel Craig's designer of choice, & that is all the endorsement I need. I love you, Tom Ford.... but alas, he has has been with journalist Richard Buckley (14 years his senior) for 27 years. At least he is into a daddy types.

Buckley was the former Editor in Chief of Vogue Hommes International. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1989 & after his recovery the couple moved from NYC to Italy.

The couple have smooth fox terriers. Their first dog- John, lived 14 years with Ford & Buckley, & appeared on the runway & in photo shoots. Currently, they have Angus & India, who are 6 & 4 years old. These terriers appeared in Ford's film A Single Man. I am grateful to Mr. Ford for his 1st film- A Single Man. It was, for me, a masterful directorial debut & a deeply moving film.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Carlyle Ford, have your people call my people.

Born On This Day- August 26th... Michael Jeter

Michael Jeter was much loved at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, not the least for providing us with the best ever moments at the Tony Awards. He was a Tony & Emmy Award-winning actor who played nebbishy characters with a Chaplinesque flair.

Jeter was born in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., & landed his first film role in Milos Forman's  film version of Hair in 1979. He had small parts in film & TV & was a frequent performer Off Broadway during the early 1980s, where he appeared in Alice in Concert & G. R. Point, & in gay playwright Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9, directed by gay polymath,Tommy Tune.

In 1989, Jeter appeared in the musical adaptation of the film Grand Hotel, also directed by Mr. Tune. He played Otto Kringelein, the dying bookkeeper who goes on one last night on the town, releasing a lifetime of pent-up emotion in a frantic Charleston-  We'll Take a Glass Together, one of the best musical theatre numbers of all time.

Frank Rich: "Mr. Jeter lets loose like a human top gyrating out of control, literally breaking out of his past into a new existence."

Jeter won a Tony for best supporting actor for the role, & was soon a frequent face in film & TV, though he was rarely the star. In The Fisher King (1991), he played played a homeless man who does a spirited Ethel Merman impression, & he was nominated 3 times for an Emmy for his role in the CBS series Evening Shade  (1990-94), in which he played a wimpy but high-strung high school math teacher, Herman Stiles, who finds himself the assistant football coach under Burt Reynolds.

He won the award in 1992 & was nominated 2 more time, for roles on Post Apocalyptic Bohemian favorites- Picket Fences & Chicago Hope.

Jeter's film credits include: Patch Adams, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Welcome to Collinwood, Jurassic Park III, Jakob the Liar & The Green Mile.

For more than a decade, Jeter also had a recurring role on Sesame Street as Mr. Noodle.

Jeter lived in LA & NYC with his longtime partner Sean Blue. On March 30, 2003, Jeter was found dead in his Hollywood home at the age of 50, a victim of HIV. He was cremated & his ashes were scattered over the Pacific. He is missed. On this day, August 26th, Jeter would have been, should have been 60 years old.

Born On This Day- August 24th... Stephen Fry

“You are who you are when nobody's watching.” 

Comedian, successful novelist, star of the silver screen, raconteur & wit are all part of the dazzling resume of Stephen Fry.

Perfectly cast, he played The Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland & Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie.

I thought he was hysterical as King Charles l in Black Adder. He is good personal friends with Prince Charles & his horsey 2nd wife, even though his performance in Black Adder was a parody of Elizabeth 2’s son. Other favorite performances: Oscar Wilde in Wilde with Jude Law (“a role that I was fated to play”) & 2 of my all time favorite films- Gosford Park & Cold Comfort Farm. I understand that he appears in something refered to as The Harry Potter Series of films. Please, don't make me watch them, as much as I admire Fry.

I have also enjoyed his books- The Liar, Making History, The Hippopotamus & The Star’s Tennis Balls. Fry lives in London with his husband- Daniel Cohen. He famously drives a black TX4 London cab. Mr. Fry has & maintains a nifty blog- The New Adventures Of Mr. Stephen Fry.

"My first words, as I was being born... I looked up at my mother & said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.'"

Born On This Day- August 18th... Marcel Carné

          

My 5 semesters of Film Theory & History have come in handy. How else would I have known of Marcel Carné, a prodigy who created dazzling, magical, original films of the French cinema from 1936-1945, including the Dadaist comedy-thriller Drôle de Drame (1937), the fatalistic melodrama Quai des Brumes (1938), the tragedy Le Jour se Lève (1939), Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942), & of course, his masterpiece, the magnificent epic Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)?

Carné's "poetic realism" consists of a meticulously recreated studio environment in which every element of lighting, decor, & design could be utilized to maximum expressivity.

Carné's last feature film, Le Merveilleuse Visite (1974), about a beautiful young man who turns out to be an angel visiting Earth, is an allegory of male beauty used as an indicator of innocence.

A man noted for his generosity & sensitivity, in his private life Carné tended to place personal relationships above political considerations: on the set of  Children Of Paradise, there were artists who would later be tried for collaborating with the Nazis, as well as artists who were members of the Underground resistance & Jews in hiding who were given shelter.

In 1970s, Carné wrote that he wished the openness of the post-Stonewall era had been available to him earlier in his career. Although he regretted that he had not infused his work with a political consciousness, he believed that his partiality to themes of impossible romance derived from his acute awareness of the oppression of homosexuals.

He was an outspoken champion of filmmakers- Pasolini & Fassbinder, who politicized questions of gender and sexual orientation.

Although his career was uneven, Children of Paradise is indisputably one of the classics of French film making, was voted the greatest film in French history by a poll of French film critics in the year 2000.

Carné was 39 years old when he directed Les Enfants du Paradis, his 7th film. Over the next 30 years he made 10 more features, some of which starred his longtime partner Roland Lesaffre. He died in Paris, at age 90 in 1996.

Born On This Day- August 17th... Mae West

 

Her career started in 1907 & her last appearance was in 1978. Talented Mae West worked in vaudeville, on radio, on Broadway, in Las Vegas & in films. Her 1927 Broadway play- Sex opened to bad reviews, boffo box office, & was ultimetly closed down by the police. She was charged with & served time for "corrupting the morals of the youth". While incarcerated she ate her meals with the warden & his wife & told the press that she wore her silk panties under her prison garb.

Throughout the 1930s her films were anticipated as major events, but by the end of the decade she seemed to have reached her limit & her popularity waned; puritanism was on the rise & censorship was severely limiting her career. After making The Heat's On in 1943, West planned to retire from the screen, & went back to Broadway. In 1954, when she was 62, she began a nightclub act in which she was surrounded by her musclemen; it ran for 3 years & was a surprise success. West is the author of a rather readable memoir- Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It.

At 77 years old she appeared on the film Myra Breckinridge with Farrah Fawcett, Tom Selleck & Raquel Welch. In the mid-1970s she released an album of rock & roll covers- Great Balls Of Fire. But for me, Mae West is remembered best for her quips, including Stephen's words to live by: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful"

Born On This Day- August 7th... John Glover

I first made note of a pair of new actors- John Glover & Meryl Streep in small parts in just 2 scenes in the film Julia(1977). They both made quite an impression in essentially tiny roles. I have watched Glover’s career with interest & have enjoyed his performances, most often playing villains, in film & on TV.

Glover has done extensive stage work on Broadway, Off-Broadway & in regional theatre. Highlights for me include an Emmy nominated turn in An Early Frost, one of the first movies to deal with AIDS & in Annie Hall, in another tiny role, he utters to Diane Keaton, the very funny line: "Touch my heart. With your foot."

He has had reoccurring roles on Frasier, Murder She Wrote, Law & Order, Brothers & Sisters, Heroes, & as Lux Luther's father Lionel on Smallville.

Glover received a Tony nomination last year as Lucky in Waiting For Godot. For me the apex of his long career was playing 2 roles, twin brothers, in Love! Valor! Compassion!for which he won the Tony & repeated the role in the film version. I really admired & was touched this very fine performance.

Glover lives in NYC with his longtime partner- sculptor Adam Kurtzman. Glover turns 68 years old today.

Considering Myrna Loy On Her Birthday

Myrna Adele Williams was born on this date in 1905, in rural Montana, & she moved to Southern California in 1912, the sunny warm weather was thought to be of help for her mother's ill health. She found work in the chorus that performed live between features at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. She was noticed by Rudolph Valentino & a hired as an extra for the film-  Pretty Ladies, in which she & fellow newcomer Joan Crawford were among a bevy of chorus girls dangling from an elaborate chandelier.

Loy's high pitched voice made her transition to talkies difficult. She was often cast as "Oriental" or Mexican in her early sound films. Her performance in Penthouse (1933) convinced the MGM brass to cast her opposite William Powell in the first of the 6 Thin Man features, 1934's The Thin Man in which she portrayed Nora Charles. The film was a huge success & she found her well deserved Hollywood stardom. She became Hollywood's perfect wife, bright, witty & humorous. Loy took a break from films during WW2, except for another film as Nora Charles, to devote herself to Red Cross work & selling war bonds.

She returned to the movies in 1946 making such terrific films as The Best Years of Our Lives(1946), Song of the Thin Man (1947), the last of the series, The Bachelor & the Bobby-Soxer (1947), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House(1948), The Red Pony (1949), Cheaper By The Dozen (1950), & the sequel- Belles On Their Toes(1952).

She became more involved with liberal politics & only acted occasionally for the rest of her life. From 1949-1954 she served as a film advisor for UNESCO & she served as an advisor to the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. She appeared in Midnight Lace & From the Terrace (1960), The April Fools(1969), Airport 1975, The End (1978), & Just Tell Me What You Want (1980). She starred in several films for TV & made her Broadway debut in 1973 in a revival of The Women.

Like her friend- Cary Grant, she never received an Oscar for acting. She received an honorary Academy Award in 1991. Myrna Loy passed away in NYC during surgery on December 14, 1993. Class act, deserving of being the Husband’s favorite. He has the best of taste.

Good-Bye, Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

He was quite simply, one of my favorite writers, elegant & fearless. I have been reading him for more than 5 decades & my book shelves are heavy in the Vs.

He watched & reported on the decline of this once great country of ours. Gore Vidal reminded readers of our failure of education, manners on the decline, & political leaders cynical, cretinous, & closed to the reality.  He found the values & culture of his fellow Americans to be shameful, & the state of literature & pop culture, almost, but not quite, beyond words.

He had a distaste for TV, & it was a compliment to his skillful storytelling & considerable wit that he could appear with such frequency on the most popular medium to deride popular entertainment, & be welcomed back the following week to do it again.

There were few subjects for which he could not invent a quip, often memorably dismissive. Vidal could be relied on to be entertaining about almost anything: history, politics, art, journalism, theatre, sex, morals or celebrity.  Vidal: “I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which cannot be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”

His literary output was prodigious: collections of smart, witty, biting essays, plays, screenplays, & more than 20 novels, including 7 books about our country from the American Revolution to the Korean War known as the Narrative of Empire series.

Vidal: “Our leaders can no longer write their own speeches or books, & there is some evidence they cannot read them either. Our political system has become a game for the very rich.”

His statements found detractors. Norman Mailer went so far as to headbutt Vidal while they were in the green room, waiting to appear together on a chat show. William F. Buckley called his a fag, on air & threatened to punch him on the spot.  But, Vidal appeared to relish feuds. When Truman Capote made a comment about Vidal being thrown out of the Kennedy White House, Vidal sued for libel.

Vidal derided the term “gay” & claimed that he had had sex with 1,000s of people of both genders by the time he was 25. But the great love of his life was Jimmie Trimble, an athletics star who was to die at Iwo Jima, preserving forever the image of a kind of romantic ideal in Vidal’s mind.

Vidal joined the Army after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He served in a transport ship, ending the war as a warrant officer. It was while on board ship that he wrote his first novel- Williwaw (1946). The word means an Arctic squall, & the novel’s setup is the effect of the storm on a crew of hot young men in cramped conditions.

In 1948, Vidal’s The City & the Pillar was published. It is a groundbreaking novel of youthful homosexuality told against the background of the story of Sodom. At the time the Kinsey Report had just been released & homosexuality was more widely discussed, & acknowledged to exist, than ever before. Vidal: “I wanted to take risks, to try something no American had done before. I decided to examine the homosexual underworld, which I knew rather less well than I pretended, & in the process show the 'naturalness’ of homosexual relations.”  Written 2 years after Iwo Jima, the book was dedicated “to JT”.

Not shocking by current standards, at the time Vidal’s book was hugely controversial, & it was described it as embarrassing, courageous, serious, social tract. Some papers which slammed the novel would not accept advertisements for it. Vidal claimed that the book affected the reviews of future reviews he received from major publications, especially The NY Times, for his later books. “He may have been right,” The NY Times stated this morning.

In the 1950s he wrote screenplays in Hollywood: The Catered Affair, I Accuse, The Scapegoat, Suddenly Last Summer & Is Paris Burning?

Vidal wrote successfully for the theatre: Visit To A Small Planet, The Best Man (which had a well-received revival this Broadway season), Romulus, & An Evening With Richard Nixon. For TV he wrote: Dark Possession, The Death Of Billy The Kid, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, The Turn Of The Screw, State Door, & A Farewell to Arms. He found the work interesting, but only as a way to make money to buy time to write books.

I appreciate his essays the mist, but I have been lost in his elegant historical fiction where Vidal introduced real figures from the past, & combine them with gossipy asides from his fictional characters. His plots featured cameo appearances by Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Henry James & many others. In Empire (1987), Vidal set President Teddy Roosevelt & newspaper man William Randolph Hearst in a confrontation which becomes a reflection on the press’s power to make or break a politician.

In 1968 Vidal had a stunning success with Myra Breckenridge, a very funny spoof on the shattering of sexual barriers & a send-up of the porn industry so explicit that the book itself was labeled pornography. In his best known novel, Vidal managed to strike at young people, entertainment, writing, California, the decline of civilization & to rage about his particular concern- population control. He used sex-changed title character to repeat his vigorously held contention that only zero population growth can save the planet from starvation.

Vidal: “If the human race is to survive, population will have to be reduced drastically, if not by atomic war then by law, an unhappy prospect for civil liberties but better than starving... it may already be too late to save this ark of fools.”

Essays are my own favored written expression &Vidal’s collections are my favorites of his work: Sex, Death & Money (1968),  Reflections Upon A Sinking Ship (1969), Homage to Daniel Shays (1972), Matters of Fact & Fiction, & Armageddon (1987).

The Second American Revolution & Other Essays won the 1982 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for criticism. This collection  took on born-again Christians, politicians, universities, big business, the Churches & all those in authority, with awesome range & radical, renegade instinct to rail against established authority- clerical, academic, corporate & patriotic. Vidal observed that politics had become trivialized, with substance & debate replaced by talking heads allowed only seconds to make arguments about the future of the nation & the world.

In 1993 Vidal won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction for the collection United States: Essays 1952–1992. He followed this with a second collection of essays- The Last Empire, published in 2000.

Among my favorite books of all time are his pair of memoirs-  Palimpsest& Point to Point Navigation, in which he mentions his many sexual conquests as “ nothing special”,  compared to the pursuits of his pals John F. Kennedy & Tennessee Williams. Vidal was fond of drinking & alleged that he had sampled every major drug, once.

One of my favorite Vidal anecdotes:  During the casting of his 1959 play about a political convention- The Best Man, a talent agent proposed offering Ronald Reagan the lead. Vidal: “We all had a good laugh. He is by no means a bad actor, but he would hardly be convincing, I said with that eerie prescience which has earned me the title 'The American Nostradamus’, as a presidential candidate.”

He twice ran unsuccessfully for office. In 1960 he was a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York’s 29th district, and he ran for nomination as the Democratic senatorial candidate in 1982. Vidal would appear as himself in several cameo roles, including The Simpsons. In 2009 he was awarded the annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation.

He was host for a time on the TV program Hot Line, & received the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America in 1955. His novel of the ancient world- Creation, won the Prix Deauville in 1983.

Vidal lived in Beverly Hills, NYC, Rome & Ravello on Italy’s Adriatic coast, for more than half a century, with Howard Austen, a former advertising executive who died in 2003. Vidal & Austen chose cemetery plots in Washington DC, between Jimmie Trimble & one of Vidal's literary heroes, Henry Adams. At the end of his life, saddened by the death of Austen & many close friends, Vidal still looked to no existence beyond this one. "Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it, & quite enough, all in all."

I once played Gore Vidal, or rather I based a character, rather successfully, on the writer. The play was Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound & my character was an acerbic, bitter theatre critic. Vidal did my homework for me. Vidal has been a major player in my rather insignificant life & I like to think that I am a bit similar to him, minus his intelligence, talent & nerve.

Born On This Day- July 31st... Colin Higgins

Colin Higgins was one of Hollywood's most beloved directors & screenwriters. He is responsible for one of the most influential films of my youth- Harold & Maude.

Born in the South Pacific island of New Caledonia to an Australian mother & American father, Higgins moved with his family to Redwood, CA from Sydney in the 1950s. After attending Stanford University for a year, he dropped out to hitchhike across the country. His travels took him first to the Actors Studio in NYC & then to Europe where he volunteered for the Army as a sports reporter for The Stars & Stripes. He eventually returned to Stanford to receive his degree in English & later attended film school at UCLA. During his final year, he wrote the screenplay for Harold & Maude.

While today it is considered to be one of the greatest of Hollywood films, Harold & Maude was a huge flop when it opened during the Christmas season of 1971 with little fanfare or advertising. The unusual romance between a young man & a much older woman, starring Bud Cort & my muse- Ruth Gordon, struck a chord with audiences & soon became a cult favorite around the world. His stage version ran for just 9 performances on Broadway, but ran in Paris for 7 years.

Following the success of Harold & Maude, Higgins went on to write & direct some of the most successful films of the 1970s &1980s:  Silver Streak, Foul Play, 9 to 5, & The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.

In 1986, Higgins established a foundation in his name. The Colin Higgins Courage Awards recognizes ordinary but remarkable individuals who have endured overwhelming hostility & hate, yet have handled themselves with the utmost grace as they educate & enlighten others about the LGBT experience. Each winner receives $10,000 as part of the prize.

In addition to the Courage Awards, the Foundation also funds film scholarships & has supported over 390 LGBT groups, ranging from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender outreach & AIDS prevention programs in places like as Fayetteville, Arkansas & Biloxi, Mississippi.

In 1986, he also completed a mini-series based on Shirley MacLaine's book Out on a Limb, which turned out to be his last film project. Higgins died of AIDS in 1988.

Born On This Day- July 24th... Gus Van Sant

"Fate sucks. I swear. "

Matt Dillon as Bob in Drugstore Cowboy

If I had been somewhat clairvoyant while on the set of Drugstore Cowboy, I would have realized that one day I would someday be living in Portland Oregon, in fact, just 1 mile from where we were filming. I most likely would have dismissed the entire notion as too much candy from crafts services. I loved living in Seattle & I had the best agent in town. I had been fortunate enough to have worked in TV (Murder She Wrote, Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, A Day in the Life) & a whole lot of commercials & voice-overs, but the Gus Van Sant project was my first feature film. I was thrilled to be working with the talented director of Mala Noche, a film I really admired about & that had received an enthusiastic reception at The Seattle Film Festival in 1985.

I was working in a feature film! My scenes were with Matt Dillon! I have now done 12 films, but this one will always be so special. The very soft spoken Gus Van Sant creates an extremely creative atmosphere for working. Many of the actors that have done films with Van Sant have remarked on how great he is to work with & how conducive to creativity the conditions are on the set of his films. He was not big on rehearsing, but he would ask for something completely different with each take. Matt Dillon (who I have worked with twice) was such a nice gentleman. He would stay & read his lines back to me for our reverse shots. Dillon was such a “regular” guy. He would eat lunch, sitting at a big long table, with the rest of the cast, crew & grips & he spent very little time in his trailer. The rest of the cast were fun & friendly: Kelly Lynch, James LeGross & Heather Graham. I did not get to meet William S. Burroughs…my only regret from this experience.

I was invited to the premier of Drugstore Cowboy, but did not attend because I was performing in a play at the time. The film went on to rave reviews & it won Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay for Mr. Van Sant & Daniel Yost, Best Cinematography, Best Actor for Matt Dillon, & Best Supporting Actor for Max Perlich. It won Best Screenplay awards from the LA Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics & the NY Film Critics Circle, & Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. At the film’s Seattle premier, the Husband turned to me half way through the viewing & stated- “Oh. My. God. You are in a really GOOD movie!”

Gus Van Sant’s films have ranged from Oscar winning studio fare: Good Will Hunting & Finding Forrester, to very experimental: Gerry & Last Days, Indies: Elephant & Paranoid Park, noble, brave & baffling experiments: the shot by shot re-make of Psycho & Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. He has done 4 films that I love & to which I award an A on The Steve Report Card: Drugstore Cowboy (of course), My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, & Milk.

In 2002, shortly after relocating to Portland after 20 years in Seattle, I was standing with some new Portland friends & some dear former neighbors from Seattle on a street in the Peal District. My friend Susan: “Oh my God… look! That is Gus Van Sant!”. The Husband: “Yeah, he lives in this neighborhood… Stephen knows him”.

Our little group mumbled some: “yeah, sures & uh-huhs”. When Mr. Van Sant walked past us, he looked up, & said in his singular soft manner: “Hello… there… Stephen. I haven’t seen you in a while... strange… your head looks bigger…” & then he went on his way. My friends looked baffled & everyone wanted to know what he meant. I had no idea (what could he have meant?), but I told them that it was an industry term, that good actors had heads that were proportionately too large for their bodies. It was my Gus Van Sant moment.

Born On This Day- July 23rd... Gavin Lambert

I met Gavin Lambert at a coke fueled, debauched, all-male party at the home of producer Robert Fryer in the Hollywood Hills. The year was 1973 & it was the only period that I was briefly considered an ingénue. I actually didn’t mind being objectified & passed around. I liked being the object of desire, & being a bit of a slut, I was feeling very democratic & exceptionally open minded. I was hungry for experiences, & was not above putting out my crack for my crack at show biz.

I had smoked a joint that must have been enhanced with something extra, because I don’t remember how I ended up in bed with the handsome older man. In the early morning hours we started in for round 2, & when the little strands of conversation revealed that this man had written the novel & screenplay for one of my favorite movies from childhood- Inside Daisy Clover, featuring my favorite actor- Ruth Gordon, I went absolutely nutty, stuttering & muttering: “Oh my god, oh my god, that is my favorite movie, I love that movie! Oh yeah, that feels so good. Tell me about working with Ruth Gordon! Do that again, but slower, harder & lower! Oh, I can't believe you created that movie. I love that movie! Will you autograph my ass?” I think I ruined the hot mood with my sudden outburst of fandom.

For 50+ years, the “go to” guy for bitchy, witty & perceptive gossip about Hollywood was screenwriter, novelist & biographer Gavin Lambert, who has died. For much of the 1950s & 1960s, he lived in Hollywood, the inspiration & setting for most of his novels, including The Goodbye People (1971), The Slide Area(1960) & of course, Inside Daisy Clover (1963).

Armistead Maupin: "Decades before it was fashionable, Gavin Lambert expertly wove characters of every sexual stripe into his lustrous tapestries of southern California life. His elegant, stripped down prose caught the last gasp of old Hollywood in a way that has yet to be rivaled."

Lambert wrote the biography- Mainly About Lindsay Anderson (2000), about his friend & roommate at Oxford, director Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life, O' Luck Man, If ). Lambert & Anderson founded the short lived but influential film journal- Sequence(1949-51), while at Oxford. Unlike Anderson, who was tortured throughout his life by guilt about his homosexuality (he fell for happily married, heterosexual young men), Lambert was gaily gay. He had a series of fulfilling relationships.

Lambert had an affair with director Nicholas Ray, whose films- Bigger Than Life (1956) & Bitter Victory (1957) Lambert wrote the screenplays. His longest relationship, however, was with Mart Crowley, who wrote the influential gay play- The Boys In The Band (which I acted in- Boston, autumn 1972). The couple had a home together in L.A.

Lambert wrote & directed Another Sky in 1955, & the film was shot in Morocco. The rather modest film tells the story of a young English woman who discovers her sensuality in North Africa, a reflection Lambert's own sexual liberation in Tangier. He lived in Morocco from 1974 to 1989 on the suggestion of writer Paul Bowles, whom he met in L.A. at the home of Christopher Isherwood & Don Bachardy.

Inside Daisy Clover(1966) was made into a film from Lambert’s novel with a screenplay by the author. Directed by Robert Mulligan, it tells the tale of how the fame & fortune of a young star, played by Natalie Wood, leads to misery & a nervous breakdown. Lambert first met Wood when he went to Hollywood as an assistant to Ray on Rebel Without A Cause. In 2004, Lambert wrote a revealing biography of the star- Natalie Wood: A Life, admitting they had shared at least one lover. According to Lambert, a 17 year old Natalie Wood lost her virginity to Lambert’s boyfriend Nick Ray. Lambert's biography includes Wood's relationships with Elvis Presley, Robert Wagner, Warren Beatty, Paul Mazursky, & Leslie Caron. In his book, Lambert claimed that Wood frequently dated gay & bisexual men, including Nick Adams, Raymond Burr, James Dean, Tab Hunter, & Scott Marlowe. Lambert also said that Wood helped support his lover- playwright Mart Crowley making it possible for him to writeThe Boys in the Band(1968).

Lambert's best screenplays were adaptations with gay overtones: Sons & Lovers (1960), based on the novel by D.H. Lawrence, was Oscar nominated, The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone (1961), from Tennessee Williams' novel, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (1977), & Liberace, Behind The Music (1988).

He wrote biographies: On Cukor (1972), Norma Shearer: A Life (1990), & Nazimova: A Biography (1997) which was the first full scale account of the private life & acting career of lesbian actress Alla Nazimova. He also wrote GWTW: The Making of Gone With the Wind (1973). I own them all. Lambert was able to interview & gain personal remembrances of those involved with the classic 1939 film, including dismissed director George Cukor & star Vivien Leigh .

I have reason to believe that before his death in 2005, Lambert was working on a book- The Greatest Sex in Hollywood: The 1970s, where I was to be mentioned in the chapter- Live Fast & Die Young, but I was probably there as a footnote. Mr. Lambert was every inch the gentleman to me. Today is his birthday. He would have been 88 years old.

Born On This Day- July 11th... Tab Hunter

Arthur Andrew Kelm Gelien was an equestrian & figure skater before his agent, Henry Wilson turned him into Tab Hunter (the same agent that came up with the name Rock Hudson). Tab Hunter has appeared in over 40 films & has worked on stage & TV. My favortite Tab Hunter role is as Joe Hardy in the1958 film version of Damn Yankees. He was the only one in the film version who had not been in the original Broadway cast.

In the year of my birth-1954, Hunter, then 23, blond & blue eyed, the perfect product of a popular perceptibility, as free from cynicism & care as a sky can be cloudless & clear, was the #1 male star at the box office with the film- Battle Cry. By 1957 he was also #1 on the pop music charts with Young Love, topping Elvis Presley.

By 1959 his ride was ending. Troy Donahue was invented & he became the next Tab Hunter, & Hunter at 28 was more or less done. Hunter began a 46 year descent into actors’ hell: spaghetti westerns (Hunter describes them as - "short on the meat sauce"), TV guest shots, dinner theater, infomercials, & the film Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood.

Then, in the 1980s, after the long trip through the depths of drek & a heart attack, Hunter was rediscovered by Post Apocalyptic Bohemian- John Waters. In Polyester (1981), Waters used Hunter, who had starred opposite John Wayne as well as Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren & a bevy of beauties, to play opposite Divine as Francine Fishpaw.  His work in Polyester reinvented Hunter as an ironic illustration of his own Hollywood iconography.

Hunter said Hollywood in the 1950s had its version of "Don't ask, don't tell": "Don't complain, don't explain." Let the studio take care of the actors, & let the public draw its conclusions.

Hunter: "Hollywood will just take you, chew you up, spit you out, dump you on the side & go on to the next, & it's kind of tragic." In 2005, Hunter released a terrific & very readable memoir- Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of A Movie Star where he finally publicly came out of the closet. Hunter: "Life was difficult for me, because I was living 2 different lives at that time. A private life of my own, which I never discussed, never talked about to anyone. Then my Hollywood life, which was just trying to learn my craft & succeed..." the word 'gay' wasn't even around in those days, & if anyone ever confronted me with it, I'd just kinda freak out. I was in total denial. I was just not comfortable in that Hollywood scene, other than the work process. There was a lot written about my sexuality, & the press was pretty darn cruel."

Hunter enjoyed long term relationships with actor Anthony Perkins & champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson before settling down with his partner of 30 years, Allan Glaser, a producer. The couple live in Montecito, California.

He was one of my first crushes. I think Tab Hunter was & is a blond bombshell. I don't hate that he is a Republican… but I do hate his Republicanism.

Born On This Day- July 7th... George Cukor

I just am crazy for the scene in one of my favorite films- Gods & Monsters: director James Whale brings his hot gardener stud to a party at George Cukor's home, with Princess Margaret as a honored guest. So well filmed & telling, director Bill Condon claims he shot the budget wad on that scene, but it was worth it.

George Cukor's private life was well known in Hollywood. His Sunday afternoon pool parties were legendary in gay circles, having been described at lurid detail by some of the party guests, including writer John Rechy. His home, decorated by actor-turned interior designer William Haines, was the spot for Hollywood homosexuals to gather. The close knit group included Haines & his partner Jimmie Shields, Alan Ladd, Somerset Maugham, James Vincent, screenwriter Rowland Leigh, costume designers Orry-Kelly & Robert Le Maire, & actors John Darrow, Robert Walker, Anderson Lawler, Robert Seiter & Tom Douglas. Frank Horn- secretary to Cary Grant, was a frequent guest. Cukor & his sophisticated & artistic friends socialized with their boyfriends- often hustlers, rough trade, actor wannabes, or ambitious artists & writers who saw his parties as way into the exclusive Hollywood life.

My favorite anecdote: Hunky, young Forrest Tucker, who was straight, would show up at Cukor's Sunday afternoon parties & swim naked in the pool for the viewing pleasure of Cukor's famous gay guests: W. Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton & other assorted influential gays in the art, literature, & movies. Tucker realized these men were important contacts & was one of many up & coming young studs who were willing to make a naked appearance for the sake of their careers. Among them was handsome, hunk, hairy Aldo Ray, whom Cukor seemed to like well enough to cast him in Pat & Mike& The Marrying Kind with Judy Holliday.

Cukor's personal reputation has suffered somewhat from these anecdotes. Rechy: “Cukor was a catty, sometimes cruel queen who was as gifted at separating his private & public personas as he was at making films.” Yet among his close friends, those important enough to him to have his home filled with their photographs: Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lauren Bacall & Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh, Stanley Holloway, Judy Garland, Gene Tierney, Noël Coward, Cole Porter, James Whale, Edith Head, Norma Shearer, Irving Thalberg, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Aldous Huxley, Ferenc Molnár, Christopher Isherwood & Don Bachardy, & close friend Somerset Maugham.

As a semi-closeted gay artist in Hollywood, one of Cukor's constant themes was how to reconcile a double life, an outsider or artist always at war with his or her own demons & the limits imposed by relationships & society. In other films, there is the meeting of 2 sides. For Cukor this seemed to represent true happiness. In Holiday (1938), Cary Grant rejects his rich, stuffy fiancée in favor of her spinster sister, played by Katharine Hepburn. who turns out to be a dreamer like himself.

Cukor is often given the title. “women’s director”, but he was the 1st to show Cary Grant as a romantic comedian in Sylvia Scarlett, & he launched the careers of Jack Lemmon, Aldo Ray, Tom Ewell & Anthony Perkins as well as Katharine Hepburn & Angela Lansbury. He directed W. C. Fields, Lew Ayres, Spencer Tracy & James Mason to performances that should have won Oscars, & James Stewart, Ronald Colman & Rex Harrison to performances that did. Plus: Max Carey in What Price Hollywood?, John Barrymore in Dinner at Eight, Cary Grant in Holiday& The Philadelphia Story, Ronald Colman in A Double Life, Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib, & Laurence Olivier in Love Among The Ruins. All these actors discovered new dimensions to their screen personalities under Cukor's smart, shrewd & sympathetic direction.

Among his most personal films: Little Women, The Marrying Kind, Pat & Mike& A Star Is Born. None of them is glossy, & none of them started as theatre.

Cukor usually filmed from the viewpoint of his female main character. This is evident in his Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy romantic comedy Pat & Mike & as it is in more obviously female-centered stories such as Little Women, & Gaslight . His concentration on strong women, along with Clark Gable's "ick factor"over Cukor's homosexuality, were the reasons for the director's firing from Gone With the Wind byproducer David O. Selznick.

All of his life Cukor fought an inferiority complex based on his ugliness, weight & life in an anti-Semitic America. His biggest secret was his active homosexuality. Among the major directors of the golden years of Hollywood, only he & James Whale were, more or less, basically openly gay. He died in 1983, 2 years after his last film- Rich & Famous. Cukor is buried in an unmarked grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery.

My favorite Cukor Film: Philadelphia Story. My Favorite Cukor moment: Cary Grant's speech on kindness to haughty Katherine Hepburn as haughty Tracy Lord.

What is your favorite Cukor moment? I really want to know.

Born On This Day- July 5th... Overachiever, Jean Cocteau

My husband is a hyphenate (most people in Portland are), as an artist-designer-set designer, but he is a bit of an underachiever, compared with poet-artist-playwright-actor-designer-photographer-filmmaker-boxing manager- Jean Cocteau. Cocteau published his 1st volume of poems when he was 19. He was a well regarded artist & popular man-about-town in Paris, with the success of several ballets & plays that he wrote in his late 20s. In the early 1920s, Cocteau's lover, writer Raymond Radiguet, died of typhoid fever; the despondent Cocteau escaped the pain of his loss with the help of opium. In 1930, Cocteau tried film making as the medium best suited for his artistic expression. His stylized, homoerotic films are taken from Cocteau's drawings: bold, simple strokes, accentuated eyes, minimalist outlines & profiles, & erotic, surrealistic portraits that dominate the sets of his films. In his later films, Cocteau included bits of his poetry written in his distinctive handwriting, samples of his drawings & paintings, narration, & cast himself in certain roles.

Cocteau’s work is marked by whimsical special effects & exotic landscapes & themes of narcissism, the Orpheus myth, mirrors, passages to secret worlds, fairy tales, flowers, & beautiful people in iconographic settings. In 1937, Cocteau met Jean Marais, the most famous of his lovers, & helped make his talented, handsome, & athletic protégé into one of France's most beloved movie stars. Cocteau made with Marais, such classics films as La belle et la bête & Orphée.

Cocteau by Modigliani

Cocteau encouraged artists to speak out against unjust political domination, & yet he was burdened by the open secrets of his opium use & homosexuality, which made him particularly vulnerable to attack by the right-wing government. During the Nazi Occupation, Cocteau's plays were banned & Cocteau was a victim of physical violence & homophobic insults. But still, Cocteau wrote, made films, traveled, & attracted famous friends, patrons, & protégés throughout the rest of his life. Cocteau was elected to the prestigious Académie Français. The artist died of a heart attack in 1963, just an hour after learning of singer Édith Piaf's death. He wrote more than 30 volumes of poetry, 7 novels, 24 plays, 11 ballets, 6 operas, 6 full length films, & 100s of drawings & photographs. He contributed to the worlds of publishing, graphic design, clothing design, & interior design. Jean Cocteau continues to this day as one of France's most famous, & most adored, cultural icons. A fascinating gay man of the 20th century. How about Adrien Brody in the title role of the film of his life story?

Born On This Day- July 1st... Farley Earle Granger

Friday, when I should have been composing a post for this, my little spot on the internet, I watched back to back Hitchcock on AMC. I thought I had seen all of Alfred Hitchcock’s Hollywood period films & some of his early British silent & early talkies, but I had somehow missed- Marnie, from 1964. I finally watched this film in amazement & afterwards I felt I needed to put together a post on my impressions of this nearly nutty psychological thriller about a frigid & fragile person, who is raped by Sean Connery, but then I thought- why, when I live it every day?

Immediately after viewing Marnie, I dug into my at least 5^th time with Rope. I am always up for a little Farley Granger. Granger had a career on stage & screen from the early 1940s- into the new century. He was well known for starring in a pair of films Hitchcock with legendary homosexual subtext- Rope & Strangers On A Train.

His first starring role in They Live by Night, directed by bi-sexual Nicholas Ray, is considered to be one of his finest film performances. Granger’s sensitive portrayal of a bank robber caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock. While preparing to shoot Rope a movie inspired by the notorious Leopold & Loeb murder case, Granger & co-star John Dall (whose homosexuality was also well known in the Hollywood community) were cast as a pair affluent young men, who set out to commit a " Prefect Murder".

The men’s sexuality is never made explicit in the film, but the relationship between Granger’s & Dall’s characters has a strong homoerotic subtext, skillfully sewn together by Hitchcock & his actors. The film became notorious for its continuous, uninterrupted 10-minute takes, the amount of time a reel of Technicolor film lasted. It was a difficult feat as Hitchcock ran into numerous technical problems which frequently brought the action to a halt throughout the 21 day shoot.

3 years after starring in Rope, Granger again worked with Hitchcock in the classic thriller Strangers on a Train, based on the first novel by acclaimed lesbian writer Patricia Highsmith, who authored The Talented Mr. Ripley & a series of Ripley books. Although Hitchcock himself was dissatisfied with the end result, Strangers On A Train was a box office hit & the first major success of Granger’s career & is one of my favorite Hitchcock’s films.

Granger remained secretive about his private life, but his homosexuality has been widely known in the Hollywood & Broadway acting communities. Among his many lovers was Post Apocalyptic Bohemain favorite- Arthur Laurents who wrote the screenplay for Rope. Laurents speaks kindly of him in his memoir- Original Story By.

Granger had shorter affairs with Leonard Bernstein & Robert Walker, he remained friends with both of them until each of their deaths. In 1995 he was one of many on-screen actors interviewed for Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman’s ground-breaking documentary The Celluloid Closet, discussing the depiction of homosexuality in film, in particular Rope & Strangers On A Train.

Granger was a profoundly good looking actor of considerable range & style: Broadway, films, musicals, light comedies & noir. I found him to be the epitome of how to age with class. He was in a long domestic partnership with stage manager-  Robert Calhoun, who passed away on 2008. Together they had written Granger's dishy memoir, deliciously titled- Include Me Out. Granger died in the same week as Elizabeth Taylor last spring.

Born On This Day- June 25th... John Benjamin Hickey

Love him! John Benjamin Hickey has starred in some of the most beloved plays of the last decade & a half, beginning with a play I am crazy for, Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!  & Broadway revivals of Cabaret, The Crucible, & The Normal Heart, where his performance as Felix Turner earned him the 2011 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In accepting his Tony Award, after listing a large number of people in his life, & after glancing at his notes, Hickey stated: “thank you to my wise, my wonderful, my exceedingly patient Jeffrey Richmond, my partner.”  Richmond is a writer on Modern Family.

Currently, Hickey plays Sean, the homeless brother of the main character, on the Showtime series, The Big C, which I am going to watch starting with episode #1 this summer. Why have I passed on this show when I just love Laura Linney & Hickey.

On film, he repeated his Broadway role in Love! Valour! Compassion! , a film I love. Hickey played gay American novelist & playwright Jack Dunphy in the 2006 Truman Capote biopic- Infamous, along with supporting roles in other films, including Post Apocalyptic favorites-The Ref & The Ice Storm, The Taking Of Pelham 123, Transformers 2, Flags Of Our Fathers & The Anniversary Party.  On TV Hickey played Philip Stoddard on ABC's short-lived gay-themed sitcom It's All Relative. Other TV appearances:  Alias, Law & Order, Brothers & Sisters, Stacked, Undercover History, Heartland, In Plain Sight, Law & Order: LA. He was terrific in Life with Judy Garland: Me & My Shadows.

I appreciate creative, interesting, engaging character actors that continue to work in all media.

Hickey lives with Richmond in NYC & LA. He turns 49 years old today.