#TBT: THEY DIED IN THE CLOSET

[sheshe2]

Katharine Hepburn (pictured above in Sylvia Scarlett)
The original gender-norm rebel, Hepburn was iconoclastic in her choices of film roles, her choice of men’s clothing, and her lovers. Scotty Bowers’s 2012 book Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars lays raw the sex lives of the bronze, golden, and silver ages of Hollywood. His decades as a procurer for the various colorful sexual personalities in Hollywood and Beverly Hills spell out in stark terms the specifics to which the gay rumors had only just alluded. Names are named, among them Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, George Cukor, Anthony Perkins, and Rock Hudson. He claims to have arranged over 150 hook-ups for the Oscar-winning actress and claims that her famed relationship with Spencer Tracy was a sham. Is Bowers to be believed? Cynic, truth-seeker, and homosexual Gore Vidal insisted that Bowers’s stories hold up. — Christopher Harrity



Anthony Perkins
The dark and brooding boy next door had a secret, and that secret was that his boyfriend was the sunny and athletic boy next door Tab Hunter. Perkins’s appeal was a sincere and vulnerable personality with a face that revealed emotions that lurked beneath the surface. He was an award-winning actor early in his career as well as a recording star with Billboard-charted hits. His fame exploded with the release of Hitchcock’s Psycho, and forever after he was typecast as the “disturbed young man.” There are photos of Perkins and Tab Hunter on arranged double dates as they sit next to each other in movie houses with the girls flanking the outside. Everyone looks miserable. Off camera, Perkins suffered great anxiety over his sexual orientation and underwent therapy to help overcome his attraction to other men. He eventually married a woman, photographer Berry Berenson (who was a passenger on the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center September 11, 2001), and fathered two sons, but according to TCM never fully overcame his personal demons and suffered the dismay of learning he was HIV-positive via a story in The National Enquirer. — C.H.





Sally Ride
The first American woman in space, Ride had a long-term same-sex relationship, something that didn’t become known until she died in 2012; her obituary listed her female partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, as a survivor. Ride, who flew multiple space missions, was married to a man, fellow astronaut Stephen Hawley, when she met O’Shaughnessy; the revelation of their divorce coincided with her retirement from NASA. “She was so eager to promote and protect the space agency, she might well have hidden her private life to help preserve its image,” speculates biographer Lynn Sherr in the just-published Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space. Ride also had witnessed her lesbian sister, Bear, being forced out of a job in the clergy due to her sexual orientation, something else that may have kept the astronaut in the closet. Ride and O’Shaughnessy went on to found Sally Ride Science, an organization that encourages girls to pursue scientific careers. Their relationship was an open secret to employees there, known but not discussed, but Ride gave O’Shaughnessy permission to open her closet door posthumously. — T.R.



The 6-foot-5 actor was the king of the dreamboats. His light comedy romps with Doris Day as well as his more serious films like Giant and Seconds allowed him to also be considered as a serious actor. His television series McMillan & Wife kept him on our screens once a week, and his last performances were on the campy, iconic Dynasty. Rock Hudson tried to play both sides of the closet. He was very out at his legendary pool parties. Folks such as Armistead Maupin have written about their sexual experiences with him. But he also married his agent Henry Wilson’s secretary Phyllis Gates. Gates was revealed to be a lesbian later in The Advocate. The walls of the closet all but evaporated when Hudson began being seriously ill with AIDS. Even then he said it was from blood transfusions. Regardless, Hudson’s death from AIDS complications resulted in enormous public awareness of the disease and as Morgan Fairchild said, “Rock Hudson’s death gave AIDS a face.” — C.H.

See More~
http://lgbtworld.info/

[LeftInTX]

1. Raymond Burr - AKA Perry Mason

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Even sadder...

...people STILL die in the closet.

[sheshe2]

3. I know