NOTE: This is part two of an exploration of the enduring influence of the Hollywood media machine on our lives and our psyches, and why it matters to seek the truth as fervently as we embrace the illusions.
Film critic A.O. Scott, in his review of the current Oscar-nominated film, Mank (NY Times, Dec 4, 2020), offers an interesting take on one of HfOH’s key themes. “For as long as anyone can remember,” he writes, “Hollywood has reverently burnished and energetically debunked its own mythology. This isn’t hypocrisy; it’s show business.” Moreover, he says, we as fans and moviegoers are not simply passive victims of Hollywood’s grand-scale media manipulation; rather, “we enjoy being fooled” — or as I’ve written about the fan magazines in particular, we appreciate being told the lies we wanted to hear — “and we also take pleasure in studying the machinery of our bamboozlement.”
Studying the machinery of our bamboozlement is, precisely, what HfOH aims to do in these blogs. But there’s a sticking point. We all love the romantic, hopeful, heart-tugging, inspiring, pulse-racing, villainous, sometimes all-of-the-above illusions put forth on film and television and in the fan magazines. As Scott said, we also love pulling back the curtain on those illusions, but only as long as what we find there doesn’t hurt too much. When reality moves us too far out of our comfort zone, or tampers with the scaffolding of our own essential dreams and understandings, we’ll skip the truth and take the lies — or the unknowing — thank you very much.
As an example: A reader posted this comment on an HfOH Facebook mini-blog about Claudette Colbert: “I was interested in this until you started talking rumors. That is too much like gossip.” The comment came from an ongoing follower of HfOH posts, so one might expect her to know that rumor and gossip were, in fact, the currency of midcentury Hollywood and my primary subject matter. But here is the portion of the FB post that offended: “Married twice, Colbert always denied rumors of her relationships with women, though the consensus among Hollywood insiders suggests otherwise: ‘It was taken for granted that she was gay, or at least not conventionally straight’ (William J. Mann, Behind the Screen, 2001), and she left the bulk of her considerable estate to a female companion of more than 20 years.”
Similarly, I’ve seen a number of early photos of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott on other vintage-oriented FB sites. Inevitably, someone comments that the two were known to have been a couple back in the day — and, inevitably, others push back, noting Grant’s marriages, quoting Scott’s son and denouncing rumor, gossip and hearsay. For these commenters, and for my commenter about Colbert, I believe that what offends them is not rumor per se but the too-near-certainty that a much-admired star was someone other than the image they’d believed. An Amazon.com reader-reviewer commenting on a Cary Grant biography admitted as much, noting that the author “largely” glossed over stories about Grant’s relationships with men, “though he could have ignored it more.” In summary, the reviewer wrote, “I enjoyed this time travel back to midcentury Hollywood, though I preferred my unenlightened misconceptions about my old idol.”
Even in this century, when we tend to think of sexual mores as relaxed and (relatively) tolerant, many biographical write-ups hedge about the sexuality of old-guard movie stars. Read a lot of the literature on Spencer Tracy — including his lengthy, heavily annotated Wikipedia entry — and you’ll find no hint of his sexual involvements with men. Rather, you get Tracy the reputed womanizer and the iconic tale of an enduring love affair between Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, as reported in this item from Modern Screen’s Hollywood Yearbook (No. 7, 1964): “For 22 years, Hollywood, the press, their friends, Spence’s wife, have all been aware of the friendship and affection which has existed between Spence, now 63, and Katie, 54. And for 22 years, a relationship which might have (at one point) exploded into ugly headlines has been conducted with taste and dignity.” This despite considerable evidence that the bond between Tracy and Hepburn, while deep and authentic, was essentially platonic and that both were involved with others of their own sex.
Some of that evidence can be found in William J. Mann’s exhaustive biography of Hepburn (Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, 2006), which a Variety review (Oct 22, 2006) described as “a reminder not to take stars at their word about their private life” — and which is not cited at all in Tracy’s Wikipedia entry. Mann quotes, among others, a former head of the research department at MGM, who’d encountered Tracy at a couple of George Cukor’s famously gay pool parties: “‘Everyone at Metro knew the truth about Kate and Spencer. They knew they were together but that it wasn’t a sexual thing. I always laugh when I hear people say, Oh, wasn’t it good of Hollywood not to gossip, to be so respectful of their affair. But nobody was gossiping because they knew there was nothing to gossip about!’”
Though stars’ sexual orientation is the most common bone of contention, far more challenging examples exist — such as the likelihood that Desi Arnaz physically abused Lucille Ball, or that Kirk Douglas raped Natalie Wood when she was 16 years old, or that Robert Wagner bears some responsibility for his wife’s death, or that Woody Allen molested his daughter. It’s one thing to watch Cary Grant say “I’ve gone gay!” in Bringing Up Baby. It’s another thing to watch Allen’s Manhattan.
Fans who push back against unwanted information about their “old idols” inevitably cite the lack of “proof” to dismiss it, e.g., one Facebook commenter’s diss of the documentary series “Allen v. Farrow”: “Basically they can’t use the legal system to ruin him, that’s already been tried, so they ruin him like they ruin everyone else, in the court of public opinion where you don’t need things like facts, evidence, etc.” Coming from a family of lawyers and judges, and with both an ingrained penchant for and vocational history of “just the facts, ma’am,” this is where I get a little queasy. Because of course, like any responsible person, I want definitive evidence; of course I deplore inflammatory accusations that can derail a career or even a life. And yet it’s essential to acknowledge the ways in which people with power and influence can and do manipulate those reasonable, responsible perspectives in order to subvert the truth. And the Hollywood publicity machine has long been a master at doing precisely that.
Does that mean we accept any semi-plausible accusation as truth? Of course not. But it does mean, I think, letting go of what we want to be true, heeding Variety’s admonition not simply to take stars at their word, and looking closely at the available information — in the Wood-Wagner case, to take just one example, recognizing the proficiency with which Wagner has always wielded his charm and influence to boost his own prospects; examining the role that an even more influential pal, Frank Sinatra, may have played in closing down the initial investigation; and reviewing in detail a variety of information that’s come to light since Wood’s case reopened. And when it comes to sexuality, it means shutting down the double standard by which such relationships have long been judged. As William J. Mann says in Behind the Screen, “The ‘burden of proof’ for homosexuality has traditionally been held far higher than that for heterosexuality.” He quotes another historian, Neil Miller: “To insist on evidence of genital sex or the discovery of some lost ‘coming out’ manifesto to prove that someone was gay or lesbian sets up a standard of proof that cannot be met.” That, Mann continues, “isn’t the case for heterosexuality. Popular wisdom presumes a romantic, sexual relationship between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy — despite the fact that neither ever claimed such.”
When all else fails, a strategy for dismissing those discomfiting, unwanted possibilities and truths is to claim that, in the end, all that matters is what’s on the screen. As New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik wrote about Frank Sinatra’s artistry in his review of The Chairman (Nov 24, 2015), “Why does the other crap matter at all?” But it does matter, as Gopnik goes on to acknowledge. “It matters because if art and the lower reaches of journalism and biography converge on a single point of common purpose, it is in being truthful about human beings as they really are and not as we would have them to be.”
James Leo Herlihy, author of the novel Midnight Cowboy, on which the great, disturbing 1969 John Schlesinger film was based, addressed precisely this theme in his story about the hustler Joe Buck. In a publicity brochure for the novel (quoted in Glenn Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, 2021) he explained he was pushing back against “the cowboy of American legend… a figure who rode into town tall and brave in his saddle, jaw squared in defense of the True and the Good and the Just. In his purity, this creature of high noon cast no shadow at all. But his legend did. And that’s the story I hope I’ve told, of places where the shadow fell, and of the price a culture inevitably pays for the lies and half-truths it tells itself.” As Adam Gopnik concludes, “History is what we have to struggle to remember even when legend is more pleasing.”
Image credits, clockwise from upper left: (1) Tracy and Hepburn in an ad for Keeper of the Flame, from Motion Picture, Feb 1943; (2) Claudette Colbert, also from Motion Picture, Feb 1943; (3) Rock Hudson and Phyllis Gates, secretary to Hudson’s agent, Henry Willson, and Hudson’s wife/beard for three years, from Movie Life, July 1956; (4) Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, from the cover of Photoplay, Feb 1959; (5) Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner in an ad for The Bad and the Beautiful, from Motion Picture, Feb 1953; (6) Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, from Movie Fan, July 1952.
Millie Wilson says
Brilliant unpacking of a resistant paradox!
Maxine Montgomery says
Great article!! I never felt any sexual chemistry between Tracy & Hepburn so was not surprised to learn that their relationship was platonic (although your post is the first place I’ve ever seen this written).
Carey B Boethel says
Just me, but I can’t seem to find more in, or from, a celebrity than the imagery recalled from their cumulative portrayals.
Marg Brown says
I never believed Kirk raped Natalie. I saw a picture of her , Wagner and Kirk greeting each other and Kirk was holding Natalie ‘s hands, all were smiling. Would she be in a picture with Kirk, let alone be in the same room as him, if he brutally raped her ??? I think not !
Martha Boethel says
We’ll never know for certain, but there’s a lot to suggest that he did, including the people she told at the time and Douglas’s own behavior patterns back in the day. And by many accounts Wood always did what she could to avoid encounters with him. One of the things about Hollywood is that, if you want to keep working, you must find a way to coexist with powerful people. And even then, Douglas was a big power in the industry.