Marlon Brando

Hollywood’s Rogue Bisexual

UPDATED POSTING: 

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marlon Brando (April 3, 1924 Omaha, Nebraska). It's time to light a candle to this revolutionary actor.

I have revised this post with information from more recent sources. So many readers have questioned the veracity of facts presented below that I have moved my bibliography to the front of this post.

Sources: 

The Contender by William J. Mann (2019; 718 pages)

Brando's Smile by Susan Mizruchi (2014; 512 pages)

Brando: the Biography by Peter Manso (1994; 1,118 pages)

He was a tough guy with a stunningly beautiful face. At first he wanted to be a drummer. Then a dancer; he studied modern dance with Katherine Dunham in the early 40s. Turned out the only things he was good at were sports and drama, invariably coupled with a determined, rogue lifestyle. Known as "Bud," he got kicked out of high school for riding a motorcycle through the hallways. He once came to the rescue of a skinny 9-year-old kid being taunted and beaten by schoolyard thugs, helped him up, threw his arm around him and said, “I’m your new best friend.”

Thus began a bizarre, intimate relationship with fellow actor Wally Cox that would last a lifetime -- for 40 years until Cox's death. Both men were born in 1924, and for many years they were roommates. After Cox died in 1973, Brando kept the ashes for safekeeping, because he wanted his own ashes to be commingled with Wally’s when the time came. Sure enough, in 2004, Brando’s family honored his request. The Associated Press reported, “The ashes of Brando’s late friend Wally Cox, who died in 1973, were also poured onto the desert landscape of Death Valley as part of the ceremony of scattering Brando’s ashes.” Brando not only kept his friend’s ashes for more than 30 years, but, when lonely, would sometimes dine with the urn, holding conversations in which he would perfectly imitate Cox’s distinctive voice, even at times keeping the urn under his car seat.

Unlike many bisexuals (like Cary Grant), who denied their homosexual activity all their lives, Marlon Brando brazenly admitted it. In a 1976 interview, Brando said, “Homosexuality is now so much in fashion it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me.”

Brando was bisexual and possessed of a voracious libido. There were plenty of homosexual experiences to report – among his partners were Burt Lancaster, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Leonard Bernstein, Noël Coward, Clifford Odetts, Christian Marquand (especially Christian Marquand), Tyrone Power, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift (on a dare, they once ran naked down Wall Street together), James Dean and Rock Hudson. Striving for a balanced diet, however, his conquests also included Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner, Gloria Vanderbilt, Hedy Lamarr, Tallulah Bankhead, Ingrid Bergman, Rita Moreno (especially Rita Moreno), Edith Piaf and Doris Duke (the world’s richest woman at the time).

By the age of 23 Brando had achieved stardom as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's stage play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). When he reprised this role in the 1951 film version, Brando received an Oscar nomination for best actor. As success piled upon success, Brando had a hard time dealing with his fame and celebrity. By the time of his death, the American Film Institute had named Brando the fourth greatest male film star, and Time Magazine included him in its list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, near the end of his career he had lost interest in acting; he took on roles only for the money. 

He was a generous and tireless advocate for social justice, particularly for the rights of African-Americans and Native Americans. He supported statehood for Israel, and in 1946 he performed in Ben Hecht's Zionist play, A Flag is Born. When Brando read in a newspaper that actress Veronica Lake had fallen on hard times and was working as a cocktail waitress in Manhattan, he had his accountant mail her a check for $1,000; she never cashed it, out of pride, but framed it and hung it on a wall to show to her gay friends.

The roles he lived off-screen were even more provocative than those he created on film. When filming Mutiny on the Bounty in Tahiti in the early 1960s, he fell in love with the place and purchased a private 12-island atoll. He married the Tahitian actress who played his love interest in the film and became fluent in French, her native tongue (he conducted many interviews in French). Rita Moreno, a long-term lover, responded by attempting suicide.

 
The world knew of his predilection for “dark-skinned women”, particularly those of Tahitian and American Indian descent. That Brando had a skinny, bespectacled male lover called Wally didn’t fit the image. Yet he once admitted that he had never been happy with a woman, adding: “If Wally had been a woman, I would have married him, and we would have lived happily ever after.” Wally Cox was the only person Brando allowed to berate him – many was the time that Cox would put Brando in his place.

In his youth Brando was an electrifyingly handsome and talented star. Exuding a sense of brooding power and bottled-up anger, he changed the way stars, both male and female, acted and even the way young men dressed. 

A fellow student, Mae Cooper, said after a workshop presentation, "people suddenly started looking at him. It gave you the chills, like the dawn of something great. It was like suddenly you woke up and there's your idiot child playing Mozart. It made your hair stand on end."

James Dean based his entire charisma on Brando, whom he worshiped. Marlon’s blue jeans and tight T-shirts became standard issue while  he reigned as the male sex symbol of the 1950s. But he was much more than just a rebel. He later chalked up two Oscar-winning performances in On the Waterfront and The Godfather.

In later years he admitted, “I searched for, but never found, what I was looking for either on screen or off. Mine was a glamorous, turbulent life – but completely unfulfilling.” At the time of his death at 80 years old in 2004, he weighed well over 300 pounds and was suffering from diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, congestive heart failure, liver cancer and failing eyesight. I found a photo of a hugely bloated, fat Brando taken shortly before his death, but I couldn't bear to post it. I'd rather be in denial of what came at the end of this remarkable life.

Born 1924, Omaha, Nebraska
Died 2004, Los Angeles, California

Brilliant, stubborn, eccentric actor

A performance on the night of December 3, 1947, made theatrical history. A Streetcar Named Desire opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in NYC, and no one could remember an actor or actress so electrifying an audience. For days people had lined up around the block to buy tickets. Theater doyenne Jean Dalrymple said, “From the moment Brando walked out on stage, all eyes were riveted on him. He was like an animal in heat, with those tight jeans and sweaty T-shirt. His Stanley was violent and crude, totally mesmerizing. I don’t recall having seen such utter rapture in a drama. It was more than a new star being born – we were devastated by the performance, as if a quart of our blood had been drained from us. I knew that I had witnessed Broadway history – in this performance acting, and theater itself, had changed for all time.”

Marlon Brando, at the tender age of 23, gave a performance that caused people to leap to their feet in a 30-minute ovation after the curtain went down. Jessica Tandy (portraying Blanche) was furious, because she knew the applause was not for her. In the audience were Cary Grant, David Selznick, Montgomery Clift, Edward G. Robinson, Geraldine Page, George Cukor and Paul Muni – all gasping for air. Tandy, whom younger readers might know from her Oscar-winning performance in Driving Miss Daisy, somehow coped with Brando's wildly erratic performances, each varying from night to night.

Note: Elia Kazan also directed the 1951 film version. This time Blanche was portrayed by Vivien Leigh, an actress with whom Brando had greater chemistry than Tandy. For younger readers who might know Brando only from his role in The Godfather, this clip will be a revelation. But don’t take my word for it, watch Brando in action:

Marlon Brando & Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire:

Yul Brynner

This is an update of a controversial post from 2012. Be sure to read the shit storm of four dozen reader comments at the end.

Bisexual Russian-born actor Yul Brynner (1920-1985) began his career playing guitar and singing gypsy songs among Russian immigrants in Parisian nightclubs. His fluency in Russian and French enabled him to build up a following with the Czarist expatriates in Paris. After a brief stint as a trapeze artist with the famed Cirque D'Hiver company in France, he started acting with a touring company in the early 1940s. He was soon on his way to becoming the first ever bald stage and movie idol.

In 1941 Yul Brynner traveled to the U.S., where he began an affair with American actor Hurd Hatfield (1918-1998), best known for playing the title role in the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray. Both men were enrolled at the Michael Chekhov Theatre Studio in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and many of their classmates have since confirmed the affair. Michael Chekhov (1891-1955, nephew of Anton), mentored performers such as Marilyn Monroe, Jack Palance, Patricia Neal, Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Leslie Caron, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Quinn, Jennifer Jones, Robert Vaughn and many others.

A year later, twenty-two year old Brynner (before he shaved his head) posed in full-frontal nude positions (photo at right) for noted gay photographer George Platt Lynes. Those who would like to view those uncropped photographs should avail themselves of Google search (you know you want to). You'll have a better understanding of what all the excitement was about.













Two decades later, at age 43, Brynner appeared wearing only slightly more in the campy film Kings of the Sun (1963, below), his youthful body betraying not a single passing year.

After several years of regional acting, Brynner was hired by the Office of War Information as announcer for their French radio service. He made his Broadway debut with Mary Martin in Lute Song in 1946, but he began playing his most famous role, the King of Siam, in The King and I in the Broadway production of the Oscar and Hammerstein musical in 1951 (photo at top of post). Mary Martin had recommended him for this role. At his first meeting with Irene Sharaff, The King and I’s costume designer, Brynner asked what he was to do about his mere “fringe” of hair. When told he was to shave it, he was horror-struck and refused, convinced he would look terrible. He finally gave in during tryouts and put dark makeup on his shaved head. The effect was so well-received that it became Brynner's trademark.

After more than three years and 1,246 performances, he starred in the screen version in 1956, winning an Oscar for Best Actor. He then returned to the stage for an additional 3,379 stage performances that stretched all the way to 1985. Brynner, 35 years old and married, was virtually unknown when he was cast in The King and I, and 52- year-old Gertrude Lawrence’s name appeared above his. Yul and Gertrude were having an affair at the time. Rodgers and Hammerstein often told the story that when Lawrence died during the run of the show, Brynner finally got top billing, and he burst into tears at the news (of his getting top billing – not the news of Lawrence’s death).

Cecil B. DeMille, impressed by Brynner's performance in The King and I, cast the actor as the Pharoah Rameses in the multi-million dollar blockbuster The Ten Commandments (1956, dressing room photo above). Along the way, Brynner also starred in such classic films as Anastasia (1956), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), and The Magnificent Seven (1960).

Brynner was also a talented published photographer and author of two books, Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of Europe and the Middle East and The Yul Brynner Cookbook: Food Fit for the King and You. I’m not making this up.

Brynner's romantic life included throngs of women, as well as men. He had four wives – actress Viriginia Gilmor, Chilean model Doris Kleiner, Jacqueline Thion de la Chaume, ballerina Kathy Lee – in addition to numerous affairs with such stars as Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, and Ingrid Bergman.

Brynner was possessed of a massive, nearly uncontrollable ego. In the mid-1960s, while filming Morituri aboard a freighter with co-star Marlon Brando, Brynner demanded in his contract that a landing pad be built on the ship so he could get a private helicopter to take him ashore after each day's shoot. He got his way, as usual.

According to Frank Langella’s recent memoir, no actor ever talked about himself so much as Brynner, whom Langella described as “never far from a full-length mirror.” Brynner explained how he’d had a special lift – big enough to fit a car – installed in the Broadway theater where he was starring in The King And I. His chauffeur could thus drive straight in and spare the star from having to “deal with the public.”

Brynner's last major film role was in the sci-fi thriller Westworld (1973) as a murderously malfunctioning robot, dressed in Western garb reminiscent of Brynner's wardrobe in The Magnificent Seven. What could have been campy or ludicrous became a chilling characterization in Brynner's hands; his steady, steely-eyed automaton glare as he approached his human victims was one of the more enjoyably frightening film-going experiences of the 1970s.

Yul Brynner died of lung cancer on October 10, 1985, in New York City at age sixty-five – on the same day as Orson Welles. When he developed lung cancer in the mid-1980s, he left a powerful public service announcement denouncing smoking as the cause, for broadcast after his death. The Yul Brynner Head and Neck Cancer Foundation was established in his memory.

Update July 14, 2023: His final performance (his 4,625th) of "The King and I" came on June 30, 1985, less than four months before he died of cancer. His lungs were so damaged that he had to use an oxygen tank to soldier through his last performances.

Sir Ian McKellen

English born Sir Ian McKellen (b. 1939) is perhaps the most famous openly gay actor who has played more straight than gay characters. His work is known to generations of movie, TV and theater-goers. During the 1960s he began his career as a classical actor specializing in Shakespeare. Six decades later, he was playing King Lear during the 2017 season of the Chichester Festival Theatre.

Although he began a modest film career in 1969, it was not until he appeared in several Hollywood blockbusters that he was introduced to an entirely new generation of movie-goers. The X-Men (as Magneto) and Lord of the Rings (as Gandalf) franchises of the early 2000s and the more recent Hobbit films have brought world-wide fame and recognition. Recently he was seen in the live-action film version of Beauty and the Beast, in which he portrayed Cogsworth. As well, his December 2016 London stage performance of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land with Patrick Stewart was broadcast to movie theaters worldwide as part of the National Theatre Live Encore series.

Sir Ian came out publicly on BBC television in 1988, just shy of his fiftieth birthday. Since then, he has been involved as an activist for multiple LBGT rights issues. He freely uses his name recognition to advance international causes that could use a boost. 

McKellen was knighted twice. In 1991 he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (which granted him the use of the title “Sir”) and again in 2008 for services to the performing arts, becoming a part of the Order of the Companions as Companion of Honor (CH).

Mckellen.com
Sir Ian’s official web page, launched in 1997, contains an in-depth look at his enduring career. There are hundreds of photographs, both personal and professional biographies, essays and links to his blog and the many causes he champions.

He has received a Tony award, a Golden Globe award, a SAG award, two Oscar nominations, five Emmy Award nominations and four BAFTA nominations – as well as every major theatrical award in the UK.

McKellen’s performance as Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award. He received his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Actor, for his portrayal of gay film director James Whale, in Gods and Monsters (1998). McKellen starred as Richard III (1995) in his own screen-adaptation of Shakespeare's play, which he also produced. Other film credits include Six Degrees of Separation, Cold Comfort Farm, Bent and The Da Vinci Code.

McKellen has also been honored for his extensive television work, from the miniseries The Prisoner to his monumental performance in King Lear, from his reincarnation of Tsar Nicholas II in the tele-film Rasputin, to his classic guesting as himself in HBO's Extras. He co-starred with Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour in two seasons of ITV's series Vicious, which aired on PBS in the US. On the first night of Channel 4 in the UK, McKellen played a mentally handicapped man in Stephen Frears' Walter. He delighted everyone with his 10 episodes in Britain’s longest running soap, Coronation Street.

Sir Ian is also a co-founder of Stonewall UK, which lobbies for legal and social equality for gay people.

Sal Mineo

Bisexual actor Sal Mineo (1939-1976) was defined by two things: his unforgettable Academy Award–nominated role opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause (at age 15), and his murder in Hollywood at the age of 37.

Nevertheless, the Bronx-born actor of Italian heritage appeared in 22 films, directed stage plays and operas and made many television appearances. While still a youth he was mentored by Yul Brynner in the stage musical The King and I,  Mineo had taken over the role of the young Prince Chulalongkorn three months into the show's initial run.

Sal Mineo was so convincing as Plato in Rebel Without a Cause* that he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, leading to his being forever typecast as a troubled youth. It was difficult for him to sustain an acting career when he became too old for such parts. A welcome exception came with the role of a Jewish emigrant in Otto Preminger’s film Exodus (1960), for which he won a Golden Globe Award and received a second Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Another escape from typecasting was his star turn as drummer Gene Krupa in The Gene Krupa Story (1959).

*Rebel Without a Cause also starred Natalie Wood. All three of the leads – James Dean, Sal Mineo (photo still from the film at left) and Natalie Wood – met with tragic, untimely deaths.

His mother, a quintessential stage mother, acted as his manager and spent his fortune faster than he could make it, leading to a series of financial crises, especially as his career tapered off.

In 1976 Mineo was stabbed to death in an alley next to his apartment building in West Hollywood by an unknown assailant. A year later actress Christa Helm was killed in the same neighborhood and in a similar fashion, and a pizza deliveryman by the name of Lionel Ray Williams was charged and convicted of that crime. Police had overheard him admitting to the murder of Sal Mineo, stating that at the time of the stabbing he did not know that his victim was Sal Mineo.

In “Sal Mineo: A Biography” (2010) by author Michael Gregg Michaud*, several rumors and speculations about Mineo’s private life are cleared up. British actress Jill Haworth, to whom Mineo was once engaged to be married, was not just a “beard” to mask a homosexual orientation. Although Sal Mineo idolized his bisexual film star James Dean, the two did not engage in sexual relations. The same with actor Don Johnson, who co-starred with Mineo in a stage production of Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1969), a play with a homosexual theme; Johnson and Mineo had once been roommates. At the time Mineo was murdered, he had been in a six-year relationship with male actor Courtney Burr III.


*From a book review by Gerry Burnie:
This exhaustive biography is not only a tribute to Sal Mineo, a talented and misunderstood individual who lived life to the fullest – no matter what he did – it is also a tribute to the author’s unrelenting dedication. For example, the writing of “Sal Mineo: A Biography” took Michaud ten years and three years of research to complete. Moreover, numerous interviews were conducted, most particularly with Jill Haworth and Courtney Burr (both were Sal Mineo’s lovers), to give it a personal insight beyond the written record...Full of details and previously undisclosed anecdotes, the biography captures a career of ups and downs and a private life of sexual impulses.

It's a little-known fact that Sal Mineo was the model for The New Adam, a colossal 8-foot-tall by 39-foot-long male nude painting (1962), precisely and sensually rendered in full frontal anatomical detail over nine linen panels by artist Harold Stevenson (1929-2018).

   Since 2005 the painting (panels separated, above) has been  part of the permanent collection of the New York City Guggenheim Museum, as shown in the image below. Note: currently not on display.

William "Billy" Haines

Out & Gay in Hollywood

William “Billy” Haines was born the evening of January 1, 1900, in Staunton, a railroad town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (my home state!). Although it is still possible to stand in awe before the house he was born in, the small city of Staunton doesn't make a fuss over its famous citizen, likely because so few people are still alive who remember his meteoric rise to Hollywood stardom. 

He has my never-ending admiration, because he stood up to movie studio heads, refusing to "pretend" to be straight for the sake of the publicity machines. He chose dignity and respect for his lover over hypocrisy and ill-gotten fame. Haines, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Farley Granger and others were all told that their movie careers would be over if they came out of the closet. Out of those men, only Haines had the courage to defy the studios; the others chose to enter into sham, studio concocted relationships or marriages to cover up their sexual orientation.

While Cary Grant and Randolph Scott and their like tried to put one over on the public, Haines chose an honest life and did one better for himself. He switched careers, becoming fabulously wealthy as an interior designer to the stars. While he never left the glamorous world of Hollywood, he never again stood before a camera. Surprisingly, he had not longed to be a movie star, nor did he dream about being a decorator. Haines, an exceptionally bright and talented young man, recognized opportunity when it was thrust in front of him, and he took advantage of it. He lived by his wits, always seeming to make the right moves. Astonishingly, he reached the pinnacle of success in successive careers for which he had no training.

Haines was the grandson of one of Staunton's most prominent citizens, but at age 14 (!) he ran away from home with his boyfriend and opened a dance hall in Hopewell, VA, a city so known for wickedness and lawlessness that it was called "Sin City." His place of business, like everything else in the town, was burned to the ground in a great fire in 1915. Rather than go back to Staunton, he struck out for New York City, where he took a factory job at age 16. A tall, exceedingly handsome young man, Haines soon returned to Virginia to help support his family; his mother was pregnant, and his bankrupt father was in a mental institution following a breakdown. At 19 he returned to NYC, where an elderly gentleman arranged a job for Billy at a brokerage firm. He lived in an apartment in Greenwich Village for two years, becoming friends with Archie Leach (later known as Cary Grant), who was then in a gay relationship with costume designer Orry-Kelly. 

Restless and opportunistic, Haines found work as a model. He sent in his photograph to the "New Faces of 1922" contest sponsored by movie producer Samuel Goldwyn – and won. A screen test followed, and he packed up and moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the leading silent film stars of the 1920s and 1930s. Haines was named the leading male film star for 1930. His closest friend was Joan Crawford, much less well-known at the time. William Haines appeared in over fifty films, was the first MGM star to speak on film, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, just a few feet from the entrance to the Roosevelt Hotel, where the Academy Awards were first presented in 1929. 


Haines with co-star Joan Crawford in West Point (1928): 

However, gossip about his openly gay life threatened his leading man image, and MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer gave Haines an ultimatum: deny his homosexuality by engaging in a sham marriage or be shown the door. Haines refused to lie about his personal life, and Mayer did not renew his contract. He never worked in films after 1934, but pursued a stupendously successful career as an interior designer, which made him a multi-millionaire. Billy's life-long adage was, "One could be forgiven for illiteracy, but never for lack of good taste."

His Hollywood clients included prominent figures of the film community such as Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Carole Lombard, William Powell, Frank Sinatra, Lionel Barrymore, Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks, studio head Jack Warner and director George Cukor. His social standing was decidedly A-list. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were frequent guests at his house. In 1969, most importantly, he was hired by Ambassador Walter Annenberg to design the interiors of Winfield House in London, the official residence of the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James. The million-dollar commission received international attention. In a career that continued until his death in 1973, he achieved fame as one of the most influential interior decorators of the 20th century. William Haines Designs remains in business to this day, with main offices in West Hollywood and showrooms in New York, Denver and Dallas. Many of his original furniture designs are still produced for the high-end interior design trade.

Winfield House, the U. S. Ambassador's House in London, as decorated by William "Billy" Haines.



Haines also made a name for himself outside of the Hollywood social circle of clients. His celebrated oval "Desert Living Room" showcased at the 1930 World's Fair in San Francisco featured geometric shapes, much leather, custom designed furniture and walls clad in Joshua wood. Photo below:

As well, he completely transformed the home of Alfred and Betsy Bloomingdale in Beverly Hills. When purchased, it was a Spanish revival structure with red tiles on the roof, arched openings everywhere and stucco-clad exterior walls. In the late 1950s Haines gave it a total makeover inside and out, in a style he had created -- Hollywood Regency. Betsy Bloomingdale retained the Haines interiors until her death on July 19, 2016. Trivia: in December of 2016 out and proud polymath Tom Ford purchased the Bloomingdale estate (as seen from the rear, below) for $39 million.

From the mid-1920s Haines lived openly with his lover Jimmy Shields (his former movie stand in) for nearly 50 years. Joan Crawford described them as "the happiest married couple in Hollywood." Haines died from lung cancer at the age of 73. Two months afterward, a grief-stricken Shields put on Haine’s pajamas, took an overdose of pills, and died in his sleep. Their ashes are interred side by side in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica, CA.

  Billy Haines with his great friend and actress Anita Page (above).

William Haines, dashingly handsome, acting opposite his best friend Joan Crawford in a flirty, comic scene from Spring Fever (1927), below. Haines and Crawford remained devoted friends until Haines’ death in 1973. Every time she changed husbands, Haines redecorated her home. Kept him busy.

 

Principal source:
Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines
Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star
by William J. Mann (1999)
480 pages; Penguin Paperback edition

Anthony Perkins: sexually conflicted actor

Anthony Perkins was an actor who had affairs with A-list male celebrities: Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Rudolf Nureyev, Paul Newman, Leonard Bernstein, James Dean, and Stephen Sondheim. The one that lasted, however, was with dancer/choreographer Grover Dale, with whom Perkins had a six-year relationship before his 1973 marriage to photographer Berry Berenson, the sister of actress Marisa Berenson. Dale, who had been Perkins’ understudy in the stage musical Greenwillow, also married in 1973 (must have been something in the water that year). Perkins was 41 years old at the time of his marriage and said he had sex with a woman for the first time just a year before that, at age 39, with his co-star Victoria Principal during filming of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

Perkins was a veteran of stage, screen and TV, even earning an Oscar nomination for Friendly Persuasion, but he lived in utter fear that Confidential magazine would out him, as it did with Tab Hunter, one of his early lovers. Perkins had two sons with Berenson, but he died of AIDS in 1992 at age sixty; according to the Los Angeles Times obituary, Perkins did not acknowledge that he had the disease until he released a statement shortly before his death, even though the National Enquirer had broken the story two years earlier. According to author Shawn Levy (The Castle on Sunset, 2019) during the 19 years of his marriage and while being a father, Perkins kept a hotel room on hold for himself at Chateau Marmont so that he would have a place for trysts with young men. Hmmm...

Before his marriage Perkins met influential gay men who resided at Chateau Marmont at various times -- Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood (and his partner Don Bachardy) among them. Earlier, Perkins had been introduced to Tab Hunter at the hotel's pool. Moments later, Perkins invited Hunter up to his room. Thus began a two-year sexual relationship between Perkins and Hunter. Studio executives tried to quash rumors by "allowing" Perkins and Hunter to go on double dates with studio-provided starlets.

His performance as Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s film Psycho* is unforgettable, but his career went into decline soon afterward. Perkins was known to frequent gay porn stores and gay movie houses in Times Square, NYC, where he watched men have sex in the stairwells.

*Note: Perkins was not filmed in the infamous Psycho shower scene. A double was used. On the day that scene was shot, Perkins was in rehearsals for Greenwillow, a Broadway musical. Source: Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.

For over a decade Perkins lived in a platonic relationship with photographer Helen Merrell, a dominating force of a woman fourteen years his senior. Merrell went on to become an influential theatrical agent and philanthropist.

In the late 1950s, Perkins released three pop song albums, but a career as a singer never materialized, although he did have a starring role in Greenwillow, a Broadway musical (closed after 97 performances). Perkins also worked as a stage actor. In 1958, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance in the Broadway play Look Homeward, Angel. During this time he also starred in Green Mansions (1959) with Audrey Hepburn and the college comedy Tall Story (1960) with Jane Fonda.


His widow, Berry Berenson, was tragically killed while aboard American Airlines flight 11 as it crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.


In a role that forever defined him: Perkins (as Norman Bates) with Janet Leigh in Hitchcock's masterpiece PSYCHO:

 

Erté

The name Erté was the French pronunciation of the initials R.T., which stood for Romain de Tirtoff (1892-1990), a Russian-born Art Deco graphic artist and designer of jewelry, costumes, interiors, and sets for opera, film and the stage. Not to mention textiles, handbags, watches and perfume bottles. As his career played out, Erté and Art Deco became virtually synonymous. His 240+ covers for Harper's Bazar* magazine (1915-1937), which often depicted women draped in furs and jewelry, are today collectors’ items.

*Spelling later changed to Bazaar.

The son of a wealthy Russian Admiral in the Imperial Fleet, Tirtoff took the pseudonym Erté while working as a fashion designer/illustrator in Paris, so as not to disgrace his aristocratic Russian family, which expected Romain to follow in his father’s footsteps as a military officer. His artistic talent was discovered early, and his mother had a dress made after one of Erté's designs he had sketched at the age of five. At age 22 he appeared at a Parisian ball in 1914 clad in a self-designed silver lamé costume, complete with pearl wings and ebony-plumed cape. True.

In 1925, MGM studios (Culver City, CA) brought Erté and his partner, Russian Prince Nicolas Ouroussoff, from Paris to Hollywood, picking up the considerable expenses for both. When their ocean liner arrived in New York, they disembarked with fifteen steamer trunks and three assistants. Erté’s black, white and gray Monte Carlo atelier was reproduced in Culver City. He was treated like a star, installed in a hilltop house in Hollywood, given a chauffeured limousine, two bi-lingual secretaries and was interviewed by the press 200 times.

MGM head Louis B. Mayer, who was known to be intolerant of homosexuals, even invited the couple to his house for dinner. Erté reported that his relationship with Mayer was always pleasant, and Mayer expressed regret when Erté asked to be let out of his contract after designing costumes for just six films. Erté lived with Ouroussoff for nearly twenty years, until the Prince's premature death in 1933. By the 1920s homosexuals in film studio wardrobe, makeup and set departments enjoyed an extraordinary freedom and tolerance, an environment found virtually nowhere else in American industry. It wasn’t just tolerated, but being gay actually carried with it some cachet.

Graphic Art: Symphony in Black

In his 1975 autobiography, Things I Remember, Erté catalogued his homosexual encounters, starting at the age of 13. Readers learned that after the death of Prince Ouroussoff, he had a serious relationship with a champion Danish swimmer and decorator named Axel. Erté’s openness regarding his sexuality was in marked contrast to others in his field at that time.

Erté designing sets and costumes for the Folies-Bergère, the Ziegfeld Follies and the Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Performers who wore his costumes included Josephine Baker, Anna Pavlova, Mata-Hari and Sarah Bernhardt. 

Erté worked up until just a few weeks before his death from kidney problems in 1990, at age 97. Very wealthy by the end of his life, he was building a house in Majorca at the time of his death.  During his long career he produced Art Deco designs for furniture, lamps, sculptures, seriographs, lithographs and even playing cards.

 

Rooms at Chateau de la Sorcere (France), decorated by Erté:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood – William J. Mann

Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History

Wikipedia

Photos of interiors at Chateau de la Sorciere: "Fantasy Furniture" by Bruce M. Newman and Alastair Duncan (1989)

Cesar Romero

Tall, suave and sophisticated Cesar Romero (1907-1994) was a star of Hollywood films and television. At the start of his career he was known as the "Latin lover/gigolo" type in  a string of  film musicals and romantic comedies, but he was also famous as the rogue bandit, The Cisco Kid, in a spate of low-budget western movies. However, to a younger generation reared on television, Romero was best recognized for his role in the campy 1960s Batman TV series as the white-faced, cackling villain called The Joker. As well, he starred as a bumbling corporate villain in a series of Walt Disney comedies, such as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969). Fans and critics alike agreed that Romero was a major talent who proved himself an enduring and versatile star in a variety of roles during his more than 60-year career as an actor, dancer and comedian.

He was also a deeply closeted gay man to his fans. When he was interviewed by author Boze Hadleigh, Romero gave a revealing, often comic account of what life was like in the Golden Age of Hollywood for a closeted gay man (in Romero's instance, also Catholic and Latino). Because he was "out" to all his entertainment industry colleagues, it was often stated that Romero's homosexuality was Hollywood's worst kept secret. That interview is included in Hadleigh's book, Hollywood Gays.

Cesar Romero was born to wealthy parents in New York City in 1907. His Italian-born father had made a fortune as an importer/exporter of sugar refining machinery, and his Cuban mother was a concert singer. Romero’s first job after attending Collegiate and Riverdale County Schools was as a ballroom dancer, and for years he served as the dancer/escort of major stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Carmen Miranda, Lucille Ball and Ginger Rogers.  Romero first appeared on Broadway in Lady Do (1927), and his first film role was in The Shadow Laughs (1933).

His life was a full-out pursuit of superficial social events such as art exhibit openings, movie premieres and fashion shows. At the time there was a running joke that Romero would attend the “opening of a napkin.” He was uniquely equipped for this lifestyle, since he was handsome, tall (6-ft. 2-in.), suave, wealthy, witty and a real fashion plate. His wardrobe contained more than 30 tuxedos, 200 sport coats and 500 tailored suits. He practically lived at the Ambassador Hotel’s Coconut Grove nightclub (Los Angeles), dancing and flirting the night away. Romero’s signature trimmed moustache was so identified with his persona that he refused to shave it off for his TV role as the Joker in the Batman series. Makeup artists grudgingly applied the heavy white facial makeup on top of his moustache.

He took a break from his acting career during WW II to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard in the Pacific (at left) but immediately returned to his acting career. Ever charming and discreet, Cesar Romero earned the reputation as the quintessential "confirmed bachelor," although Hollywood insiders knew all about his long-term relationship with Tyrone Power (photo at end of post) , Gene Raymond and other actors of screen and stage. As an interesting aside, Romero’s Hollywood social nickname was “Butch.” I’m not making this up.

Critics and fans generally agree that Romero's best performance was as Spanish explorer Cortez in Captain from Castile (1947). In 1953 he starred in the 39-part espionage TV serial Passport to Danger, which earned him a considerable income from a lucrative profit-sharing arrangement. Although Romero became quite wealthy and had no further need to work, he could not stay away from the cameras. He surprised everyone in Hollywood by taking on the role of The Joker in the hugely successful TV series Batman (from 1966). He also guest-starred on dozens of TV shows, including Rawhide (1959), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Zorro (1957), Fantasy Island (1978), Falcon Crest (from 1985) and Murder, She Wrote (1984).

Romero died of a pneumonia-related blood clot on New Years Day in 1994 in Santa Monica, California, just six weeks shy of his 87th birthday. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: at 1719 Vine St. (for television) and at 6615 Hollywood Blvd. (for motion pictures).

Tyrone Power (left) and Romero on a trip to South America (shown below).

Note from your blogger: In researching Romero’s life, I was surprised how many writers used the words, “rumors of homosexuality.” Romero’s sexual orientation is based on fact, not rumor or speculation – he freely admitted his homosexuality during his lifetime and allowed writer Boze Hadleigh (Hollywood Gays) to write about his dalliances with other gay or bisexual men. Many fans of Hollywood stars dismiss reports of their favorites’ homosexual activity, but they fail to realize that, for most stars, a public “outing” would have been the end of their careers. Those who knew about a star’s true sexual orientation waited until the actor/actress was deceased to speak about it, out of respect for their colleagues’ careers. Hollywood is disproportionately populated by gays and bisexuals, on both sides of the camera.

Cesar Romero sings and dances his way through Romance and Rhumba (1941) co-starring Alice Faye and John Payne. Such roles were typical of his early movie career. Many examples of Romero's TV and film appearances may be found on YouTube.com

 

Cole Porter

At the time he sang second tenor in the Glee Club at Yale, Cole Porter (1891-1964) also appeared in stage roles and performed cabaret sets at private parties. It became his habit to step out of the chorus just before the choir’s last number to sit at the piano to accompany himself in a solo performance of songs and patter, much of the clever and cheeky material his own. Although he was listed just once in the program, the audience usually kept him there until he had gone through 10-12 encores. Reviewers called him the “highlight” of the concerts, “a clever imitator, strong singer and comedian”. Then, as later in life, Porter wrote both the words and music to his songs.

After one year he dropped out of Harvard Law School, where he had resided with Dean Acheson, the future Secretary of State. His unwavering D-grades in all his law courses resulted in a transfer to the School of Music in 1914 for his second year at Harvard. For a time he studied music with Pietro Yon, who went on to become famous as organist at NYC’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Porter, who was exclusively homosexual, met his future wife Linda at a 1918 wedding reception in Paris, where he had lingered after serving in France in a volunteer ambulance unit during the final year of WW I. At least that's what he told Linda. Although Cole appeared on the streets of Paris in various military uniforms, later biographers revealed that Porter never served in the military of any country. Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with a little of everything sprinkled in for good measure – much gay and bisexual activity, cross-dressing, international musicians, Italian nobility, and a large surplus of recreational drugs. For a twenty-something boy born on a farm in Peru, Indiana, things were moving fast.

Linda Lee Thomas (at right), a fabulously wealthy socialite divorcée, was descended from the Paca family (one of whom was a signer of the Declaration of Independence) as well as from the Lees of Virginia. Linda was well aware of Porter’s homosexuality, but they nevertheless married on December 12, 1919, and remained based in Paris as bon vivants of hedonistic high style until 1937, when war clouds forced their return to the U.S. Many of their circle suspected that Linda might be lesbian or bisexual, while others thought of her as asexual. Whichever was true, their marriage was without sex, but certainly not without love. They adored each other. Years later Linda miscarried, but it is not certain whether Cole was the would-be father. Linda was known to have affairs of her own, but it cannot be determined if they were sexual. It’s all a cloud of ambiguity.

After their honeymoon in southern France and Italy, Cole sought further formal musical training, enrolling at the Schola Cantorum in the Latin Quarter of Paris. He soon abandoned his notion of writing serious orchestral music, however, and did not complete the curriculum.

Linda, thirteen years older than Cole, provided him with a passport to social landscapes he could never have traversed on his own. Their world was a fusion of outrageous Bohemianism and mad-cap Roaring Twenties liberation, tossed together with moneyed misfits, exiled royalty, show business personalities and assorted impoverished creative geniuses. Included in their social circles were Coco Chanel, Lauritz Melchior and Arthur Rubenstein, who loved to sit down at the piano to play Cole Porter songs. In short, they knew anyone worth knowing.

Soon after their marriage, Linda bought a much larger Parisian residence in 1920 at 13, rue Monsieur, a street just one block long, not far from Les Invalides and the Rodin Museum (and purchased for more than $10 million in today’s money). The rear garden backed up to the house of Nancy Mitford, the British novelist, biographer and socialite, who was involved in a romance with the homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St. Clair-Erskine. But I digress.

Linda’s house in Paris was so large that they rented a suite of rooms to Howard Sturges, a close friend of Linda’s who became Cole’s dearest life-long friend. Sturges lent Linda a beautiful painting by Christian Bérard, which hung for years in their Parisian drawing room. Sturges, a witty, old-money Boston socialite, was a trained violinist who kept a pet bear and walked a pig on a leash through the streets of Paris. I’m not making this up.

Hostess Elsa Maxwell (a closeted lesbian) leans over a smiling Cole Porter. The legendary society maven was a huge fan and patron.



Sturges often traveled with Cole and Linda, wherever their journeys took them, and Cole and Howard made this three-way friendship more complicated when the two men entered into an affair. The Porters were peripatetic to the extreme. They always traveled with an entourage of servants and friends, usually picking up the tab for their guests, and quickly became acquainted with Egypt, Monte Carlo, Italy, London, Biarritz, Spain and New York. To say that the Porters lived large is understatement.

Cole and Linda befriended wealthy American ex-pats Gerald and Sarah Murphy, and together they made the South of France a fashionable year-round resort destination. There were striking parallels in the lives of the Murphys and Porters, not the least of which was the fact that both Gerald and Cole were married homosexual men.

In 1923 Cole’s wealthy grandfather died. Long disapproving of Cole’s choice of a career, he made no mention of Cole in his will. Of the four million dollars left to Cole’s mother, however, she gave half to her son, then 32 years old, who later said the inheritance didn’t spoil or ruin his life – it just made it wonderful. Well, not everything was wonderful. It was about this time that Porter tested positive for syphilis.

Soon Cole and Linda became part of the social set of Prince and Princesse Edmond de Polignac. The princess, based in Paris, was heir to the singer sewing machine fortune. She was a captivating lesbian married to a homosexual (and financially destitute) prince, who was himself a talented amateur composer. They hosted private musical salons that drew on the talents of Stravinsky, Fauré, Satie, Ravel and Milhaud. The Polignac’s musical afternoons were for decades the most important and influential venue for new French music.

For five summers during the 1920s, the Porters descended upon Venice, renting the fabulous Palazzo Rezzonico. During the summer of 1925 Cole became completely smitten with Boris Kochno, a Russian poet, librettist and Ballet Russes dancer who was Diaghilev's collaborator. Their correspondence survives, and Porter comes across as a love-sick puppy. Soon thereafter, Porter returned to the U.S. to write shows for Broadway and Hollywood. While living in New York, Porter found that paying for sex was less complicated emotionally, and it allowed him to indulge his taste in sailors, marines and assorted prostitutes.

Until recently Porter's piano (right) stood on the cocktail terrace of the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in NYC, where Cole and Linda Porter kept an apartment* in the Waldorf Towers, the residential wing of the hotel. The 1907 Steinway grand, with a hand decorated walnut case, was a gift from the hotel in 1945. Upon Porter's death in 1964, the piano went downstairs to the lobby.


Monty Woolley, who often joined Cole to cruise New York City's waterfront bars and bordellos, recounted that one night, a young sailor they approached by car asked outright, "Are you two cocksuckers?" Woolley responded with, "Now that the preliminaries are over, why don't you get in and we can discuss the details?"

Cole’s numerous male lovers included Nelson Barfeld (a dancer/choreographer who was a former U.S. Marine), Robert Bray (a married Californian) and Jack Cassidy (a character actor). Not to mention architect Ed Tauch, director John Wilson and longtime friend Ray Kelly, whose children still receive half of Porter's copyright royalties. After relocating to  Hollywood, he was a regular guest at George Cukor's Sunday all-male pool parties, but soon the two became rivals. While renting a beautiful Hollywood home owned by renowned homosexual actor-decorator Billy Haines, Porter held competing all-male parties, and Cole’s became the more valued invitation. Porter was not discrete. A recent biography recounts that in his later years, Cole kept "breaking appliances so he could lure cute repairmen into his lair". As well, Scotty Bowers's recent Hollywood tell-all recounts that Porter had a decided taste for giving oral sex to Marines while suffering verbal abuse and humiliation. The homosexual relations were not casual. All of Porter's sexual activity was homosexual, and he became more brazen in the more open and permissive atmosphere of Hollywood. Linda reacted by staying away from California, sailing back and forth between her residences in Paris and New York. She was quietly making plans to divorce Cole.

Then in 1937, Cole was involved in a tragic horse riding accident and fractured both his legs. This was especially debilitating and humiliating to the ego of a vain man who placed enormous value on looks and a dashing appearance for both social and sexual reasons. He was in the hospital for months as his mental and physical health waned. He was in constant pain from his leg injuries and underwent 34 operations, all ultimately unsuccessful. Linda changed her plans and returned to Cole's side; they shared quarters at the Waldorf Towers in NYC, and before long he returned to writing songs.

Porter hired a driver and a personal assistant, who tended to details such as getting Cole into and out of wheelchairs, elevators and buildings. Soon enough Porter was reviving his lusty male/male activity. Once he graduated from a wheelchair to a cane, he maintained a small house overlooking the ocean at Lido Beach on Long Island, which he used for male/male trysts. Frank Walsh, a soldier stationed at Governors Island, recalled attending a party at Porter's Lido Beach residence, describing it as "a drinking and sex party, nearly orgiastic, with fifty or more soldiers kissing, drinking and engaging in lots of very graphic sex." At about this time Cole tripped on a stair and broke his left leg again, causing a major setback to his recovery.

Cole Porter portrait by Richard Avedon, 1950.

In 1945, he lent his permission to the movie project Night and Day, allegedly about the life of Cole Porter. Although a great boost to his ego, the plot was a wildly fictionalized biography. His friends thought it hysterically funny, knowing the divide between fact and fiction. The movie overlooked Porter’s overly pampered and controlled youth, his notorious gay life and his sexless marriage of social convenience; instead it lent credence to the tall tales Cole spread about himself, such as his (fake) war record and injuries. According to friends, Cole enjoyed the movie's wildly fictional account, and he especially savored having closeted movie star Cary Grant play a heroic, straight version of himself. Fortunately Porter did not live to see the 2004 film De-Lovely, a wretched misstatement of facts and an utter bore. I do not know how it was possible to make the extravagant, over-the-top lives of Cole and Linda Porter, portrayed by Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, appear so dull.

Porter's greatest hit musical came late in his career. Kiss Me Kate (1948) is a play within a play about a troupe putting on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. W. H. Auden even called it a much better piece of theater than The Taming of the Shrew (!). A film version hit movie theaters in 1953, also to great acclaim, but Porter's risqué lyrics had to be sanitized to avoid the Hollywood code censors, thus robbing the musical of much of its comedy. The film was originally released in 3-D.

A major blow came with Linda’s death in 1954. She died after a long illness from chronic respiratory problems at their apartment in the Waldorf Towers in NYC. Although they had separated only to reunite several times, they remained devoted to each other. She left an estate of over $1.5 million, in which Cole had a lifetime interest (Cole had also inherited the bulk of his mother's half million dollar estate, but needlessly worried about money constantly). He was given Linda's Williamsport, Massachusetts, estate outright (description below), as well as all of Linda's personal belongings.

Unfortunately, Porter descended into further creative silence and social isolation in 1958, when his right leg was finally amputated. Porter was embarrassed and incapacitated by the surgery. Linda Porter had acquired a 40-acre estate in Williamsport, MA in 1940, and after her death, Cole became a virtual recluse at Buxton Hill**, as the property was named (current photo below). In a bizarre act Porter ordered the Tudor-style main house razed after  Linda's death and moved a caretaker’s cottage to the location of the original house. According to one of his biographers, visitors to Buxton Hill became fewer and fewer, because most weekends Porter was wicked drunk and ignored his invited guests, some of whom dubbed the farm, “the torture chamber.” At Cole’s death from kidney failure in 1964 (at a nursing home in Santa Monica), the Buxton Hill estate went to Williams College, but returned to private hands a few years later. It recently served as a luxury inn, with tennis courts and a 30' X 50' swimming pool. And the whole shebang (structures and 40 acres of land) subsequently hit the market for $4.5 million. 1425 Main St., Williamstown, MA. It has since gone off the market.

**When Cole Porter formed his own publishing company, he named it Buxton Hill.

* Porter’s 5-bedroom apartment in the Waldorf Astoria was available for rent last year at the rate of $150,000 a month. No lie. The Porters had lived in several apartments at the Waldorf Towers from 1939 to 1954, but Cole moved into this much larger unit just after the death of Linda. When Porter moved to apartment 33-A (1955-1964), he hired Billy Baldwin to do the interior design work. Baldwin was so well-known for his love of slipcovers that Cole Porter joked that he didn’t want to come back to find his piano slip covered! After Cole Porter died, Frank Sinatra moved in. Quite a pedigree for Waldorf Towers apartment 33-A (floor-plan porn below).

Of note: Porter’s wildly successful 1934 musical Anything Goes was revived on Broadway in 2011, and a touring company took the show to audiences all across the country.

His body of work includes some 1,400 songs. Some are one-offs which continue to astonish listeners today. For example, in Miss Otis Regrets (1934) we are told by a servant of a polite society lady how her employer was seduced and abandoned. In just a few lines of lyrics, we learn that Miss Otis hunted down and shot her seducer, was arrested, taken from the jail by a mob, and lynched. The servant conveys Miss Otis's final, polite, apologetic words to her friends: "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today." There is not another song like it.

Carmen McRae's impassioned reading of "Miss Otis Regrets..."




Among Cole Porter’s classic American standards are:


Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye (1944)
Ray Charles and Betty Carter’s classic reading of Porter’s extraordinary tune and lyric:

When you're near there's such an air of spring about it.
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.
There's no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to minor
Everytime we say goodbye.





Begin the Beguine (1935)

Don’t Fence Me In (1934)

From This Moment On (1950)


I Love Paris (1952)

I Get a Kick Out of You (1934)

I’ve Got You Under My Skin (1936)

In the Still of the Night (1937)


Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love (1928)

Night and Day (1932 - one of ASCAP's top 10 all time money makers)

You’re the Top (1934)






True Love (1956)
Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly sing a duet aboard the yacht True Love in High Society, the musical remake of Philip Barry’s 1939 stage play, The Philadelphia Story (made into an acclaimed film in 1941).

 

Some songs have remained inexplicably obscure. After You, Who? was a great favorite of Mabel Mercer, but I had not heard anyone else sing it in years. Imagine my surprise when John Barrowman included it on a recent album.



After You, Who? - The Gay Divorce* (1932)

Though with joy I should be reeling that at last you came my way,
There's no further use concealing that I'm feeling far from gay,
For the rare allure about you makes me all the plainer see
How inane, how vain, how empty life without you would be.

After you, who could supply my sky of blue?
After you, who could I love?
After you, why should I take the time to try,
For who else could qualify - after you, who?
Hold my hand and swear you'll never cease to care,
For without you there what could I do?
I could search years but who else could change my tears
Into laughter after you?

* Hollywood codes forced the 1934 film version to be called The Gay Divorcée. Censors would not concede that a divorce could be something joyous. I kid you not.

Trivia: Cole Porter was left handed and found it awkward to write down music on staff paper. He worked out a solution by turning the paper at a right angle, so that the staff lines were vertical. True.