In the 1950s and 1960s, there was such a strong Hollywood closet door, that actors who were gay went through the trouble of getting married to sustain an image of heterosexuality in order to preserve their careers. A strong case on point is Rock Hudson, whose emergence from the closet officially coincided with his AIDS diagnosis.
In the 1970s, with the opening of the closet door in America following the Stonewall riots, there was a great deal of change. Gay characters took a place, sometimes, ironically, played by heterosexual men – the comedy Soap comes to mind, with the gay character played by Billy Crystal. Some of them, like William Hurt, even won Academy Awards for playing gay men (Kiss of the Spiderwoman).
In the 1990s when AIDS had dragged many men out of the closet, we even saw the advent of a gay sitcom – Will and Grace, also with a heterosexual man playing a gay man.
During the 90′s, I was close friends with an actor named Brad Davis, who had made his name starring in Midnight Express, a 1978 movie based on a real life story about a man arrested and imprisoned in a Turkish prison for smuggling drugs. It was one of the first on-screen kisses I ever saw in a movie theater between two men. Brad died of AIDS when he was 41. His wife wrote a book about his life and last days called After Midnight: The Life and Death of Brad Davis that chronicled how Brad received his diagnosis and, fearful of never working again in Hollywood, got a small group of friends (I was among them) to help him get anonymous medical care and keep his secret. When he died, the news of his diagnosis broke and Hollywood was roundly condemned for failing actors like Brad who had to keep their HIV status in the closet in order to work.
In the wake of his death, I was called into a meeting with Hollywood producers and studio heads to help conceptualize a new organization that would help Hollywood Actors with HIV that was eventually named Hollywood Supports and was underwritten by major studios.
What is all this leading to? I think that in the public mind, there is a perception that Hollywood is progressive and a leader of social and cultural thought. In our FH Out premiere podcast, you can hear the thoughts of a casting director about the responsibility of Hollywood and culture. For my own two cents worth, I think Hollywood is far less a leader than most people think it – but rather is a follower. Rather than fashioning social and cultural mores, I think Hollywood is a mirror where we can follow our own thinking.
Listen to Jon Garbo’s podcast interview with Hollywood casting director Lisa Hamil and to the maiden podcast for FH Out Front:
For related material of interest: The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo.
SUBSCRIBE
A very interesting and frank discussion. I quite enjoyed it.