Gay-Straight Bromance

Contents:

• GAY-STRAIGHT BROMANCE

GAY-STRAIGHT BROMANCE

Never my life had I unrstood homosexualy, nor had I really ever met someone who was openly gay. Men dated Women, and gay dus jt wanted attentn or hadn’t figured out yet. To me, that’s all I need to hman year, one of my biggt fears was that I would have a gay roommate.

I thought a gay man would take advantage of the suatn and prive me of privacy.

I was so [censored] turns out, one of my hman roommat was gay, but took him over a year to tell me. One of the first thgs I told my roommat was how happy I was to have straight roommat, that my biggt fear was beg ogled by a gay guy.

As a straight guy a homophobic world, a thoughtls ment had the power to silence my bt iend and impe his alienable right to be himself. Sure, I’d heard the agent’s name before, primarily nnectn wh his most famo client, Rock Hudson – that Henry Willson’s secretary was the bri chosen for Hudson durg his brief marriage to unter the rampant gay mors that were swirlg about him Hollywood as he grew to a star the early 50s.

So I cid old Henry served a blog spot all his own Leroy Willson (1911 ~1978) – and y, that’s “Willson” spelled wh two l’s pl, appropriately enough, a “son” add on at the end – was an olr gay man, what today we would ll a notor “chicken hawk” of an old queen, equentg gentlemen’s night clubs along the Sunset Strip bar scene where he wooed younger men for both personal as well as profsnal see, Henry Willson also jt so happened to be the head of talent at David O. Certaly none of the 1950s dreamboat beefke movie star wannab uld rist, those young men who end up wh the tenr attentns of Henry Willson as their agent, cludg his role shapg gay or bisexual actors to ostensibly straight-arrow silver-screen idols.

Such young gay actors were no secret the bs, yet jealoly and zealoly kept unr wraps om the dienc who bought tickets for the fantasy played out on movie screens and fan magaz. A look to the life of Hollywood mogul agent Henry Willson today giv a unique sir glimpse at the dilemmas of his gay clients livg a double life, straight leadg man by day while nductg lively after-hours same-sex affairs and sexual liaison trysts unr the very flashbulbs of the publicy mache which had created their inic statur the first retrospective examatn sh a proverbial spotlight on the hidn soccultural history of the Amerin movie stud system through the late 1950s, which self began to pture the 1960s wh the sexual revolutn as “outg” beme a natnal passtime. Even at that time, for a gay actor to e out of the closet was ak to mtg reer hara-kiri, not to mentn that was prosecutable to boot (not jt among actors, of urse).

While today certa high-profile producers and directors and even a spatterg of movie stars are now out and prumably proud, n easily be said that more than a few gay actors and their handlers are still saddled wh problems that Henry Willson, Agent, would regnize all too well. “If a young, handsome actor had Henry Willson for an agent, ‘ was almost assumed he was gay, like was wrten across his forehead, ” rells Ann Doran, one of Willson’s few female closeted dilemma of the gay actor trac s roots the movie dtry further back, however.

Two of the Navy’s blacklisted clubs were smack-dab the middle of the Sunset Strip — Chez Boheme at 8950 Sunset Blvd and Cafe Internatnale at 8711 Sunset Blvd — both of which were, g today’s term, “gay iendly. ” (Gay bars as we know them today — clubs that ter pretty much exclively to gay men or women — were strictly a post-war phenomenon. At the time of his ath, Durk was livg wh his agent Henry Willson and the two were said to be the fallout aftermath of the tragic ath of the young man who well might have been the only real love of his life, Willson quickly beme wily known for his stable of good-lookg, well-built, albe margally talented (not to mentn predomantly homosexual) male actors, each of them wh unual nam which Wilson himself personally had btowed upon Willson personally disvered and named the lik Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Robert Wagner, Nick Adams, Doug McClure, Ty Hard, Clt Walker, Van Williams, John Derek, Race Gentry, Guy Madison, and Rory Calhoun, among others (cludg my personal favore first and last name batn, “Buck Class”).

Moreover, he has been given ial primary cred for stmentally advancg the reer of bombshell Lana Turner as well as beg Ga Rowland’s most acunts, the stereotypil Hollywood hunks of the 1950s – the lik of Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, Tab Hunter, and others – were often eher gay or extremely “gay-iendly, ” as that phrase now turns. In a stud attempt to quell gay mors, Willson gave all of his protege clients a signature ma-up “manly” name nsistg of a sgle-syllable surname (Van, Rock, Tab, Nick, Guy) followed by a regnizable Anglo sirname (Williams, Hudson, Hunter, Adams, Madison). Willson took a clumsy, naive, Chigo-born tck driver wh bad teeth named Roy Scherer, got him some ntal work and some actg lsons, and transformed him to one of Hollywood’s most popular leadg 1955, Confintial magaze threatened to publish an expose about Hudson’s clanste homosexual liftyle.

In orr to circumvent the article which potentially would have vastated his client’s reer, Willson disclosed rmatn about Rory Calhoun’s years prison and Tab Hunter’s arrt at a gay party 1950 exchange for the tabloid agreement not to prt the Hudson further perpetuate the se at his agent’s urgg, Hudson married Willson’s secretary Phyllis Gat  orr to put the mors to rt and mata a rpectable heterosexual image as a hband. Embodyg the buttoned-down prejudic and reprsns of the McCarthy era (upheld by closeted gay figur like Roy Cohn and J. I Experimented Wh A GuyIf you are a guy that experimented wh a guy, you are not alone, and is not somethg that you should be bothered about, bee is pletely normal to want to explore one’s sexualy and there’s no reason guys shouldn’t do parts of society own upon guys experimentg wh other guys, which is not somethg that tends to affect women as much, and fact, women beg bicur or bisexual is much more mon than guys experimentg wh each possible reason for this may be that the manls or genr inty of men is often associated, unfortunately, wh their sexual orientatn, and they are often tght that if they experiment wh other guys, means that they are lser somehow, or not “man enough” is extremely unfortunate bee one needs to be able to experiment wh and explore their sexualy whout any worri of what that means for their genr inty, and this is not somethg that one should be prived has also been extensive rearch on guys experimentg wh other guys, and one such survey was found that the stigma agast men experimentg wh other men is so harsh that about 63% of women say that they wouldn’t even date a man who had sex wh another man, while the oppose is not te, and most men said that they would gladly date a woman who had experimented wh other women, which shows how accepted female homosexualy and sexual fluidy are.