Hollywood Gays (41 page)

A: I dunno. Who remembers so far back? But when you go into acting and you get hired, you’re glad for anything that supplies you with extra emotion and range for the parts you finally get…the parts you auditioned for. Most normal guys, when they try to act, they’re stiff as boards. Upstairs. Not downstairs. (Winks.)

Q: Acting in most cultures has a greater percentage of gay men in it than most professions.

A: Marlon once said it’s even more that way in macho cultures, ‘cause emotion’s more taboo there.

Q: Is it true what I’ve heard, that Brando—when it comes to male partners—prefers what have been described as “Third World types”?

A: (Guffaws.) Marlon prefers sex, period. For women, yeah, “Third World” nails it. You know why? ‘Cause they’re unlike his mother. His mother wasn’t exotic, so if the gal is, psychologically it’s less like incest. Marlon’s pretty savvy about psychology— Freud, Jung, Hung…Low, all that. With guys, Marlon’s more equal-opportunity. He likes Latins, sure, but if anyone’s a looker or he’s ready to…how do I put it…delicate-like?

Q: If somebody wants to worship at his shrine?

A: Amen, brother! (Laughs.) You come up with that?

Q: I think Truman Capote did.

A: (frowns) Truman never found me sexually appealing. You might not believe it, but when he was young, he was more than halfway to sexy.

Q: I’ve seen photos. But don’t feel bad; Truman’s sexual ideal, or one of them, was Lloyd Nolan.
(No reaction from Ewell.) The actor, Lloyd—

A: Oh! Sure. I was trying to place him. Lana Turner, her doctor killed him off in some movie where (Nolan) was her husband. Later he was on television, right? We all end up there (shrugs).

Q: He was the kindly doctor in
Julia
, in which Diahann Carroll starred and played a nurse.

A: I think I remember it. I remember him now.
He
was Capote’s idea of good-looking?

Q: Or of sex appeal. That’s what he said. So you see.

A: So I should’ve thanked the little troll, after all. (Grins.)

Q: Now, about your costar—

A: Yes. Miss Monroe was an enchanting—

Q: Not her. Harvey Lembeck.

A: (Grinning.) You know about our movies?

Q: But haven’t seen them. I don’t think they’ve been released on video, and I’ve inquired.

A: I’m not sure either. I wonder if I get residuals if they put them out on videotape? Harvey’s dead, you know (died in 1982).

Q: Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know his name, but I knew his face. He was in
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine
, a 1960s non-classic I saw at the movies with my sister.

A: Was he in that? You lose touch with people….

Q: You and he were Willie and Joe in army comedies from the early 1950s that now must be comedy classics.

A: Just comedies. They were B-movies. David Wayne and I did them too, before David left. You know about him and Marilyn, don’t you?

Q: No (imagining Ewell refers to an affair).

A: He got lucky with her…he was her leading man more often than anyone. Naturally that made him damn visible. (Frowns.) I only got to be in
one
movie (with MM). Ah, well. (Sips.) See, television wasn’t as predominant like by the mid and late ‘50s. It wiped out the B-movies first, ya know.

Q: Many would have said that TV was the equivalent of B-movies.

A: Billy Wilder? (Nods.) He used to say he didn’t have any use for TV, but he was glad it came along, ‘cause it gave the movie people something to look down on.

Q: The way that movies and movie people were looked down on by the theatre, right?

A: (Nods.) Or…wait a minute. Was it Billy Wilder or someone else?

Q: It sounds like Wilder. Or Groucho Marx. But, speaking of Marilyn Monroe, you of course saw
All About Eve
?

A: Of course. I’m not illiterate, ya know.

Q: Remember Marilyn as Miss Caswell, of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art? In her final scene in the film, she’s overwhelmed after an audition at the theatre and asks George Sanders, who’s playing Addison DeWitt—

A: About television! Yeah.

Q: She asks, “Tell me this—do they have auditions in television?” and he says—

A: I know, I know. “That’s all television is, my dear, nothing but auditions.”

Q: Excellent English accent! Couldn’t you have played Addison?

A: Not mean enough. But I did use an English accent for a scene in
The Seven Year Itch.
Remember?

Q: Of course! You’re talking to Marilyn in a fantasy scene at the piano, pretending to be very suave and—

A: Pretending to be Noël Coward.

Q: Definitely not an everyman.

A: And definitely queer. In the very best sense, though.

Q: Except that he detested the Mahatma Gandhi.

A: “The”?

Q: “Mahatma” was a title—Great Soul—it wasn’t his first name.

A: What was it? Michael? (Giggles.)

Q: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. No relation to Indira Gandhi the prime minister.

A: Why did he hate him?

Q: Because Gandhi fought, non-violently, for India’s freedom from British rule and Coward, despite his talents, was obviously an imperialist.

A: Noël Coward, he’d have been all for the British Empire….

Q: All for it.

A: I had a friend who said he was British when I met him. Later he said he was from Wales. I thought he said Whales. But he didn’t. Anyway, later he had to move back to…someplace there. Not London. But he nicknamed me T.E. ‘Cause of T.E. Lawrence. Lawrence of Arabia, like the movie. Howard, my friend, said he thought Lawrence and I had something in common. (Nods and winks.)

Q: And with Howard also?

A: Wanna hear something strange? (Moves in closer.) I don’t think Howard had any sex drive.

Q: Very rare in a male. I understand north Wales is very scenic. I hope to go there soon, and also visit Llangollen. Do you know about the Ladies of Llangollen?

A: Which ones?

Q: The famous lesbian couple who lived together and are buried together in a Welsh churchyard. It was allowed because, being female, people assumed they were asexual, despite being inseparable for decades.

A: Women get the breaks, all right. If it’s men, they imagine the worst.

Q: Or the best, depending on one’s point of view.

A: Ah…you got a point. I wasn’t there myself, but I remember hearing how when Cary Grant and his boyfriend (Randolph Scott) were shooting
My Favorite Wife
—

Q: A great camouflage title.

A: —they shocked the whole movie establishment when they checked into the same hotel in I think Pasadena and then into the same room and right into the very same double bed! Man! (Shakes head.) Nobody dared print that. But you heard about it for years after.

Q: I’ve read that they lived together through five different houses. Yet Grant became such a closet case.

A: The higher they go, the farther they fall, kid.

Q: Did you think with
The Seven Year Itch
being such a big hit that you’d finally become a star?

A: Nah. A lead role, sure. A star? He’s a star if he’s a star over several pictures and several years. I knew it was a golden opportunity. I was a character man, and not a young one. Maybe for a few moments I kinda got drunk on its (the movie’s) popularity, but I always knew it was the sex in the sex comedy and the sex symbol that was Marilyn Monroe. I didn’t have no crystal ball, and in this damn crazy business you can’t ever tell what’s gonna happen anyway.

After
The Seven Year Itch
whooda guessed Monroe would take a couple of years off from Hollywood? She turned down everything that came her way. She defied Fox (the studio), for crap’s sake! That’s the effing opposite of striking while the iron’s hot. Me in her little white strap-on shoes, I’d never have done that.

Q: Had she tired of so-called dumb-blonde roles?

A: Sure. She was nearing 30, wanted to move on. For better acting choices and material. Very brave. Of course, the press just made fun, but I admire her moving to New York and taking acting lessons (via Method guru Lee Strasberg).

Q: It’s a shame she didn’t do a play. Everyone would have come, just to see her.

A: That’s probably why. She knew that. It had to be good material, and she had to be good in it. You know, she’d get all nervous in front of audiences. Like on a movie set. So imagine performing in front of 200 or 2,000 people. Marilyn wasn’t studying for the stage, she was improving her technique for better movies. The only audience she wasn’t nervous with—the one she loved—was the camera. A photographer’s camera. She was a perfect photographic subject.

Q: An icon. In both senses of the word. Did you see the movie
Tommy
?

A: The rock thing?

Q: Yes, from a rock opera.

A: The one with Ann-Margret?

Q: Yes, as Tommy’s mother. Remember that whole sequence where there’s a religion built around Marilyn Monroe, and a statue is carried through the church of her in the white
The Seven Year Itch
dress?

A: Yeah…with Richard Sherman (Ewell’s character) nowhere in sight. Understandably. No, of course. Marilyn died and became a goddess.

Q: Do you think she’d be pleased?

A: I think she’d be surprised she died so young (36) and thrilled to be a goddess and still today’s ultimate icon.

Q: Can you shed light on any major misconceptions about Marilyn?

A: I think so, young man. She was wonderful, and I never resent talking about her. I only get disappointed when people think that’s the only film I ever did. Or when they’re amazed how much stage work I’ve done. But I’m a working actor. I don’t have a beautiful pan. It’s not my choice. I gotta make a living. I also happen to like acting, and the stage is an actor’s medium.

You know that, don’t you? Movies is a director’s medium—also an editor’s medium. Never cross the damn editor! Man… (Shakes head, then sips.) Were you asking me about Billy Wilder (who directed, cowrote and coproduced
The Seven Year Itch
)?

Q: Yes, him too.

A: A good director, a good writer. Not the sweetest guy in the world. Also a good actor. You know, diffident about his career—in public—but like Marilyn, he was real career-oriented and publicity-savvy. They both
had
to reach the top. Both loved being there.

Q: Lauren Bacall has said Marilyn had “no bitchery” in her.

A: Yeah. Sometimes she’d show up late, other times the takes would go on and on and over and over, but she wasn’t being difficult. That’s the difference. You never wanted to kill her for it, like with…others, ‘cause they did it out of spite or power or some artsy-fartsy reason. Marilyn and Wilder were smart about their careers, but the difference is, Wilder enjoyed bad-mouthing people, she didn’t. The only time Marilyn said something negative about someone was after they said something. Something so bad or stupid, and even then she didn’t always say something.

Q: Did you follow her career closely, before she died in 1962?

A: Not so much, though like everyone else, I heard the major news about her. But friends and associates would keep me filled in, like I was
supposed
to know, ‘cause of
The Seven Year Itch.
 

Q: Getting back to comments by her detractors, Tony Curtis said, during
Some Like It
Hot
, that kissing Marilyn Monroe was “like kissing Hitler.”

A: “Hit-luh.” Don’t forget the accent.

Q: As if one could.

A: Yeah, she hated that. She wondered what provoked it. Marilyn was easily hurt. Even with her ups and downs in Hollywood she never seemed to build up the hard shell that most front-rank actresses develop.

Q: Actresses such as…?