Cary Grant: Hints and Closets in the 1930s

On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant died in Davenport, Iowa, right across the river from my home town of Rock Island.  I was living in West Hollywood at the time, but still, it felt weird to know that a film legend had died right next door.

Cary Grant had a brilliant career, usually playing suave, sophisticated types driven mad by a free spirit or a series of catastrophes.  Must-sees include Topper (1936), Suspicion (1941) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), To Catch a Thief (1955), North by Northwest (1959) by Hitchcock again,and  That Touch of Mink (1962) with Doris Day.  Many of his movies have gay subtexts.

In Bringing Up Baby (1938), his character answers the door in a frilly women's nightgown (because a woman stole his clothes), and declares "I just went gay all of a sudden."  He continues: "I am sitting in the middle of Time Square, waiting for a bus."  This is one of the first uses of "gay" in its modern sense, augmented by the reference to cruising.  It's an ad-lib, not in the shooting script. How would he know it?

The perennial question is, was he gay?

The facts of the matter are:

1. He met Randolph Scott in 1932, and the two lived together, on and off, for the next ten years ("to save on expenses," heterosexist biographers claim) and remained close friends for the rest of their lives.

2. But neither have been associated with any gay stars, or with the gay subcultures of Hollywood in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s.

3. Friends and acquaintances noted that he was often seen in the company of young men.

4. He was married five times. His first two wives "accused" him of being gay, his last three denied the rumors, stating that they had sex a lot.

5. He sued Chevy Chase for suggesting that he was gay.

6. His daughter stated that he liked the rumors, because they motivated women to "cure him" through sex.

7. His last movie, Walk, Don't Run (1966), is obviously about a gay romance.

8. He never acknowledged his gay fans.

9. My friend Randall claims that he had a three-way with Cary Grant and Groucho Marx in 1958.  The story is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Answer: there's a ton of evidence for both gay and heterosexual identity.  Most likely he was bisexual and highly closeted.

Mae West: Gay Diva of the 1930s

She appeared in ten movies between 1933 and 1943 -- a rather small body of work (during the same period, Mickey Rooney appeared in over fifty).  And two others during the 1970s.  Yet she is instantly recognizable today, and her lines are still being quoted:

"It's not the men in your life, it's the life in your men."

"Goodness had nothing to do with it."

"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"

Like 1970s sitcoms, comedy movies of the 1930s were about people not having sex.  The Hays Code forbade any implication of sex, premartial, marital, or extramarital, so you could only talk about it through code, hints, and innuendos.  Mae West was an expert on innuendo -- her body language and intonation could make the most innocent line sound like it wasn't.

Maybe that's why she became an icon for gay men of the pre-Stonewall era.  Faced with police-state repression, where discovery would be catastrophic, they learned to communicate with body language, gestures, code-words.  That's the origin of the term "gay."

She was also a favorite model for drag queens of the era.  In fact, she claimed that she invented drag.

Mae West had a number of close friends who were LGBT, such as bisexual Cary Grant, and wrote the first play to openly mention gay people. It was closed down by the police during a run-through in Connecticut in 1927, but copies are available.  Her attitude was rather progressive for the era: she believed that gay men were feminine souls trapped in male bodies, and thus doomed to sad, empty lives.  But they weren't innate criminals plotting the overthrow of civilization.

Unfortunately, her attitude stayed the same as seasons changed, and by the 1970s it was old-fashioned and homophobic.

In her last film appearance, Sextet (1978), Mae West is presented as an ongoing sex symbol.  There's nothing wrong with the elderly having active libidos, but seeing the 85-year old actress surrounded by fawning musclemen and married to 34-year old Timothy Dalton is rather ludicrous.

Still, we get to see the musclemen.

See also: Madonna.

Walk, Don't Run: Cary Grant's Last Gay Pickup

Walk, Don't Run (1966) is set during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where there is a severe shortage of hotel rooms.  Important businessman Sir William Rutland (bisexual actor Cary Grant) arrives with nothing available, so he answers a "roommate wanted" ad.  The only problem: the apartment is owned by a woman, Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar).

He assures her that he has no amorous intentions -- he has a wife back in England -- but then he spends the next day bragging about the "beautiful woman" he's living with, hoping that someone gets the wrong idea.

Having demonstrated that he is heterosexual, sort of, Rutland goes cruising.  He spies American architect and Olympic competitor Steve Davis (Jim Hutton), and rather obviously tries to pick him up.  After some seductive conversations, he drags Steve into a bathhouse, apparently hoping for a glimpse of his goods.  The American complains about women scrubbing his body -- women, gross!  -- before jumping nude into the bath.

Thus softened up, Steve agrees to share Rutland's room.  Christine is not happy with the idea of two men living in her apartment, but they assure her that they have no amorous intentions -- toward her, anyway.

Then, Rutland begins matchmaking, cleverly deflecting his attraction to Steve onto Christine.  At first Steve will have none of it -- he's not interested in women, thank you very much -- he prefers his hot boyfriend, Russian athlete Yuri Andreyovitch (Ted Hartley).

But a visa malfunction requires Christine to marry right away, so Steve acts the Good Samaritan.  And the marriage sticks.

His job done, Rutland heads home.  Just in case you thought he might really be gay, the cab driver suggests that he take a fertility god with him -- he and his wife have four children, but there's always room for more!

You'll find fewer obvious examples of overt same-sex desire deflected onto the feminine.  Aside from a few obligatory "My wife back home" statements, Cary Grant plays Rutland as gay.  And except for his deus-ex-machina falling in love, Jim Hutton does likewise.

This was Cary Grant's last movie role, though he continued to perform on stage (seen her in the 1930s with long-term partner Randolph Scott).  He remained active in the Hollywood community until his death in 1986.

Born in 1938, Jim Hutton had a "golly-gee" openness that was good for light romantic comedies, and he made a dozen of them in the 1960s: Where the Boys Are, Bachelor in Paradise, You're Only Young Once, Looking for Love, Sunday in New York, Who's Minding the Mint?  He died in 1979.

His son, Timothy Hutton (born 1960), was a Brat Pack hanger-on who played in a number of memorable buddy-bonding dramas, such as Taps (1981) and The Falcon and the Snowman (1986).

A Touch of Pink: Whiny Gay Guy, Free-Spirit Bisexual, and Cougar Mom

In A Touch of Pink (2004), Pakistani-Canadian Alim (Jimi Mistry) is living in London, with some kind of behind-the-scenes job in the movies.  He is morose, depressed, and quirky, always having conversations with his imaginary friend, Cary Grant.  But he still manages to land a partner, bisexual free-spirit economist Giles (Kris Holden-Ried).

There are free-spirit economists?

Then Alim's bitter, fault-finding Mom arrives from Canada for a visit.

You know what that means: hid all the gay books and beefcake photos, move the Economist to the guest bedroom, and pretend that you're engaged to his sister.  You've only seen that a few dozen times before.

But you haven't seen what happens next.

  The Economist flirts openly with Mom, calling her "beautiful," and taking her out for a romantic day of sightseeing and dancing cheek-to-cheek.  At this point, I assumed that the Economics would end up dumping Alim for his mother.  But that's not the direction the movie takes.

Roiling with jealousy over his the Economist's romantic interest in his mother, Alim decides to come out in stupidest way possible -- by showing Mom his photo.

Wait -- that's supposed to put the kibosh on her romantic interest?

All hell breaks loose. Mom returns to Canada, and the Economist is so upset over the loss of his cougar girlfriend that he breaks up with Alim and starts dating an Olympic Gold Medalist.

Right, whenever you break up with a guy, Olympic Gold Medalists are always waiting to zoom in.

But not to worry, Mom switches from homophobe to gay-rights activist overnight, and finds a new beau, a poetic janitor.  

The Economist and Alim reconcile. Deciding that he doesn't need an imaginary friend anymore, Alim dismisses Cary Grant.  Cue the fade-out kiss.

There were a few interesting bits:

1. Cary Grant behaves exactly like what you would expect: "Hide everything!"
2. Alim's cousin is gay but intends to marry anyway to "keep up appearances.
3. The bizarre  love triangle
4. Mom's conflicting attitudes toward the West.  She grew up watching old Cary Grant movies,  discovered that the real London was nothing like that, and now hates all things Western.  But not really.

But that's not enough to overcome the tired, contrived ending,  or the whiny, unpleasant character of Alim.

By the way, the title is a parody of That Touch of Mink (1962), a Cary Grant-Doris Day romantic comedy that no one except movie buffs has ever heard of

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