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A dishy, definitive look at Cary Grant

‘A Brilliant Disguise’ portrays actor as gay, bi, and straight

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Cary Grant, gay news, Washington Blade
Cary Grant (Photo courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

‘Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise’
By Scott Eyman
c.2020, Simon & Schuster
$35 / 576 pages

Recently, during the pandemic and election season, I felt down. Until I watched “Bringing Up Baby,” the 1938 screwball comedy. Like millions of other fans, especially queer aficionados, I cracked up when David (Cary Grant) loses his clothes. He’s wearing Susan’s (Katharine Hepburn) bathrobe. A prim, proper dowager comes to the door. “Why are you wearing those clothes,” she asks.

“Because I just went gay all of a sudden!” David (Grant) exclaims.

“Gary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise” by film historian Scott Eyman is a fascinating, comprehensive biography of the screen legend. There have been other biographies of Grant, a queer icon, but Eyman’s is definitive.

Grant, who died in 1986, was born in 1904 as Archibald (Archie) Alexander Leach in Bristol, England. Grant’s childhood was as far removed from the glitz and glam of Tinsel Town as could be imagined. Charles Dickens (whose youth was no picnic) might have put the young Archie in one of his novels.

His father was an alcoholic. Grant was told his mother was dead. (Years later, he learned that she was alive and residing in a mental institution.) Money was scarce. He found solace by attending vaudeville shows in music halls.

His skills as an acrobat were his ticket out of his impoverished circumstances. He toured with vaudeville acts in England and America. Eventually, he landed in Hollywood. His first big break came when Mae West picked him to star with her in “She Done Him Wrong.” From there, Grant embarked on a decades long career. From the 1930s until “Walk, Don’t Run” in 1966, he made 57 films. An astute businessman, Grant sat on several corporate boards.

Grant married five times. He remained on friendly terms with Betsy Drake, one of his ex-wives and had a daughter Jennifer with Dyan Cannon, his fourth wife.  

Long before it was fashionable to “tune in, drop out,” Grant used LSD to learn about himself.

And, of course, there was Randolph Scott, the actor, with whom Grant lived in Hollywood in the 1930s during his (and Scott’s) bachelor years. A fan magazine photographed the two of them at their home. Jennifer, Grant’s daughter, denied that her father was gay. “Dad somewhat enjoyed being called gay,” she wrote in her memoir. “He said it made women want to prove the assertion wrong.”

Yet, it’s hard not to believe that Grant wasn’t queer. It’s been claimed that before he became famous, Grant had a relationship with the gay costume designer Orry-Kelly. Though there’s no way that Grant or Scott could have been open about being a couple at the time, their relationship seems to have been an open secret. The actress Carole Lombard joked about Grant and Scott, “Randy pays the bills and Cary mails them.” 

In “Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise,” Eyman, author of “Hank and Jim: the Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart,” deftly illuminates Grant’s sexuality and the other mysterious aspects of the legendary actor’s life.

We adore “Cary Grant,” the polished, charming, suave, witty presence who we see on screen. Yet, Cary Grant, the actor, wasn’t this character. Grant is “the most self-invented man in the movies,” Eyman writes.

“It’s a part I’ve been playing a long time, but no way am I really Cary Grant,” Eyman tells us Grant would say.

Grant wasn’t carefree as he so often appears in his movies. “Underneath Grant’s fascinating, nonpareil facade was a personality of nearly perpetual anxiety,” Eyman writes.

Both gays and straights have wanted to claim Grant as one of their own, writes Eyman, who lives with his wife in West Palm Beach. Grant likely wouldn’t have liked to have been labeled as gay or queer. Yet, Eyman reports that Grant in a conversation with his friend Bill Royce, implied that “he had been basically gay as a young man, later, bisexual, still later straight.” 

“Cary Grant” gives us a dishy, informative look at not only Grant but Hollywood in all its delicious machinations. Katharine Hepburn, while a houseguest at Grant’s home, becomes absorbed in reading Sophocles while she’s taking a bath. Mae West, larger-than-life on screen, is tiny in person.        

Looking for a glorious read?  Check it out.

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Books

‘Radiant’ an illuminating biography of Keith Haring

Author captures artist’s complexities in sympathetic new book

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‘Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring’
By Brad Gooch
c.2024, Harper
$20/502 pages

“Radiant” is an illuminating biography of the talented artist Keith Haring, who made his indelible mark during the 1980s before dying young of AIDS. Brad Gooch, biographer of poets Frank O’Hara and Rumi, follows Haring from his childhood in Kutztown, Pa., to his early days in New York City painting artistic graffiti, to his worldwide fame and friendships with Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The eldest of three children and the only boy, Haring learned to draw early on from his father. Art quickly became a lasting obsession, which he pursued fiercely. Growing up in a small, conservative town, he was drawn to countercultural movements like hippies and religious “Jesus freaks,” although he mostly found the imagery and symbols appealing.

He studied commercial art in Pittsburgh but later dropped out, spending several years working and learning at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center, before moving to New York City in 1978. Studying painting at the School for Visual Arts, he also learned about video and performance art, making interesting projects. He also began drawing images on subways and blank advertisement backboards. One of his most distinctive was the Radiant Baby, a crawling baby shooting rays of light. 

Gooch begins the biography with his own encounter with this public art, which felt colorful and “extremely urgent.” It had to be done guerilla-style, before the authorities could catch him, and they were frequently painted over. He was arrested a few times.

Ironically, a few years later Haring would be paid huge sums and flown around the world to create large-scale art on public property. People were amazed at how quickly he worked, even in terrible conditions. Sometimes at these events, while a crowd was gathered, he would draw and give away the artwork. Knowing that his art in galleries sold for incredible amounts, he enjoyed occasionally frustrating the art world’s commercial desires.

His Pop Shops also revealed Haring’s competing impulses. Opened in 1986, first in New York and later in Tokyo, they put his art on all sorts of merchandise, including T-shirts and posters. On the one hand, they allowed ordinary people to buy his work at reasonable prices. However, they also earned him more money and increased his public image.

He made art for everyone. His best-known pieces, featuring babies and dogs, are colorful and family friendly. Some even consider it “lightweight.” He eagerly created murals and artwork for elementary schools and neighborhoods. But he also made art with social and political commentary and sexual explicitness. “Michael Stewart – USA for Africa” depicts a graffiti artist’s strangulation by New York City Transit Police officers. He painted “Once Upon a Time…” for the men’s bathroom of New York City’s Lesbian & Gay Community Center.

Haring worked nearly right up to his death in 1990. The Keith Haring Foundation keeps his work in the public eye, while also funding nonprofits working with disadvantaged youth and AIDS education. Gooch captures Haring’s complexities; he befriended graffiti artists of color and dated working-class men, but was sometimes ignorant about how his wealth and fame affected these relationships. Well written and sympathetic, the book can sometimes overwhelm in detail about life in the 80’s and Haring’s celebrity friends.

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Books

New book is a fun whodunit set in London drag world

‘Murder in the Dressing Room’ will keep readers guessing

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(Book cover image courtesy Berkeley)

‘Murder in the Dressing Room’
By Holly Stars
c.2025, Berkeley
$19/368 pages

Your alter ego, the other half of your double life, is a superhero.

When you’re quiet, she’s boisterous. Your confidence is flat, hers soars. She’s a better dresser than you; she’s more popular, and maybe even a little smarter. By day, you live a normal existence but by night, your other side roars and in the new mystery, “Murder in the Dressing Room” by Holly Stars, both of you solve crimes.

Lady Lady had been a little off all evening.

As owner of London’s most fabulous, elegant drag club, she was usually in command but her protegee, Misty Devine, could tell that something was wrong.

She discovered how wrong when she found Lady Lady on her dressing room floor, foaming at the mouth, dead, poisoned by a mysterious box of chocolates.

Hours later, Misty de-dragged, morphing from an elegant woman to an ordinary, binary hotel employee named Joe who was heartbroken by the tragedy. Only employees had access to Lady Lady’s dressing room – ergo, someone they knew at the club had to be the killer.

Obviously, the London detectives assigned to the case had a suspect list, but Misty/Joe and their boyfriend Miles knew solving Lady Lady’s murder was really up to them. They knew who the killer wasn’t, but who had reason to kill Misty’s mentor?

Maybe Mandy, the club’s co-owner. The club’s bartender and bouncer were both sketchy. Lady Lady had spats with two employees and a former co-worker, but was that motive enough? When the dress Lady Lady was wearing that night proved to have been valuable stolen goods, Joe’s investigation list grew to include people who might have sneaked backstage when no one was paying attention, and a shady man who was suddenly following them around.

Then Misty learned that she was in Lady Lady’s will, and she figured the inheritance would be minor but she got a huge surprise. Lady Lady’s posthumous gift could make others think that Misty might’ve had reason to kill her.

And just like that, the suspect list gained another entry.

When you first get “Murder in the Dressing Room” in your hands, hang onto it tight. It’s fun, and so fluffy and light that it might float away if you’re not careful.

The story’s a little too long, as well, but there’s enjoyment to be had here, and authenticity enough to hold a reader’s attention. Author Holly Stars is a drag performer in London and somewhat of a murder maven there, which gives her insight into books of this genre and the ability to string readers along nicely with solid characters. If you’re unfamiliar with the world of drag you’ll also learn a thing or two while you’re sleuthing through the story; drag queens and kings will like the dual tale, and the settings that anchor it.

As a mystery, this is fun and different, exciting, but tame enough for any adult reader. If you love whodunits and you want something light, “Murder in the Dressing Room” is a double delight.

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Books

Telling the Randy Shilts story

Remembering the book that made America pay attention to AIDS

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(Book cover image courtesy Chicago Review Press)

‘When the Band Played On’
By Michael G. Lee
c.2025, Chicago Review Press
$30/282 pages

You spent most of your early career playing second fiddle.

But now you’ve got the baton, and a story to tell that people aren’t going to want to hear, though it’s essential that they face the music. They must know what’s happening. As in the new book “When the Band Played On” by Michael G. Lee, this time, it’s personal.

Born in 1951 in small-town Iowa, Randy Shilts was his alcoholic, abusive mother’s third of six sons. Frustrated, drunk, she reportedly beat Shilts almost daily when he was young; she also called him a “sissy,” which “seemed to follow Randy everywhere.”

Perhaps because of the abuse, Shilts had to “teach himself social graces,” developing “adultlike impassiveness” and “biting sarcasm,” traits that featured strongly as he matured and became a writer. He was exploring his sexuality then, learning “the subtleties of sexual communication,” while sleeping with women before fully coming out as gay to friends.

Nearing his 21st birthday, Shilts moved to Oregon to attend college and to “allow myself love.” There, he became somewhat of an activist before leaving San Francisco to fully pursue journalism, focusing on stories of gay life that were “mostly unknown to anyone outside of gay culture.”

He would bounce between Oregon and California several times, though he never lost sight of his writing career and, through it, his activism. In both states, Shilts reported on gay life, until he was well known to national readers and gay influencers. After San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk was assassinated, he was tapped to write Milk’s biography.

By 1982, Shilts was in love, had a book under his belt, a radio gig, and a regular byline in a national publication reporting “on the GRID beat,” an acronym later changed to AIDS. He was even under contract to write a second book.

But Shilts was careless. Just once, careless.

“In hindsight,” says Lee, “… it was likely the night when Randy crossed the line, becoming more a part of the pandemic than just another worried bystander.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are two distinct audiences for “When the Band Played On.” One type of reader will remember the AIDS crisis and the seminal book about it. The other is too young to remember it, but needs to know Randy Shilts’s place in its history.

The journey may be different, but the result is the same: author Michael G. Lee tells a complicated, still-controversial story of Shilts and the book that made America pay attention, and it’s edgy for modern eyes. Lee clearly shows why Shilts had fans and haters, why Shilts was who he was, and Lee keeps some mystery in the tale. Shilts had the knowledge to keep himself safe but he apparently didn’t, and readers are left to wonder why. There’s uncomfortable tension in that, and a lot of hypothetical thinking to be had.

For scholars of gay history, this is an essential book to read. Also, for anyone too young to remember AIDS as it was, “When the Band Played On” hits the right note.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

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