Line in the Sand
Raymond Burr
1917 - 1993
I loved Perry Mason. And Ironsides too. And so I was very interested years ago when my friend Frank, who never talked about his clients except occasionally after they were dead, told me he'd seen Raymond on a regular basis for years. Although he preferred the term "whore," Frank was actually a very professional paid escort with a reputation for being discreet. "In this town you have to be," he explained. "otherwise you're going to wind up dead." Frank said he'd known boys who'd disappeared because they'd kissed and told, and I believed him. Everyone knows about Raymond now, but Frank had other clients, and some of them even I'm not brave enough to tell you about.
But not Scotty Bowers whose tell-all book Full Service has finally arrived. People have been talking for years about the damage to reputations Scotty would do if he ever wrote a book, and now he has. He names names. As you might imagine, there's been the inevitable fall out that always comes along when the sexual lives of famous people are discussed in public. The denials, the running-down and dismissal of the source, even these days when the most appalling scandals and secrets are routine news items. There are still people who want to respect the line drawn in the sand between what you can say or not say about stars and great names and public figures. The persistence in maintaining the myth, for instance, of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is astonishing. Some will pursue it to the gates of insanity and box office disaster.
If you've ever been around someone with a public image which is at odds with his or her private self - which is to say practically everyone you know, if you think about it - then perhaps you too have experienced that moment when you've realized, I know something the rest of the world doesn't. But if you are like so many other people in this town or in Corporate America you've signed a confidentiality agreement, and so, End of Story.
But W. H. Auden, writing about the writer J.R. Ackerley ("Papa Was a Wise Old Sly-Boots," collected in Forewords & Afterwords, 1943, Vintage edition, 1974, p. 453), says that we need to know specifics. We want the full story, with details:
"Mr Ackerley is never quite explicit about what he really preferred to do in bed. This omission is important because all 'abnormal' sex-acts are rites of symbolic magic, and one can only properly understand the actual personal relation if one knows the symbolic role each expects the other to play."
I happen to agree with Auden, but I would go further. Normal and Abnormal and Everything in Between: all sex-acts are rites of magic, and we understand people better when we know what magic they're up to, what games they like to play, what roles they prefer to be cast in, if you will. How public that information should be, of course, is a matter of much debate and speculation. The line in the sand between what should be disclosed or not is drawn in the sand after all, not in stone.
Raymond Burr had a place on the beach in Malibu. So did lots of stars. So did Billy Hopper, who played Paul Drake on Perry Mason. He was the son of the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.
William Hopper (1915 - 1970)
Photographed by George Hurrell (1904 - 1992) who made all the stars beautiful.
Can you imagine having a gossip columnist for a mother?
Raymond Burr was gay?!?
I didn't realize I was sooooo uninformed. We must talk soon.
XXXXXXXXOOOOO,
M.
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Madame,
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Thanks to "soyons-suave" I have a lot of information, not that it matters a lot anyway. It is not that important to enjoy the play of any actor/ actress.
Building or maintaining a myth can also be an act of art..., well, at least you need some talent!
Billy Hopper is really handsome! That is my shock of the day!
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I believe Oscar Wilde once said, "It's better to be talked about than not to be talked about."
In line with your post, let me just add: I sure could use a little more "magic" in my life
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It's comments like Auden's that make me wonder what the hell was wrong with Christopher Isherwood. He was playing like he was such a rule-breaker, writer of one of the first gay novels, a total anarchist, and when I toss him a sideways question about monogamy in May-December romances he just about shits his pants.
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I remember us talking about that, and you even got some feisty defenders of Christopher commenting too, either on your blog or here, but in any event, I have to agree. I think, at least for an older generation of gay men, even the ones who were "out" there were degrees to how open and honest you could be, and limits to what could be said publicly or in print versus what you'd admit to when 'letting your hair down' with friends. That's why Scotty's book is so interesting to me: there's a whole community out here (in L.A.) who know perfectly well what Scotty has written is true, but plenty of people at the same time who want to be shocked and dismayed it's finally gotten into print. In that respect, Auden can say all he wants about needing to know the specifics and private details to understand the person, but he's as good an example as any of someone whose private life was a lot more complicated than the public version. And I suspect he'd be as quick as Christopher to tell a young journalist it was none of his business. Unless of course, the circumstances were right...
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Meanwhile, if you're into irony, I met Isherwood with a friend who was *shocked* I had the gall to ask about his relationship with Don Bachardy.
Guess who ended up "posing" for pictures?
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