Open Secret
Gay Hollywood–1928-1998
David Ehrenstein
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Amazon.com Review
If David Ehrenstein’s Open Secret says that somebody is gay, you can safely assume that he or she is (which is why the chapter on Tom Cruise reveals nothing more than reasons why people believe–or want to believe–he might be gay). Interviews with contemporary ‘out’ stars, writers, and studio execs are balanced against the reminiscences of those who spent Tinseltown’s golden age in the closet. This reveals how open Hollywood’s tolerance of its gay and lesbian members has become, but it also shows the lack of similar progress in how the press deals with potential celebrity queerness. There isn’t much difference, for example, between the scandal sheet Confidential’s 1955 exposé of Tab Hunter’s bust at a ‘pajama party … for the boys’ and the 1997 ‘Kevin Spacey Has a Secret’ cover story in the ostensibly more respectable Esquire.
Open Secret flits from a visit to the set of the Ian McKellen-Brendan Fraser film Father of Frankenstein (based on the novel by Christopher Bram) to an analysis of Ellen DeGeneres’s protracted coming-out process, from an overview of the impact of AIDS on the entertainment industry to the story of how Gus Van Sant almost made a movie of Randy Shilts’s The Mayor of Castro Street. But the intersection of queer sexuality and Hollywood admittedly covers a lot of territory, and Ehrenstein does an admirable job of providing an overview. One bit of advice: skip over the very brief prologue, which tries a bit too hard to convince readers of the book’s seriousness, and allow the informative and entertaining stories here to speak for themselves. –Ron Hogan
From Publishers Weekly
The history of gay Hollywood cannot be summed up in one book any more than straight Hollywood can, but Ehrenstein’s exhaustively researched tome comes close to being the definitive account. It is a superb companion to Vito Russo’s Celluloid Closet (which documented the history of gay and lesbian characters in films, rather than who’s working in the industry). Beginning in the late 1880s with the invention of cinema and the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual,’ Ehrenstein examines the very open secret of homosexuality in the entertainment capital, validating Michelangelo Signorile’s theory (in Queer in America) that the Hollywood closet has always been maintained by studio producers, publicists, the tabloid press (who continue to create heterosexual romances for gay/lesbian celebrities because they sell papers) and the stars themselves. In short, everyone knows except the public. The chapter on scandal magazines vividly demonstrates that the same publicity machine that denied, obscured and repackaged stars’ reputations in the 1940s and ’50s is still working overtime in the ’90s. Profiles and conversations with gay/lesbian studio heads, producers, directors, screenwritersand publicists, as well as firsthand narratives by those from earlier eras (including Gavin Lambert, Gloria Stuart and Armistead Maupin), flesh out Ehrenstein’s study (to his credit, he doesn’t use any anonymous sources). It’s all here: Liberace’s two libel suits against newspapers for saying he was gay (he wonAtwice!); how AIDS changed the political and social landscape of same-sex life; the press backlash to Ellen DeGeneres’s coming out; and even that gerbil rumor. So knowledgeable and articulate a tour guide is Ehrenstein that these stories come fully alive after decades of meticulous cover-ups and public facades. Eight pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Details
| ISBN | 9780688153175 |
| Genre | Performing Arts |
| Publication Date | 07-Oct-98 |
| Publisher | William Morrow |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 320 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | NotRated |
| Subject | Gay Actors; Gay Actors/ United States/ Biography; Gay Motion Picture Producers And Directors; Gay Motion Picture Producers And Directors/ United States/ Biography |
| BookID | 9294 |
