Customer Reviews

Hollywood Gays: Conversations With: Cary Grant, Liberace, Tony Perkins, Paul Lynde, Cesar Romero, Randolph Scott...

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I totally agree with previous reviewer on all points. (I could not bring myself to rating this DISGUSTING GARBAGE, I mean 1 is too good for it! ) Let me just re-state those points... Firstly, please, pay attention that all of the men mentioned in this book are already dead. Secondly, I do believe that all of the men mentioned in the book were "more or less gay" (and I do not mean bisexual...I mean those men, who ARE GAY, but can't fully admit it, even to themselves). However, I DO NOT SEE how and why would they be so frank with this pompous tiny man... Tony Perkins, for example, was never known for his good demeanor, especially towadrs journalists. Thirdly, author's complete lack of a writer's imagination is obvious, because ASOLUTELY ALL MEN SOUND ALIKE (now, who in their sound state of mind would believe that Tony Perkins, Cary Grant, James Coco, and say Liberace were so much alike in their personal manner of speaking and their opinions on various subjects? ) IT IS ABSURD. Last but not least, throughout all of the so-called conversations, the author keeps interrupting people that he is "conversing" with, just to show how smart he is or to insert yet another sleazy piece of gossip. Had he really done that, I believe, he would have been immediately shut off, if not by Cary Grant, then definitely by Tony Perkins, for doing that. However, the bit about 80-year-old Cary Grant putting moves on the author absolutely takes the cake among all other absurd and disgusting insinuations, I have read so far about gay men in Hollywood. After all that Grant had lived and seen, I am sure he would have had much better taste in men, if in nothing else... Anyway, this book is worst than any of today's tabloid rubbish. Therefore, I have two questions...Firstly, Why on earth anyone would want to publish that?(Answer: For money, of course, and that is sad... sad that we, as readers, get to read it). Secondly, is it even possible (apparently, it is! ) for the author to claim that such intimate conversations supposedly happened in the first place, and, then, to publish them (breaking, again, the supposed confidentiality) without any authorization from people mentioned and without any legal repercussions from the "victims" side? But, then again, those men are dead, so the garbage just keeps coming our way...

As a journalist myself, I can testify that Cary Grant never gave interviews, even for articles about him. When he HAD to give an interview, he managed never to say anything. So you can write off the Grant interview right away. No conceivable way would he EVER EVER have spoken to Boze Hadleigh. In fact, I can't see how anyone would.

Someone mentioned their curiosity as to why Hadleigh's interview subjects are always dead. Uh, libel laws. He doesn't want to be sued. As he surely would have been - just look at what Cary Grant did when Chevy Chase called him "queer." And here's Cary, talking to good old Boze and coming onto him. Right.

Boze joins Hector Arce and Charles Higham in that wonderful world of - hey, they're dead, let's say anything we want - even fake an interview. And don't ever forget their liberal use of anonymous sources.

We know in many cases that the men allegedly spoken to by Hadleigh were indeed gay. Some we suspected. Now, did these people speak to Hadleigh - knowing full well what he's about? Perhaps some did and just as perhaps, some didn't.

Why we can't love and admire these people for what they brought to us with their work, I don't know. Instead, people like Boze try desperately to out actors like Tyrone Power (I bring this up because Hadleigh works Romero mercilessly on the subject) and manage to overlook first person accounts of affairs with him, such as Mai Zetterling's "All Those Tomorrows," Lana Turner's "The Lady, The Legend, the Truth," Linda Christian's "Linda: My Own Story," and Gene Tierney's autobiography. But why listen to those liars when we have BOZE??? Before Boze, there was Whisper magazine, a Confidential ripoff, and they outed Ty -as fooling around with Anita Ekberg while he was married to Linda Christian. Strange, isn't it - Confidential would have outed Rock Hudson if his studio hadn't traded another story. Odd they never felt compelled to do that to Ty...hmm...Again, Power may have been bisexual, and I do think in Hollywood, there was a lot of that going around. But why tell Boze about it.

WOW. This guy should be ashamed to present this as even being remotely journalistic. No sources, no tapes and such outlandish, unbelievable dialogue that you are embarrassed for the writer. Cary Grant at 80 came on to this guy? Its so ridiculous its funny. Just one of the many obvious personal sexual fantasies the author shares with the reader. I'm sure many of these people he supposedly interviewed were gay or bi-sexual, but it's not proven in this book. If anything it's disproven by the mere fact that the author has such little to back him up that he has to resort to faking interviews and offering anonymous sources.

The most obvious example is the Cary Grant interview, but the rest are just as blatant. There is no way a private person like Grant would speak to a known liar like Boze, let alone discuss his homoosexuality with him, when he had sued Chevy Chase around the time of the interview for calling him a fag.

The book is a waste of money and time. There are great biographies out there that contain substantiated facts rather than gossip and lies.

This is one of the most ridiculous books that has ever been passed off as "nonfiction". Supposedingly, these veteran stars all couldn't wait to tell all to some minor writer. You might notice that there isn't a single picture of the author with any of the stars, yet he amazingly has detailed conversations with them, including someone like Randolph Scott who never gave any interviews the last thirty plus years of his life!! Also note how unbelievable the dialogue is and how each star's "voice" sounds much like the other, all are vagueish about their own sex life but can't wait to dish about everybody else. Possibly all of the people profiled (I can't bring myself to say interviewed) were gay or bisexual but if you believe these "interviews" I have a Brooklyn Bridge I would like to sell you at a nice price.

This book is more about the author, Boze Hadleigh, than the so-called interviews. We get to read about when he was born and his parents, how he got his name, his religion, and ALL about his beliefs. He keeps interrupting his (snicker) interviews to preach about intolerence to gays. I am gay and I was insulted at his pompous attitude. I thought I was getting a book on the history of gay celebrities not a term paper by the author on gays. However, the most unbelievable part of this whole book is the way he has practically every star coming on to him. PUH-LEASE! Look at his picture on the jacket and it is evident that this could not possibly be the case. Just because he is gay does not mean every gay star wants to jump into bed with him. It is absurd and a diservice to gay men to suggest that all gays want to have sex with a any man like this character. What a joke!

I was fascinated by the idea of the book, though it is really a piece of trash, at its too-hollow core. I do love how Hadleigh includes mention of Weyland Flowers (of Weyland and Madame) and his pre-death heaviness, even with AIDS, with James Coco. The conversation with Flowers was to have happened at the end of the '80s, while the conversation with Coco, based on later comments, seemed to have happened EARLIER. Either it is bad writing (or editing), misleading the reader as to time sequence, or IT NEVER HAPPENED. It is so hard to believe most of what Hadleigh writes, particularly regarding a snuggly-snuggly in a limousine by (the very closeted) Cary Grant. My how the Hollywood hunks (and Paul Lynde and Coco) have a Boze fetish, it would seem. Maybe the studios should use him as a bargaining chip with SAG: less pay, bu more Boze. Who could resist?

Nastiness temporarily aside, the book certainly has a lurid appeal, but very little to lend it any shred of authenticity. Sell the transcript tapes, Hadleigh, and then you might have a believer in me. Until then, maybe you should just write autobiographical texts, as this is all the book seems to want to do, anyway. A personal touch in biography can certainly be interesting and illuminating, but not in the egomanical way presented here. If you want to sell your own life, political truisms and facts about your circumcision, Mr. Hadleigh, please do it within your own context, I beg you, and not within the star wrapping.

Boze Hadleigh strikes again with another slew of over-heated tete-a-tetes that tax credulity. Where is there ANY corroborating evidence--a snippet of a tape recording, a photo, a breathing body who was on the scene--that these cozy confessionals actually took place? Not in this book, which would have you believe that every closeted superstar over the past forty years couldn't wait to babble into Hadleigh's ever-present microphone. Only in his dreams.

Books like The Celluloid Closet and Hollywood Babylon abound with rumors about the sexual appetites of Hollywood stars. Boze Hadleigh's Gays in Hollywood, however, seeks to provide first-hand reports. An entertainment journalist since the 1960's, Hadleigh conducted volumes of off-the-record interviews with celebrities reputed to be gay or bisexual such as Cary Grant, Paul Lynde and Anthony Perkins, as well as less well-remembered actors like Randolph Scott and William Haines. In these interviews, often given only with the understanding that they would not be published during the star's life, Hadleigh attempts to get normally secretive actors to speak about their guarded sexual lives. The results vary widely, but even the "unsuccessful" interviews can be fascinating. Some stars like Paul Lynde, James Coco and Cesar Romero, speak freely and provide valuable accounts of what it was like to be gay in an industry filled with double lives and convenience marriages. Others like Cary Grant and Anthony Perkins are more elusive, but not without revelations about co-workers and peers. And one in particular is not so kind: at the end of his interview, an exceptionally ruffled Liberace expels Hadleigh from his mansion with imperial fury. Like his earlier volumes Conversations With My Elders and Lesbians in Hollywood, Hadleigh's work is somewhat journalistically suspect. He claims that for most of these interviews, he was not allowed to tape record or take notes, and frequently the questions seems stiltedly reconstructed and retroactively self-righteous. Still, the interviews are highly entertaining and provide an important alternative view of the film industry's social history. Recommended for both general readers and scholars of gay history / film studies.

Though entertaining, I feel this book should be considered just that. Unconvincing dialogue flows rampantly. Don't take this too seriously...REALLY.

No there were no conversations with these Hollywood legends. First of all why would any of them admit to something so private to this man? For the sake of argument, let's say Cary Grant was gay, why would he hide the truth from friends, and his family and the world, but admit it to Boze Hadleigh?

The conversations come across as made up. I can't explain the feeling, it's something you'll have to see for yourself.