Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 3:30 pm
I can out a famous gay filmmaker for having a girlfriend. But is it outing if he wasn't hiding her?
Well of course I didn't have any scoop on David, who has assured me that said filmmaker has recovered from his brief bout with bisexualitis.David Ehrenstein wrote:Check your e-mail Tex.
NY Post wrote:January 28, 2007 -- SHE was one of the most alluring sex symbols of the 20th century, but Marlene Dietrich was so broke toward the end of her life that she solicited money from an obsessed fan in exchange for singing to him five nights a week - while he performed an act of sexual self-gratification.
In "The Grand Surprise," a collection of previously unseen journals of Leo Lerman - the late, flamboyant Vanity Fair magazine editor who was a lifelong pal of Dietrich - he writes that her daughter, Maria Riva, told him how the star had plummeted into the pits of "degradation" to survive in Paris in the late 1980s. Dietrich died in 1992 and Lerman in 1994.
"Marlene received a letter from a man in the San Fernando Valley. He told her how much he adored her, etc.," Lerman writes. "When she saw, from his letterhead, that he was a doctor, she rang him. This began endless telephone exchanges, during which he became more and more enslaved."
But when the doctor offered to fly to Paris to rescue her, Dietrich cut off communication for several weeks, only to start up the calls again and find him depressed about being out of touch and seeing a shrink five times a week for $90 a session.
" 'Why don't you give me that money,' she asked. 'I'll sing to you five times a week,' " Lerman wrote. "He sent her a $5,000 check. She cashed it." Dietrich then began her task, singing tunes like "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have" to the doctor every night. "She sings to him," Riva told Lerman, "and you should excuse me, but I have to put it blankly - he [achieves sexual gratification] . . . If she was some woman from Oshkosh I could have her committed."
In the book, due out this April from Knopf, Lerman also reveals an unappetizing secret about the hygiene of another sex icon, Greta Garbo. "Marlene says Garbo has only two suits of underwear. They are made of men's shirting. She wears one for three days, then washes it, does not iron it. Then she wears the other," Lerman writes.
"Marlene says she doesn't mind the not ironing, but three days! Garbo uses only paper towels in her bathroom, has two pairs of men's trousers, two shirts, and little else in her wardrobe. She is very stingy."
What I wouldn't give for a time machine and the guts to chat up Alan Bates circa The Caretaker.David Ehrenstein wrote:Donald Spoto has written a biography of Alan Bates that's about to come out -- "outing " Bates for the five people who didn't know he was gay.
Anger is so addle-pated at this point that he's probably confusing Julianne Moore with Juanita Moore.patrick wrote:My friend recently saw Kenneth Anger speak, and said that afterwards he was told that Julianne Moore is one of the major targets of Hollywood Babylon III, but he wasn't told why.
I haven't read it, but surely it's got to be the Kitty Kelley book. Of course, that was published in 1981, so you'd be missing a whole quarter-century worth of gossip on Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson, and Larry Fortenski (for starters). Then again, it would be untempered by attempts at hagiography for her tireless AIDS charity work and declining health.Lino wrote:Ok, what's the best book (salaciously speaking) on Liz?
Ever seen his early Fox Film The Blue Eagle, or at least what remains of it? I clearly remember a slightly gratuitous scene of sweaty (dripping with) bare chested seamen working in the bowels of a ship and wondering myself whether Ford may have found the whole scene ... alluring.tryavna wrote:Maureen O'Hara's autobiography is pretty salacious -- and perhaps a little bitter, too. Anyway, she talks about accidentally seeing John Ford and a famous male star (whom she doesn't name) kissing.
Then, of course, there's Ford's notorious sex hygiene "documentary" he made for the army.
Can someone please elaborate on exactly what goes on in this hygiene film?tryavna wrote:Then, of course, there's Ford's notorious sex hygiene "documentary" he made for the army.
In the footnote at the bottom, DVD Savant gives a pretty good description of the more grotesque elements of the film, except that he fails to mention all the shots of soldiers washing their genitals.SheriffAmbrose wrote:Can someone please elaborate on exactly what goes on in this hygiene film?
Cool thanks!tryavna wrote:Why don't you just watch it for yourself. It should be the first video at the top of this Google Video page. (Don't watch it near any meal times.)
meow!Burt Reynolds? “Burt was just nasty,†she writes.