Role models of greatness.

Here you will discover the back stories of kings, titans of industry, stellar athletes, giants of the entertainment field, scientists, politicians, artists and heroes – all of them gay or bisexual men. If their lives can serve as role models to young men who have been bullied or taught to think less of themselves for their sexual orientation, all the better. The sexual orientation of those featured here did not stand in the way of their achievements.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Part 4: Paul Newman meets Steve McQueen

"I thought Newman was arrogant.
When I finally got him into bed, I taught him who the man was."
– Steve McQueen on Paul Newman

They first met on the set of Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956, rooftop photo below). McQueen approached Newman and propositioned him after engaging in crude, even insulting banter. Newman later told his friend Janice Rule that as they ended their conversation, McQueen planted a wet, sloppy kiss on him. With tongue.

Thus began a rivalrous relationship that was frequently acrimonious. McQueen turned down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) because he wouldn’t accept second billing to Newman. The two fought like cats and dogs over the positioning of their names on the movie poster for Towering Inferno (1974). McQueen was a brash liar, but Newman found himself strangely attracted to him, and there was obvious sexual tension between the two. But Paul was also having a sexual relationship with Sal Mineo at the time, and Mineo had fallen madly in love with him and wanted to live together as a couple. When Paul rejected that offer, Mineo attempted suicide.

By this time Newman had moved his mistress, Joanne Woodward, into the Chateau Marmont. If those walls could talk. Christopher Isherwood called on Paul and Joanne. Gore Vidal was a resident on a different floor (as a cover, Woodward considered marrying Vidal to further the future of his race for the U.S. presidency). Marilyn Monroe once knocked on Newman’s door with a bottle of champagne and got lucky, since Paul was alone that afternoon. Grace Kelly hit on him at the Chateau Marmont – it was Newman who felt lucky that day.   

Photo: Rivals McQueen and Newman spar on the rooftop in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)

When a friend took Newman to task for using a clean-cut image to hide a calculating, black heart, Paul had to listen to a life assessment as one of betrayal, deceit and lies. His friend suggested that Woodward had no inkling of the nefarious activity Paul was up to. Newman replied, “You’re right. Secretly I’m a devil. I can be a very, very bad boy.”

But I digress.

About this time Newman developed a serious man crush on Robert Wagner, but it did not turn sexual. Two later crushes (Robert Redford and Tom Cruise) also ended with similar results. Fortunately Newman was able to satisfy his need for man-on-man sex with McQueen, who was still hitting on him. Once Newman agreed to meet Steve in a cheap hotel in Long Beach, where McQueen said, “I’ve got every horny woman in Hollywood trying to get me to f*ck her. I need a break, a different kind of action now and then. You’re the kind of change I have in mind.” This sort of clandestine activity between the Hollywood rivals went on for years.

Just around the corner was one of Newman’s great cinematic triumphs, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), in which he plays a repressed homosexual by the name of Brick. James Dean was lined up for the role, but he died in a car crash before production began. In the film version, the direct homosexual references were removed from the Tennessee Williams script in order to satisfy then current production codes. The film script dances around the reasons Brick and Cat (Elizabeth Taylor) haven’t slept together in years, but mention of the suicide of Brick’s close football chum Skipper is retained.

Newman told Tennessee Williams, "The role of Brick is perfect for me. All my life I've been split into two different directions. One side of me wants to live life with my gay football buddy Skipper, the other side is tempted to fuck the living shit out of Maggie the Cat and be the heterosexual stud most of my fans want me to be."

Hollywood insiders divulge that Elvis Presley was considered for the part of Brick, and that Elvis and Paul got together to talk about it. Elvis asked about Newman’s friendship with James Dean. Newman swore that Elvis told him, “I’ll make a confession. I’m about the straightest dude that ever walked the planet. But if that f*cker ever called me, I’d come running. I guess you’d say I have an obsession with Dean.”

Faye Dunaway tries to keep the rivals apart in Towering Inferno (1974)


Well, honestly. The next time I go shopping for salad dressing, it won't be the image of starving children that comes to mind.

Source:
Darwin Porter’s biography, “Paul Newman: The Man Behind the Baby Blues” (2009). 

40 comments:

  1. Was there any straight men in Hollywood?

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    Replies
    1. Not to hear the LGBT crowd tell it...

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    2. Man no wonder Hugh Beaumont split right after the leave it to beaver was done to start his tree farm in Missouri, and thank God for Elvis, Adam West, Robert Redford, Robert Wagner, and any other straight people in hollywierdland' I looked up to a lot of those freaks you mentioned, I guess you have to be kind of weird inside to want that life to much, no wonder the king went back to graceland all the time.

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    3. Yee gods you guys are thick and that's not a pun; thick as in like a brick. It has NOTHING to do we being straight or gay. BEFORE the liberation of the mid 70's guys (and gals) HAD FUN! Sex is sex and there was a lot of it... What's the difference between Monroe knocking on the door or McQueen? Good healthy ILLICT fun if you ask me, and a good many did back in those days, is fun because it is illicit and illicit because it breaks "norms"...
      I know, to you thick bricks that it seems like everyone is being outed these days and you ask yourself if there where any straight actors "back then" but again, you just do not get it.
      These days we live amongst "labels"... A guy ( or gal) has to be "This or "That" because everything is branded, people are a brand... How dull. Everyone is looking over their shoulder afraid of getting "branded" thus afraid of living.
      Guys use to go to gym class, strip take a shower and get on with the rest of their day. These days, guys shower in their gym shorts, if at all (!) giving themselves ULSERS about having to be seen ( what a trauma) and compared. Shower and get on with it... Just like back then... Screw and get back on the set for take 2!
      The MOST WORRISOME thing I read was that admiration for those guys of yore seem now lost because they played catch the soap In the shower... In that case stop communication altogether since there is a hidden close somewhere about something in everyone's lives.
      If these recent "outings" mean anything they should mean " who cares" we should all be able to shower without our shorts on bros!

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    4. Hmm, If people "REALLY" knew what went on in Hollyweird, I hit town as an "innocent" 19 year old, labeled: "The most beautiful boy in the world" by my agent, a Henry Wilson, who was a famous agent back in the day! I soon realized it wasn't your talent that really counted in "Hollyweird", it was the size of your breasts, or "penis" size & if you'd "cooperate", aka: play with the perverts that rule Hollyweird (and now all of media, the Looney tune lefties, aka: liberals, Socialists, i.e., mostly left wing liberal Democrats), their friends, producers, directors, "older" so called stars, all in their "click"! I could & am writing a book about my days (about 7-8 years I lasted) in Hollyweird, the good, bad & ugly truth about people that live on & by their looks or their pleasing flesh, sometimes blessed & have talent too! I didn't have any talent, just beautiful, but, some brains & morals also (I got out without being "EATEN ALIVE", literally! Haaa. All IMHO. Peace out!

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    5. Jack, I don't know where you get such information about Adam West. Everyone knows that West is gay, always has been. Most Hollywood actors were straight, but it's the gay and bi-sexual ones that get all the publicity.

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    6. As much as I’m tempted to believe I cannot due to the flood of info about everyone at the time. Sometime things are too crazy to believe.

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  2. LOL funny as hell. .All men in Hollyweird are fags

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    1. Clint ? Duke ? O.J.? Arnold ? Ron Reagon ? Bill Cosby ?

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  3. Two of the sexiest guys in Hollywood on the downlow?

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    1. Not really, McQueen was a regular @ the gay biker bars & always had a cute, young "cub" on the back of his bike, like @ the biker hustler bar, "Gauntlet" in Hollyweird! I think his so called "cancer" he died from, may have been something else?

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. Steve Mc queen gay? I don't believe it. Impossible.
    Paul Newman Gay? Possible..

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    Replies
    1. McQueen grew up in juvenile reformatory, so you know he learned to enjoy sex with other males. He might have also enjoyed women.

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  6. i dont like your judgemental expressions "a calculating, black heart", "the nefarious activity " - the attitude of sleeping around was prevalent at the time

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    1. If the public ever knew about their so called "straight" movie stars, politicians, TV & recorded stars! I was a model, face & body in those days, knew many who were mentioned in these blogs, I go back to meeting the Kennedy's with Peter Lawford, a drunk, fading B movie star @ the "Wishing Well Hotel" in Del Mar, Ca., as I was the 19-20 year old host (really ONLY hired as the chef viciously said to me, "because I was beautiful"! So, figure it out, Steve McQueen was well known for hitting the so called gay biker bars & tricking with anything butch & cute, he was very notorious, as was Montgomery Clift, who proposition me a few months before he died, but, he was a real sicko, he had cigarette burns on his hands & I was told by the bartender, he was a human ashtray & liked it too! Yikes, too much for me, plus, his face was so banged up looking. I laughed about Elvis running away ftom the so called "fags" in Hollyweird, I remember his representative, a guy they called Red, a bit player in some Hollyweird films, was having a hustler go around offering $500.00 to let Elvis give them a BJ, nothing else, I & others TURNED him down, as to me & others heard.Elvis was a sick f--- going to bed with his mother & underage kids (Priscilla was 13-14 years old when Elvis went after her & he was in his middle 20's! As far as Bob Wagner, he was in every bar in Hollyweird cruising & hitting on every good looking man available, a drunk too. I also owned 3 restaurants in Hollyweird, where Don Johnson used to sell his ass (literally!) In the 60's when he was just a dumb cowboy looking hustler & got lucky with Melanie Griffith & her mother's MONEY!
      I was called the most beautiful boy in the world, until a studio I was signed (just got.a contract to be the 2nd lead with Guy Mitchell, a signer @ the time for a TV pilot, he was.a big thing in those days, I was just hung & beautiful! Haaa) with got ahold of some semi nudes I posed for, as a 19 year old stupid kid! There went my most "beautiful boy and the world" persona! It was with AMG, or: "Athletic Model Guide" & run by a greedy, immoral Jew pervert, named Bob Misor, or Miser who had all of us kids sign a release contract, which gave him permission to show, print, publish our photos forever! In fact he or his associates put out a "pictorial book" this past few years with some of our pictures in it!

      Even Henry Wilson, my agent in the Hollyweird years couldn't get the pictures back & he had a lot of power back then! I have been approached many times OVER the years to write a tell all book & what I know about the.above, Hollyweird in the 60's & up years! But, I value my life! Haaa.

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    2. I lived in Hollyweird from 1959 right after I got out of the service, until I fled from there in 1970 basically, for my sanity! I an the obe telling the truth about Hollyweird in the 60's, as I was well known (a model, face & body!) & once I knew better a businessman!

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  9. The way the writer is insinuating that every goodlooking Hollywood actor was gay is insulting to intelligent people .You honestly expect us to believe that all gays are goodlooking and therefore these handsome actors are gay ? Well gays in real life are in the Elton John mode and worse .

    Obviously some of these actors may have been bi.I am not sure but listen...if they were bi or gay...you are right.Its their life and their business and now they can't answer because they are dead but supposing they were gay or bi.....they certainly were not hero's in any way apart from for the gay community and if they were putting it out there not stop they should stand up and own up.I am surprised they all didn't end up with HIV/AIDS from the disgusting stuff they were supposed to have got up to.

    And you know what....what about the health risk to the women in their lives ? Thats supposing that this entire hog wash is true .Supposed to be gay yet scared to come out the closet yet rampaging around everywhere.Smacks of a lot of porkies going on here ..

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    1. You remind me of my old roommates girlfriend who (while playing with a litter of puppies) said, "I hope the puppies don't get AIDS" when she found out that he was living with three gay guys. This happened around 1986, and to this day I think it's hands down one of the dumbest statements ever spoken by anyone!

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  10. So at last it`s come out that all Hollywood leading men are gay..that McQueen and Newman and Brando and Dean and Sal Mineo...that Mineo was so in love he contemplated suicide....my only comment is this, and I knew about Paul as from 1970, he was `the hittee`...the Jew boy...the half Jew...the convert. I used always to feel like crying whenever I watched Newman in a film. This is why. Tragic really.

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  11. What in the world is wrong with Newman or McQueen being gay or bi??? To this day, the world shuns movies with gay leads. And they could obviously still find interest and time for the ladies so - I'm thinking bi - even if any of them had preferences for men. None of this has anything to do with the fact that they were amazing actors and will always be seen that way. But would they have had the same career if they were out as being 'bi'? No. Does anyone in Hollywood have amazing movie careers being openly gay or bi? I don't see it. Sure, supporting actors. But leads?
    Can we all just stop judging people for a hot minute? All this article says to me is McQueen and Newman were players...all the way around. When people attack and react irrationally to even a hint of homosexuality it only makes me wonder..... Why do you protest so much???

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  12. Read the book called....Paul Newman the man behind the baby blues...his secret life exposed by Darwin Porter

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  13. question: How does the writer know what was said in 1-to-1 conversations?

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  14. I'm just fussy. I really want something more clinical and less chatty.
    Newman & McQ intermitently with each other answers many questions. Bromance with benefits.

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  15. For a time, McQueen and James Dean were roommates in New York, and I often wondered just how close they really were. Both loved fast cars and motorcycles, too. Martin Landau would know, as he was a roommate, as well, but he ain't talkin'. Oh well. I would pay big bucks to watch a home movie that featured Dean, McQueen and Newman having a three-way together.

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  16. I just wonder who was the "top" and who was the "bottom" in the McQueen/Newman relationship.

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  17. McQueen, who obviously had the "little guy syndrome", was an incessant braggart, who claimed he was the only real tough guy among the TV cowboys (while he was playing Josh Randall). One look at his small stature and skinny arms and torso would make such statements laughable. Stuntman and cowboy star Jock Mahoney, at 6'4" and weighing 200 pounds, challenged McQueen, and of course the actor stopped making such claims. Even if he were a bottom, he would never have admitted it to anyone, and we will never know the truth.

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  18. Damn. If I had only known Blue-eyed Newman like man-on-man sex, I would have stalked him!!! LOL LOL

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  19. Odd that the three 'unconsumated' crushes happen to be the only three who are still alive...

    I've heard he saw Wagner on and off for years, and that Tom Cruise was devastated to learn he was just a fling

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    1. Cuando mueran seguro que salen toda clase de anécdotas a la luz...

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  20. Nothing sadder than these old queens claiming to know something that they don't. Queens please!!!!

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  21. I think if the stories about McQueen were real than there would be more evidence for so many of his friends lived longer and some still alive. I think these young hot male actors experimented with one another but doesn't make them homosexual just curious.

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    1. Ali McGraw should know and has never said a word I guess.

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  22. So if mean liked males what did Woodward do about it



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