Gary Cooper

Bisexual American Screen Idol

1901-1961

For three years during the late 1920s über-rich Howard Hughes maintained a sexual relationship with a young, unknown but upcoming actor named Gary Cooper, buying him cars, watches, clothes and other lavish gifts along the way. At the time, Cooper, while playing only bit parts in silent films, was being supported financially by handsome silent film actor Rod La Rocque, who refused to buy him a car. Hughes to the rescue! 

La Rocque later entered into a marriage of convenience with Hungarian actress Vilma Banky, who had strong lesbian tendencies, and during their marriage both La Rocque and Banky continued to dally in same-sex relations. Freshly arrived from Helena, Montana, Cooper was tall (6’3”), devastatingly handsome and possessed of a legendary endowment, using his physical assets to acquire material goods from older, much wealthier men and women. Hughes was also bisexual, also well-endowed, and possessed of an obsession for bedding the most beautiful and glamorous people, regardless of their sex. For Cooper (b. 1901), his arrangement with Hughes was unusual in that Hughes (b. 1904) was actually a few years younger than he.

At the tender age of 26, Cooper’s two-minute appearance as Cadet White (above) in the silent film masterpiece Wings (1927) became his breakthrough role, leading to his career-making star turn in the talking film The Virginian (1929).

Hughes’s attention span was notoriously short, however, and his infatuation with Cooper cooled as he next set his sights on the dashing William Boyd, later known to millions as Hopalong Cassidy. Boyd’s costar Louis Wolheim once mentioned that the dazzlingly handsome Boyd, although basically heterosexual, wasn’t averse to letting a man service him if he felt it would advance his career. On this point Boyd and Cooper had a lot in common. Both Boyd and Cooper would attend the all-nude male beach parties on Catalina Island hosted by bisexual actor Richard Arlen, and a member of the Hollywood paparazzi once snapped a picture of the naked Hughes and Boyd sharing an intimate kiss in a secluded cove on the island. Hughes had to pay $10,000 to secure the negatives, thus preventing their publication. The man had enough money to make trouble disappear. Serious money. He received $10,000 PER DAY from a trust fund.

Cooper photographed in 1932 by Cecil Beaton

Cooper had entered Hollywood as a hungry film extra in 1925. Later, on the cusp of stardom in 1929, Cooper met the Paramount contract actor Andy Lawler, a popular and flamboyant homosexual who became his closest friend. They even lived together until mid-1930. Lawler, born in Alabama, coached  Cooper's southern accent for the film, The Virginian. He also introduced Cooper to a wider, more sophisticated social circle that included openly gay actor Billy Haines and gay director George Cukor, whom Lawler had followed out to Hollywood.

After Cooper became an American film icon, however, references to his relationships with Hughes and Lawler were whitewashed from his back story, a common practice by actors and actresses during the era dominated by the moral strictures of the 1930s Hays Code. Joan Crawford is a prime example. No more photos of Cooper and Lawler “out on the town” appeared in the press, and Cooper stopped attending Cukor’s notoriously gay social gatherings.

City Streets 1931

Most all of Cooper’s biographers mention the relationship between Lawler and Cooper, but few describe the relationship as sexual. At the most they report that aspect as “rumor”. However, E. J. Fleming, in his book The Fixers, accurately labeled Cooper “bisexual”. But the most reliable witness was William Kizer, Lawler’s cousin, who insisted that Gary Cooper was enmeshed in a serious relationship with Andy Lawler. They took cozy weekend trips and even moved in together in 1929/30, while Cooper was also dating the volatile Mexican actress Lupe Velez. “Volatile” is understatement; she once stabbed him and later fired a shot at Cooper as he was boarding a train in LA in 1931. Velez tolerated Cooper’s dalliances with men, so long as she could participate as well (!). Cooper confessed to Hughes that he had slept with both La Rocque and Velez.

Gary Cooper on Paramount Lot, 1933

According to Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann, Gary Cooper suffered a devastating breakdown after the studio-engineered split from Lawler. Nevertheless, after an initial distancing, Cooper and Lawler reunited as lifelong friends. Their special relationship is referenced in both Jeffrey Meyer's biography Gary Cooper: American Hero and Larry Sidwell's The Last Hero: A Biography of Gary Cooper. 

Cooper's subsequent career as a major film star is well documented, so your blogger refers younger readers to his Wikipedia page, for starters.

Sources (other than those mentioned above):

Patrick McGilligan -- George Cukor: A Double Life (2013)

Darwin Porter – Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005)

The following glamor shots, mostly from the 1930s, further reveal Cooper's legendary good looks, a far cry from his later somewhat weathered "lonesome cowboy" persona.

Howard Hughes

Bisexual Billionaire, Film Maker & Aviator

A recent magazine article made mention of the whitewashed version of the life of Howard Hughes as depicted in the movie, Aviator. I decided to go digging for a bit of dirt, and believe me, there was plenty -- too much for one post.  I was astonished by the sheer quantity of homosexual activity, so here goes:

Hollywood 1921: Bisexual film director William Desmond Taylor, Mexican born film star Ramon Novarro, Spanish born star Antonio Moreno, and a teenaged Howard Hughes were all involved with each other sexually – sometimes all at the same time. Taylor was mesmerized by Hughes, who was attending a private school east of Santa Barbara, and planned to star him in a film custom tailored for him. Howard’s uncle, Rupert Hughes, a powerful Hollywood screen writer, was to write the script. It was Uncle Rupert who had introduced Howard to William Desmond Taylor.

Included in their circle was silent film star Blanche Sweet, who regularly gave Howard blow jobs, marveling at the young man’s generous endowment. But it was Taylor who became completely obsessed with Howard. He knew he could make Hughes the biggest star in all of Hollywood, and he couldn't keep his hands off him. Unfortunately, Taylor was murdered in 1922, and the case remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of Hollywood.

Immediately after Taylor’s funeral, Hughes abandoned plans to become a movie star. He told Sweet and Moreno that he had decided to become a producer, a field in which he could be the boss. He also continued to pursue his passions for horses and airplanes. Howard was a magnificent rider and a fearless aviator.

He was also handsome, tall (6'3"), well-endowed and rich – and accustomed to getting his way. Howard lived a warped reality of instant gratification. He played by no one’s rules, sampling whatever drugs, alcohol, women and men he fancied. Hughes, the son of a fabulously wealthy father, lived on an open-ended allowance, enabling him to buy cars and wildly expensive clothes for his boyfriends. One of the most important of them, Dudley Sharp, was later involved in an affair with Howard’s doting mother, who became pregnant by Dudley. Based in Houston, Allene (Howard’s mother) died from complications of the pregnancy, and a day later Dudley, Howard's boyfriend from just a few years before, attempted suicide. Howard and his father took these unsavory complications in stride and immediately returned to California to live their lives of unbridled excess. Hughes Sr. continued his torrid affairs with Gloria Swanson and Eleanor Boardman, and had Howard moved into a private bungalow at a Pasadena polo club – all paid for by his father, of course. Howard was sixteen.

Howard’s father bribed officials at Cal Tech to accept his son, who did not have a high school diploma, as an uncredited student. Such was the power of money. Its corrupting influence was not lost on Howard. After accepting a blow job from silent film star Billy Haines (see post on August 5), Howard bragged to Haines that he had received intimate invitations from both Eleanor Boardman and Charlie Chaplin. Haines felt he should warn Howard that Boardman was one of Howard Sr.’s mistresses. Howard told Haines that he was aware of that, and “it would make taking her all the sweeter.” When Howard Sr. found out about it, he actually encouraged the affair, even telling Boardman that he was pleased by his son’s brazenness. Unknown to Boardman was the fact that Howard Sr. wanted to move on, focusing his attentions on Gloria Swanson. Morality of convenience – thanks, son!

Haines and Hughes forged a close friendship, even though Billy Haines was 100% gay and Hughes was bisexual. Billy knew everybody in Hollywood and made sure Hughes was invited to all the right parties. Haines was also a close friend of Eleanor Boardman. In fact, both Haines and Boardman had been winners of their respective divisions of the “New Faces of 1922" contest sponsored by Goldwyn Pictures. Both were sent from New York to Hollywood for screen tests, and both became big stars. Upon arrival in L.A., Boardman was already an established stage actress, but Billy Haines was 100% raw talent.

Note: Some readers might doubt that these photos are of Howard Hughes, since his appearance changed so radically from his mid-thirties. Both photographs in this post are from 1930-1931, when Hughes was 25-26 years old, before the plane crash and resulting plastic surgery.

At a New Year’s Eve party in Houston, Howard’s father had humiliated him in front of other guests. After a heated argument about aviation (it was Howard’s passion, but his father refused to support his son’s desire to fly), Hughes Sr. yelled at his son, “Just like your Uncle Rupert, you’re nothing but a queer.” Turns out Hughes Sr. knew all about both his son’s and brother’s sexual dalliances with men. Howard collapsed into tears as his father slammed the door and stormed off. It is important to note that the person into whose arms Howard collapsed was none other than Dudley Sharp*, father of his mother’s unborn child, as well as being Howard’s boyhood lover. For two weeks Hughes Sr. and his son kept an icy distance from each other. On January 14, 1924, Howard’s father died suddenly of an embolism while working in his Houston office. When Howard was approached on the golf course to be told that his father had died, the first thing he did was call the family attorney. He asked the lawyer to read him his father’s will. Howard had just turned eighteen.

*Sharp later suffered the humiliation of having to ask Howard for money in order to continue his studies at Princeton. Hughes refused. Dudley Sharp later married and became U.S. Secretary of the Air Force under Eisenhower.

To be continued...

Sources:
Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993) by Charles Higham
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005) by Darwin Porter

Howard Hughes, Part II

Hughes in 1930

According to his father’s will, Howard had been left with 75% of the Hughes Tool Company – not what Howard had in mind. He badgered his grandparents, aunts and uncles into selling him their stock so that he would have complete control of the company. He even engaged in homosexual activity with his Uncle Rupert in order to have Rupert petition his stubborn parents into selling.

This became the norm to Howard – he’d use whatever ammunition it took to accomplish his task – usually in the form of sex combined with lots and lots of cash. He was also young, rich, handsome and virile at a time when the Hollywood lifestyle was a temple to debauchery, and Hughes was at its epicenter.

As a school boy, Howard had been rebuffed by a young girl named Ella Rice, daughter of the prominent Houston family for whom Rice University is named. When Howard was six years old, Ella had humiliated him by returning his Valentine card. Howard vowed to get even with her some day. Fast forward to 1925, when Howard was back in Texas tending to business at the Hughes Tool Company. Ella was still around, and Howard hatched a plan to woo her, then humiliate her. Trouble was, she was now engaged to a fellow known as James Winston. James never knew what hit him. Howard focused all his attention on the boy, seduced him, gifted him with a yellow Duesenberg and an envelope containing $25,000. Worked like a charm. With James Winston out of the way, Ella and Howard were married on June 1, 1925. Dudley Sharp was Howard’s best man. At the age of nineteen years and seven months, Howard owned 100% of the Hughes Tool Company and had talked a young lady, who had humiliated him when a child, into marrying him. He was just getting warmed up.

Later Howard told his Hollywood pal Billy Haines (see post of August 5) that, on the day of the wedding, “I was so nervous I had to get sucked off by Dudley to calm my nerves before the ceremony.” Just after the ceremony, while embracing Dudley in private, Howard said, “You should never have let me go through with the ceremony. Ella will never mean as much to me as you do.” While on his honeymoon on Long Island, Howard wrote to Dudley, “My marriage is a disaster. Ella and I are not sexually compatible!”

A debonaire pilot:

Upon returning to Los Angeles, the first person Hughes called was Billy Haines, who asked, “Are you a staid old married man now, or can we go out on the town and raise hell?” Hughes answered that he was married “in name only.” Upon checking into the same hotel where his father had bedded countless women, Howard asked to be placed in a suite with separate bedrooms, instead of the honeymoon suite, which had been reserved. Hughes left his newlywed to her own devices and went out with Haines, not returning until eight o’clock the next morning. Thus began a time of protracted humiliation of Ella (she should never have returned that Valentine!). By this time, Hughes was already displaying eccentric traits that would dominate his later years. He seldom shook anyone’s hand for fear of germs. He was later to display obsessive-compulsive behavior of such exaggerated proportion that it boggles the mind. He was also dealing with a serious loss of hearing.

Hughes had a brief affair with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who went on to marry Joan Crawford. After their divorce, Miss Crawford forever rebuffed Howard’s requests for a date. Said Joan, “I adore homosexuals, but not in my bed after midnight.”
   
Howard was somewhat alarmed to learn that he had quite the reputation as a bisexual around Hollywood. When he was approached by actress Madge Bellamy (who famously turned down the female lead in Ben-Hur, Ramón Novarro’s greatest triumph), she said, “I hear you’ve already had Ben-Hur (a reference to Novarro), so why not sample the actress who turned down the picture?”

Hughes formed a Hollywood film production company and scoured the town for star material. He had uncompromising taste in beauty. He didn’t care if a person was male or female – Howard just had to have whoever was the handsomest, the most beautiful. For three years Hughes maintained a sexual relationship with a young, upcoming Gary Cooper, buying him cars, clothes and other lavish gifts along the way. Cooper’s eventual replacement was a young, blond William Boyd*, later known to millions as Hopalong Cassidy.

*Bisexual actor Richard Arlen was hosting an all male nude beach party at a secluded cove on Catalina Island, and Hughes asked William Boyd to tag along with him. Somehow a photographer got close enough to snap nude photos of Hughes and Boyd, which became the talk of Hollywood. RKO, Boyd’s studio, was having apoplexy (an interesting aside is that later, in 1948, Hughes took over the reins at RKO and ran it into the ground; they were out of business ten years later). When Hughes and Ben Lyon were having an “off-the-record” weekend in Mexico, they were photographed engaging in a torrid kiss. It took thousands of dollars to buy back the negative. Pocket change for Hughes.

Howard Hughes as film director, wearing his trademark argyle socks:

Obsessed with aviation and movie making, in 1927 Hughes began shooting an epic film about fighter pilots, Hells’ Angels, that would not be completed until 1930, an astonishing circumstance at a time when the average film was completed in three or four weeks. Hughes, who made the film with $3.8 million of his own money, directed the dogfight scenes himself and performed some of the aerial stunts. Amazingly, the film went on to earn a $4 million profit and made Jean Harlow a star.

The next years were a blur of activity. By 1928 Hughes had his pilot’s license. Two Arabian Nights, a film Hughes produced, won an Academy Award in 1929. Howard and Ella, who had been separated for over a year, divorced in 1929. Hughes decided that Hell’s Angels would have to be a talking film and reshot all the scenes with dialogue, doubling the film’s cost. He was seriously injured in a plane crash while making Hell’s Angels (he did some of the stunt flying himself). Moving on, Howard founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, and  Hughes was chasing fame and fortune with unbridled zeal. He was twenty seven years old.

By the 1930s Howard learned that sharing details of his private life could get him into trouble. Soon Cary Grant (photo at right) became his only confidant, a friend to whom he could tell anything. Since Grant himself was miles deep in the closet, this was a safe policy (insiders say that Cary Grant was the one great love of Howard’s life). Hughes soon became obsessed with his own privacy, and like most things in his life, he carried it to wild extremes.

To be continued...

Sources:
Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993) by Charles Higham
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005) by Darwin Porter

Howard Hughes, Part III

After the plane crash, Hughes had plastic surgery, and his looks changed considerably – and not for the better. Even so, Hughes was able to entice the 6'4" tall newcomer to Hollywood, Randolph Scott, into an affair. Turns out their fathers had been friends back in the day. When Scott was out trolling for male flesh one night in Griffith Park (a popular place for gay cruising), he propositioned a vice cop and was arrested. Hughes bailed him out and paid a $3,000 bribe to make the arrest disappear. Scott was grateful, but eventually moved on to Cary Grant, with whom he would have a long-term, volatile relationship. However, Jean Harlow claimed that Hughes had three signed photographs of Randolph Scott in his bedroom and stared at them in order to become aroused while having sex with her. During a heated argument with Billie Dove, whom Howard intended to marry, she called him an impotent bastard and a faggot – and she wasn’t kidding. Jean Harlow called him a “deaf faggot.”

Things started to go south for Howard in a big way. After the plane crash he started having debilitating migraine headaches, and his hearing loss worsened. He was having more and more frequent bouts of impotence, especially with women. He started to use cocaine, and he suffered a nervous breakdown, to boot. Once the best dressed man in Hollywood, Hughes began to appear in public in wrinkled, sloppy clothes. Hughes was also becoming involved in dealings with the mob, particularly Bugsy Siegel. Even worse, Howard turned into a scathing bigot, disdainful of Jews and blacks. A rare bright note was the enormous success of The Front Page, a film Hughes produced in 1931.

Howard was blackmailed by Billie Dove’s husband to the tune of $350,000 (Hughes paid up). By the early 1930s Hughes had blown through most of the profits of the Hughes Tool Company. He had used the company’s earnings to bankroll a string of money-losing projects in aviation and film production.

However, his taste in the handsomest men in Hollywood continued unabated: Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, George O’Brien, Johnny Mack Brown and many, many others. When Clark Gable first arrived in Hollywood, he dropped trou for several influential men, including Billy Haines and Howard – anything to get ahead and become a star. When über-gay George Cukor was directing Gable in Gone with the Wind, he teased him about his earlier dalliances with Haines and Hughes. Gable never spoke to Cukor again while on the set, and he led a successful effort to get Cukor fired (Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming).

Howard’s attention drifted away from making films to the field of aviation. He became more and more eccentric. For example, all he would eat was rare steak and peas (but they had to be very small peas), and he started buying his clothes from thrift stores. He became hopelessly paranoid and insanely jealous of anyone who threatened to topple him from the mountaintop. His jealousy over the feats of aviation by Charles Lindbergh manifested itself into fits of screaming and profanity. After the kidnaping of Lindbergh’s child, Hughes became obsessed with security.

And that’s where I’m going to stop. Hughes went on to design and manufacture aircraft and forever change the face of Las Vegas. However, his life from this point was a sad lapse into mental illness, self destruction and bizarre behavior, much of it too unsavory to relate. A second plane crash in 1946 left him scarred and addicted to morphine. He ran RKO Pictures into the ground, and did much the same with Trans World Airlines. He later fled to the Bahamas and Mexico to have easier access to codeine, which he personally injected into his arms. He also suffered the effects of tertiary syphilis. His legacy was that of the world’s most eccentric billionaire, and today only his medical research institute carries his banner in a positive light.

Because of his wealth and power, his homosexual proclivities were not well known to the public during his lifetime. However, enough of his employees and colleagues survived after his death in 1976 to be able to speak openly about the subject without fear of reprisal. Turns out they had plenty to talk about.

Sources:
Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993) by Charles Higham
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005) by Darwin Porter