George Grizzard

Veteran Gay Actor

Veteran stage, film and TV actor George Grizzard (pronounced Griz-ZARD) was a gay man who was associated with the stage dramas of Edward Albee – he originated the stage role of Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (shown seated in photo above). Grizzard commented that during rehearsals he never realized it would be such a big hit. “Then it caught on like wildfire – the reaction from people and the crowds clamoring to get in. It was startling. It is such a brilliant play on so many levels. It made people's minds go wild in 1962.”

An early film success was in Otto Preminger’s Advise and Consent (1962). Notably, Grizzard portrayed John Adams in the PBS TV miniseries The Adams Chronicles (1976), but his work ran the gamut, from appearances on TV’s Golden Girls, Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Law & Order to Clint Eastwood’s film, Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Grizzard’s last movie appearance. In a varied career spanning 50 years, he was cast in 40 films, hundreds of television episodes and numerous Broadway plays. Both his Broadway and films debuts were made with Paul Newman.

Everyone liked him, and everyone knew he was gay. Because Grizzard lived quietly and respectfully, the media treated him in kind. His partner of nearly 40 years was William Tynan, also a stage and TV actor. Grizzard kept his ego in check and had a strong work ethic. He also won Emmys and Tonys and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2002.

Grizzard died in 2007 at the age of 79 from lung cancer in NYC, where he lived with his partner, although Grizzard and Tynan also maintained a country home together in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

In this film clip from Advise and Consent, he appears with a very young Betty White.



And excellent tribute to Grizzard can be found in this article:
www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1668755,00.html

Rudolph Nureyev

ballet dancer par excellence

Russian born dancer Rudolph Nureyev (1938-1993) was a last-minute replacement for an injured male star on the Kirov Ballet’s European tour of 1961. Nureyev electrified audiences in Paris and famously defected to the west at Le Bourget airport NE of Paris, with the assistance of French police. He changed the perception of a male ballet dancer’s being only an accessory to female principals.

His muscular, dramatic style of dancing and strengths in both classical and modern dance led to a career in which he attained pop-star fame. He socialized with the likes of Gore Vidal, Freddie Mercury, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli and Andy Warhol. Gossip about Nureyev’s generous male endowment seems to be validated by this 1961 photograph by Richard Avedon (shown below), taken a month after the Russian star’s defection.

A little-remembered fact is that Nureyev starred as Rudolph Valentino in Ken Russell’s 1977 film Valentino, which was vociferously condemned by the Catholic Church.

His lover for many years was Eric Bruhn, the noted Danish ballet dancer, choreographer, actor and author. Bruhn died in 1986, and Nureyev in 1993, both from complications from AIDS related illnesses.

Tom Tryon

actor and author

American film, stage and television actor Thomas Tryon (1926-91) was best known for his portrayal of an ambitious Catholic priest in the film The Cardinal (1963 - photo at end of post), for which he received a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor (Motion Picture Drama). He also appeared in two epic films about World War II, The Longest Day (1962) and In Harm's Way (1965). His television career was centered around roles in westerns.

Although he had been married for three years during the 1950s, by the 1970s Tryon was in a romantic relationship with Clive Clerk, one of the original cast members of the Broadway sensation, A Chorus Line. Clerk was also an interior designer, and the apartment he decorated for Tryon on Central Park West in New York City was featured in Architectural Digest. Tryon was also involved in a relationship with Cal Culver, also known as Casey Donovan, a famous gay porn star (see photo below). Culver’s best known film, Boys in the Sand, is a classic of the genre.

Disillusioned with Hollywood, Tryon retired from acting in 1969 and began a successful second career as a writer. His most popular novel was Crowned Heads (1987), a collection of four novellas inspired by Hollywood legends. The first of these novellas, Fedora, about a reclusive former film actress whose relationship with her plastic surgeon is similar to that between a drug addict and her pusher, was later filmed by Billy Wilder. It is considered to be a minor classic of the thriller/horror genres. Other novellas in the collection were based on the murder of former gay silent screen star Ramón Novarro, and the quasi-Oedipal relationship between gay actor Clifton Webb and his mother.

Another popular book was The Other (1971), an influential psychological horror novel about personality transference between twins. It was made into a film about a boy whose evil twin brother may or may not be responsible for a series of deaths in a small rural community set in the 1930s. A later novel, Lady, written in 1975, concerns the friendship between an eight-year-old boy and a charming widow in 1930s New England and the secret he discovers about her.