Alan Cumming

Actor Alan Cumming, who plays Eli Gold on CBS’ acclaimed series The Good Wife, recently signed a deal to continue as a regular cast member. The Good Wife, now in its third season, was partly inspired by the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal and other prominent American political sex scandals, particularly those of John Edwards and Bill Clinton.

Cumming joined The Good Wife as a recurring character in the first season and was upped to a regular for the second season. Cumming’s character of cutthroat political operative Eli Gold, based on former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, was an immediate standout when he was introduced in the first season. He earned a guest-starring Emmy nomination last year.

Cumming is a Scottish-born stage, television and film actor, singer, writer, director, producer and author. He attained dual U.S. citizenship in 2008 after marrying his partner Grant Shaffer, a graphic designer, in 2007. The couple resides in New York City. Prior to the civil union, Cumming dated both men and women, including a two-year relationship with actress Saffron Burrows, a six-year relationship with male theater director Nick Philippou, and a 1985 marriage to actress Hilary Lyon that lasted eight years.

Once he outed himself as bisexual in 1998, Cumming promoted LGBT rights, emceeing and attending fundraisers for organizations such as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), as well as several AIDS charities.

Cumming was appointed an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to film, theatre and the arts and activism for LGBT rights. In 2005 he received the Vito Russo Award at the 16th Annual GLAAD Media Awards for outstanding contributions toward eliminating homophobia. In July of the same year he was presented with the HRC's Humanitarian Award in San Francisco, also for his LGBT public stance. In 2006 Cumming received a Doctor of Arts honorary degree from the University of Abertay Dundee (Scotland). He also is a patron of the Scottish Youth Theatre, Scotland's National Theatre “for and by” young people.

Classically trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Cumming’s career bounces all over the place. Although he has received accolades for performing Shakespeare on stage, he has accepted roles in real cinematic clinkers (Garfield the Movie, Josie and the Pussycats, and Burlesque from among a long list).

He is a man of strong opinions. When talking about Richard Chamberlain's comment: "I wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out", Cumming goes ballistic. “Rupert Everett made the same point in a radio interview, saying he never got a job in Hollywood, and never got a job in England, after coming out. Well, I think it's so mean-spirited," says Cumming. "If you're living a lie, that's not healthy, and I think it is really irresponsible of Chamberlain and Rupert to say these things. But it's not about your work," he says scornfully.

"It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they? Anyway, it's an academic question: how can you know that coming out affects your career? Some people just get less work than others, and it has nothing to do with sexuality."

In this clip from a British television talk show, Alan discusses getting an OBE, his husband Grant, voting for Obama and singing for the National AIDS trust. He also sings “That’s Life” and tells about his becoming an American citizen. All in under nine minutes.

NBA's Rick Welts

Lots of high profile gay sports professionals fear being outed, but here’s what happens when you’re so good at your job that no one gives a flying leap about who you take to bed. Rick Welts, the openly gay former president of the Phoenix Suns, was hired by Oakland's Golden State Warriors as team president and COO. For decades Welts feared what coming out might do to his career. Like so many closeted gay people in sports, he kept his private and public lives separate for fear that he wouldn't be able to get another job in sports if people knew he was gay.

Welts' coming out last May while president of the Suns team was one thing. They couldn't fire, demote or shun him, because that would have been a public relations disaster.  Welts stepped down as Phoenix Suns CEO in September, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his male partner, who lives in Sacramento. But when he left, no team was obligated to hire him.

Now an NBA team has handed an openly gay man the reins to their franchise. While people focus on the travails of athletes, the real power brokers in sports are the guys Welts works with every day, and they've decided to welcome a gay man into their fold. This is huge. Gay players, coaches and executives now know that they can have a welcoming, accepting home in their field. No more pretend-dates with women, no more hiding a partner away from the spotlight. And now all those people who live in a fearful professional closet have a bright, shining example of what can happen when you're simply good at your job.

Now, if we can just have an NBA season.

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).