Gay Influence: Malcolm Forbes

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Malcolm Forbes

Closeted Gay Financier with Money to Burn

Homoerotic art was splashed liberally on the walls of his Manhattan townhouse. He had a penchant for handsome young men hired as servers for his catered parties and dinners. Before the guests arrived he would lure one of them into his Jacuzzi and give him a blow job – followed by a $100 tip – and then send him back out to work his party. Same deal with the houseboys, bodyguards and chauffeurs. He often gave blow jobs to his male employees at his magazine office, with the door wide open, so others would not suspect what was going on. His son Steve was in an office not thirty feet away. His secretary, seated near the open door, but out of sight of his desk, knew never to just walk in. She always called first. Smart gal.

His preference in gay porn was any video produced by Colt Studios. A reflection of this super-masculine and macho lifestyle was his penchant for motorcycles, especially Harleys. His other forms of private transportation were private yachts (see photo of Highlander V, below) and airplanes (his private Boeing 727 was named Capitalist Tool). He was one of the richest men in the world. His name was Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990), and his eclectic range of friends included Prince Charles and Mick Jagger.

His closeted gay life prevented him from mingling with prominent gays, but that didn’t keep him from picking up hot leather dudes and squiring them around NYC on the back of one of his Harleys. He married to sire offspring, then went about having one promiscuous affair after the other, always with men. No one ever recalled his talking about having sex with women.

Forbes and best pal Elizabeth Taylor, both looking glamorous in skirts (at right).

Forbes was famous for making money, and he knew how to throw serious parties. He spent $2.5 million on his own 70th birthday party in Morocco; he chartered a Boeing 747, a DC-8 and a Concorde to fly in eight hundred of the world's rich and famous from New York and London. The guests included his friend and co-host Elizabeth Taylor, Gianni Agnelli, Robert Maxwell, Barbara Walters, Henry Kissinger, half a dozen US state governors, and the CEOs of scores of multinational corporations likely to advertise in his magazine, FORBES, which had been founded by his father. The party entertainment was on a grand scale, including 600 drummers, acrobats and dancers and a fantasia – a cavalry charge which ends with the firing of muskets into the air – by 300 Berber horsemen.

Malcolm Forbes bought this 17th-century French chateau in Normandy in 1970, which he restored and refurnished. An early masterpiece by the architect François Mansart, the pink and grey Chateau de Balleroy was built in 1626 for Jean de Choisy, chancellor to the brother of French king Louis XIII.