{"id":312378,"date":"2025-11-23T00:00:57","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T00:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-november-22-23-2025-americanstudying-closeted-gay-celebrities\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T00:00:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T00:00:57","slug":"americanstudies-november-22-23-2025-americanstudying-closeted-gay-celebrities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=312378","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: November 22-23, 2025: AmericanStudying Closeted Gay Celebrities"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[On
\nNovember 17th<\/sup>, 1925, Roy Harold
\nScherer Jr<\/a>.\u2014better known as Rock Hudson<\/a>\u2014was born.
\nHis iconic career and complex life open up a lot of American histories, so this
\nweek I\u2019ve AmericanStudied a handful of them, leading up to this weekend post on
\nother 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.]<\/p>\n

Quick takeaways
\nfrom five complex lives (in chronological order of their birth years).<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Cary
\nGrant<\/a> (1904-1986): Every one of the entries in this post will have at least
\nsome ambiguity, but none more so than the legendary actor who was born
\nArchibald Leish in Bristol, England, but refashioned himself into one of the
\nmid-century\u2019s true icons. Grant lived
\nwith a fellow actor<\/a>, Randolph Scott, for a dozen years, and by all accounts
\ntold
\nmultiple friends and family members<\/a> that he was in love with Scott. But he also
\nwas married
\nto five different women<\/a> across his life. Was he bisexual? Were those
\nmarriages all beards? Biographers disagree, but one thing seems clear: Grant\u2019s
\npublic persona and private life were nearly as distinct as those of the main
\ncharacter in North By
\nNorthwest<\/a><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Liberace<\/a> (1919-1987): In
\nthe late 1950s, the legendary pianist and showman successfully
\nsued<\/a> the British newspaper The Daily Mirror<\/i> for libel after gossip columnist
\nCassandra (the pen name for William Connor) strongly implied that he was gay.
\nHe would similarly
\nsue and settle<\/a> with the U.S. gossip magazine Confidential<\/i> over their
\nfrequent such allegations, including a July
\n1957 cover story<\/a> \u201cWhy Liberace\u2019s Theme Song Should Be \u2018Mad About the Boy!\u2019\u201d
\nLiberace\u2019s homosexuality is far less ambiguous or disputed than Cary Grant\u2019s,
\nand so the ambiguity here is what we do with such lawsuits\u2014whether we see them
\nfor example as expressions of his own tortured inner psyche, or as instead the
\nkinds of media control with which Grant\u2019s agent Henry Willson was so adept. <\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Montgomery
\nClift<\/a> (1920-1966): In this case of this Hollywood screen icon, who passed
\naway tragically young from a heart attack, the ambiguity is interconnected with
\nhis most famous professional and personal relationship. Clift
\nand Elizabeth Taylor<\/a> were very close, starring together in three romantic 1950s
\nfilms and maintaining a famously tight
\noff-screen friendship<\/a> (and perhaps more) throughout. So when Taylor said,
\nwhile being honored at
\nthe 2000 GLAAD Media Awards<\/a> for her LGBTQ+ advocacy, that Clift had been
\ngay, the admission was both surprising and seemingly accurate. Yet the details
\nof his life and relationships<\/a> seem to suggest at least bisexuality, another
\nreminder of how difficult it is to tell the life story of closeted public
\nfigures.<\/span><\/p>\n

4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Robert
\nReed<\/a> (1932-1992): As part of a 2000
\nABC News piece<\/a> entitled \u201cThe Real Mike Brady,\u201d Reed\u2019s Brady Bunch<\/i> costar
\nand on-screen wife Florence Henderson remarked, \u201cHere he was, the perfect
\nfather of this wonderful little family, a perfect husband. Off camera, he was
\nan unhappy person\u2014I think had Bob not been forced to live this double life, I
\nthink it would have dissipated a lot of that anger and frustration. I never
\nasked him. I never challenged him. I had a lot of compassion for him because I
\nknew how he was suffering with keeping this secret.\u201d I\u2019ve blogged
\nbefore about sitcom dads<\/a>, and it\u2019s particularly interesting to think (as Henderson
\ncertainly does in that quote) about the experiences of an actor playing that
\nkind of iconically heteronormative role while living as a closeted gay man. <\/span><\/p>\n

5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Freddie Mercury<\/a>
\n(1946-1991): As compared with earlier icons like Grant and Clift, Freddie Mercury\u2019s
\nbisexuality<\/a> seems to have become pretty well-established in the years after
\nhis tragic death from AIDS. But not if you watch the recent acclaimed
\nfilm biopic Bohemian Rhapsody<\/i><\/a> (2018), which portrays Mercury as
\nalmost entirely gay (with one influential early relationship with a woman).
\nIndeed, the film\u2019s Mercury says to that woman, Mary Austin, that he \u201cmight be
\nbisexual,\u201d to which she
\nreplies<\/a>, \u201cFreddie, you\u2019re gay.\u201d Clearly cultural representations of these figures
\nare just as complicated and fraught as were the stories and lives themselves!<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanksgiving
\nseries starts Monday,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[On November 17th, 1925, Roy Harold Scherer Jr.\u2014better known as Rock Hudson\u2014was born. His iconic career and complex life open up a lot of American histories, so this week I\u2019ve AmericanStudied a handful of them, leading up to this weekend post on other 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.] Quick takeaways […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,142259,25623,76682,2891,3894],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-312378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-americanstudying","tag-celebrities","tag-closeted","tag-gay","tag-november"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: November 22-23, 2025: AmericanStudying Closeted Gay Celebrities - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=312378\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: November 22-23, 2025: AmericanStudying Closeted Gay Celebrities - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[On November 17th, 1925, Roy Harold Scherer Jr.\u2014better known as Rock Hudson\u2014was born. 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