CHAPTER ONE

Never a superstar, Cesar Romero was nonetheless a household name and had several claims to fame. His first was as a grandson of Cuban liberator Jose Marti. Then as the latest "new Valentino" imported by Hollywood--from back east, not Cuba (New York-born Cesar attended high school in New Jersey)--to fill the Latin Lover's shoes. Another claim to (whispered) fame was as Tyrone Power's on-and-off lover and lifelong friend.

Another was as a "dancing fool." He began as a dancer, dancing on screen with Betty Grable and others, and was a favorite escort of Hollywood actresses from Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, and Carmen Miranda to, in latter days, older actresses like Jane Wyman, Ginger Rogers, and Anne Jeffreys. At nightclubs and parties, awards ceremonies, and other events, from the 1930s through the '80s, the "confirmed bachelor"--as gossip columnists usually described him--was always in demand. One source explained, "It was well known that Cesar could be counted on to be charming, to be an excellent dance partner, and to be discreet." He was, and had to be, discreet, for often he would escort an actress to a public spot, later depart with her, drop her off at some pre-arranged rendezvous with her male (or female) lover, and then drive to the arms of his own current male paramour.

On screen, the 6'3" hunk with the flashing smile found fame neither as a professional Latin nor an acclaimed dancer, though occasionally he enacted either role, sometimes simultaneously. Rather, he became a busy character actor, essaying both villains and chums to the male lead, with or more typically without a foreign accent. He worked with most of the stars of the golden age of cinema, from Dietrich and Shirley Temple to William Powell, Henry Fonda, and "Charlie Chan." He appeared in a handful of classics and dozens of enjoyable A- and B-movies. His more reflective film titles include:

The Shadow Laughs; Cheating Cheaters; The Thin Man; The Good Fairy; Uniform Lovers (Hold `Em Yale in the USA); Strange Wives; The Devil Is a Woman; Nobody's Fool; Love Before Breakfast; Dangerously Yours; Always Goodbye; The Gay Caballero; Tall, Dark and Handsome; A Gentleman at Heart; Deep Waters; Love That Brute; Street of Shadows (Shadow Man in the USA); The Leather Saint; All's Fair in Love; The Story of Mankind; If a Man Answers; A Talent for Loving; How to Make It; Soul Soldier; and Now You See Him, Now You Don't.

When television hit motion pictures in the back of the knees, Cesar Romero took to the small screen in over 40 years' worth of varied guest roles--and one brief series of his own, Passport to Danger. In the 1960s he won a new generation of fans as the campy, green-haired, ever-cackling Joker on Batman. And while his golden-era contemporaries retired or died, Cesar soldiered on, looking great. He commented in California magazine, "People are starting to call me Dorian Gray!

"But whatever else I may or may not have in common with Oscar Wilde, he did not create me and I was not a personal friend of his! Nor did Rudy Valentino give me my first break in pictures, as has been rumored. When he died, I was in my teens." So, Cesar's latest claim to fame became his enduring looks. In 1968 TV Guide dubbed him one of the most "beautiful men in the world," with "hair the color of stainless steel," an alert, "erect" posture, and charm to spare. Unsurprisingly, he launched a chain of men's clothing stores in California.

As he became elderly, his lifestyle didn't. Romero was known as Hollywood's most party-going citizen. At most any celebrity event--at the opening of an art gallery, a fashion exhibit, or a function commemorating Old Hollywood--Cesar was there, with or sometimes without a female celebrity in tow (not just glamour gals; often it was matronly Los Angeles philanthropist Sybil Brand). People joked that Cesar Romero would attend the opening of a napkin. Most nights of the week found him out on the town, away from the Brentwood condo that he shared with his sister Maria, whom he outlived.

Cesar continued going out--when he wasn't attending a function, he was likely at a dinner party--until the very end. The last time I saw him was in late autumn, 1993, in Beverly Hills at a tribute to our town's late honorary mayor, Will Rogers (killed in an airplane crash in 1935). The event tied in with the L.A. production of the Broadway hit Will Rogers' Follies, and Cesar was seated, grinning from time to time, on the dais. He was 86, and his one notable physical flaw was a brownish discoloration on the middle of his nose. Sometimes he covered it with makeup, but frequently let it go, explaining:

"I'm not quite that vain now. It's just how it is, no big deal. Of course when I work, the makeup man or girl covers it for me.... My lower teeth aren't perfect either. I've been advised I can get them changed or capped or whatever, but to me it's no big deal. And who'd want to sit still that long?"

To friends, he was known as "Butch." Certainly he acted more butch than stereotypical, though his off-camera humor was often self-mocking (e.g., after taping a TV talk show also featuring a female beauty queen, he instructed the technician removing the guests' clip-on microphones, "You can do the young lady first--the young queen before the old queen!"). His nickname was given to him by George Murphy when both were hoofers. The future Republican senator reportedly felt that as a dancer, Cesar could stand a more virile cognomen:

"I told him `Butch' Romero would be his fast ticket to posterity, but then all the studio bosses thought it sounded peculiar for a `Latin Lover.' I figured for a dancing man, `Butch' would be smarter than going with an ancient Greek's [sic] name. But you can't second-guess Hollywood, and I guess that's one reason I left the place."

In 1933 the Cuban-American was transported to Hollywood, where MGM didn't know what to do with him. By then, during the depths of the Depression, male foreigners--as Romero was considered, because of his name--were fast going out of style. Louis B. Mayer's notorious homophobia may have played a part (he'd already been defied by MGM star Ramon Novarro after repeating his request that the gay Mexican take a wife). At the more Euro-oriented Paramount in 1935, "the new Valentino" was costarring with Marlene Dietrich in Joseph Von Sternberg's Spanish extravaganza The Devil Is a Woman. Had it been a hit, he would likely have gone on to romantic leading roles rather than Fox and such Shirley Temple vehicles as Wee Willie Winkie and The Little Princess.

Woman was probably too exotic for mid-American audiences, who in any case hardly got to sample the final Dietrich/Von Sternberg collaboration. As the director put it in his memoirs, "The film was banned by the Spanish government, which in turn was banned by Generalissimo Franco." Spain's protestations led Paramount to pull the picture from release and agree to destroy most of the prints. Cesar's big break was thus negated. Said Von Sternberg, "Most who saw it were Hollywood minions, before the few extant prints were shelved, to gather dust except for [being seen at] MOMA, then a screening at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, and finally a limited circulation in 1961."

But rumor had it that, pre-release, the homophobic director had already cut Cesar's part--to favor co-male lead Lionel Atwill--after learning Cesar was gay. To this writer's knowledge, Romero never acknowledged the rumor. Ironically, Elsa Lanchester, widow of closeted gay star Charles Laughton, told me, "When Charles was doing [the aborted] I, Claudius for Herr Von Sternberg, who was an American and not of aristocratic origin [Von indicates Teutonic nobility], he gave Charles his unsolicited opinion of Senor Romero. He said Cesar was a bit on the`fancy' side and ought to find himself a wife if ever he expected to get anywhere in the picture business. The kraut said this with a straight and obviously naive face to our Charles...."

Apparently the next time Romero's career suffered from homophobia was after he inherited the role of the Cisco Kid (including The Gay Caballero, 1940). The Hispanic hero was derived from a 1907 O. Henry short story and in 1929 won the second Best Actor Academy Award for Warner Baxter. Fox turned it into a popular early '40s series that didn't sit as well with moviegoers in nations to the south. James Horwitz in his book They Went Thataway explained:

"Romero was no cowboy, but one of those grill-creamed Latin Lover types, and played the Kid as a smarmy dandy and fop, while Chris Pin-Martin's Pancho (the Kid's sidekick) was a gutbucket slob. Latin American sensibilities were offended by this unlikely duo. An international incident nearly occurred. Diplomatic cables flew back and forth between Latin America and the State Department. The Cisco Kid, as portrayed by Romero, was, so to speak, queering America's south-of-the-border foreign policy. Darryl Zanuck at Fox was more or less ordered by Washington to change Cisco's style or stop making the pictures. He decided to drop the series altogether."

The series was later revived with heterosexual Mexican sex symbol Gilbert Roland. But the replacement of the "mincing Romero" with a "lecherous Roland" proved unpopular with US and Latin audiences. Horwitz described the new Kid as "a typical Rolandesque cigarillo-smoking, hot-sweat-of-passion, lusty, mucho macho caballero. The films bombed out." It was the allegedly Rumanian Duncan Renaldo who eventually struck the right note of asexuality and nonviolence, becoming the most famous Cisco Kid of all--with a big plug from TV.

The publication of the above explanation in my 1990 book Hispanic Hollywood put an almost two-year chill into Cesar's and my friendship and interviews (since 1977, usually at the fabled Chateau Marmont). We were to have appeared together on a local TV talk show, but Cesar canceled when he discovered it would feature not my other current book (The Vinyl Closet, about gays and lesbians in music) but Hispanic Hollywood.

Pre-publication, I'd asked Cesar if he would pen a foreword to my book about Latins in motion pictures. He politely demurred, and so Edward James Olmos wrote it. As for the Cisco Kid material from Horwitz's book, I photocopied it and sent it to him care of Morgan Maree, his business manager. No reply. Later, when we began speaking again, I asked why Cesar hadn't gotten back to me if he didn't want the factual, already printed information in my book? "I never got your letter." End of subject.

By and large, Cesar Romero was an excellent interviewee. Sadly, he was seldom sought for interviews. Almost never was he asked about his private life. True, he never officially came out of the closet, but for one of his generation he was relatively open about his sexual and affectional orientation, and he rarely took steps to disguise it. His avoiding contractual marriage, as he pointed out, was a statement in itself--one that the mass media had no desire to give voice to.

The first time we met, at the Marmont, I couldn't resist, and greeted him with "Hail, Cesar!" When I later called him Mr. Romero, he flashed a smile and insisted, "Mr. Romero was my father. Don't make me feel so old!" I asked what should I call him? "You can call me `Butch' or Cesar." I couldn't help feeling both were too familiar, particularly on such short acquaintance, and compromised with the honorific Don Cesar (now and again we spoke Spanish together, especially when the waiter or nearby customers weren't meant to understand).

Cesar--as I eventually called him--was an avid and thoughtful conversationalist on most topics. On one he was unwilling and protective: "my close friend, my dear friend, Ty Power." He never stated what most of Hollywood knew at the time--that they were lovers. When he spoke of Power on TV, he would mention Tyrone's wives or girlfriends--real or imaginary--and although he admitted to me that Power was "bisexual," even that was uttered reluctantly. A closeted movie actor friend--best known for his role on a TV series about a policewoman--himself also legally (if not actually) single, declared, "I gather Ty was rather tortured about it. He was a prominent movie star and icon. He wanted to be straight, but more than that, he was terrified of being found out.

"Cesar's not a movie star, and never had the same pressure or fears. And I think he's more comfortable within himself, he's a survivor [Power died at 44].... When Cesar talks about Ty, he feels he's being loyal to him, even if those same pressures and fears don't exist anymore. Or not to the same degree."

The year I met Don Cesar, he turned 70. He still flirted and had a zestful gleam in his eye. But whether in his 70s and 80s he had affairs with anyone, I have no idea. A few times, in the 1980s, we video-watched some porno flicks together. In 1991, after Paul Rubens (ne Rubenfeld), aka Pee-Wee Herman, was arrested at an "adult theatre" in Sarasota, Florida, Cesar joked on the phone, "Think how much grief he could have saved himself if he'd stayed home or in his motel and played with his toy in front of a video machine!" I wondered aloud why Rubens had bothered to go out to a porno theatre.

"I guess to see other toys in action," Cesar chuckled. "Poor fellow--such hypocrisy [from the media]. I wonder if Sarasota has a gay adult theatre...?" When in 1992 a tabloid ran the story of "Pee-Wee's Gay Wedding ... & Jim Nabors Sang at Secret Ceremony," he clipped it and sent it to me, noting, "I knew I liked this guy. And Jim Nabors' voice!" When next we met, Cesar said that a lesbian official from the national Hispanic organization La Raza in Washington, D.C., had informed him that Rubens's sister was (reportedly) a well-known gay rights activist back east. "Young people are all right," he intoned.

Q: Where does one begin with as colorful a life and career as yours?

A: You mean as long (grins).

Q: How many movies have you been in?

A: I'm pushing 100. Oooh, I don't like the sound of that! If it isn't 100 movies, it will be soon.

Q: But now you seem to do more TV than movies.

A: Undeniably true.

Q: Because of ... age?

A: Age and because there's more work on the small screen. What it's missing in quality it makes up for in quantity. From an actor's selfish point of view.

Q: Speaking of quality, it varies wildly in movies too. You've been in classics like The Thin Man, Springtime in the Rockies, and Around the World in 80 Days. But you've--

A: The last one doesn't count. Everybody in Hollywood was in that. If you weren't, you left town and made up an excuse.

Q: Not just everyone in Hollywood. Noel Coward was in it, and for a day's work he received an automobile, a Bonnard. A reporter visiting the set was flabbergasted and said, "Just for a day's work?" and Noel Coward replied, "Not at all, madame. For a lifetime of experience."

A: (Laughs, claps hands together.) Classic Coward. I think a few other guest stars got paid in automobiles.

Q: Yes. Sir Noel said that Ronald Colman got a Cadillac.

A: Said to you or ...?

Q: (Smiling.) I got to interview him. By then he was--belatedly--Sir Noel. He wasn't in 1956.

A: And you weren't born, I'll wager.

Q: I beg your pardon. I was a toddler.

A: You got to meet Sir Noel Coward? I met him too. Didn't know him well. But you are lucky.

Q: I know I am. He was not only brilliant, he was kind and down-to-earth.

A: Sometimes that happens with celebrities. (Grinning.)

Q: What I meant is, most people like that aren't so ... sincere.

A: Well, you know what they say in Hollywood--the most important thing is being sincere, even if you have to fake it.... They also say the camera never lies. It lies (leaning closer) every day.

Q: Do you mean actors playing characters unlike themselves?

A: Yes, yes. A pompous ass playing a concerned hero, a bitch playing the girl next door ... but also tricks about aging or emotional insincerity--project a mask, and people can project onto it whatever they think you're feeling.

Q: Or want you to be feeling.

A: Yes. A good rule of thumb in acting for the camera is not to emotionalize. Keep your expressions pretty still. You have very expressive eyes. If an actor's face is more of a blank, he can let the audience do the acting for him.

Q: Like who?

A: ... Spencer Tracy. Not to take anything away from him, but many a morning he came to the set hung (over), and during a line--or particularly when he had no lines--he'd present an expressionless face to the camera. People would read all kinds of reaction into it, but Tracy told me himself that half the time he was just standing very still, trying to look sober and composed. (Shrugs.) That takes nothing away from him. The fact he got away with it was a tribute to his talent.

Q: He's become known among younger actors for his advice about just saying your lines right and not bumping into the furniture.

A: Aha! That is wrong, and we can put this on record. He did say that too, but it didn't come from him. He very rarely did interviews, but in one interview long ago he said that he got that advice from Noel Coward! He gave Coward the credit.

Q: And now others give Tracy the credit.

A: There was another thing I remember Noel Coward said--I should remember more, and I have a pretty good memory. He said when he was very young, in his 20s or 30s, the critics would complain that he was "precocious." That's the word. And Coward said, "How do they think I could be clever and not know it?"

Q: Makes perfect sense. Which is worse--a critic's bad review, or not getting mentioned in a review?

A: What do you think?

Q: ... Silence is the worst insult.

A: You said it.

Q: Getting back to the uneven quality of movies--

A: Movies I've been in?

Q: Actually, yes. But hey, it's a living. Anyway, you've more recently done films like Sergeant Deadhead, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, and Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood....

A: (Grinning.) That last one is a classic dog.

Q: A classic dog movie?

A: No. A classic dog. (Nods.)

Q: Yet they say movies--still--have more prestige than TV.

A: It's also harder to get into them. Not that television is so easy. It's all uphill now.

Q: Mmm. But enough about TV. More about your background. Let's go back to the very beginning.

A: All right. What do you want to know about the Civil War?

Q: Funny. You were born in the USA....

A: Which many people still find hard to believe. And if you can believe it, Hollywood wanted to change my birthdate. I was born after Valentine's Day, so they wanted to change it to February 14. You know why?

Q: Latin love and romance?

A: You said it. A Latin lover should be born on Valentine's Day. I said no.

Q: You know who else did? Elsa Lanchester. She was born around Halloween, and when she starred as The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the publicists wanted to change her birthday to October 31.

A: And not being a real witch, she refused.

Q: Yes (both laugh). Your first movie wasn't The Thin Man (1934)?

A: No. I did a handful in '33 and '34, then I got the buildup in 1935. The Thin Man was a good break, because it was highly popular. I played a gigolo in it.

Q: There's Latin typecasting for you.

A: Yes. And no. His name was Chris Jorgenson. An Anglo-gigolo--but at least not a transsexual (like Danish-American Christine Jorgenson).

Q: You were a Latin from Manhattan. So, before movies, you had to be on the stage.

A: Oh, of course. We all came up through the theatre--or in some cases the thee-ayder. I was in a show called Lady Do, late '20s. My big break, my Broadway bow, was Dinner at Eight. I played Ricci (spelling it). That was very popular.

Q: But you didn't get into the movie version, which was helmed by the gay George Cukor...?

A: No. And I didn't know about him then (nods significantly).

Q: Could that have helped you, if you had?

A: It's possible. I don't know at what point Cukor supposedly or actually started favoring particular young actors with roles ... perhaps not just then (in the early 1930s). He was starting out himself. He had to be careful. By the '50s, I know, he was giving big breaks to--

Q: Big newcomers?

A: (Laughs.) So I often heard.

Q: Like Valentino, you began as a dancer. How and why?

A: Well, first--and I should only have been as lucky as Valentino, in the movies--I didn't have to be a gigolo. In real life.

Q: And Valentino did?

A: People who knew him in Italy said he engaged in male prostitution there. Could be. But in New York, he was a paid dance partner and a gigolo for older ladies of affluent means.

Q: Would that have involved sex?

A: More probably not. But it was widely known that those boys were either queer or went both ways.

Q: As far as it's possible to know, Valentino was apparently gay or bisexual.

A: Yes. And his two lesbian wives. But without any question, he had sex with men. From choice. So he was one or the other.

Q: Did you ever know anybody who made love with him?

A: I did. One heterosexual who later gave up acting. He was very young, experimenting, and quite flattered when "the Sheik" made clear his interest in him. And I knew several gay actors who ... knew Rudy, including my good friend Ramon Novarro. He was almost as popular a star as Rudy was.

Q: Novarro was stunning--they called him "Ravishing Ramon"--but he also seemed very nice.

A: A gentle, sweet man. His murder (in 1968 at the hands of two hustler brothers) was so gruesome and bloody, it was so senseless--one of this town's greatest tragedies. (Even so, the self-avowed heterosexual brothers have long since been released from prison.) It was the biggest shock I had since Ty's death (in 1958 from a heart attack on location in Spain).

Q: I imagine the murder scared most sensible gay men in Hollywood off of using hustlers?

A: Anyone with any sense.... That and the murders of Sharon Tate and her friends helped make us all extremely wary. A lot of paranoia set in.

Q: Stars are increasingly being targeted.

A: All kinds of celebrities, political ones as well. In this country, with all the countless guns.

Q: However, in Novarro's case, it had more to do with robbery and gay-bashing--that extra viciousness directed against a gay man--than his being a celebrity. Correct?

A: Yes, I don't even think those two brutes knew who he was. He hadn't been a movie star for a very long time. His name wasn't known to young people.

Q: Except via I Love Lucy, where Lucy's mother still had a crush on Ray-Monn Navarro, as she pronounced it.

A: (Smiles; frowns.) But those two barbarians did know that he kept a lot of cash in his house, whoever he was. That's what they were after.... During the murder trial, it was the dead man who was put on trial, as if he'd corrupted these two barbarians.

Q: It's an ongoing travesty of justice. Victimizing the victim of anti-gay violence. The basher or murderer tries to justify the violence by saying, "But he came onto me," whether true or false.

A: Whether he did or not, nothing justifies a violent reaction. Unless it's an attempted rape, and even then.

Q: If every woman reacted the same way to sexually eager men, there'd be few heterosexual males left!

A: It's true. It's awful, the unfairness. But that's why one must stay out of trouble.

Q: And why the laws must be changed, and people elected who aren't mere conservers of traditional injustices....

A: Amen. But ... oh, it's depressing. We were talking about ... dancing. Much less depressing! (Sighs in relief.) Several of those fellows working in the dance parlors, I forget what they called the places, they had to live down the reputations they got there, for years after ... George Raft. He may or may not have gone both ways, but he was very sensitive to what they said about him, and it was one factor why he decided to play all those gangsters in the movies.

Q: One rumor is he had a crush on mobster Bugsy Siegel.

A: (Laughs.) The mobster with the beautiful blue eyes. I know Raft did have some genuine affairs with actresses.

Q: So he may have been bisexual. Or heterosexual.

A: In reality he may have been ... "bi." But in ... common parlance, in or out of our business, if a man has a marriage or an affair with a lady, he's thought of as heterosexual.

Q: As though everyone is only hetero- or only homosexual.

A: They go by what they can see.

Q: And they force the sexual minority to hide what they do and feel, so that the public assumes almost everyone's heterosexual. How were you able to evade pressure to marry?

A: I wasn't able to evade some pressure--we all had some pressures brought to bear on us--but I did evade the noose. I mean the knot! Freudian slip.

Q: More like a Freudian slap.

A: (Laughs.) But that brings us right back to dancing. You see, very, very often, I was out dancing with one actress or another. And that got press. Even when it didn't, the whole town knew I was a dancing fool, and since I couldn't very well dance with a man, they saw me dancing with a lady, and ...

Q: And they assumed the rest.

A: That's it. What they saw was what they got in their heads. Now, as to how I started dancing. I'd learned with my sister--we learned from our cook, who was Puerto Rican. I liked dancing, it was fun and expressive, and I was good at it.

Q: And it was socially approved.

A: You said it. Again, it put any doubts out of most people's heads. But I'll tell you something not for public consumption in my lifetime.... All right? That's how I ... found out. That I was different. While dancing ... you understand?

Q: You mean that you weren't sexually turned on to your partners?

A: (Nods, smiling.) I enjoyed dancing, I enjoyed the girls I danced with, but ... that was all. I wasn't distracted by them, and on the dance floor, I could see other partners I would rather have had....

Q: Males.

A: (Nods.) So I had to keep from laughing when a male relative of mine became concerned about how often I danced.

Q: What, he thought you should be outdoors playing sports?

A: Mentioning sports, I was very good at tennis. Not quite championship level, but ... No. This well-intentioned relative told me confidentially that so much dancing was bound to make me, ahem, frustrated. (Grins.) So I shouldn't do too much dancing. Or else I'd be bound to practice self-abuse. Frequently!

Q: "Self-abuse." What a misnomer for self-pleasure.

A: (Smiles.) Lovingly practiced the whole world over.

Q: Indeed. If anything, it's the norm--autosexual, and part of the time heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual....

A: I think that covers it (grins). Anyway, I told the poor fellow not to worry. He thought I'd get sick or drain myself of all energy and not be able to conduct a business career. Which I would have been miserable at. But due to a big bust in Cuba, my father's business suffered badly, so I was free to choose my own career. I became a professional dancer, and I went on the road and started making real money.

Q: I hope you don't mind this question, but why, in the movies, didn't you become another Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly?

A: Thank you! (Mock-bows, smiling.)

Q: "Thank you"?

A: You're presuming I had enough talent to compete with those excellent dancers. (Shrugs.) I don't know. I may have had. But being a Latin, that wasn't what they were grooming me for. I was supposed to be a romancer, either wooing the leading lady or competing with the leading man for her.

Q: Did male dancers of star stature have to have a more mainstream image?

A: That is perceptive of you, because in this country men dancers have always been viewed with suspicion. If you were an actor, a star, and a dancer, you had to be, or have a name like ... as you said, someone "mainstream." You can name the top three (male) dancers in the movies, can't you?

Q: Fred Astaire (born Austerlitz), Gene Kelly, and Dan Dailey. Dailey is gay.

A: Yes. As well.... (A warning finger; end of subject.)

Q: One clarifying question. When you say gay, do you mean homosexual or bisexual?

A: Either.

Q: Ah. Well, to me it means homosexual. And bi means bisexual. There can be a difference.

A: In Hollywood, I agree. I don't know about out there anymore. But a Hollywood actor can genuinely enjoy sex with either.

Q: Why?

A: Beauty. We have the most beautiful people in the world here. Of both sexes.

Q: Look at Tyrone Power. In his heyday, he was, I'd say, universally desirable. As were some of the goddesses.

A: Ty was the most beautiful of all, man or woman. He was matchless. And you know, people often mistook him for Latin, from his dark hair and brows and eyelashes.

Q: And probably because he played Latins in films like Blood and Sand and Captain from Castile.

A: (Beams.) Captain from Castile ... wonderful memories.... At that time, we had several beautiful, glamorous Latin American stars. They were the best fun at parties and clubs, we always got along great. There was a whole colony--the handsome Hispanics, like Ramon, Gilbert Roland, and others. (Sighs.)

Q: Those wonderful Latin looks, eh?

A: I'm not the only one. You know who had a crush on Gilbert? Lucille Ball. I don't know if they had an affair, but several people in this town believed they would end up married.

Q: Instead she married another Latin--and you worked with him, didn't you? (He grins.) A renowned, or notorious, ladies' man. Did you ever have a crush on Desi Arnaz?

A: (Nods.) Desi loved sex. He couldn't get enough.

Q: How about that syndrome, the Casanova thing, where a man--a Don Juan--who has hundreds of female lovers, at some point along the way also has a few male ones?

A: Well, of course! An erection's an erection. It just wants satisfaction. Wasn't it ... was it Gertrude Stein who said a mouth is a mouth is a mouth?

Q: Could be. There didn't used to be surveys on this topic, but now they indicate that more men enjoy oral sex--receiving it--than the standard male-female sexual position, the "missionary," for want of a better word.

A: They may prefer it, but until not so long ago, a man, a regular married man, didn't know where to get it. Mostly, they had to do without. Wives or girlfriends wouldn't do it. Guys had to go to a professional and pay her.

Q: Or ...?

A: Or something like a highway rest stop where the truckers go. "Glory holes," they call them. Which gives a new meaning to the old expression, "gone to glory." (Smirks.) So, anonymous oral sex--no names, no faces. So that the fellow can still think of himself as ... living a completely normal life. Right?

Q: It helps him think of himself as just one category, instead of as simply sexual. The Greeks, for instance, didn't have words for "heterosexual" or "homosexual."

A: Smart people, the Greeks. You mean the ancient Greeks?

Q: Of course. Not the Greek Orthodox. So did Desi Arnaz ever know how you felt?

A: He'd have been rather slow if he didn't. He knew he was pretty irresistible--I mean well before I Love Lucy, and even then. And he knew about me, and ... I guess he could see it in the eyes. When someone's acting for a scene, they can fool the camera. But in everyday life, unless you're watching and censoring yourself every minute, or spending all your time in the company of ladies, what you feel is bound to show in your eyes. Sooner or later.

Q: Men look. Most men, any type.

A: Yes. And to make a very pleasant story short, one day Desi said to me, "All right, we both know what you want. Let's get it over with." We did. End of story.

Q: Just once?

A: (Grins widely.) Men aren't potato chips....

Q: But I'll bet--

A: Desi said "one time only." For our friendship. Neither of us made a big deal out of it, excuse the pun, and we never referred to it again.

Q: Do you think Lucy ever knew?

A: Of course not! It would have been the least of her worries, later on. And I know I wasn't the only one; Dorothy Kilgallen's husband (Arnaz's Broadway co-star Richard Kollmar) was another man. Desi loved pleasure. Who doesn't? He wasn't "compromised," as they say. He received the pleasure, for a change. I mean, Desi screwed women, and he never got screwed--physically; in Hollywood, everyone gets screwed--so how much more heterosexual than that does anyone have to be?

Besides, it didn't harm anyone or create problems. Later, when he was cheating on his wife all over the place, in addition to his problem with alcoholism, that led to heartaches for poor Lucille.

Q: It's certainly true that if a man with a wife goes outside--

A: The expression used to be "steps out."

Q: If he "steps out" for ... a frolic with another man--and there's any number of things either or both can do, or not do--it should cause no problem. But if he steps out on her with another woman, he may later decide to leave his wife--and their kids--for her, or he may impregnate the girlfriend or mistress--

A: As well as spending household money on the mistress!

Q: Right, and all of that would certainly create problems and heartache.

A: When it's same-sex, no one gets pregnant. Before there was the pill, and before women made themselves so sexually available, that was a big consideration.

Q: It's still a big one in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Heterosexual sex, because of pregnancy, must occur within legal marriage. Thus, young, unmarried men often have sex with each other as relief and an alternative.

A: You said it. But you know something? They don't think of themselves as gay. I've heard it over and over.

Q: Denial. Even though it takes two people to perform one homosexual act.

A: Yes! When they could just think of themselves as flexible. Or just plain sexual. But there's something you younger kids don't realize. In the, uh, old days (cocks an eyebrow) ... how shall I? ... fellatio was a big status symbol. If someone was willing to do that for you, you felt like a king. Few would have said no.

Q: Once.

A: Yes. Twice might be embarrassing.

Q: I think it was Voltaire who said, or wrote, "Once, a philosopher. Twice, a sodomite."

A: (Laughs and claps hands.) Very good! But I think he must have been referring to that other activity?

Q: Well, that particular biblical word is both judgmental and inaccurate.

A: And not even limited to homosexuals.

Q: Right. Getting back to the dance floor, you escorted Lucy a few times, didn't you?

A: Oh, we had several dates. She loved to dance. And she loved Latins.

Q: Do you think she'd have known you were ... just there to dance?

A: You know, I have no idea, and I wouldn't have cared. We went out because that's what we beautiful young movie people did! We were encouraged to. We were living the high life, it was very glamorous and elegant, it was wonderful fun. And far more innocent than now. Less sex, less drink, absolutely less drugs--if someone did that, it was unusual, and it was private. Today, half the girls powder their noses from the inside!

Remember, I was much younger then. It was all before the war, I was in my late 20s and then my 30s. But what did happen was if you went out together several times, those columnists--there were dozens of them then--they'd link you romantically, on paper. It meant nothing, but if it kept popping up in print, someone at the studio might suggest that you make it legal.

Q: So you didn't need publicists then?

A: They called them press agents. Today they're very, very professional ... liars. Mostly. Back then, a press agent would be better for pressing pants. All the top columnists had leg men, and when you showed up somewhere, it automatically got covered. Most of the time.

Q: And again, what the public read about, and saw photographed, was what they took literally.

A: Yes. But there really were, in those days, several gay, carefree bachelors. In the old meaning of the word. Someone once told me "gay" now stands for "Good As You." But people weren't at all as suspicious as now.

Q: No, because it was so suppressed and invisibilized, that average people thought somebody gay was one in a million. Worse, gay people, especially away from the big cities, were made to think so too.

A: Or people thought they were mostly foreign. There was a lot of that thinking too.

Q: Yes, the over-emotional Latin, the effete Englishman.... But you know the word "bachelor"? Originally it meant a young knight who had served under another knight's banner.

A: That sounds interesting. So it had ... connotations.

Q: In days of old, when knights were bold.... But by the time you reached 40, people must have begun to suspect?

A: (Nods.) By that age, almost everyone had married. Me, Ramon ... Clifton Webb, very few of us hadn't tied the knot.

Q: Not to contradict, but there were several others, though most of them weren't stars.

A: Most of them worked in comedy.

Q: Funny men.

A: Watch it! (Laughs.) But by the time I was 40, everything was winding down. It started after the war. On the plus side, there was more ... more plenty, more products and technology. But for me (shakes head), the nightlife was winding down, the glamour, the fun. The movies--and how! Times were getting tough.

Q: The witch-hunts. They passed you by?

A: Ave Maria! I was Latin. Communism and Latins? There was no Castro then.

Q: Lucky Cuba. Although Batista (his predecessor) was terrible too.

A: You said it. Unless you were terribly rich.

Q: You know one of the worst things about communist regimes?

A: The food?

Q: Be serious. They're always rabidly homophobic.

A: Ah. Yes, that's true. But in Hollywood, with the witch-hunts, most of the targets were intellectuals and Europeans.

Q: And a huge percentage of them were Jewish or gay. Two of the extreme right's ongoing targets.

A: Many weren't even communists. Just liberal.

Q: Much of it was a backlash.

A: You mean against the Iron Curtain going up?

Q: Yes, and the Bamboo Curtain, but domestically a backlash against Democrats. After almost four terms of Franklin Roosevelt, and then Truman.

A: It was awful. A terrible, terrible time.

Q: As Lillian Hellman called it, "scoundrel time." Though I must add that her defense of Stalinism was terrible.

A: I agree! But let's wash our hands of politics. I've avoided it. I always prefer to leave it alone.

Q: It would be nice if one could. But the only type of person who can afford to ignore politics is someone who's male, white, heterosexual, and Christian-- "preferably" Protestant.

A: You've hit it on the head. It's true. But at my age, I think I can beg off politics. I try to vote, but ... I'm too old to get involved with it. (Smiles.) The young people can do it.

Q: Young people must do it.

A: (Shakes head.) Yes. There are good things now, but there were good things then. Those nightclubs! The way we dressed up! And it was safer then. Muggings--what muggings? If you weren't in the ma>

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