Blind Item #2 - Old Hollywood
Arguably the greatest western movie making actor of the silent movie era, this actor was deeply closeted. The studios forced him to marry an actress but after three months split with her and told the studios basically to take a hike. His only concession to them was that he didn't finalize the divorce for years so it looked as if they were married longer.
Tom Mix?
ReplyDeleteGeorge OBrien
ReplyDeleteTom Mix had multiple wives and George Obrien had multiple children. Not sure either answer fits the blind.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Hart?
ReplyDeleteWilliam S Hart... because I found this about him:
ReplyDelete"He was the pre-eminent silent westerner, a forerunner of Cooper, Fonda and Scott"
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2011/nov/06/ten-best-silent-movie-stars-in-pictures
...and because he married only once, for 6 years, according to Wikipedia.
William S. Hart
ReplyDeleteYour comment wasn't showing when I posted mine. I think he's it, although he looks anything but gay, and fathered a child with his wife the year after they married.
ReplyDeleteTom Mix died bizarrely..killed by a suitcase.
ReplyDelete@zilla wow, had to look that one up. Bizarre.
ReplyDeleteThis is from his wife's name was Winifred Westover and this is from her Wikipedia page:
ReplyDelete"They married on 7 December 1921 and had a son, William S. Hart Jr. They separated in 1922 after three months of marriage[2] and divorced in 1927."
Dang, you made me look that up. "Tom died in 1940 in a weird automobile accident, apparently he was speeding and lost control. He was hit in the back of his head by a suitcase that flew off the rear shelf of his single-seated roadster in the middle of the desert." From the innernet.
ReplyDeleteAnd here we are in 2016 with gay movie stars getting married to beards and being in lavender marriages with ivf babies. So nothing has really changed, has it?
ReplyDeleteWilliam S. Hart first sprang to my mind. He was definitely the main Western star of the silent era. He and his six-month bride did have a son, though. No one forced him to do that...
ReplyDeleteWilliam S. Hart. The basic facts match up -- was married to a starlet and they separated after three months but were married for six years. Was rumored to have been very well endowed.
ReplyDeleteNot all gays look stereotypical, even back in the early 1900s. And many entered in "lavender marriages", even having children.
ReplyDeleteYeah.. I just meant he looks pretty gruff in most of his photos which at first caused me to think it couldn't be him, but I realize every group follows a Bell curve distribution, in this case with the more flamboyant on one end, macho on the other, and most falling somewhere in the regular everyday middle.
ReplyDeleteIt does look like the studio told Hart to "take a hike" right back. Paramount dropped him, he made Tunbleweeds on his own and sued UA for failure to promote it. Re-released it many years later after the suit was resolved, and admirably, he did recoup his losses. (Wikipedia)
ReplyDelete