Kate, Spence and Stana

My wife was watching a Katherine Hepburn film yesterday and she wondered if Kate had any kids.

I said I didn't know, but I mentioned that she was gay.

My wife retorted, "What about her affair with Spencer Tracy?"

I said Tracy was gay, too. The "affair" was something cooked up to cover up their real sexuality.*

Then we discussed how it is different today and how people are coming out all the time these days.

Wife said, "Not everybody. Would you go to work dressed as a woman?"

I replied, "Sure I would."

She had nothing more to say.

* Source: Bowers, Scotty (2012). Full service: my adventures in Hollywood and the secret sex lives of the stars. New York: Grove Press.

Hollywood En Femme

Sascha Brastoff

Being a liberal, I read Salon every day.

Being a film fan, I read "My Tryst with Spencer Tracy" on Salon the other day.

The Spencer Tracy article was an excerpt "from Scotty Bowers' controversial new memoir, Full Service (written with the help of Lionel Friedberg), about working as a sexual fixer in Hollywood."

The article revealed that Tracy was bisexual and that his not-so-secret love affair with actress Katherine Hepburn was a publicity stunt to cover up Tracy's bisexuality and Hepburn's lesbianism.

After reading another excerpt on Amazon, I bought the Kindle version of the book and began reading it with the Mac Kindle reader application.

It is a page-turner and I have not been able to put the book down. If you are a film fan, especially films of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, I think you will find the book very interesting. It is a no-holds-barred exposé of the sexual exploits of the Hollywood stars and celebrities of that era.

Naturally, I was curious if there were any trans stars mentioned in the book.

There was not one word about Jeff Chandler or Dan Dailey, but the book did mention that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover "got dressed up in drag" during a visit to Hollywood" and a "lot of fun was had by all…"

The book also mentions the crossdressing exploits of costume designer Sascha Brastoff. "When Sascha was in drag he looked, walked, talked, and behaved exactly like a woman. You simply could not tell that he was a man."

And so it goes.