Broadway Babylon (31 page)

In 1980, Moore spoke (on the phone) under the condition that his private life not be broached. Although no longer a performer, he remained in the closet, even though partnered. Moore shed little light on
The Boys in the Band
or his career, and I terminated the session early. Frederick Combs: “Bob’s arrogance and queeny manner scared off movie studios. They hired William Friedkin (pre–
The Exorcist
), who might be straight or might be bi … He made some ambiguous comments while making
Cruising
,” a homophobic film picketed while on location by many gay New Yorkers and coincidentally featuring
Boys
’ own Keith Prentice as, what else, a gay murder victim.

Boys
‘ original cast members got to reprise their roles on screen, usually a rarity but not in a time where most Hollywood actors and every star declined to play gay. (Leading or ensemble, gay roles didn’t yet yield Oscar nominations or awards.) Studio interest in the hot property cooled after no big name attached itself to the project; Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger had recently enacted gay leads in unsuccessful films (see
The Lavender Screen
’s updated edition). The 1970 movie of
The Boys in the Band
, via National General, not a major distribution company, didn’t fare well at the box office—outside a few cities, few people showed up, including gay filmgoers.

As a New York play,
Boys
was a significant hit with homosexual and heterosexual audiences. Despite its grim, almost warning ad line,“
The Boys in the Band
 … is not a musical,” the play and film deeply impressed then-closeted gays. After the 2002 passing of Cliff Gorman, critic Rex Reed wrote, “Sacred memories invade my thoughts of funny man Cliff (
The Boys in the Band
) Gorman,” even though the actor was not primarily a comedian.

“Yes, it was a backward and stereotypical play,” reflected gay historian Martin Greif, lamenting that its most famous line, via the mainstream media at least, was “You show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse.” “But in that era, what a treat just to see gay characters, and central ones at that, and from the pen of a gay man.… Obviously, Crowley shouldn’t have made that idiotically defensive comment on the order of: There may actually be happy gay people out there, but they’re not in
my
play.” Greif added, “Remember,
Boys
came out not long after the lifting of the state law which forbade gay and lesbian characters on New York stages.”

Robert Moore remembered, “Most people, including gays, came to see the play with an attitude of horrified fascination … I think Mart’s device of using a birthday party was inspired. It reveals these guys’ world and allows them to let it all hang out. It’s a party to which the audience is invited, as voyeurs and eavesdroppers.”

But
The Boys in the Band
was no party for most of its cast, none of whom went on to stardom. “I think I’m the only actor who embraced the play,” said Frederick Combs. “I did it in New York and I did it in London. I can see the upside—being in a hit, being something of a role model or standard bearer—while I can also see, have known, the downside … yet I haven’t felt trapped and defeated by the curse of
The Boys in the Band
.”

Combs described the phases of his experience: the initial thrill of costarring in a pioneering hit play, the movie getting made “with us in it,” disappointment that the picture didn’t do better even though “It wasn’t unexpected. The so-called heartland is not New York—damn it. And then being so identified with the play and the movie, like to the point of, ‘You did play yourself, right?’ Almost having to apologize for it!”

As more than one cast member pointed out, Middle America never saw the movie—which TV still shuns—but everyone in Hollywood did: casting directors and “anyone with the power to give or deny you a job.… Back then, there was real stigma attached to being publicly known as gay, which equated to having played gay,” said Combs. “Especially if you weren’t a celebrity, someone who’d been photographed on dates with the opposite sex.… There was an enduring darkness attached to
The Boys in the Band
once the successful play ended and the unsuccessful movie came out. The tune was like, I told you so and it serves you right for trying to make a movie out of
that
.”

F
REDERICK
C
OMBS
, a once-close friend of
Boys
movie producer-turned-author Dominick Dunne, wrote a play titled
The Children’s Mass
which sometime lover Sal Mineo helped produce. Combs appeared on TV’s
The Young and the Restless
but found acting jobs in any medium scarcer and scarcer. “It’s ironic. On Broadway in 1961 I originated Geoffrey, the gay friend of the pregnant girl in
A Taste of Honey
. That didn’t seem to hurt me. Possibly I drank from the same well once too often.” The handsome, talented actor was in several New York Shakespeare Festival productions and in Franco Zeffirelli’s
The Lady of the Camellias
and was writer-in-residence at the Edward Albee Playwriting Foundation. But in the mid-1970s, Combs moved to LA where he had more of his own plays produced.

He also directed, for instance Harvey Fierstein’s
International Stud
. In lieu of acting assignments, Combs worked as a dialogue coach and acting teacher, founding the Los Angeles/Actor’s Lab in 1979. He did minor roles in made-for-TV movies and didn’t hide his gayness. In the late ’70s, he gave a candid interview to gay
In Touch
magazine.

“Do I regret playing Donald in
Boys
?” he repeated my question. “No. Of course not. Not in and of itself. I regret the aftermath.”

In 1992, Frederick Combs died of AIDS, at fifty-seven.

K
ENNETH
N
ELSON CHEATED THE ROLE
of the Boy in
The Fantasticks
in 1960 and perhaps went further professionally than any other
Boys
cast member. Leonard Frey reminisced, “It was such a beautiful moment … Ken singing ‘Soon It’s Gonna Rain’ in
The Fantasticks
. He was
so
much younger then. The stage life can really age and harden you. Me, I was always sort of enveloped in humor, but Ken had leading man potential.” In the play and film of
The Boys in the Band
, Nelson had the role closest to being the lead—as Michael, the party host who’s a guilt-ridden, alcoholic Catholic.

A talented singer-actor, Nelson had taken over from Anthony Newley in
Stop the World—I Want to Get Off
(1961). “It feels like I’ve done it all, flops, hits, misses, everything in between,” he looked back in British
Photoplay
. “Maybe I should have worked my way west.… In movies, they remember you.” Nelson’s biggest disappointment and final Broadway effort was the much-heralded musical of the popular ’50s film
The Teahouse of the August Moon
, retitled
Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen
(1970). He starred as the Okinawan Sakini, enacted on screen by Marlon Brando. Disgusted by the sixteen-performance run of the show, which closed in January 1971, Nelson moved to London where he felt theater was taken more seriously and he wouldn’t be typed as Michael nor associated with a big money-losing musical. In the West End he appeared in a revival of
Show Boat
.

Post-
Boys
, he tried to steer clear of gay roles. When a twenty-five-year-anniversary restaging of
The Boys in the Band
was done as a benefit to fight AIDS, Kenneth Nelson was one of two surviving cast members who said thanks but no thanks—the other, of course, being Cliff Gorman. The participants were Laurence Luckinbill (Hank), Peter White (Alan), and Reuben Greene (Bernard).

“Kenneth did have his career hurt by being so prominent in
The Boys in the Band
,” stated Combs. “To be honest, though, if Michael hadn’t been the biggest role, I’m not sure Ken would have taken it. Among us all, he thought he was the star.
The Fantasticks
, et cetera. He had star attitude.” After
Boys
Nelson endured small and shrinking roles on television, as in
Reilly, Ace of Spies, The Trials of Lee Harvey Oswald
, and
Lace II
. He eventually landed the smallest of bit parts in a Pia Zadora vehicle,
The Lonely Lady
, as a fey beautician—a fleeting gay stereotype. His final assignment was in
Tales from the Crypt
. He died in London of AIDS in 1993 at sixty-three.

“I
REMEMBER HOW SURPRISED
I
WAS
when I saw [the 1969 movie]
The Magic Christian
,” said Frederick Combs, “with Leonard Frey in what amounted to a cameo as a gay vampire. I stayed to read the credits, and for Lenny’s character it said ‘Laurence Faggot,’ right above Laurence Harvey [who played Hamlet], a very unpopular actor according to anything I’ve heard. At first I
thought, ‘What a nothing, demeaning role.’ And that word, the f-word, it was almost like a slap in the face—to us all—when I read it.”

By inclination and via stereotyping, Frey chose a thankless post-
Boys
(the play) gay role. He was likely tempted by
The Magic Christian’s
big names (Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr) and big budget. “When you’ve been part of an ensemble cast and your background’s the real work and humility of the theatre,” clarified Combs, “you tend to jump at the chance to be in a film. Any film. A little role? Just think of it as ‘ensemble’ acting. Think how much money you’ll get for so little work. You won’t know till the thing’s released how much or nearly all of you they’ve left on the cutting room floor.”

Leonard Frey did work almost continuously after
Boys
until his death. He’d been on Broadway in
Knock, Knock, The Royal Family
, and earned a Tony nomination for
The National Health
. After, he joined the all-star cast of Ellis Rabb’s production of
The Man Who Came to Dinner
(the crypto-gay title role has been essayed by myriad gay actors, from Alec Woollcott and Monty Woolley to Clifton Webb and Nathan Lane).

“Like most actors, Lenny yearned for movie fame, and his Oscar [nomination] only whetted his appetite,” said Combs. “Eventually Hollywood must have figured out—I mean, at least three gay roles—that he wasn’t straight, and they dropped him, even for secondary roles.” Frey had a recurring part in the TV series
Best of the West
and guested on shows like
Murder, She Wrote
. “When he came to England to do
Magic Christian
, which I cowrote,” explained Graham Chapman, “he was aloof. Whether he knew or guessed my sexuality, I can’t say. But he became even less friendly as time went by.” Chapman wouldn’t confirm whether he was behind the f-word labeling of Frey’s bit role or whether it was aimed at the unpopular and closeted Laurence Harvey. The only deceased member of Monty Python (from cancer), Chapman cowrote and costarred in several films, most notably
The Life of Brian
.

“Lenny could be chilly if he didn’t know you,” said Combs. “He was shy at first. After the
Fiddler
[nomination], he got very cautious. For a long time he had high hopes, and the grapevine said he wouldn’t talk about
The Boys in the Band
or anything gay related.” Frey died in New York City of AIDS in 1988 at forty-nine.

“Not many outsiders know that Lenny based his Harold persona on our producer Richard Barr,” revealed Combs. Barr, an actor turned prominent stage producer (
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sweeney Todd
), had been mentored by Orson Welles and was an apprentice member of the fabled Mercury Theatre. In
Citizen Kane
, it was Barr’s character who asked, “Rosebud? What’s Rosebud?” Barr died of AIDS in 1989 at age seventy-one.

The youngest cast member of
Boys
to die was Robert La Tourneaux, “Cowboy,” the requisite beefcake and “birthday present” for Harold (Leonard
Frey). The movie’s initial print ad featured a headshot of Harold in sunglasses, cigarette dangling from his mouth, with the caption “Today is Harold’s birthday.” To the right, a headshot of La Tourneaux, with a sexy smile and tousled hair, and a kerchief round his neck. That caption read “This is his present.” Most American newspapers banned the ad. Had he been heterosexual, or pretended, La Tourneaux, with his Travolta-ish looks and not-too-bright-yet-likeable manner, might have hit it big on the screen.

He’d made his Broadway bow in
Ilya Darling
, the 1967 musical of the hit film
Never On Sunday
. After
The Boys in the Band
he got only one more movie role. “Yeah,
Boys
was a kiss of death for me,” he acknowledged. “I went from that to a token part on stage” as Serving Man in director Ellis Rabb’s
The Merchant of Venice
. William Como, editor of the crypto-gay New York entertainment magazine
After Dark
,” said, “Bobby did an interview for us. Much too frank.

“He named some of his lovers, including Calvin Culver (who starred in an X-rated flick titled
The Boys in the Sand
) and a married bisexual actor who’d been on stage and later got a supporting Academy Award and [was] featured in the never fully explained death at sea of a female movie star with whose bisexual husband he was allegedly having an affair—though of course the media deliberately switched genders and hinted at an affair between the actress and the actor who wasn’t her actor husband.

“But we did include Bobby [in the magazine] in ’73,” added Como. “We felt he was up and coming.” However, after signing to costar in Tennessee Williams’s
Vieux Carré
, La Tourneaux was fired before the play opened. In 1978 he was quoted in
Quentin Crisp’s Book of Quotations
: “Charles Laughton played every kind of part but never a homosexual. People knew he was gay, but his public image [which included a wife] never betrayed his private reality. So he was safe. I wasn’t safe.”

Eventually the still hunky “Cowboy” did nude photospreads and appeared in the altogether at the Ramrod, a Manhattan male-strip theater. He contracted AIDS and made the tabloids when his landlord tried to evict him for allowing his caregiver to live with him. La Tourneaux sued and won the case, but died soon after, at forty-four in 1986.