Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (21 page)

The actor was aware that he had become the front runner to play Rhett Butler in
Gone With the Wind
. “Six million eyes would be trained on me, and most of them will want me to fail.”

He explained to them that almost every member of the American public had already decided that he was the actor to play Rhett on the screen. “Thousands of fans want me. Others want Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman, Basil Rathbone, Warner Baxter, and, would you believe, a moronic choice of Humphrey Bogart.” Gable went on to tell Nina and her son that he’d learned that Selznick had gone to John Gilbert’s widow and had told her, “We have buried the actor who should have been Rhett Butler.’”

On the set, Gore was mesmerized at what went on behind the scenes during the making of a movie. In the future, he would spend much of his life on movie sets, battling actors over lines in their scripts.

On the set of
Test Pilot
, Gore witnessed his first actor/writer fight, hearing Gable in a bitter argument with Waldemar Young, who was one of four writers working on the screenplay.
[Much of the script had been written by director Howard Hawks, who was assisted by Vincent Lawrence and John Lee Mahin.]

Gable accused Young of writing “fag dialogue between Spence and myself. What red-blooded pilot recites poetry and quotes from the classics? And that death scene when I’m supposed to hold Spence in my arms and say, ‘I love you, Gunner?’ Why don’t you have us end up doing a sixty-nine on the screen? You might as well. We’re obviously playing fuck buddies.
[Gable had been cast as Jim Lane, the reckless test pilot, and Tracy was playing Gunner Morris, the grease monkey “who constantly fusses over him.”]

“You’ve also butched up Myrna,” Gable continued. “She knows more about baseball than I do. When I start to fall for Myrna, you have Tracy throwing a jealous fit. I’m going to Fleming, to tell him I won’t play some of these queer scenes.”

Even after it was rewritten, Gable hated playing the death scene where he holds a dying Tracy in his arms. He always jokingly referred to Tracy as “The Wisconsin Ham.” Deciding that Tracy was unnecessarily drawing out his death scene, Gable finally dropped Tracy’s head with a thud on the ground. “Die, goddamn it, Spencer. I wish to Christ you would.” Then he stormed off the set.

In Riverside, Gore was assigned a room of his own, as was Nina. But he soon learned that she was slipping into Gable’s bedroom late at night, leaving in the morning before breakfast.

“Nina and Clark found they had something more in common than sex,” Gore said. “Both of them were heavy drinkers, downing the booze during the golden hours of the day and at twilight and midnight.”

As her relationship with Gable deepened, Nina at one point asked Gable “if you can make a man out of my pansy son?”

That meant inviting Gore along for some of his macho activities, such as hunting and fishing, which Gable called “taking to the hills.”

Gable agreed to let Gore go with him. For the young boy, that meant rising at four o’clock in the morning and helping make breakfast “for a lot of smelly men. It also meant getting poison ivy and being chased by a black bear.”

Gable also gave Gore lessons in marksmanship, skeet shooting, and fly casting. Later, the movie star told Nina, “I don’t really think this boy is cut out to be an outdoorsman, but I’ll keep trying. I just hope he doesn’t grow up to be a fag like most of the guys in this town. I should know.”

For a brief time, Gore and Nina were invited to stay at Gable’s secret hide-away in North Hollywood. He’d rented a house which used to be owned by the famous silent screen star, Alice Terry, and her director husband, Rex Ingram.

It was while staying at this house that Gore was invited to fly to Catalina with Gable aboard a B-17 flown by Paul Mantz. Tracy had turned down the invitation, telling Gable, “I’m on the wagon and all of you guys will get stinking drunk.”

Gable’s friend from MGM, “pretty boy” Robert Taylor, was invited to go along instead.

Taylor—who was married at the time to the bisexual actress, Barbara Stanwyck—often accompanied Gable on his hunting trips. George Cukor once commented on this arrangement. “Clark Gable was fucking Lana Turner; Robert Taylor was fucking Lana Turner; and Clark Gable was fucking Robert Taylor. Hollywood…don’t you love it?”

It was in a small motel on Catalina Island, through paper-thin walls, that Gore was introduced to Hollywood seductions. He and Mantz were assigned one bedroom, Taylor and Gable the other, with a shared bathroom between the two bedrooms. One night when Gore got up at around 2am to urinate, he heard noises coming from Gable’s room. The door to his bedroom had been left slightly ajar.

“I listened to the noises coming from inside,” Gore later told Mantz. “It was Gable’s voice I heard, so I assume it was Taylor doing the sucking. Taylor was sucking Clark’s dick.

“Get used to it, kid,” Mantz told him. “Don’t forget I run the Hollywood Express and could write a book about what goes on. You won’t believe some of the combinations of lovers I fly to secret hideaways. Remember one thing, kid. To become a
bona fide
member of the Hollywood community, you’ve got to be a pervert.”

“Well, I met Spencer Tracy last week,” Gore said. “He’s not a pervert, and he’s involved with Katharine Hepburn.”

“Let me tell you about those two: He’s a closeted homosexual—just ask his best friend, George Cukor—and she’s a lesbian. They love each other. In case you don’t know the expression yet, it’s called ‘a platonic relationship.’”

Later, when Gore told others what he’d heard that night in Gable’s room, he said “The only thing that pissed me off about Taylor and Gable getting it on is they didn’t invite me to join them. Those were two good-looking guys.”

***

Upon their return to Gable’s lodgings in North Hollywood, when Gore was lounging with Gable beside a pool, the young boy told him his secret dream. “I want to become a movie star.”

He even told Gable about the three young actors who were his greatest inspiration: “When I went to see Mickey Rooney appear as Puck in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(1935), he became my role model. I was just ten at the time, and Mickey could have been fourteen, although he looked nine. Seeing him cavort around on the screen, I just knew what I wanted to become.”

Years later, when describing this Hollywood role model to Tennessee Williams, the playwright said: “Mickey Rooney was the best actor in the history of movies. You sure aim high, Gore. What talent that little kid had. Amazing.”

Gable was somewhat surprised at Gore’s other role models: They included the identical twins, Bobby and Billy Mauch, as they appeared with Errol Flynn in
The Prince and the Pauper
(1937).

“The boys were four years older than me, and the two most beautiful boys I’d ever seen. They looked so much alike, even their own mother couldn’t tell which one was Billy and which one was Bobby.”

Later, he wrote that when he first saw Billy and Bobby on the screen, he didn’t want to be Puck or even Mickey Rooney any more. “I wanted to be myself.
Twice
. I think a palpable duplicate of oneself would be the ideal companion.”

Gore confessed one night to Tennessee on his porch in Key West that for years, he kept a studio still of Billy and Bobby. “I masturbated to it every night.”

“I thought Billy and Bobby Mauch were cute as a pair of bug’s ears, and I wished I were either one of them, if not two of
me.”

The Mauch twins never again managed to replicate their original success, although they did go on to star in three films based on the Penrod stories by Booth Tarkington. “Then they vanished, except in my psyche,” Gore wrote.

Actually, Billy continued to play minor roles in a number of films. Late in 1950, Gore met Billy for the first time, although he was disappointed that “he didn’t look as glorious as he did in
The Prince and the Pauper.”

“He told me that he was working in a film called
Bedtime for Bonzo
that starred Ronald Reagan and a chimpanzee.” Gore said. “Its female star, Diana Lynn, became my future girl friend.”

“Ronald Reagan?” asked Gore. “That has-been actor and FBI informant?”

The Nina/Gable affair continued on and off until the end of World War II, interrupted for long periods of time during his marriage to Lombard.

In 1944, near the end of his stint in the Army, Gore was granted a two-week leave. He journeyed to Hollywood to find Nina back again in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hugh D. Auchincloss, her former husband, was picking up the tab. His son, Tommy Auchincloss, was in residence as well,

Nina was invited to a Hollywood party, and she asked Gore to be her escort. As he remembered it, “I was the only man in uniform at the gathering. Frank Sinatra came up to me.”

“I’m getting a lot of bad publicity because I’m not in uniform,” Sinatra told him.

“It’s no damn fun, I can assure you,” Gore told him.

He later admitted, “I was shameless that night. I waited until Sinatra had to take a leak. The
voyeur
in me won out. I followed him to the toilet, wanting to see for myself if all those rumors were true. I think he sensed what I was up to. Instead of beating me up, he put on a show for me. The rumors were true.”

Nina and Gore also met Marlene Dietrich that night. The screen goddess seemed aware that Nina was having an affair with Gable. She was very dismissive of him. “Oh, he is just a gigolo, or was. When he got his start in Hollywood, he would go for anything with a hole and a promise of a couple of dollars.”

Two days later, Gable, also on leave from the Army, paid an afternoon visit to Nina at her bungalow on the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel. This time, instead of asking him to make a man out of Gore, she wanted him to teach Tommy Auchincloss how to swim in the hotel’s pool.

As Gore and Nina watched from
chaises longues
, Tommy and Gable were having a lot of fun. At one point, Tommy rode Gable’s back, with his legs wrapped around the actor’s neck. It was at this inappropriate moment that Tommy decided to take the leak of all leaks. When Gable felt the warm, golden stream cascading down his back, he tossed Tommy into what might have been his watery grave if Gore hadn’t jumped into the pool to rescue him.

Gable’s final words to Tommy were, “Sink or swim, pisser!”