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) (90 page)

When Christopher Isherwood heard the story about Gore and the future president, he said, “I believe it. If Truman Capote had told me, I would have questioned it. But Gore was not a liar. I’ve cruised with him. He’s a ‘put your hand down there and grab the cock’ type. Of course, that aggressive approach works better in Rome than it does in New York or Hollywood. Cock grabbing is how he made his intentions known.”

***

In the mid 1950s, along with Howard Austen, Gore enjoyed life at the Château Marmont, an upscale hotel which was at the time one the best cruising grounds in Greater Los Angeles. His friend, Paul Newman, had turned him onto the place.

“In those days, Paul had the best of both worlds,” Gore said. “He had a wife
[Jackie Witte]
stashed away somewhere, although I don’t know if he still slept with her. He had Joanne Woodward in Hollywood, and he had, on occasion, Grace Kelly in one of the bungalows. What a life we had back in the good old days. Of course, the bisexuals were the lucky ones. Not being gender specific in their preferences, they doubled their chances of getting laid.”

After a day of writing, Gore liked to hang out by the hotel pool, especially on weekends. Gore knew that the bisexual director, Nicholas Ray, occupied one of the bungalows, but he hadn’t met him yet. He’d been greatly amused by Ray’s campy Western,
Johnny Guitar
(1954), starring Joan Crawford battling Mercedes McCambridge. “Two dykes shooting it out,” Gore told Austen.

One sunny Sunday afternoon, Gore came over and introduced himself to Ray, who had been described as a “silver-haired, chain-smoking
auteur
cursed with a romantic nature and a taste for vice.”

Within thirty minutes, Ray and Gore got into an argument, Gore maintaining that the scriptwriter was more vital to a film than its director. Ray said, “If it’s all in the script, why make the film?”

Despite their argument (or perhaps because of it), Ray invited Gore to a party he was hosting that night in his bungalow. He told Gore that he was putting together a film called
Rebel Without a Cause
. Released in 1955, it would star James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo.

“I’ve seen Dean before,” Gore said, “at the Actors Studio in New York. He’s always sucking up to Tennessee Williams, hoping he’ll write another great part, the equal of…you know, Brando’s part, the character of Stanley Kowalski in
A Streetcar Named Desire.”

In his yet-to-be-written memoir,
Palimpsest
, Gore gave a very limited overview of what happened at Ray’s party that spring of 1955. “There were several bungalows around the pool,” he wrote. “Nick Ray lived in one, preparing
Rebel Without a Cause
, and rather openly having an affair with the adolescent Sal Mineo, while the sallow Jimmy Dean sulked in and out, unrecognizable behind thick glasses that distorted myopic eyes.”

Gore had gone to the party without Austen, who had wanted “to check out a wild new place” that had recently opened in West Hollywood. Gore later admitted that he had been tempted to put the make on Dean, only because he knew he’d been pumping it to Tennessee. But when Ray introduced him to Dean, Gore found him arrogant and insulting. “What a prick he was,” Gore later said. “We hated each other on sight.”

When Gore later chatted privately with Ray, the director told him that at first, he’d been reluctant to cast Mineo as Plato in
Rebel
because he felt he had no chemistry with Dean.

“Jimmy and Sal set out to prove me wrong,” Ray confided. “Both of them came to my bungalow and stripped down and let me watch them make mad love to each other. They were explosive together. After that, I cast Mineo in the role which I had considered giving to this other young actor, Dennis Hopper. Later, I gave Dennis a smaller role in
Rebel.”

Over their fourth drink, Ray and Gore discovered that they had something in common: Both were devotees of “boy ass.”

“Since you and Dean didn’t hit it off, you’ll have to go for Sal, and I’ll introduce you to Dennis. He’s available, but only if you’re important enough in the industry. Right now, you’ll have to wait your chance.”

“Dennis is entertaining his so-called sponsor, Vincent Price,” Ray said, indicating an older and a younger man deeply involved in a private dialogue. “They’re over in the corner. Take a look.”

“Vince was obviously smitten,” Gore later said. “When I talked to Price, he told me he was teaching young Dennis about art.”

“And other things,” Gore had snapped.

“Don’t be a jealous bitch,” Price said to Gore before walking away in a huff.

When Gore was alone with Mineo, he asked him out for dinner. “At first, Sal didn’t seem too interested, until I told him I was Paul Newman’s best friend. I also informed him that I was a script writer at MGM, and that I was working on a film script that had a juicy part for which he’d be ideal. Then our date was on.”

The following night, because he wanted to be alone with Mineo, Gore asked Austen to disappear for the evening as a means of allowing him to pursue his private agenda, which in this case, involved Mineo. He’d heard some interesting recent gossip about the young Bronx-born actor.

“Ray told me that Sal was madly in love with Dean, and he was going to depict that love on the screen,” Gore said. “As director, he planned to include a scene where Dean and Sal would kiss passionately on film.”

[
Ray carried through on his vision. During the filming, he shot a scene of Dean as Jim and Mineo as Plato sharing a prolonged and very deep kiss. The two actors got carried away and Ray had to yell “CUT! CUT! CUT!”

The head office heard rumors of this kiss and immediately shot off a memo to Ray: “It is, of course, vital that there be no inference of a questionable or homosexual relationship between Plato and Jim.”

Ray later told Gore, “I had to kill the kiss scene, saving the clip for some future restorer to insert into an unexpurgated version of
Rebel Without a Cause.
But I fucked the studio and got away with something, at least. I retained a scene of Sal with those adorable brown eyes of his gazing up with love at Jimmy. At least the gay guys in the audience will get it.”]

Then Ray filled Gore in on some additional background about Mineo, claiming he’d been broken in while still a kid on Broadway. “When they starred together in
The King and I
on Broadway in 1951, Yul Brynner fucked him almost every night before they went onstage.”

“My God,” Gore said. “Mineo must have been only twelve or thirteen years old. Aren’t there laws in New York against child molestation?”

The dinner and the sex between Gore and Mineo apparently got rave reviews. Both of them, the actor and the writer, claimed to be bisexual, “Everyone’s supposed to be bi,” Mineo told Gore. “What’s wrong with being bi?”

“Kid, you’re preaching to the choir.”

Gore later told Austen and others, “Sal has an uncut cock that expands to nine inches. Before that, I used to make the pronouncement that a man with nine inches is impossible to find. But as the years went by, I encountered many of those nine inch cocks, even a twelve inch cock. If you find one of those, get married right away.”

***

Gore was only beginning his sexual conquests around the hotel pool. More young actors were to come, so to speak.

Two weeks after Nicholas Ray’s party, he placed an urgent call to Gore in his hotel room at the Château Marmont. “I’ve got a conflict in my schedule, too much of a good thing,” he told Gore. “You’ve got to help me. I’d made a date with Dennis Hopper tonight. But at the last minute, Natalie Wood called, and she’s free after all. I’d invited her before I called Dennis, and she’d said she was busy, but her plans fell through. I’d rather fuck Natalie than Dennis, but I can’t reach Dennis on the phone.”

“Where do I come in?” Gore asked. “My advice is to have a three-way.”

“Natalie’s too young for that,” Ray said. “Please do me a favor. I’ll make it up to you. The next hot actor who shows up on my casting couch, I’ll toss to you. I’ve agreed to meet Dennis in the bar. I want you to stand in for me and invite him to dinner. I’ll leave fifty dollars for you in an envelope at the front desk. If you guys hit it off tonight, so much the better.”

“I find Dennis more appealing than your buddy, Dean,” Gore said.

“Since you’re an ass man, it’ll work out just fine, since you told me you don’t like to suck dick all that much. Dennis doesn’t have much up front.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Gore said. “I think the kid is good looking. Vincent Price sure thinks so.”

“He’s free of Vince tonight,” Ray said. “Dennis is all yours.”

Gore later told his long-time friend, Stanley Mills Haggart, “Dennis looks like a clean cut kid, which, as you know, I prefer. He’s the type of guy voted Student Council President.” Of course, Gore made that appraisal long before Dennis entered his drugged-out weirdo phase.

Over dinner that night, Hopper seemed more interested in talking about his burgeoning film career than in Gore’s script writing. Ray had cast him as a gang member named “Goon” in
Rebel Without a Cause
.