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) (92 page)

At the Mengers household, Isherwood and Bachardy approached Tony. “He suddenly looked panic-stricken,” Bachardy said. “He looked around for his wife and children, and kind of bid them to him before he would even say a word to us. ‘My life is different,’ he whispered to us. He was treating us like we were the Popes of Queerdom, and seemed to fear we’d talk some sort of dirty fag talk to him. Did he honestly think that his marriage could make him straight?”

[Perkins died on September 12, 1992, at his home in the Hollywood Hills, suffering from AIDS-related pneumonia
.

Nine years after that tragic day, on September 11, 2001, in Boston, Berenson boarded the doomed American Airlines Flight 11, presumably heading for Los Angeles. Seized by terrorists in midair, it crashed into the North Tower of Manhattan’s World Trade Center, killing 87 passengers and crew members, five terrorists, and approximately 1,600 other people within or near the building itself.]

***

Late the following afternoon, Gore showed up at Stanley Haggart’s party with Robert Francis. Ominously, Haggart whispered to Gore, “Aren’t you afraid of getting wiped out by Hughes? I was told that Robert is his boy.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Gore said.

“In attendance at Haggart’s party was Gore’s former friend, Anaïs Nin. It was obvious, as Haggart watched, that the relationship between the two had dimmed, but at least they were still on speaking terms.

Haggart always had Golden Age stars at his parties. At this one, one of the guests was the petite redhead, Nancy Carroll, one of moviedom’s leading ladies from the dawn of the Talkies, and a former mistress of Joseph P. Kennedy. Joan Blondell was another guest, as was Alexis Smith.

Gore was stunned when Haggart introduced him to the novelist Ayn Rand, with whom Gore later got into a political argument. After she left the party that night, Haggart told Gore, “I used to live near Ayn. One night, when I invited her to dinner, she brought this huge manuscript called
The Fountainhead
. I managed to read only eighteen pages of it.”

“The bitch is a crypto-Nazi,” Gore responded.

[It was the use of that term that in 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, would involve Gore in a multi-million-dollar libel suit with right-wing commentator, William F. Buckley, Jr
.

Buckley had shot back, “Now listen, you queer! Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”]

Both Gore and Robert were delighted to meet Haggart’s long-time friend “from the old days,” Jon Hall. Side by side with Dorothy Lamour, who wore a sarong, he had once thrilled movie-goers in pulpy, tropical sagas that included
The Hurricane
(1937) and
Aloma of the South Seas
(1941). The virile star photographed so well in Technicolor with Maria Montez, that no one seemed to notice that he couldn’t act. “All I had to do was wear as little clothing as possible,” he told Gore.

“And that’s why we salivated so over you,” Gore told him.

“Any time they needed a swashbuckler, a stud in a fairy tale, and a seminude South Sea adventurer, I got a call,” Hall said. “But the phone hasn’t been ringing too much these days.”

“I think you still look great,” Robert said.

[Haggart was one of the last friends to see Hall. Suffering from cancer, he fatally shot himself on December 13, 1979.]

The guests departed at seven. Haggart asked Robert and Gore to stay for a supper he’d cooked himself. Later that night, all three men took off their clothing and went for a nude swim in his pool.

Since it was getting late, Haggart invited Robert and Gore to spend the night in his guest cottage. Both of them accepted.

They were stunned by the décor. An interior designer, Haggart had introduced the then-shocking colors of chartreuse and royal purple to the American consumer through layouts in magazines which had included
Family Circle
.

Gore said, “I’ve never slept on chartreuse sheets before. At Nina’s house, only starched white was used.”

Robert smiled at him and said, “You won’t get all that much sleep tonight.”

The next day, before Robert had risen for breakfast, Gore joined Haggart and Jon Hall on the terrace. The fading movie idol had spent the night with Haggart in the main house.

When Gore realized that he was in safe company, he said, “Robert Francis is a gift from the Gods. We had a wonderful night together.”

Gore seemed to fall in love with Haggart’s guest cottage and used it not only during his stay at the Château Marmont, but when he and Austen moved into their Malibu residence with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.”

“Using the cottage, with its private entrance, gave him the privacy he craved. “I don’t want to be seen hauling my tricks through the living room.” Gore said.

After Gore was installed in the cottage. Robert became a frequent visitor. Tragically, the stardom predicted for Robert Francis never happened. On July 31, 1955, Robert and his co-pilot died when their small, one-engine plane crashed after take-off from Los Angeles.

Tony Perkins finally accepted an invitation and showed up on several nights to come, as did Sal Mineo.

As long as he stayed in Hollywood, Gore continued with his movie star seductions. The biggest star of all lay in his immediate future.

***

When Jackie told her husband, Senator John F. Kennedy, that Gore was working for MGM as a scriptwriter in Hollywood, he called his brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, who had married Kennedy’s sister, Patricia. “Peter, invite Gore to go out with you. Let him attend your parties in Santa Monica. Make him feel welcome, the way you do with me. Except if you fix him up, make sure it’s a boy, not one of those glory holes you hook me up with.”

Lawford promised that he would. Consequently, he called Gore at MGM and invited him to visit Patricia and him at a Saturday night party at their home in Santa Monica, a beach-fronting house that had once been owned by Louis B. Mayer.

At the party, Gore was introduced to Patricia Kennedy Lawford, who told him, “Gore Vidal, you’re practically a member of our family…or something like that.”

Both of them shared memories of Jackie, Gore telling of when they had the same stepfather—a reference to Hugh Auchincloss.

As an avid movie-goer, Gore had long been fascinated by the screen charm of Peter Lawford. He found the British-born actor very good looking and sexually appealing.

He’d heard that his mother, Lady May Lawford, was privately known as “Mother Bitch.”

[Six months into her pregnancy, after informing her devoted husband that he was not the father, he had committed suicide in front of her. Peter was born three months later.]

Most of what Gore had learned about Lawford came from reading the Hollywood gossip columns. He had seduced some of the most widely publicized movie goddesses of the 1940s, including Ava Gardner, June Allyson, Lucille Ball, Rita Hayworth, and, in a much publicized mini-drama, Lana Turner. As a bisexual, he’d once enjoyed the sexual favors of a married couple, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, but on separate occasions. Ironically, he had affairs with both of Ronald Reagan’s wives, Jane Wyman (after her divorce from Reagan) and Nancy Davis (before her marriage to him).

Director George Cukor had told Gore of Lawford’s homosexual life, having seduced the young actor himself. Cukor revealed details about Lawford’s long affair with Robert Walker, who had had an extended affair with Nancy Davis himself.

Lawford also had a years-long affair with Van Johnson, and sexual dalliances with men as diverse as Clifton Webb and Noël Coward too.

As a sexual athlete, Lawford had pursued beach bunnies while surfing, as well as prostitutes of both genders. At MGM, he’d specialized in young male extras and studio messengers.

When Gore was introduced to the formidable Lady May, she immediately launched into an attack on the Kennedy family, knowing that Gore knew both Jackie and JFK. She called them “a bunch of barefoot Irish peasants. By marrying my son Peter, that Patricia bitch hopes to link herself with British aristocracy. My God, the next thing I hear, old Joe Kennedy will be buying a title for her. There have been a lot of those for sale since the war ended.”

“I told Peter he should have married Elizabeth Taylor,” she continued. “She’s always been in love with him. Besides, Elizabeth is going to make a lot of money one day, and then Peter could support me in the style to which I am accustomed.”

At that point, Lady May asked Gore to bring her another gin and tonic. “The Queen Mother and I share the same taste in drink.”

Gore and Lawford had met at the height of their sexual allure, and each ofthem seemed attracted to the other. Away from the other guests, out on Lawford’s terrace overlooking the Pacific, they agreed to slip away on a date that coming Wednesday night. To maintain privacy, Gore suggested they use the guest house of Stanley Haggart, because Gore had access to it, and because it had a private entrance.

Lawford warned him, “As a member of the Kennedy family, I have to be more discreet than I was in those good old days at MGM. Did you know that Jack wants to run for president, perhaps become vice president before that?”

“With Papa Joe’s money, he has a chance,” Gore said.

That Wednesday, Lawford did arrive at the secluded guest cottage. But as Gore told Haggart the next day, “Peter and I will be friends in the future, but not lovers.” He admitted, “We’re not sexually compatible. He’s a great cocksucker—in fact, oral sex is his thing with both men and women. But he wouldn’t let me fuck him, which is what I wanted to do, and I’ve never been good at giving blow jobs, which is what he wanted.”