The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (13 page)

I also inherited her narcissism, casting every man in my path as someone to indulge me, take care of me and have sex with me. By constantly acting out with men, I was deliberately reminding Thom that he would never be enough.

Mommy visited at Easter, receiving lavish attention from the show’s staff and cast members. How did she respond to her son appearing naked onstage, simulating sex acts? It was fine with her as long as my exploits fed her neediness. And as long as the liquor was being poured in her direction.

This was hardly a healthy mother-son teaming, but it looked like a blast to the casual observer. The underlying complexities, intensified by our shared alcoholism, fueled a relationship that was destined to end unhappily. But during my celebrity phase, it worked. Imagine having an accepting mother and being in a show where being gay seemed to be an asset rather than a liability. Feeling secure about being gay, I was jolted when I learned that there were varying shades of gay in Hollywood.

Merv Griffin attended one of the
Dirtiest Show
performances with beard Eva Gabor on his arm and decided to make television history by having two actors appear nude on his afternoon talk show. In reality, the actors would be nude in front of the live studio audience but photographed from the neck up for the television viewers at home.

According to a front-page article in
Daily Variety
, the two actors who would appear on the popular Griffin Show were Ondine Vaughn and Michael Kearns. During an initial interview with Griffin’s producer in preparation for the taping, the talk show host made a brief appearance to say hello and shake hands. Griffin maintained that showbiz grin even though he appeared a bit rattled as he half-heartedly took my hand. Within hours of that meeting and less than twenty-four hours before the scheduled taping, I received word that there had been a mistake. Griffin wanted Michael Taylor, not Michael Kearns.

Although the devastatingly handsome Taylor, one of the world’s top male models, had a relatively small role in the show, he had something I didn’t have. With his short hair and subdued personality, Taylor’s “straightness” would in no way jeopardize the closeted sexual reality of the talk show host. Although no one said it out loud, I was “too gay.”

I have steadfastly avoided outing someone unless I’m certain they are gay. Griffin’s sexual exploits were known to me since we shared the same boyfriend (although I got him for free)—the “Everybody Needs Milk” poster stud whose farm-boy image, clad in overalls, hovered over the Sunset Strip on a billboard.

The Dirtiest Show in Town
experience proved to get me laid more than it got me hired to do a follow-up acting job. I did get an agent who engineered a second round with Ms. James at Universal, who had not ruled me out. At that audition, I was acting with an overlay of trying to appear straight. Imagine the level of discomfort that resulted from attempting such an emotionally debilitating task.

After the second try to win her over, James requested something “stronger,” continuing to speak in Hollywoodese. While it was clear she had faith in my acting ability, it was equally clear that she questioned my ability to pull off a leading-man role.

The final verdict was intended to comfort, I suppose, but was not entirely believable. “He’s too similar to several of the other actors under contract,” she concluded.

I continued to party hard, have daily sex and occasionally go on an audition. Like every other actor in town, I did odd jobs to make a living. I worked in a chichi Beverly Hills boutique named after Tennessee Williams’ play
The Glass Menagerie
. I sold luxurious glass items, including delicate animals, to snotty queens, rich housewives and bored movie stars.

When Thom asked me if I’d sell a photo of myself to his publisher for some soft-core porn book he was writing, I agreed. It was a quick $250. “It’s what they pay models for book covers,” he said.

Nearly two years elapsed before I got my Big Break, playing John-Boy’s “big brother” on
The Waltons
, television’s most wholesome series, before or since. Our relationship was based on the adversarial relationship between the Warren Beatty and Dwayne Hickman characters in
The Secret Lives of Dobie Gillis
. I was cast as the suave upperclassman who was a pro at attracting the girls: the perfect foil to Richard Thomas’s bumpkin.

Contrary to what I’d begun to believe, I proved that I could act the role of a hetero on network television. The juicy part promised to recur even though I, along with the other actors who played college students, was signed for one episode.

From receiving the script, delivered by the studio on my doorstep, to costume fittings at Warner’s, this was the Hollywood life I had pictured.

Aware it was my first time, Richard “John-Boy” Thomas could not have been more generous, making sure my close-ups were just right and constantly reassuring me.

In our scene, Thomas attempts to get my attention, while I ignore him, intent upon impressing a young lady with my many charms. It’s the perfect setup for a conflicted yet humorous relationship.

After the day’s shooting, Thom and I celebrated my mainstream success at our Silver Lake apartment. I remember getting very, very drunk. After Thom went to bed, I sat on the outdoor balcony and continued to drink, switching from white wine to vodka. I would count and recount a chorus line of palm trees swaying on the horizon. Twenty-six. No, twenty-
seven
. Twenty-five?

I eventually passed out, waking up, disoriented, to the glare of the rude morning sun.

Shortly after taping
The Waltons
, I was offered a role in
Tubstrip
, a gay sex romp that was headed to Broadway. The schizophrenic nature of my career was clearly in motion. Would I be able to juggle a mainstream television career with an unconventional theater career? Almost everyone I knew strongly advised that I not do
Tubstrip
, in order to protect an uncertain TV career.

“You can’t keep doing those gay plays,” a gay actor friend insisted. “You’ll never be taken seriously in Hollywood.”

The real issue, of course, was my degree of openness. If I chose the world of
The Waltons
, I would be forced to distort myself; if I chose the world of the theater, I would be allowed to embrace myself.

CHAPTER 24
               

I chose to do the play, hungry to experience the freedom I’d felt in
Dirtiest Show
, onstage in front of a live audience.
Tubstrip
, written and directed by Jerry Douglas, would provide that luxury. It was a classic farce, set in a New York gay bathhouse patterned after the legendary Continental Baths, and I would play a narcissistic actor/model involved in a tempestuous sadomasochistic relationship.

Cal Culver (also known as Casey Donovan, the preeminent porn star of his day) led the cast that I joined as a replacement in San Francisco.

In an almost surreal foreshadowing of how my career would unfold,
The Waltons
episode aired during the first week of the San Francisco engagement. While households all over America sat at their television sets, watching me flirt with a beautiful girl, a couple of hundred gay men sat in a small theater off Geary Street and watched me, stark naked, shackled to a pool table with a plastic flower stuck up my ass. This wasn’t your ordinary career.

The actors who weren’t emoting with me onstage set up a tiny television set in the dressing room so they could watch (if not hear, since the sound had to be virtually mute) my big scene.

Among those in the theater audience that night (and almost every night) was Tom Tryon, the erstwhile movie star (
The Cardinal
) turned writer (
The Other
), who was having a titillating affair with Cal.

In addition to his established porn career and his nascent career on the boards, Culver also had a career in the beds of those who could afford his unscripted talents. He was one of Manhattan’s highest paid call boys and the initial Tryon tryst was a financial arrangement that evolved into a romantic one.

They were a striking couple: the youthful blond beach boy and the mature, swarthy man whose movie star looks remained intact as he approached fifty. Every night, Tryon would watch the onstage carryings on from the same seat in the last row of the little theater, taking notes on the golden boy’s uneven but charming performances.

Before committing to the New York run on Broadway, I returned to L.A. in hopes of capitalizing on
The Waltons
appearance. Not only were there no immediate offers; the network decided to nix any future college scenes based on a carefully studied audience response that indicated that America wanted to see John-Boy at home on Walton’s Mountain, not venturing into the collegiate world of Boatwright University.

Thanks to the sloppy journalism of
TV Guide
, which was picked up by dozens (if not hundreds) of press outlets, an urban legend emerged: I was “fired” from
The Waltons
because I was gay. Ironic, huh? The truth, which I’ve repeatedly stated, was based solely on the audience’s reaction; they preferred John-Boy at home with the family, not away at college.

Screw Hollywood, I was ready to take on New York.

What happened next will undoubtedly read like a treatment for a
Twilight Zone
episode. Warner Books anticipated that Thom’s fictitious book,
The Happy Hustler
, written by “Grant Tracy Saxon,” would be a big money maker but was hampered by one detail. Unlike Xaviera Hollander’s
Hooker
bestseller,
Hustler
was a work of fiction and there was no one to promote it.

“What if,” some savvy Warner exec said to Thom, “you get Michael to pose as Grant Tracy Saxon? He’s an actor, isn’t he? And isn’t that his picture we’re using on the cover?”

That’s right, the $250 “modeling fee” I received turned out to be for the initial image of
The Happy Hustler
.

“You mean I’d play Grant Tracy Saxon like a character?” I asked Thom.

“Yes, and you’ll be in magazine layouts and on talk shows,” he said, knowing my unquenchable quest for celebrity. “You’ll be famous.” Then the magic words: “There will probably be a movie. You’ll be a star.”

We clung to each other in order to fulfill our narcissistic needs.

With no star making prospects in sight, even after my triumphant television debut as a hetero, it didn’t take much to convince me. And I believed Thom’s promise of stardom.

Pulling off a hoax of this magnitude required careful planning, beginning with creating a believable yarn that would merge Kearns with Saxon.

The backstory we created went something like this: Actor Michael Kearns lived a double life as a bisexual call boy and chronicled his heretofore secret adventures in a quasi-autobiographical book. This would allow the publicity sharks to cash in on my squeaky-clean
Waltons
gig and my less-than-squeaky-clean
Tubstrip
appearance. We would reconcile the discrepancies that existed between the truth of my life and the fiction of the book by saying “there are distortions and composites in order to avoid lawsuits and hurt feelings.”

The Advocate
broke the story in a cover piece to coincide with the New York run of
Tubstrip
, featuring me shirtless, wearing an unbuttoned Levi’s jacket and pants, also unbuttoned.
Publishers Weekly
ran a piece that created a buzz within the book world, announcing that the paperback would include an autographed foldout nude centerfold of the author—a publishing coup.

Four months before the scheduled publication date,
The Happy Hustler
had received enough pre-publicity to warrant an initial printing of 250,000. Since I hadn’t even opened my mouth as Grant Tracy Saxon, the entire charade, including an unprecedented press run for a book of this genre, was built on some photos of me and a couple of credits as an actor. While the book’s commercial title and sexy content would sell copies, everyone knew that my ability to “become” Grant Tracy Saxon, like an actor “becomes” Hamlet, would ultimately determine the book’s success or failure.

So while I played one role nightly on Broadway, I was preparing for my upcoming part, reading and re-reading the book, identifying the right costumes and finding Saxon’s physical and vocal energy.

Capturing the character’s bisexuality was never really an issue for me. I had dabbled in enough hanky-panky with the opposite sex to be believably bi. It was distinctly different from attempting to deliver the black-and-white version of heterosexuality that Hollywood required, especially for actors appearing on television.

After the New York run of
Tubstrip
, we moved the show to DC, where my renegotiated contract stipulated special billing, a blow-up of the book cover to be prominently displayed in the lobby and other perks.

My visibility began to overshadow the other cast members in
Tubstrip
. Some were resentful; others were supportive. Cal remained neutral.

In the midst of the run, I was flown from DC to New York to appear on the
Pat Collins Show
, a popular midday talk show with predominately women in the live audience who got to ask Grant Tracy Saxon questions.

“Do you feel like a sex object?” one of them asked.

“Sure,” I said, spreading my long legs and grinning. “Don’t you?”

The audience howled.

“How do you charge?”

“By the inch,” I teased. More laughter. “Or do you mean, do I take Visa?”

Another woman asked, “Did the producers of
The Waltons
know you were a call boy?”

“You’ll have to ask John-Boy about that,” I shot back.

Howls.

The Happy Hustler was born.

What I didn’t realize was that becoming someone else at that level would involve nearly killing myself.

CHAPTER 25
               

The book’s release, in April of 1975, coincided with
The Waltons
rerun.
People
magazine wrote: “Nothing is sacred on TV these days, not even
The Waltons
. In a 1974–75 episode CBS ran and, with some trepidation, just reran, John-Boy left home for college and had trouble adjusting until befriended by a campus ‘big brother,’ played by Michael Kearns. Seems that the network just discovered—and hoped that its nationwide audience still hasn’t—that Kearns recently published an autobiographical book of his bisexual escapades titled
The Happy Hustler
. To be sure, Michael had used his street name, Grant Tracy Saxon, as the
nom de plume
, but the eight-page nude foldout in the Warner paperback edition was unmistakably Kearns.”