GLAMOROUS MEN

While researching yesterday’s blog entry about Guy Madison, I found that there was as much or more to write about the fascinating real-life caricature who was Guy’s agent, Henry Willson.  Sure, I’d heard the agent’s name before, primarily in connection with his most famous client, Rock Hudson – that Henry Willson’s secretary was the bride chosen for Hudson during his brief marriage to counter the rampant gay rumors that were swirling about him in Hollywood as he grew into a star in the early 50s.  Still I had no idea what a powerhouse this man was as the cornerstone for the male actor “dreamboat” and “beefcake” manufacturing industry that Hollywood evolved into during the 1940s and 50s.  So I decided old Henry deserved a blog spot all his own today.

Henry Leroy Willson (1911 ~1978) – and yes, that’s “Willson” spelled with two l’s plus, appropriately enough, a “son” added on at the end – was an older gay man, what today we would call a notorious “chicken hawk” of an old queen, frequenting gentlemen’s night clubs along the Sunset Strip bar scene where he wooed younger men for both personal as well as professional reasons.

You see, Henry Willson also just so happened to be the head of talent at David O. Selznick’s newly formed Vanguard Pictures.  (Now how’s that for a pick-up line?)

His business card literally read: “If you’re interested in getting into the movies, I can help you.  Henry Willson, Agent.”  And he could help, too, in more ways than one.  Willson earned his sobriquet of “fairy godfather of Hollywood” through his single-minded focus on newly arrived young male hunks to the Sunset Strip, with whispered enticements like, “You could be a star…. You’re better looking than any movie actor here.”  Moving closer, to advance the intimacy, he would confide: “You are a star. Now it’s up to me to let Hollywood know.”  What red-blooded All-American college quarterback or baseball pitcher or basketball star or figure skater or sailor on leave could resist such a pitch?

Certainly none of the 1950s dreamboat beefcake movie star wannabes could resist, those young men who ended up with the tender attentions of Henry Willson as their agent, including his role in shaping gay or bisexual actors into ostensibly straight-arrow silver-screen idols.  Such young gay actors were no secret in the business, yet jealously and zealously kept under wraps from the audiences who bought tickets for the fantasy played out on movie screens and in fan magazines.  Willson provided the face of a cynical system, supported by an unseen infrastructure of fixers and studio connections who enabled and perpetuated the mythmaking process inside the red carpeted closet of Hollywood. 

Henry Willson made himself a key player in the Hollywood social and commercial stratosphere by implementing a unique business model as that of agent and career coach, investing thousands in living expenses, cosmetic makeovers, fashion guidance, and acting lessons for his hopeful wannabe starlet studs.

A look into the life of Hollywood mogul agent Henry Willson today gives us a unique insider glimpse at the dilemmas of his gay clients living a double life, straight leading man by day while conducting lively after-hours same-sex affairs and sexual liaison trysts under the very flashbulbs of the publicity machine which had created their iconic statures in the first place.

This retrospective examination shines a proverbial spotlight on the hidden sociocultural history of the American movie studio system through the late 1950s, which itself began to rupture in the 1960s with the sexual revolution as “outing” became a national passtime.  Even at that time, for a gay actor to come out of the closet was akin to committing career hara-kiri, not to mention that it was prosecutable to boot (not just among actors, of course).  While today certain high-profile producers and directors and even a spattering of movie stars are now out and presumably proud, it can easily be said that more than a few gay actors and their handlers are still saddled with problems that Henry Willson, Agent, would recognize all too well.

“If a young, handsome actor had Henry Willson for an agent, ‘it was almost assumed he was gay, like it was written across his forehead,” recalls Ann Doran, one of Willson’s few female clients.

The closeted dilemma of the gay actor traces its roots in the movie industry further back, however.  During World War II, thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen on their way to the Pacific theater were granted their last stateside leave in the port city of Los Angeles.  Predictably, many of them headed out to the local bars to blow off steam before deploying.

In June 1942, the Navy took the unusual yet fascinating action of placing about 30 bars and nightclubs across the city off limits to sailors.

“These taverns and bars are not safe or proper places for servicemen to patronize,” a Naval commander reported to the LA Times.  “Firm handling is necessary to eliminate that undesirable fringe of the industry.”  

The precise nature of the unsafe and improper activities going on in these night spots was left unstated — but it must have been pretty bad if the Navy felt the need to protect sailors from it, especially since the country was sending these same men off to risk life and limb in the Midway, Guadalcanal and other death traps across the Pacific.

There is one possible clue, however.  Two of the Navy’s blacklisted clubs were smack-dab in the middle of the Sunset Strip — Chez Boheme at 8950 Sunset Blvd  and Cafe Internationale at 8711 Sunset Blvd — both of which were, using today’s term, “gay friendly.”  (Gay bars as we know them today — clubs that cater pretty much exclusively to gay men or women — were strictly a post-war phenomenon.)

The headliner star attraction at Chez Boheme in that summer of '42 was Rae Bourbon, a female impersonator and one of the last big stars of the Prohibition era “Pansy Craze.”  Café Internationale, on the other hand, was owned and operated by Elmer and Tess Wheeler and catered to women.  As the 1940 guidebook, “How to Sin in Hollywood” put it:

“When Your Urge’s Mauve, go to the Café Internationale on Sunset Boulevard.  The location offers supper, drinks, and the ability to watch boy-girls who neck and sulk and little girl customers who… look like boys.”

In the early part of the 1930s, one of Henry’s first clients, and reportedly also his younger male lover, was Junior Durkin.  Durkin’s career would be cut too-soon short by a fatal automobile accident on May 4, 1935.  Interesting to consider is the idea that Durkin might have been one of Willson’s early name reconfiguration efforts.  Born Trent Bernard Durkin, he began his acting career on stage in the New York theater.  Durkin ventured West to Hollywood and entered films in 1930 where he met and presumably fell in love with Willson.  Junior might best be remembered for playing the irascible Huckleberry Finn in “Tom Sawyer" in 1930 and then reprising the title role a year later for "Huckleberry Finn" in 1931.

Under contract with RKO Radio Pictures, Junior Durkin was cast in various comedic roles for a series of "B” rated films seeking to capitalize on his gangly yet perceptively adorable young boy appearance.  He achieved more success and greater recognition in “Hell’s House” (1932) co-starring then newcomer Bette Davis.

Somewhat prescient of James Dean’s youthful death some twenty years later, Junior was traveling with his friend, fellow actor Jackie Coogan, and three other people in 1935 when the vehicle he was driving was involved in a serious accident in San Diego.  Jackie Coogan was the only survivor of the accident.  At the time of his death, Durkin was living with his agent Henry Willson and the two were said to be lovers.

In the fallout aftermath of the tragic death of the young man who well might have been the only real love of his life, Willson quickly became widely known for his stable of good-looking, well-built, albeit marginally talented (not to mention predominantly homosexual) male actors, each of them with unusual names which Wilson himself personally had bestowed upon them.

Henry Willson personally discovered and named the likes Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Robert Wagner, Nick Adams, Doug McClure, Ty Hardin, Clint Walker, Van Williams, John Derek, Race Gentry, Guy Madison, and Rory Calhoun, among others (including my personal favorite first and last name combination, “Buck Class”).  

Willson’s distinctive and enduring contribution was concocting these catchy names for his beefcake stalions, often with an almost comically hyper-masculine macho ring to them, a sense of trying too hard or insisting too strongly.  Thus, Willson changed “Orton Whipple Hungerford, III” into the suggestively phallic “Ty Hardin,” while “Arthur Andrew Keml” was changed to Tab Hunter" and “Roy Harold Scherer, Jr" turned into Rock Hudson.  The young man born "Francis Durgin” became first “Frank McCown” and then “Troy Donahue” until Willson finally settled on “Rory Calhoun.”  Later, “Merle Johnson, Jr” inherited the “Troy Donahue” moniker, freely admitting, “Troy Donahue was a star’s name.  Merle sounded like I ought to go out in the farmyard and do the chores.”  This name game became a unique form of movie star branding that Willson sheepishly enjoyed since as he smirked, “everyone knew that I had named them,” never mind the widespread mockery.

Call it his stable, call it his cadre, call it a possy, a heard, a pride, a gaggle, or even a platoon or a regiment – I’d call it a massive convergence of testosterone infused vigor – and whether bereaved or just plain old fashioned horny – the inestimable Mr. Willson had himself a whole heaping helping handfull of more than his fair share of hunks of burning man lovin’!  In his own words:  BEEFCAKE!!!

Wilson’s attentions were not entirely directed just towards his favored young boys, at least from a professional bent, as he also discovered Rhonda Fleming walking to Beverly Hills High School, brought her to David O. Selznick’s studios, and helped groom her for eventual stardom.  Moreover, he has been given initial primary credit for instrumentally advancing the career of bombshell Lana Turner as well as being Gina Rowland’s agent.

By most accounts, the stereotypical Hollywood hunks of the 1950s – the likes of Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, Tab Hunter, and others – were often either gay or extremely “gay-friendly,” as that phrase now turns.  At the very least, they were magnanimously open-minded to all forms of sexual expression, especially when it came to advancing their film careers.

Huge throngs of these hopeful wistful young gorgeous guys hung out at talent agent Henry Wilson’s infamous extravagant all-male parties which he would throw at his glamorous home in the Hollywood Hills.  In a studio attempt to quell gay rumors, Willson gave all of his protege clients a signature made-up “manly” name consisting of a single-syllable surname (Van, Rock, Tab, Nick, Guy) followed by a recognizable Anglo sirname  (Williams, Hudson, Hunter, Adams, Madison).  These boys’ names all do have a certain lyrical lilt to them, don’t they?  Sort of like humming a gay little tune.  No wonder Willson is said to have established his own “Dreamboat Factory”!

Probably Willson’s most prominent client was Rock Hudson.  Willson took a clumsy, naive, Chicago-born truck driver with bad teeth named Roy Scherer, got him some dental work and some acting lessons, and transformed him into one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men.

In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an expose about Hudson’s clandestine homosexual lifestyle.  In order to circumvent the article which potentially would have devastated his client’s career, Willson disclosed information about Rory Calhoun’s years in prison and Tab Hunter’s arrest at a gay party in 1950 in exchange for the tabloid agreement not to print the Hudson story.

To further perpetuate the ruse at his agent’s urging, Hudson married Willson’s secretary Phyllis Gates in order to put the rumors to rest and maintain a respectable heterosexual image as a husband.  Nevertheless, Rock Hudson’s feigned marital union dissolved after only three years.  Following Phyllis Gates’ death in 2006, it was revealed that she had tried, unsuccessfully, to blackmail Rock following their divorce.  Supposedly, none other than Henry Willson himself thwarted this novice attempt at blackmail when Willson clandestinely had surface certain explicitly erotic photographs of his former secretary, the now former Mrs. Rock Hudson, engaged lesbian sexual activity.

With Willson as Rock Hudson’s long-time agent, the two were teamed professionally until 1966 when apparently one of Hudson’s newer lovers prompted Rock finally to dissociate from Henry.  The then mega-star was quoted at the time as complaining in respect to the professional divorce, “Every time Henry Willson sucks some cock, I get blamed for it!”

Henry Willson singlehandedly is remembered as playing a significant role in systematically popularizing the beefcake craze of the 1950s through his ever-expanding list of young male actor clients.  In fact, Willson is credited with coining the term “beefcake” first to describe his scrumpdillicious client Guy Madison.

With its Boy Wonder Beefcake Dreamboat Factory in full swing, Hollywood appeased America’s great wave of 1950s conservatism all the while selling sex appeal by constructing an American mythology that modeled a tamed young adult male, a randier version of the pre-war Andy Hardy good boy, adding some military assertiveness to pose a deliberate alternative to rebellious bad boys of the times like Marlon Brando and James Dean.  Embodying the buttoned-down prejudices and repressions of the McCarthy era (upheld by closeted gay figures like Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover, now seen as traitors to their sexuality), the charade played out a dream of middle-class “normalcy” depicting only hetero-normal sex among white people, and even then almost entirely offscreen – unseen, unheard, and unspoken of in front of the cameras.

Transmitted throughout America by well-funded fan rags like Photoplay and Modern Screen, as well as by powerful gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, this was a cotton candied, ice cream cone pop culture world of dubiously wholesome frolics as starlets and studlets lobbed volleyballs on the beach, roasted wienies beside the backyard pool, and double-dated to publicize studio productions.  In this parlance of the “greatest generation,” these Adonises were “free, white, and 21,” typically stragglers from the postwar parade of homecoming GIs, the ones who didn’t care to return to the farm or the family hardware store, whatever the cost of a shot at Hollywood fame.