He knew all the old movie stars he was a great friend of Joan Crawford, for instance.
He was such an attractive man, so full of fun. The marriage lasted less than a year before Cromwell left her (Lansbury, the original Carrie Bradshaw, was dumped by Cromwell in a note that said, simply, "I can't go on.") Years later, Lansbury explained the marriage to the Daily Mail: "I may have been mature in some ways, but I was also a greenhorn, as they say. Lansbury was 19 when she married Richard Cromwell, an actor who was more than a decade older than the ingénue and who had had an affair with Howard Hughes. America's beloved great aunt, Angela Lansbury, was married for a short time to a man who ultimately came out as gay. We really started to laugh."īut Garland and Minnelli aren't the only classic stars who married gay men. Let me go!' And I said, 'Michael, how could you.' He said, 'It's over, relax.' Then we looked at each other and we started to laugh. She told The Joy Behar Show: "I grabbed … And I said, 'Why did you let me marry this idiot?' He said, 'I thought you liked him! You look so happy.
Minnelli, in turn, blamed the marriage on Michael Jackson (as one does). After their divorce, Gest sued Minnelli and accused her of everything from spousal abuse to giving him herpes. Years after their divorce, Liza set the world agog with her marriage to Gest. If that weren't shocking enough, he had an affair with her mother's husband, Mark Herron. Minnelli caught her first husband, musician Peter Allen, in bed with another man on her wedding night. The apple didn't fall far from the tree with Garland's other daughter, Liza Minnelli, a gay icon in her own right. "I remember all too clearly the screaming accusations that filled our house in the middle of the night when she encountered one of her lovers' 'indiscretions.' I didn't hear the word 'fag' from the kids at school. After all, the men want to marry them-not a man." Garland's own daughter, Lorna Luft, speculated that her mother was unable to distinguish between friendship and romantic relationships with her gay companions. Bonnie Kaye, a counselor who specializes in women who marry gay men and was once married to a gay man herself, says, "Women-who may have some idea that their husbands may have had a few 'experimental sexual experiences'-believe that people try things, but then they realize it's not who they really are. What made Garland so attracted, and attractive, to these men? Garland was bisexual herself, and although aware of her husbands' sexualities, she considered them to be not static. After their divorce and a subsequent marriage, Garland married Mark Herron, only to discover his homosexuality and divorce him months later after he beat her. Garland became aware of Minnelli's affairs as their marriage progressed, once attempting suicide after finding him in bed with another man. According to the biography Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer, Minnelli lived as an openly gay man before coming to Hollywood, where he began to feel the oppression of the rigid studio system. Louis, when Garland was only 23 years old. Garland's second marriage to Vincente Minnelli is perhaps her most notorious they married in 1945 after Minnelli directed Garland in Meet Me in St. Probably the most famous star ever to marry a gay man is gay icon Judy Garland two of of her four husbands were gay. Read More: The Gay Men Who Have Sex with Women One might assume, because of this, that iconic female celebrities who married gay men were also in on the sham of lavender marriages, but in fact, many straight female stars who married gay men were totally in the dark about their husbands' sexuality. Their girlfriends and wives were careful setups by the Hollywood publicity machine, which was eager to milk their sex appeal as long as possible and keep fans from asking questions. The fact that Rock Hudson and Cary Grant had affairs with men is now common knowledge. Gay stars picked wives, often actresses and celebrities themselves, in order to hide their sexualities and keep fans lusting after them onscreen.
" Lavender marriages," as they were called, began as a response to big studios including " moral clauses" in their stars' contracts. Gay stars have been masking their sexuality under the cover of heterosexual relationships since the first days of film.