TORONTO — Veteran screenwriter and author Larry Kramer says some of the biggest movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age — including Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy — were gay.
“In the ’30s and ’40s, there were plenty of famous gay actors and directors who partied and socialized together,” said Kramer.
“It certainly was very, very discreet, but everyone knew what was what.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kramer listed stars like Cary Grant, Randolph Scott and Barbara Stanwyck.
He said Hepburn and Tracy were publicly paired together by the movie studio. “Everyone in Hollywood knows this is true,” said Kramer.
Hepburn, who died in 2003 at 96, was briefly married in her 20s but never remarried or had children. Tracy, who died in 1967 at 67, married Louise Treadwell in 1923 and — though they split a decade later — never divorced. The couple had two children.
Several previous books, including 2006’s Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn by William J. Mann, have included references to Hepburn being gay or bisexual.
Kramer also told THR that director George Cukor was replaced on Gone With the Wind because actor Clark Gable refused to work for a gay man. Kramer also recalled how openly gay songwriter Cole Porter hosted glamourous dinner parties “where all the guests had to be nude.”
Kramer, 80, was a script writer for Columbia Pictures and United Artists who earned an Oscar nomination for 1969’s Women in Love. His acclaimed play The Normal Heart was adapted for the screen last year.
In his recently-published book The American People, Volume 1: Search for My Heart, Kramer also claims U.S. historical figures Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Pierce and J. Edgar Hoover were either gay or bisexual.
“Historians always assume the heterosexuality of their subjects, sometimes in direct contradiction of available facts and evidence,” Kramer said.
He cites letters Hamilton penned to a fellow officer during the war. “The letters were unmistakably love letters,” said Kramer. “He referred poignantly to their feeling for each other.”
Kramer said he was upset that his friend Tony Kushner made no reference to Lincoln’s sexuality in the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 movie Lincoln.
“I still don’t understand what happened to make Tony de-gay the film like that,” he said. “I had introduced him to lots of academics who filled him in on the evidence of Lincoln’s love affair.
“But Tony wouldn’t go there, which made me lose a bit of respect for him.”
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