I just spent the last few weeks living in a world of wild
parties and carefree sex courtesy of three books by Robert Hofler: Money,
Murder and Dominick Dunne: A Life in Several Acts; Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs and Rock
’N’ Roll starring the Fabulous Allan Carr
and Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange—How a Generation of
Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos.
It all began with an excerpt from Dominick Dunne in The Daily Beast,
which showed up in my Facebook newsfeed. The excerpt dealt with the filming of
the Elizabeth Taylor film Ash Wednesday
in Rome, when Liz was in the midst of her relationship with Richard Burton. In
addition to her frequently being late for her call time (and drunk), the
excerpt also detailed her conversation with her co-star, Helmut Berger, about
being constipated. We're also told that Burton was jealous of the handsome (and
gay) Berger, who at the time was having an affair with director Luchino
Visconti.
Dunne was the producer of Ash Wednesday, but he's probably most famous for being a writer for Vanity
Fair, as well as the author of several
novels.
Dunne's specialty was true crime stories, and this was
probably due the murder of his daughter, actress Dominique Dunne (Poltergeist), by her boyfriend and Dunne's subsequent disillusionment
with the outcome of the murder trial. (Her boyfriend wound up spending only a
few years in prison.) Dunne may have led a charmed life career-wise, but his personal
life was beset by tragedy. In addition to his daughter's murder, his wealthy
and beautiful wife eventually developed MS.
That all may sound like a downer (and it is), but there's
plenty of excitement in this book as well. Dunne would go on to write about two
of the most notorious murder trials of the 20th century: O.J. Simpson and the
Menendez Brothers (the former, the subject of a recent TV series and the latter
about to be.)
Before that, we see Dunne's rise from stage manager at NBC
to movie producer, to his career at Vanity Fair and as a novelist. There's also some literary gossip about
his strained relationship with his brother and sister-in-law, the writers John
Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion.
Oh yeah, and Dunne was also gay (despite having a wife and
three children). There's one great story about Dunne inviting a hustler to his
New York apartment and barely escaping with his life. That's probably the most
extreme example of the struggles Dunne went through in coming to terms with his
sexuality.
Then there's Allan Carr, who never made any bones about his
sexuality, but struggled with his weight throughout his life. Carr is best
known as the producer of the movies Grease and Can't Stop the Music (which
featured The Village People and a pre-transition Bruce Jenner) and the Broadway
musical La Cage Aux Folles. Carr was
perhaps equally well-known for his wild parties and some of the best sections
of Allan Carr describe these parties,
as well as his four homes in Beverly Hills, Malibu, New York, and Hawaii. (His
Beverly Hills home had a disco in the basement!). I also enjoyed the many
behind-the-scenes showbiz stories, like that of a 30-year-old Harvey Fierstein
being invited in his down jacket held together with duct tape to Carr's St.
Moritz Hotel penthouse to work on La Cage
with Jerry Herman and Arthur Laurents.
Sexplosion deals
with the sexual revolution in movies, theater, books and TV between 1968 and
1973, a period I think of as a golden age in American culture. Hofler shows us
the evolution of such cultural (and sexual) landmarks as the films Midnight
Cowboy, Carnal Knowledge, Women in Love, Last
Tango in Paris, and Deep Throat; the plays The Boys in the Band, Oh! Calcutta! and Hair; the books Portnoy's Complaint, Couples, Myra
Breckenridge and Fear of Flying and the TV shows All in the Family and An American Family. What's remarkable is how many of the artists involved in
these projects were gay (Midnight Cowboy
director John Schlesinger, The Boys in the Band playwright Mart Crowley, Women in Love screenwriter Larry Kramer, Hair creators Gerome Ragni and James Rado, Myra Breckenridge author Gore Vidal and American Family's Lance Loud.) What's also remarkable is how shocking such
things as nudity (especially male nudity) and homosexuality were back then and
how strange it now seems that people (including celebrities like Jackie
Onassis) once watched pornography in movie theaters!
In spite of the now wide availability of pornography on the
Internet (and, before that, on video), I'm struck by the feeling that being an
adult from 1968 to 1973 was much more interesting and exciting than it is
today.
Perhaps Hofler’s next books can tackle talent manager Sandy
Gallin, record industry-turned-movie mogul David Geffen and former Paramount
Pictures and Fox TV honcho Barry Diller. Velvet Mafia, anyone?
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