Bogie, I just realised that I turned your thread on Charles Laughton into a discussion on Cary Grant and various authors. Very sorry.
If it's any consolation my husband will sympathise, it seems it's something I do all the time. He starts a conversation and I turn it into a conversation about something completely unrelated I don't know if it's just me or a female talent
I'll start a looking for recommendations thread
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
charliechaplinfan wrote:Bogie, I just realised that I turned your thread on Charles Laughton into a discussion on Cary Grant and various authors. Very sorry.
You're certainly not alone on this one, CCF; if you back-check you'll find that I'm your early partner-in-crime on this thread (quel suprise!), especially lighting a fuse with my invokement of Cukor's name.
I read a book once called The Girls, mostly because it featured Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead pretty prominently. In the preface, the author frankly says she has no actual proof of anything she claims. Apparently, she combed through reams of newspaper and magazine articles, FBI files and so forth, then used deductive reasoning and reading between the lines to come to her conclusions. And she came to some very bizarre conclusions, let me tell you. This is probably how a lot of biographers work--take a rumor, edit the material to fit, then make up stuff to fill in the blank spaces.
Hollywood seems to be a perpetual rumor mill, with stories being recycled and given a new coat of paint to fit the audience. For example, there's a story about a certain aging Hollywood diva. Goes something like this: The diva is watching the rushes of her latest picture and asks the cameraman why he made her look so old. After all, he used to make her look so beautiful before. And the cameraman, not wanting to offend says, "Well, I'm 10 years older now." I've seen that same story attributed to 4 different actresses. In truth, it probably never happened. But it makes a good story.
Truth is, unless you were there, like Larry (and others?) you just don't know. And even then, it's suspect. We edit our memories all the time, so the story I tell you today about my college days, for instance, may be very different from the story I'll tell 10 years from now and from the one I told 10 years ago. It's human nature.
Straight, gay, bi--doesn't really matter. At most, a performer's sexual orientation just adds another dimension to their performance.
There. That's my 2 cents worth. Or possibly $2 worth--sorry to go on so long.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. "~~Wilde
I don't know if it's just me or a female talent 
