Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

5) Hot Show: The Musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

Everybody in the UK is talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – a musical about a young drag queen who wants to go to prom in drag. Meet Jamie Campbell and the actor that plays Jamie – John McCrea – in the video below.

1) Michelle Wolf: A Star Is Born

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Do something this weekend that makes YOU go WOW!!!

Power getting a tan, via YouTube

May 5th, 1914– Tyrone Power a true matinee idol and he was one of the most beautiful men to ever appear on the Broadway stage or in American films. He was a major star at 20th Century Fox where he fought for, and was given great roles that allowed him show that he was more than just gorgeous.

Power was married three times and he had three children. He had a hugely heralded affair with Lana Turner and a reticent romance with Judy Garland. Power was so beautiful that everyone wanted him. His first wife, the one-name-only French actor Annabella stated:

“Ty just couldn’t say no!”

It seems that Power said yes to quite a few ladies and a bunch of gentlemen too.

Photo from TCM via YouTube

According to highly readable, scintillating Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood And The Secret Sex Lives Of The Stars by Scotty Bowers, a favorite book from 2012, Power had steamy star sex with the author and joined in on three-ways with Bowers, and another man, or sometimes a girl. According to Bowers, Power was a sex machine and a sweetheart, a very winning combo, I must say.

Power had liaisons with many men during his career, including famed lyricist Lorenz Hart and elegant actor Cesar Romero. Power was so handsome that he could choose any of the most attractive men on any studio lot. Unlike other male stars of his era, Power was not afraid to be seen in the company of guys assumed to be queer: George Cukor, Clifton Webb, Reginald Gardner, Van Johnson, or notorious bisexual Howard Hughes. In Errol Flynn: The Untold Story (1980) writer Charles Higham claims that Power had an assignation with Flynn. Power was so loved by people in showbiz that they all gaily looked the other way when Power had a fling.

Yet, my research points to Power having a romantic relationship that lasted for decades with a 20th Century Fox stagehand, his one true lasting gay love affair.

Power was part of a theatrical family that dated back to the 1800s. He was just 22-years-old when he received fourth billing in his earliest success on film, Lloyds Of London (1936). In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Power had an uninterrupted string of hits, including great work in the starring role of The Mark Of Zorro (1940) and as the doomed bullfighter in Blood And Sand (1940) where he battled with Rita Hayworth to be the yummiest member of the cast.

Power joined the Marines in 1941. When he returned to Hollywood in 1946 he enjoyed an unlikely smash hit with a film version The Razor’s Edge, my favorite of his films. It is based on the popular gay writer W. Somerset Maugham‘s popular novel. His co-star was the nearly as gorgeous Gene Tierney. Anne Baxter won an Academy Award for this glossy film, a top grosser for Fox Studios, and one of the truly transcendent films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Glam shot from Fox Archives

Power insisted on doing the film noir Nightmare Alley (1947) opposite Joan Blondell, where he plays a conniving carnival geek. Directed by the great gay director Edmund Goulding, it gave Power the best role of his career, along with terrific reviews. But studio head Darryl Zanuck refused to publicize it and the film vanished quickly. It became a cult favorite for film fans in the next century. I caught it on TMC in March. Few 1940s films ventured as deeply into cynicism as Nightmare Alley, or dealt so frankly with sexuality, with provocative peeks of polymorphous perversity and power-tripping.

In 1946, Power and Annabella’s marriage ended. He was still a marine, yet he managed to go on a six week trip to South America with Cesar Romero. Upon their return, he entered into that tempestuous relationship with Lana Turner, who was then the queen of MGM and between husbands. The Turner romance was too drama filled and alarmed the studio brass, so he married Mexican actor Linda Christian, a union that brought two daughters before the marriage ended in 1955.

With Alice Brady in In Old Chicago” 1938, via YouTube

Power had one more truly great role, the charming murderer in Witness For The Prosecution (1957) directed by Billy Wilder and co-starring that awesomely hammy homosexual actor Charles Laughton and Laughton’s scenery chewing wife, Elsa Lanchester. Power is superb as the charming, disingenuous ne’er-do-well. His performance is a revelation, but his hard living ways were catching up with him, and much like his fuck buddy Flynn, it showed. He was dead a year after filming this performance, and he looks much older than 44-years-old. Power was taken by a heart attack while filming Solomon And Sheba (1959) for director King Vidor on a hot Spanish summer afternoon.

Along with his two daughters, he left behind Tyrone Power Jr. who also became an actor. Like Clark Gable‘s only son, he was born after the death of his father. He is the fourth actor to bear the name Tyrone Power. The first was his great-great-grandfather, the Irish actor Tyrone Power (1795–1841). He is known as Tyrone Power Jr. because his father is the most famous of the four.

In his 25 year career, Power appeared 50 films. Like most bisexual and gay stars of his era, Power lived in dread fear of being outed. Although studio head Zanuck liked Power personally, he was afraid of losing Fox’s biggest moneymaker should the film fans discover that Power was digging having sex with guys. Sure, he had that affair with Judy Garland, but what gay male working in films of that time didn’t?

How about a biopic starring Zac Efron as Power?

In a television commercial for underwear from the 1950s, spokesperson (and Marlon Brando main squeeze) Wally Cox chimed:

“I may look like Wally Cox, but inside I’m Tyrone Power”.

May 6, 1895– Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antoguolla:

“A man should control his life. Mine is controlling me.”

He was born in sunny Southern Italy and arrived in NYC in 1913. He became a taxi dancer, an ballroom dancer and boy for hire. In 1917, he took a train to Hollywood to try his luck in the new film industry. He played a number of small roles in silent movies, appearing as a featured dancer in the film Alimony (1920). He smartly changed his name to Rudolph Valentino and he was impressive enough to be cast as the lead in The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (1921) directed by the fascinating Rex Ingram for Metro Pictures. The film, which features a memorable scene of Valentino dancing the tango, made the rakishly handsome Italian stud a sensation and it made him a star. Later the same year, The Sheik made him a screen legend and his flickering image on the screen actually caused women to faint. Valentino became known to casting directors as a reliable exotic type, and his popularity soared with romantic melodramas like Blood And Sand (1922) and The Eagle (1925).

He earned a fortune in the film business and he lived lavishly but died in debt. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams but never could win the approval of America’s macho male mainstream audience. He was turned down for many parts because he looked too foreign, too dark, too pretty. Most male audiences were offended by Valentino’s extravagant dress, makeup, and willingness to show his body on screen. Still, Valentino disregarded the era’s rigid codes of sex and gender.

Photo via YouTube

His legendary star status is set in film history, but the legacy of his work died with the silent film era. Because of studio stills, Valentino will always retain his extraordinary beauty, star quality and charisma, but his work on screen shows no real real skill compared with other silent film greats. Thanks to film restoration, his style of acting is frozen forever, but it is almost incomprehensible to modern viewers with his heavy makeup and exaggerated emoting. Disparaged during his time for denigrating masculinity with his perceived effeminacy, time has not been kind to Valentino’s legend. Whether his voice would have killed his career in talkies is a subject of much speculation. Some film historians say his accent was too thick, others who knew him say his rich, masculine baritone would only have helped him reach even greater heights of fame. Yet now, Valentino on silent film comes off as camp as a Carmen Miranda musical number.

Photoplay Magazine published a piece that described Valentino’s influence on other leading men after his tango in The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse that read:

“The movie boys haven’t been the same. They’re all racing around wearing spit curls, bobbed hair and silk panties. This can’t keep up. The public can stand just so many ruffles and no more.”

Valentino’s gayness was a badly kept secret in Hollywood, despite his marriages to and divorces from Jean Acker and Natasha Rambova, both lesbians. His reputation as “The Great Lover” from silent films haunts him decades later.

“The Son Of The Sheik” with Vilma Banky, via YouTube

There were claims that he had been murdered by a jealous husband. But the truth is simpler. Shortly after wrapping up filming, Valentino traveled across the country promoting The Son Of The Sheik (1926) before its general release. He arrived in NYC during a heat wave. He was hospitalized because he was bleeding internally of a ruptured ulcer. Sadly, he had spent his final days engaged in a feud in the papers with an anonymous reporter who had questioned his masculinity and blamed him for America’s “degeneration into effeminacy”. The reporter railed against Valentino’s “Roman face”, his “patent leather hair”, and his ability to make females dizzy.

Valentino’s fans stood in a vigil outside the hospital for a week, before his final credits rolled. In severe pain, his final words were:

“Am I still a pink powder puff?”

Photoplay wrote In Memoriam:

“Although his eyes glimpsed bitterness and sadness, they saw a dream that few folk ever see…”

He lay in state for several days at Frank E. Campbell’s Funeral Home, the preferred send-off spot of actors. Women tore at their own clothes, clutched their chests and collapsed in the heat. Thousand of fans gathered outside Campbell’s. Mourners rioted, smashed windows, and fought with police to get a glimpse of the deceased star. Standing guard at the coffin were four brown shirted Fascists, supposedly sent by Italian leader Benito Mussolini, but in fact, hired by press agents.

Photo via YouTube

At the funeral, many Hollywood notables showed up, including Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Gloria Swanson. Polish actor Pola Negri obligingly fainted for photographers several times between the train station and the chapel. She collapsed at his casket, where she had installed a massive flower arrangement that spelled out the word POLA.

Valentino’s body was taken by train to Hollywood, where another funeral was held for him at the Church Of the Good Shepherd. He then was finally laid to rest at Hollywood Memorial Park. For decades, on the anniversary of his death, a veiled woman in black arrived at Valentino’s tomb and placed a dozen red roses and one white one on his grave. Eventually, competing women in black began to show up at the tomb, knocking roses to the ground as they scuffled for position in front of newspaper photograph.

Valentino had an elusive quality that made him a screen legend even if he wasn’t a good actor. Always talented as a dancer, Valentino once performed for President Woodrow Wilson at the White House.

He possessed a tremendous charisma that allowed him to shine on the silver screen. His early death cemented his place as a forever Pop Culture Icon. In life, he received more grief than acclaim, and he lived with more sadness than joy.