A Tale of Two Cities: How New York and Los Angeles Treat Their Out Actors

During the 80s and 90s, tabloid rumors of gayness swirled around Jodie Foster, Merv Griffin, Kevin Spacey, Richard Gere, Kristy McNichol, and many others. Time magazine strongly hinted that John Travolta had a gay past in a 1991 story on Scientology.

“For me, personally, there was never a question [of staying closeted after being outed],” says former Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman star Chad Allen, who was exposed by the Globe tabloid in 1996. “There was a time when it was actually said to me, ‘You know, we can get you a girlfriend. We can make that happen.’ But that's not in me. I can't live a lie.”

Chad Allen

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In a pre-Internet era, these tabloid revelations stayed mostly on the edge of American consciousness. Ellen DeGeneres was another celebrity long rumored to be gay — and widely known to be gay in Hollywood — but when she came out on the cover of Time in 1997, it was still a shock to many in middle America.

DeGeneres’ landmark announcement was easily as important as Rock Hudson’s death a decade earlier. But despite reports that other celebrities were considering following her out of the closet, the rush never came. It didn’t help that DeGeneres’ announcement was greeted with such vitriol and that her career soon stalled.

The Great Gay Way

The world of New York theater, meanwhile, has a reputation for being liberal when it comes to gay actors — and for the most part, it’s deserved. After all, Broadway famously resisted the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1940s and '50s, although some historians suggest this only happened because the financial power wasn’t concentrated in the hands of a few easily intimidated studio executives, as it was in Los Angeles.

“The New York theater community is like high school where everyone sits at the cool kids’ table,” declares Christopher Sieber, the Tony-nominated theater actor who came out in 2003 while starring in the gay-themed sitcom It’s All Relative. “Everyone knows everyone, and it’s fantastic. No one cares if you’re gay.”

Christopher Sieber

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According to Ehrenstein, gay actors have long been more open in New York than in Los Angeles. “People know your business in the cities,” he says.

With smaller budgets and more liberal audiences, New York’s theater community dealt with gay themes years — in some cases decades — before Hollywood’s TV and movie industry did. When Hollywood did deign to turn the most successful of these plays into movies, as they did with 1934’s The Children’s Hour, 1953’s Tea & Sympathy, and 1955’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, they often diluted the gay content, or eliminated it entirely.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a time when Harvey Fierstein was not out and proud and the toast of Broadway. In 1982, Fierstein won Tonys for both acting in and writing Torch Song Trilogy, his semi-autobiographical account of a gay man in New York. But the following year, Fierstein caused a minor scandal when, accepting a Tony as author of the book for the musical La Cage aux Folles, he thanked his then-boyfriend from the stage during the live television broadcast. In our modern era when it seems half the Tony winners thank their same-sex partners, it’s hard to imagine this was a controversy — but it was, even in New York’s so-called “liberal” theatrical community.

Harvey Fierstein

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But as with the death of Rock Hudson, AIDS changed the New York theater world too. If actors had often been out behind-the-scenes, their deaths thrust them — and their gayness — into the spotlight.

“The devastation of HIV/AIDS really hit [the theater community] hard,” Sieber says. “I didn’t arrive in New York until 1988. What I noticed is there was an amazing community that will pull together for a great cause.”

Next Page! Was David Hyde Pierce never really in the closet? And Neil Patrick Harris breaks the curse!