25+ Old Hollywood Stars You Probably Didn’t Know Were LGBTQ

The Golden Age of Hollywood gave us many of the biggest icons of the 20th Century. But did you know the film industry’s queer culture existed even before that famous HOLLYWOODLAND sign went up in 1923, and half of Tinseltown kept their identities a secret to safeguard their careers? So, here are some Old Hollywood stars you probably didn’t know were LGBTQ. You might know some, but we guarantee some intriguing surprises.

James Dean was a Hollywood Giant who forever changed pop culture as the first true Rebel Without a Cause. Jimmy only made three films before tragically losing his life in his Porsche Spider in 1955. He was 24. While Dean dated women, including Natalie Wood, rumors he was gay circulated in his heyday and persist today.

Several authors claim James Dean was involved with Rogers Brackett, the advertising executive. More shockingly, Jimmy’s friend Stanley Taggart insisted the star had an affair with fellow rebel Marlon Brando.

Marlon Brando married four women, and some claim he fathered 17 children. However, in addition to his alleged affair with James Dean, the Hollywood heavyweight reportedly had encounters with Cary Grant, Montgomery Clift, Sir John Gielgud, and even Bob Dylan.

In 1976, Brando told a French journalist that he had been with men but stated, “I am not ashamed.” In a later Vulture interview, composer Quincy Jones said Brando also slept with James Baldwin, Marvin Gaye, and one very famous comedian…

Though Elizabeth Taylor married eight times to seven men — including doomed soulmate Richard Burton twice — she’s alleged to have had relations with Marilyn Monroe. But that’s not the reason she became a celebrated gay icon.

The English actress is loved for her dedicated and passionate activism regarding the LGBTQ+ community. Liz had many close relationships with gay men, although that was probably because she’d married half the straight men on the planet!

Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, and became one of Hollywood’s greatest leading men. He was a ladies’ man who married five times and had a daughter. However, Gillian Armstrong’s documentary Women He’s Undressed reveals Cary met Australian costume designer Orry-Kelly in New York in 1925. They became lovers and lived together on and off for nine years.

Cary Grant also lived with fellow actor Randolph Scott for 12 years in a Los Feliz mansion nicknamed “Bachelor Hall.” Rumors have long swirled that the pair were involved romantically.

Judy is the ultimate gay icon. Her father, Francis Gumm, was a closeted gay man, and the family moved to California after he seduced young local Minnesotan men. Judy always preferred the company of gay men, hung out in gay bars, and ​​the LBGTQ phrase “A friend of Dorothy” is named after her Wizard of Oz character.

She also kept marrying gay men — Vincent Minnelli, her tour promoter Mark Herron, and finally, singer Mickey Deans. In Tinseltown, she allegedly spent the night with her friend Marilyn Monroe after giving in to Marilyn’s many propositions.

Sir Alec Guinness is best known for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope. But did you know that Sir Alec kept his orientation away from the media and out of the public eye for the entirety of his seven-decade career?

Only after the veteran English actor of stage and screen passed away was it revealed he was a card-carrying member of the LBGTQ+ community. According to his biographers, Guinness’ family and close friends always knew he was gay.

Lucille Fay LeSueur, aka Joan Crawford, was one of Old Hollywood’s biggest stars. She married four times and adopted five children. But while Crawford was known as a maneater, she had an insatiable appetite for both men and women. Joan had dalliances with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Kirk Douglas, ​​Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, and Marilyn Monroe.

Her lifelong arch-nemesis Bette Davis once quipped Joan slept with everyone in Hollywood except Lassie! You can learn more about her lifelong rivalry with Bette Davis in Ryan Murphy’s FX series Feud.

Legend has it that, to cover up the fact that the world’s greatest lover Rudolph Valentino was gay, the studio married him off to rumored lesbian actress Jean Acker in 1919. According to The New York Times, Jean regretted the marriage within hours and locked Rudolph out of their hotel room! Needless to say, they quickly divorced.

As Valentino accepted more “powder puff” effeminate roles, he vigorously denied being gay and married costume designer Natacha Rambova in a second lavender marriage. He had encounters with author Samuel Steward. Rudolph passed away in 1926, aged just 31.

After Rudolph Valentino passed away, hunky Mexican-American actor Ramón Novarro became Hollywood’s go-to Latin lover, playing the title role in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur. Ramón was also gay and had several relationships with men, including with Hollywood news writer Herbert Howe and composer Harry Partch but he always struggled with his secret life.

Tragically, in 1968, decades after Navarro’s career fell from grace, Paul and Tom Ferguson called Novarro, offering their services in exchange for cash. Ramón let the two brothers into his home, whereupon they robbed him and took his life.

During his 40-year career, Spencer Tracy was known as a tough-guy womanizer and was linked to Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Hedy Lamarr, Myrna Loy, and Gene Tierney. But, for the last 25 years of his life, he had a long, studio-engineered lavender relationship with Katharine Hepburn… a relationship they never consummated.

But behind the scenes, Tracy often stayed at George Cukor’s house for days on end, getting up close and personal with the director’s male friends. He’s also rumored to have been in a long-term relationship with All the King’s Men actor John Derek.

Gorgeous Katharine Hepburn enjoyed a 60-year career and a long relationship with frequent co-star Spencer Tracy. While they loved each other and were inseparable, screenwriter Larry Kramer and LGBTQ+ activist said, “Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were both gay. They were publicly paired together by the studio. Everyone in Hollywood knows this is true.”

Hollywood “arranger” Scotty Bowers claims he set Hepburn up with over 150 women but that she would see them once or twice before quickly tiring of them.

Anthony Pekins is famous for his terrifying turn as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal horror movie Psycho (1960). Later in life, he married actress Berry Berenson and had two children, but Perkins was with Tab Hunter for four years and actor and dancer Grover Dale for seven years.

According to Scotty Bowers, Perkins “always wanted someone different. ‘Who’ve you got who’s different, Scott?’ ‘Who do you have for me for tomorrow night that will surprise me? Anything really new?” Anthony passed away in 1992 after keeping his illness a secret.

Who is this Scotty Bowers character whose name keeps popping up? Well, he provided services to the stars, and it all began at a gas station. One day in 1946, married actor Walter Pidgeon pulled into a Hollywood gas station and paid 23-year-old ex-Marine turned pump attendant Bowers a $20 tip to come home with him.

Pidgeon told his gay friends about the enthusiastic pump attendant who soon began providing services to the stars. Ryan Murphy dramatized Scotty’s story in his wonderfully camp Netflix show Hollywood.

Actor and director Charles Laughton married fellow actress Elsa Lanchester in 1929. They were together for over thirty years, but Laughton was another of Scotty Bower’s regular gas station customers. The Hunchback of Notre Dame actor’s first relationship with a man was with a handsome young actor named David Roberts. They met in 1941, and their relationship lasted until 1950.

In a memoir written after Charles passed away, Elsa said they never had children because Laughton was gay. Several of his contemporaries and Hollywood historians concur with Elsa.

Barbara Stanwyck was one of the most famous actresses in old Hollywood, appearing in almost 85 films over a 60-year career. She was married twice, but both marriages look to have been studio-backed lavender unions to hide the truth. Stanwyck’s second husband, Robert Taylor, said she was a lesbian and confessed they didn’t share a bed.

Stanwyck refused to broach the topic but lived with her publicist Helen Ferguson. She’s also believed to have been with Tallulah Bankhead. Biographer Axl Madsen wrote, “People would swear that she was Hollywood’s biggest closeted lesbian.”

Cuban-American actor Cesar Romero appeared opposite Marlene Dietrich in The Devil Is a Woman and played the Cisco Kid in six Westerns. The devilishly handsome 6’3” actor danced with Carmen Miranda and Betty Grable and was Joan Crawford’s best friend. But he’s best known for playing The Joker in the camp 1960s Batman TV show.

While Romero typically played Latin lovers, he was gay. He remained in the closet to the public for the entirety of his career, but close friends and colleagues knew his secret.

Patsy Kelly might not be a household name, but she was an early LBGTQ+ trailblazer in Hollywood. She often played the sassy best friend in 1930s comedies like The Girl From Missouri and Merrily We Live. Kelly is one of the very few actresses to candidly talk about her preference for women.

She told magazines that she was a lesbian, lived with her girlfriend, and never planned to marry. Early in her career, Patsy had a relationship with singer and actress Tallulah Bankhead, another trailblazer who openly admitted liking men and women.

Singer and actress Tallulah Bankhead came from a prominent Alabama family and was the wildest, most extroverted, and wittiest socialite of them all. The ultimate rebel, she was so uninhibited she was known for stripping off at private parties. She married actor John Emery and took many male and female lovers.

She allegedly had intimate encounters with fellow singer Billie Holiday, actresses Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Hattie McDaniel, Beatrice Lillie, Alla Nazimova, Blyth Daly, and writers Mercedes de Acosta and Eva Le Gallienne.

Clark Gable was a notorious ladies’ man. He slept with many of his co-stars, including Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard, married five times, and had two children. But rumors swirled that he slept his way to the top and had affairs with actors Billy Haines, Rod La Roque, and possibly Montgomery Clift.

Gable didn’t want to star in Gone With the Wind because director George Cukor knew how he made his way to the top. Halfway through filming, Cukor was fired and replaced by Gable’s friend Victor Fleming.

George Cukor was known as “the woman’s director” because he could muster great performances out of any actress, from Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight to gay icon Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and A Star Is Born and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

While Cukor never openly talked about his love life, he became a confidante to Hollywood’s brimming secret gay community. As a socialite, Cukor’s Hollywood mansion — decorated by gay actor Billy Haines — became the center of LGBTQ+ society in Tinseltown.

As well as Jimmy Dean, another icon Madonna sang about in “Vogue” was Marlene Dietrich. Her Madgesty even based her look on the blonde screen siren. Coming from the LBGTQ+-friendly Weimar arts culture, Marlene made it to Hollywood and changed the world by wearing pants and tuxes.

Marlene was fearlessly unapologetic about her love for men and women and kissed women on screen in the 1930s. She was romantically linked with Kay Francis, Edith Piaf, Mercedes de Acosta, and Greta Garbo. Marlene referred to Hollywood’s underground network of closeted actresses as her “sewing circle.”

Dishy heartthrob Montgomery Clift had affairs with actors Roddy McDowall and Marlon Brando, dancer Jerome Robbins, and his Misfits co-star Marilyn Monroe. Sadly, Clift had a bad car crash in Elizabeth Taylor’s driveway, scarring his striking face and ending his career. Clift passed away in 1963 from a heart attack aged 45.

After his passing, Clift’s mother said she knew Monty was gay from his early teens. Liz Taylor famously declared Monty was gay during a speech at the 2000 GLAAD Awards, a claim that Clift’s brother, William Brooks Clift Jr., supported.

Shelley Winters married four men, and she and her friend Marilyn Monroe kept lists of all the famous men with whom they planned to sleep. (Incidentally, Albert Einstein was on Marilyn’s list!) Shelly went on to have affairs with Clark Gable, Sean Connery, Errol Flynn, William Holden, and gay actor Farley Granger. But she also appeared in government files on Hollywood’s queer scene.

She lived with Gerry Deford for 19 years. He was gay, but Shelley regarded him as her one true (platonic) soulmate. She married him hours before she passed away in 2006.

While he might sound like something you’d find in a word processor, Tab Hunter was a hunky all-American actor. His tanned, ripped body, chiseled face, and blonde hair made him hugely popular with young female filmgoers in the late 1950s, so he kept his preferences a secret until he was arrested for lewd behavior in 1960. Crass tabloid magazine Confidential outed him and several other stars.

Tab felt “painfully isolated, stranded between the casual homophobia of most ‘normal’ people and the flagrantly gay Hollywood subculture — where he was even less comfortable and less accepted.”

Today, it’s well-known that heartthrob Rock Hudson was gay. But he kept details of his love life a secret for most of his life. His agent, Henry Wilson, quashed Confidential magazine’s exposé threatening to out Rock Hudson by giving up another of his clients, Tab Hunter.

Harry Wilson also arranged a lavender marriage between Rock and his secretary, Phyllis Gates, which lasted three years. He had a long, intimate relationship with stockbroker Lee Garlington. Hudson was one of the first stars to reveal he had a certain illness and sadly passed away in 1984.

Jim Nabors was best known for portraying Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show. His hapless and naïve auto mechanic was so popular, he even got his own spin-off, Gomer Pyle, USMC. Jim had a relationship with Rock Hudson in the early 1970s, and the two men reportedly married. However, Hudson insisted the marriage was nothing more than a joke and that Hudson took the name Rock Pyle.

A month after gay marriage became legal, in January 2013, Nabors married his partner of 38 years, Stan Cadwallader.

African American actress Ruby Dandridge was most famous for the 1950s radio show Amos n’ Andy, but she also appeared as a dancer in the original King Kong and the 1943 musical Cabin in the Sky. Ruby left her husband, Cyril, after having two daughters, Vivian and Dorothy, who both became famous actresses.

Ruby then had a Boston Marriage with Geneva Williams, whom historians call “her lifelong companion.” They lived together, and Geneva pushed Dorothy to become the first African American actress nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.

Canadian actor Raymond Burr played two of television’s most iconic characters, brilliant defense attorney Perry Mason and brilliant disabled detective Ironside. Burr married Isabella Ward in 1948, and they shared a house with Burr’s mother and grandparents. However, the marriage crumbled after just a few months.

Then, in 1960, Burr met Robert Benevides, an actor and veteran, on the set of Perry Mason. In the 1980s, the couple started a vineyard in California’s Sonoma County and remained together until Burr passed away in 1993.

Another entry from Madonna’s “Vogue” is Greta Garbo. Once known as the most beautiful woman in the world, the stunning Swedish-American enchantress was known for her gorgeous face, melancholy, somber persona, tragic characters, and subtle and understated performances. But most of all, her desire for seclusion.

Garbo had affairs with Marlene Dietrich, Billie Holiday, Tallulah Bankhead, and Mercedes de Acosta. The latter would fall into Marlene Dietrich’s arms whenever Greta moved on. Garbo called her love affairs with women “exciting secrets.” She passed away six weeks after Madonna’s “Vogue” was released.

Marilyn loved men almost as much as she loved diamonds. But the world’s most iconic maneater was a secret member of the LGBTQ+ community. Before becoming famous, Marilyn had relationships with her acting coaches, Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg. Actress Jane Lawrence’s book My Little Secret reveals she also had relations with the iconic buxom blonde bombshell.

Monroe admitted to having encounters with Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot, and even Elizabeth Taylor. So, while Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn didn’t mind if they were blonde or brunette!

Vincent Minnelli was a stage and film director who made such bangers as Meet Me in St. Louis and Gigi. He’s just as famous for being married to gay icon Judy Garland and being Liza Minnelli’s father. He married four women to hide the fact he was gay.

According to Emanuel Levy’s biography, Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer, “Minnelli lived as an openly gay man in New York prior to his arrival in Hollywood, where the town that made him a film legend also pressured him back into the closet.”

Tyrone Power might have been a major swashbuckling heartthrob during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but Scotty Bowers was quoted as saying, “Women swooned over him, and he bedded quite a few of them, but he much preferred men.”

Tyrone was married to French silent film actress Annabella and gorgeous Mexican actress Linda Christian. He had love affairs with Lana Turner and Mai Zetterling and a relationship with his Witness for the Prosecution co-star Charles Laughton. Lifelong friend Cesar Romero confirmed Tyrone was gay in the 1996 book Hollywood Gays.

Long before Tom Holland lip-synced to Rihanna’s “Umbrella”, Debbie Reynolds starred with Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Then she became Carrie Fisher’s mom. But according to The Daily Beast, declassified files on Hollywood’s queer scene revealed she and her husband, Eddie Fisher, were both members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Years later, film historian Robert Osborne claimed Debbie had a love affair with Citizen Kane and Bewitched star Agnes Moorehead. Reynolds denied sharing Agnes’ bed — but her son and Carrie’s brother, Todd, reportedly confirmed it happened.

While Debbie Reynolds was known as a goody-two-shoes, Carrie Fisher’s dad, Eddie Fisher, was often surrounded by scandal. Both Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor married him (awkward!), and he had high-profile affairs with Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Juliet Prowse, Kim Novak, Ann-Margret, and Judy Garland.

According to those same classified files, Eddie was secretly a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Reynolds once told The Telegraph, “Everyone I dated was gay,” which also seems to include her husband.

“You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination.” No, not it’s not Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a Lil Nas X gig, or your local Pride event; the next stop is the Twilight Zone!

The 1960s best sci-fi TV show pushed boundaries with its progressive stance on race and gender. Yet, curiously missing are any LGBTQ+ issues. Could this be because vet and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling was gay? According to those pesky classified files, the answer is yes.

Remember in Friends when Monica asked for a haircut like Andie McDowell but ended up with a hair-do like Roddy McDowall from the original The Planet of the Apes movies? Well, the owner of the original bad haircut was British-American actor Roddy McDowall. He played the apes Cornelius and Caeser, making him the Andy Serkis of his day, but in ape makeup, not motion capture computer graphics.

Although he never spoke publicly on the topic, Roddy McDowall had a relationship with Montgomery Clift for several years in the early 1950s.

Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde, better known as Dirk Bogarde, was an English actor, novelist, and screenwriter. While he was known to be gay, he remained in the closet. Back in the day, as well as being gay being illegal in England, Rank Studio contracts included morality clauses, so he would have been fired if the truth came out.

He was in a long-term relationship with Anthony Forwood. For nearly four decades, Bogarde shared his homes with his male lover, first in England and then in France.

Film director Dorothy Arzner isn’t a hugely well-known name, but she deserves to be. She was the first woman to direct a talkie — Fashions for Women (1927) — and became one of Hollywood’s only female directors. She also invented the boom mic by strapping a microphone to a fishing rod.

Dorothy didn’t give a hoot who knew she was gay. She had a long-term relationship with choreographer Marion Morgan for 40 years and is rumored to have had affairs with her leading ladies, including Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn.

Most famous for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Danny Kaye married composer and lyricist Sylvia Fine ​in 1940, and they were happily married until he passed away in 1987. However, Donald Spoto’s biography of Sir Lawrence Olivier claims the lauded English Shakespearean actor and director had an affair with Kaye.

When Olivier’s later wife, Dame Joan Plowright, was blamed for ending Olivier’s marriage to Vivien Leigh, she stated, “Not guilty. Danny Kaye was on the scene long before I came along.”

English actress Vivien Leigh famously starred in Gone With the Wind and married fellow English thespian Laurence Olivier, who treated her appallingly. According to Darwin Porter’s book, Damn You, Scarlett O’Hara, Leigh’s marriage to Olivier was a smokescreen, and the couple repeatedly cheated on each other within weeks of becoming lovers.

According to the book, Leigh liked men and women and was once kicked out of an Italian hotel for bringing back “street boys.” Vivien had at least three lesbian affairs, including one with fellow British actress Isabel Jeans.

Janet Gaynor is best known for her tour de force performance in F.W. Murneau’s incredible 1927 film, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. She also won the first-ever Best Actress Oscar for two other films that year, 7th Heaven and Street Angel. Janet retired from acting in 1939, married a famous film costume designer, and had a son.

In William Mann’s book Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969, actor Bob Cummings said, “Janet Gaynor’s husband was Adrian, the MGM fashion designer. But her wife was Mary Martin.”

That MGM fashion designer was Adrian Adolph Greenburg. Rudolph Valentino’s costume designer wife, Natacha Rambova, brought him to Hollywood in 1924, and he designed costumes for The Wizard of Oz and for stars like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn. Like Madonna and Beyonc​​é, he was so good he was known simply as Adrian.

Diana McLellan writes in her book The Girls that Adrian and Janet’s union was a lavender marriage to debunk rumors that they were both members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Could there be a more straight role than playing the dad in The Brady Bunch? Well, it turns out the actor who played patriarch Mike Brady — Robert Reed — was gay. He married Marilyn Rosenberger and had a daughter but stayed in the closet to protect his career.

His Brady Bunch co-star, Barry Williams — who played​​ eldest son, Greg Brady — once said, “Robert didn’t want to go there. I don’t think he talked about it with anyone. I just don’t think it was a discussion — period.” Sadly, Robert passed away in 1992.

Paul Lynde was a character actor who played Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and voiced the dastardly Hooded Claw in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop cartoons. He was famous for his distinctively camp and snarky persona and was once described as “Liberace without a piano.”

The 1970s LGBTQ+ community didn’t like his comedy during a “self-loathing era for gay culture.” However, while Lynde often lampooned himself, he never came out. If you wonder how, remember Liberace never officially came out of the closet, either!

Genius stand-up comedian and actor Richard Pryor was married seven times to five different women and had seven children with six different women. So, you’d guess he was pretty straight. Well, guess again because in February 2018, his widow, Jennifer Pryor, released a statement to TMZ stating her husband had conducted an intimate affair with Marlon Brando in the 1970s.

In his autobiography Pryor Convictions, Pryor talked about a short relationship with a transgender member of the LGBTQ+ community, which he called “two weeks of being gay.”