Content warning: this post mentions ****** assault, child abuse, violence, drug and alcohol addiction, suicide, and homophobia.
The star images of actors in Old Hollywood were carefully controlled, but in the decades since, many secrets have been revealed about the most iconic leading men of the golden age. Here are some of the most interesting and wild…1. Marlon Brando was bisexual, telling a journalist in the ’70s, “Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed.” Quincy Jones later said Marlon would “**** anything,” and claimed that he had slept with James Baldwin, Richard Pryor, and Marvin Gaye. Richard Pryor’s widow confirmed he did have *** with Marlon.
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There’s also been a lot of speculation about the true nature of Marlon’s close friendship with fellow actor Wally Cox. He was apparently “very possessive” of Wally, and after Wally died unexpectedly at age 48, Marlon kept his ashes and sometimes carried them with him (against Wally’s widow’s wishes). When Marlon died, his ashes were scattered together with Wally’s in Death Valley, where the pair spent a lot of time.
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2. Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins were both closeted actors in the 1950s when they dated for three years after meeting at the Chateau Marmont. The pair reportedly would go on double dates with women and then go home together.
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Tab Hunter went on to fall in love and have a decades-long relationship with producer Allan Glaser; coming out in his 2005 memoir Tab Hunter Confidential. Anthony Perkins, meanwhile, attempted conversion therapy and married a woman, Berry Berenson, before dying of AIDs in 1992.
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3. Spencer Tracey was a person with alcoholism who would go on weeks-long benders in hotels. He would reportedly check in with a suitcase full of whiskey bottles, lock himself in a room, get naked, and lie in the bathtub drinking the whiskey non-stop for days at a time, “not having to get out of the tub, even to perform bodily functions.”
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4. Gene Kelly reportedly had a violent temper that saw him terrorize the people he worked with, and he also had a competitive streak that was so intense, he once broke his own ankle from slamming his foot down in frustration over losing a volleyball game, leading him to lose his role in Easter Parade.
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5. Rock Hudson’s homosexuality was an open secret in Hollywood, and Confidential magazine was apparently intent on outing him in 1955, leading to his agent, Henry Willson, supplying Confidential with information about two of his other clients in exchange for their silence on Rock and then quickly marrying Rock off to his secretary, Phyllis Gates.
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During their divorce three years later, Phyllis reportedly secretly made a recording of Rock in which she attempted to get him to talk about his ****** encounters with men, and which she then used to allegedly blackmail Rock into a settlement that gave her their Hollywood Hills home, stock in his production company, and $250 alimony per week for 10 years.
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6. The FBI tracked Frank Sinatra for more than 40 years, closely observing his friendships with Mafia figures, which revealed that the Mob allegedly applied pressure to help Frank get out of a restrictive contract with bandleader Tommy Dorsey.
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“Those were his friends,” said retired FBI agent Sam Ruffino. “The fact that they were known hoodlums and murderers didn’t matter to him. He didn’t care, he was going to hang around with who he wanted to hang around with.” At one point, Frank reportedly offered to become an informant, but was rejected by the FBI.
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7. One celebrity who apparently did become an informant for the FBI was Cary Grant, who allegedly spied on Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood, exposing Errol Flynn as a Nazi agent and later marrying (and possibly spying on) Barbara Woolworth Hutton, who was previously married to Count Kurt von Jaugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, one of Cary’s subjects.
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8. Meanwhile, accusations of Nazi ties are far from the only wild fact about Australian-born actor Errol Flynn. In his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he opened up about his extensive alcohol and drug use as well as ****** encounters, including the fact that he used cocaine on the tip of his ***** in an attempt to enhance his ****** prowess.
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Errol was reportedly violent and cruel. He installed a two-way mirror in his guest bedroom and bathroom to spy on people who partied at his house. In 1942, he was accused of statutory rape by two women and charged with four counts of rape, but was acquitted. During his trial, he met a teenage tobacco store worker named Nora Eddington and went on to marry her.
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9. Charlie Chaplin had numerous relationships with underage girls throughout his life, and there were even calls for him to be investigated in the US Senate, with film historian F.X. Feeney stating in 1945: “Senator William Langer put forward bill S.536 calling for the Attorney General to investigate and determine whether the ‘alien’ Chaplin should be deported because of ‘his unsavory record of law breaking, of rape, or the debauching of American girls 16 and 17 years of age.'”
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Charlie was in his late 20s when he married his first wife, Mildred Harris, who was 16 at the time and concerned she might be pregnant. After their divorce, Charlie went on to marry actor Lita Grey when he was in his mid-30s, and she was 16 (and pregnant). The pair had met when Lita was eight and began working together when she was 12. Charlie’s third wife, Paulette Goddard, was the only woman he married when she was in her 20s (he was in his 40s). His fourth and final wife, Oona O’Neill, was 18 when she married 53-year-old Charlie.
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10. Clark Gable was 34 and married when he allegedly fathered a child with his 23-year-old co-star Loretta Young while filming The Call of the Wild. Loretta hid the pregnancy and pretended her daughter, Judy Lewis, had been adopted. Loretta reportedly later characterized her interaction with Clark as date rape.
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11. Natalie Wood’s sister, Lana Wood, alleged that Kirk Douglas sexually assaulted Natalie when she was about 16 years old and he was in his late 30s. “He hurt me Lana… It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified, I was confused,” Natalie apparently told her sister.
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Lana published the accusation in her 2021 memoir, a year after Kirk had died. In a statement, Kirk’s son Michael Douglas said, “May they both rest in peace.”
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12. In 2022, multiple women — including Karen Sharpe, Hope Holiday, Anna Maria Alberghetti, and Laine Kaza — spoke to Vanity Fair, accusing Jerry Lewis of abusing his star power and sexually harassing and assaulting them during the 1960s.
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13. Before he began a career in Hollywood, Academy Award-nominated actor Sessue Hayakawa intended to join the Japanese Imperial Navy, but was rejected after an accident ruptured his eardrums. He attempted to kill himself, but his dog’s distressed barking awoke his family, and his father broke down the door of the shed Sessue had locked himself in with an axe to save him.
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14. Jackie Cooper became the youngest person to ever be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar at age nine for his role in Skippy, but his heart-wrenching performance came about because of a cruel trick by director Norman Taurog, who was Jackie’s uncle. Norman had Jackie’s dog taken away from the set by a security guard and staged a gunshot going off, telling Jackie the dog had been executed in order to get him to cry in a scene. “I could visualize my dog, bloody from that one awful shot,” Jackie later said. “I began sobbing so hysterically that it was almost too much for the scene.”
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It wasn’t the only questionable thing to happen to Jackie as he was growing up in Hollywood. When he was 17, he had his first ****** encounter with Joan Crawford, who was then in her mid-30s, and the two went on to have a six-month “affair.”
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15. Laurence Olivier was allegedly a secret agent for the British government, tasked with building support in the US for Britain’s war with Germany in 1940, although reportedly he had no choice in the matter, with Winston Churchill “not asking but telling him that his country expected him to do his duty.”
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16. The murder of Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane remains one of Hollywood’s greatest unsolved mysteries, and it revealed dark secrets he had been hiding, like his extensive collection of home-made *********** featuring his many encounters with woman, often alongside his friend (and later accused murderer) John Henry Carpenter.
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17. Finally, while it’s difficult to find an original source, it’s long been reported that Eartha Kitt once claimed to have had a ********* with Paul Newman and James Dean. It may just be a rumor, but there are some facts that lend weight to it: Eartha and James were very close when he was alive; James was queer, and there’s speculation Paul was too; and the two men had incredible chemistry and flirted a lot during a screen test for East of Eden.
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What are some Hollywood secrets you’ve heard of? Let me know in the comment section below!
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