Earl Holliman died.
Not sure what to say.
Over a year ago -- maybe two -- C.I. noted at THE COMMON ILLS a man over ninety whose health was faltering was hiding in the closet. She noted it was an actor. A mutual friend asked C.I. to meet with the actor because they thought he would feel better if he came out. So C.I. talked to him about that and told him that people would embrace him.
As C.I. noted at THE COMMON ILLS, she didn't think the man would ever come out, that he would go to his grave in the closet.
That man was Earl Holliman.
He's dead now and Craig Curtis had to announce the death. Who? His husband.
Hope your Labor Day Weekend was better than mine.
A friend asked for a favor. Could I speak to one of their former clients?
By phone? No problem.
No, in person.
He lives in the valley. I did not want to go.
But he thinks he's dying -- he's thought that before. And the man he's spent his life with wants him to come out and called my friend.
"I'll send a car."
Yeah, you better because I'm not driving in the valley, let alone to it.
So he's an actor. Unlike some closeted actors and actresses, he can't insist his mother would be shocked -- his mother died long, long ago. How old is he? He's so old that ____ _____ once bearded for him back when she was a starlet -- a decade before she became a respectable actress and a winner of numerous awards.
He won an award too. Many, many decades ago.
He made a lot of movies.
He was like Orlando Bloom. He didn't really sell tickets but no one who went to the movies he was in felt like they'd been short changed. So he was more like Orlando Bloom than, for example, Josh Harnett.
He's been part of five classics -- one is a camp classic but it's a classic none the less. He was popular on the big screen but never a star. In TV, he'd finally become a star.
He's well over seventy and he won't step out of the closet. He's worried what people will think.
What people will think? Few thing of him today and even fewer know he's alive.
By the time the sixties ended, so did his pretense of dating actresses. By the 80s, the never married status should have registered.
No one's going to be appalled. Coming out would be seen as brave. And if he truly is on the end cycle (again, he's thought this before but he's edging ever closer to 100 so this could be it), coming out would mean he would make the In Memoriam reel at the Academy Awards broadcast. It would also mean renewed interest in his work. He hasn't played a role in a film or TV show in over two decades.
It would also mean that it would come out (his being gay) on his terms. He could give a few interviews as his life wound down (if he is indeed dying) and talk about what is was like coming up in Hollywood in the fifties. There would be tremendous interest for historical, sociological and media reasons.
The more we talked, the more obvious it was that nothing was going to happen re: his coming out. I offered to hook him up with Lily Tomlin because in our only conversation before this one -- a conversation that took place over 30 years ago -- he'd expressed that he was a fan of Lily Tomlin's and then, he leaned in, and sotto voice added, "I've heard she's gay." To which I replied, "You mean like you."
Is that why, all these years later, his former publicist had arranged this meeting? No. It was because, I was told by the actor, I was known for not sugar coating. That reputation's been there for years but it was when the Iraq War was about to start and I told off a roomful of big names as they tried to figure out how best to 'message' what was coming -- as opposed to standing up against it -- that the reputation really took hold. I didn't realize what a bitch I was considered -- and I'm fine with that. I did rip people apart -- fake ass, faux lefties who are held up as heroes by a public that doesn't know better. I don't regret a word I said (and I'm very grateful to the friend, a film director, who stood up and walked out of the room with me) and it was past time that someone said it to those fake asses.
Apparently, the actor feels the country has gone astray (it has) with one war after another and, as a veteran himself, he has loved hearing about that moment when I told off a bunch of fake asses. (It's rather notorious within the industry.)
I told him the truth. He can act on it or not.
Not only would it be good for his image -- coming out -- it would be good for others who need role models. The man's not had any scandals in his life -- no arrests for drug use or what have you. When people do think of him, they think of him fondly because he didn't wear out his welcome.
It would also be good because someone's going to talk after he's dead. Better he be the one to talk about it now.
Those two promotional photos above ran in the October, 1974 issue of Ms. magazine. Sue Cameron's "Police Drama: Women Are On The Case" opened with, "Not since Barbara Stanwyck starred in The Big Valley has a woman had the lead in a weekly dramatic series. This year Angie Dickinson and Teresa Graves have hit prime time as the leads of two police stories, Police Woman (NBC) and Get Christie Love (ABC)." The last new episode of The Big Valley aired in May of 1969. From then until September 11, 1974, when Get Christy Love debuted, there had been no female star of a TV drama. (Police Woman debuted September 13th.)
39 years later, NBC thought it was acceptable to unveil a fall season without one show -- sitcom or drama, 30 minutes or hour long -- that starred a woman?
The whole industry knew he was gay back when he working. He posed as straight when we met -- the Lily Tomlin line -- until he got that I already knew and that it wasn't a problem to me. When we met, there were still some men and women who would feel the need to pose as offended. And I say pose because a number of them were gay men and lesbians in the closet. In fact, there's a closet case just a little younger than Earl -- and still alive -- who always made it show of being upset when meeting someone gay. He's even written laughable books -- as a 'straight' man -- about things like Noel Coward coming on to him but we'll save that for another obituary -- I mean, I don't want to be thrown off the ship into the ocean.
One of the great things about being off Twitter is how rarely I have to hear about Glenn Greenwald anymore
— Michael Clear (@michaelclear.bsky.social) Nov 25, 2024 at 4:49 AM
Can't believe how fast this site is growing. Sharing a thread of my writing, starting with this piece on my Substack about last year's Rage Against the War Machine Rally. It's some of the most fun I've ever had writing.
— amanda moore 🐢 (@noturtlesoup17.bsky.social) Nov 17, 2024 at 8:59 PM
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— Morgan J Freeman (@mjfree.bsky.social) Nov 27, 2024 at 12:24 AM
Good. It’s horrific how other platforms abused their reach to strangle local, independent, and national outlets alike. I WANT to see news and actual vetted work and I WANT journalists to get rewarded for it. Because I want to live in a thinking human world over some AI generated slop dystopia
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) Nov 26, 2024 at 7:38 PM
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Common sense?
They have none which is how the meet-up happened.
But let's stay with the lack of common sense.
Alleged
pedophile and sex trafficker Matt Gaetz had to abandon his nomination
for Attorney General of the United States; however, please note this
came only after the disgusting foursome of Matt Stoller, Lee Fang, Ryan
Grim and Glenneth Greenwald championed and defended his nomination.
Glenneth,
a transphobe who hates lesbians as a class, went so far as to insist
Matt Gaetz had earned the right to be confirmed it on the issue of gay
rights alone. He Tweeted, "He was also the key figure in having Florida
repeal its ban on same-sex couples adopting (sorry, just facts)."
Glory Hole Glenn is always a liar. That wasn't a fact that he served up, it was a lie.
Glenneth knows his aged fan base swallows any lie he tells and he's no longer important enough for most to bother fact checking. He figured he'd get away with yet another lie.
"He was also the key figure in having Florida repeal its ban on same-sex couples adopting (sorry, just facts)."
What does that say to you? That statement implies that Matt Gaetz ending the ban on gay and lesbian couples adopting.
Lie. Lie. Lie.
Where to begin?
How about the fact that the ban -- pushed by Anita Bryant -- was not on same-sex couples. It was on any gay person.
What a stupid idiot.
He's always hated lesbians and that's why he missed March of 2002 when Rosie O'Donnell came out as a lesbian. Steve Rothaus (KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS) reported that month:
Rosie O'Donnell
learned last year that Florida is the only state that flat-out won't
allow gay people to adopt. That gays can become foster parents in the
Sunshine State, but not permanent adoptive parents.
The TV star and magazine editor -- who lives in Miami Beach with her partner and three children who were adopted in New York -- suddenly realized she would not be allowed to keep the 4-year-old foster daughter entrusted to her by the state of Florida.
"She will soon be adopted by friends of mine. I am not legally able to adopt this child, because I am gay," an outraged O'Donnell writes in the introduction to a book, Too High A Price: The Case Against Restricting Gay Parenting, to be published this week by the American Civil Liberties Union.
O'Donnell decided to out herself and join forces with the ACLU after reading about Steven Lofton and Roger Croteau, a Miami Beach couple fighting in court to adopt their three foster sons. On Aug. 30, 2001, a federal judge in Miami upheld a 1977 Florida law that prohibits gays and lesbians from adopting.
At
that same time, only one other state prohibited gay adoptions -- and
that was Mississippi -- but, pay attention Glory Glenn -- it prohibited
couples adopting -- gay couples -- it did not, like Florida did --
prohibit gay couples and an individual gay man or lesbian from adoption.
"He was also the key figure in having Florida repeal its ban on same-sex couples adopting (sorry, just facts)."
So Glenn the lousy lawyer was wrong -- he was wrong when he said the ban was on same-sex couples. No, you damn fool, you damn liar, the ban was on gay couples and on a single gay man adopting and on a single lesbian adopting. If you're too lazy to read the original law, you could refer to 2004's LOFTON V SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN & FAMILY SERVICES which argued that there was a difference between a single straight person adopting a child and a single gay person.
Glenn's a liar and a loser.
"B-b-b-but, Ava and C.I., he was right about Matt Gatez being key to the ban being repealed!!!!"
No. He was lying there as well. There are two more lies to cover. One is that Matt was key to the ban being repealed. He's referring to Matt adding an amendment to a bill in 2015. Now, more reality, though Matt has a 'son' who he 'adopted' that many in Florida have thought was his lover, Matt's no friends of LGBTQs and never was. The legislators who served with Matt that we spoke to noted that Matt didn't want the bill to pass -- the one he added the amendment to. He added it, we were told, at the last minute hoping to kill the bill and it almost did kill the bill in Florida's senate (Matt was in the lower chamber). It wasn't seen as a bill that was going to pass -- especially not as the senate received it three weeks before the end of their session..
So there's that lie.
But here's the big lie, Rosie and the ACLU brought the issue to attention in 2002. Matt acted in 2015. Guess what happened between those two events?
In 2010, the courts found the 1977 law to be unconstitutional and it was no longer enforceable (IN RE: GILL).
Oops!
Bitch slapped across his lying face.
You need to stop believing that Glenn tells the truth and you especially need to grasp that he never knows the law.
Common sense should have told you decades ago that Glenneth doesn't know the law but he sure knows how to lie.
Common sense is your friend. Learn to trust it.
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