Listen, I know a lot of gay men are prone to believing "everyone" else is gay -- or at least gay until proven otherwise. For whatever reason, I'm actually not that way. In fact, even when the world was screaming that Ricky Martin was gay, and Michael was insisting that he "used to see him holding hands with his boyfriend in Chelsea," I still rolled my eyes and assumed it was a bunch of gossip. (Oops. Chalk that up to the third time Michael's been right in the last dozen years!) So when a Queerty reader wrote so matter-of-factly about Olivia Newton-John's being gay -- and was quite irate about it because she needs to "stop treating her fans like idiots" -- I started to think he probably knew what he was talking about. Then I got an email from a reader who had looked into the subject a little deeper and I quickly had my doubts once again. Hollywood image or no Hollywood image: It's hard to imagine anyone going through this much trouble and getting this many people to live lies just to concoct a story of heterosexuality. Bonus points to my reader for citing two articles by trusted friends of mine!
Loving the blog as always, and looking forward to the arrival of the book in my mailbox.
Re: ONJ as bi/gay, I looked into this rumor quite thoroughly when I first bought Boze Hadleigh's "The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music World" in 1994. I temporarily believed the book and loved the idea of Olivia being lesbian or bisexual but have concluded the supposed interviews by Hadleigh are fake, and his reputation is dubious.
To be succinct I found that: Matt Lattanzi left Olivia for their daughter's nanny, Cindy Jessup, ten years his junior, in 1995, leading to his divorce from ONJ. He married Cindy and they divorced many years later after she left him -- one of Heidi Fleiss's hookers wrote a book and had a chapter titled "getting physical in Olivia's bed," as she took an acting class with Matt and had a fling with him in his marital home when Olivia was away. I really don't think Matt is gay. I recently read "Olivia: The Biography of Olivia Newton-John" by Tim Ewbank (2008), which is an interesting read and quite detailed about the relationships in Olivia's life, all of which were with men, starting with Ian Turpie in her teen years, and of course most recently, she married John Easterling. Before Easterling, her boyfriend Patrick McDermott famously disappeared during a 2005 fishing trip. -- Olivia was interviewed by the Advocate along with Del Shores in 2001 when they made "Sordid Lives" and she was questioned about the lesbian rumors, which she denied. I don't think she would take the lesbian role in "Sordid Lives" if she was closeted and paranoid -- also, your blog post has a short quote about her sexuality but the full interview can be found HERE, and I find it completely believable (in contrast, I think "Grease" co-star John Travolta is certainly gay or bisexual).
From HERE.
2 comments:
I once knew an Australian man who who was two years ahead of Livvy in high school. While pumping him for every last detail, I brought up the lesbian theory, to which he said, "Ha! Hardly. Her nickname in school was Tunnel Cunt."
What?
"Lots of guys drove through it."
I worked with "Boze Hadleigh," but always via mail and maybe (?) phone in the '90s. I don't know his real name. At the risk of mortally offending him, I have to say I do not believe his interviews were real, and I'm surprised that he was not sued if he asserted in THE VINYL CLOSET that Olivia said she was bi or gay. There are so, so, so many "too good to be true" interviews that he conducted...and they weren't taped. Case in point: Sal Mineo. He allegedly did an interview with him, but Mineo's surviving partner told me all of the circumstances of the interview were completely unbelievable. I don't think Hadleigh can be upset if people question him...he basically always said he was young and cute and that's why everyone talked...
Post a Comment