Was Paul Newman Gay?

Movie Legend's Links to Gore Vidal, Robert Wagner & Tom Cruise Beggars the Question: Was He a "Friend of Dorothy"?

Hollywood legend Paul Newman passed away in the same week that his friend and erstwhile co-star Robert Wagner was out on the media trial thumping the tub for his new biography, which if the Internet rumor mill is to be believed, is a smokescreen obscuring his firm credentials as a "Friend of Dorothy." FOD is a moniker hung on male homosexuals, those both in and out of the closet, the "Dorothy" referred to being the gal from Kansas by way of Oz assayed by Judy Garland, an icon to gay me in the post-World War II period.

Was Paul Newman an "FOD"? Well, he did share the Three-Faced Eve, Joanne Woodward, in the late 1950s with FOD Gore Vidal. When the married Newman met and fell in love with Woodward, he was married to his first wife and she was engaged to Vidal, the novelist cum screenwriter. Newman, Woodward and the then bisexual Vidal, a switch hitter still whacking at balls from both sides of the plate who would soon father a child with a gal pal before firmly ensconcing himself in the gay camp in the 1960s,lived as a happy threesome for a while.

Paul, Joan and Gore remained close throughout the '60s, at least. During the 1968 Presidential election, ABC News featured Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. as commentators. Buckley, incensed at being called a "crypto-Nazi" by Vidal, threatened to punch the man he denounced as a "queer." Paul Newman allegedly threatened to return the favor, should William F. strike.

Speaking of violence, according to The Daily Mail, an English newspaper, Paul Newman allegedly beat up his first wife, Jackie Witte, for questioning his masculinity. "An unauthorized biography alleged he had even beaten his wife when she taunted him with rumours of a gay relationship with his homosexual friend James Dean."