Is Robert Wagner Gay? TV Star's Memoir Calls into Question His Sexual Orientation as He Tries to Spin $$$ Out of Tragedy

Autobiography Addresses Death of Natalie Wood

TV star Robert Wagner is making the rounds of the media outlets, thumping the tub for his new autobiography, Pieces of My Heart. In his memoir, the man known as "R.J. to family and friends (he was born Robert John Wagner in Detroit, Michigan in February 1930) dishes on his first marriage, divorce and remarriage to Natalie Wood. He also spins other tales, tall and short, about his so-called life before and behind the cameras. However, Wagner never does address the rumors that have plagued him since his career began more than 55 years ago, that he is homosexual.

The fey title of the memoir, Pieces of My Heart, does nothing to dispel the rumors, not his "revelation" that he had an affair with the legendary Barbara Stanwyck when he was a young man. Pieces of My Heart sounds more the title of a memoir by a Hollywood queen, in the sense of said queen being a woman, not a queer.

Among those in the "know" who follow the ups and downs of closeted "Friends of Dorothy" in Hollywood like those old Soviet hands in the CIA and State Department who practiced Kremlinology], Wagner's new memoir provides ammunition for those who claim he is an F.O.D. (F.O.D. 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.)

Robert Wagner is making capital out of his relationship with Natalie Wood, who died in mysterious circumstances a quarter-century ago. He had been dumped by his first wife Natalie Wood in the early 1960s, when she fell for the charms of Warren Beatty, her co-star in Splendor in the Grass (1961). Recalling his break-up with Wood that ended their first marriage, R.J. now claims that he waited outside of the house of Beatty, the young Hollywood heartthrob just making his name as one of Hollywood's greatest cocks men, armed with a pistol, ready to kill him, so distraught he was over losing his wife. Well, it's a good story and made many headlines.