Deep Inside the Hollywood Closet: Rumor Mill Implicates Paul Newman, Robert Wagner & Other Big Stars

Natalie Wood Reportedly Found Her Husband "R.J." With Another Man the Night She Died

The bisexual Burt Lancaster had nothing to do with this Hollywood crowd due to his own insecurities over his lack of education and due to a lack of consciousness when it came to the sexual politics these deviant divas engaged in. The type of people who would be abashed by a fart during the act of love didn't interest Burt.

Steve McQueen dropped out of The Sundance Kid & Butch Cassidy over the rumors about his own sexuality. (The Sundance Kid & Butch Cassidy was the original working title of the 1969 megahit. Newman -- who owned the property -- originally was slated to play Sundance, but after McQueen dropped out and Marlon Brando refused the role, he took the role of Butch. The name "Butch" has hyper-masculine connotations, so Newman might have switched roles as a joke, as the movie was written as a straight Western. Without warning, Newman changed it into a comedy, through his performance on the first say of shooting, according to director George Roy Hill. ) McQueen was afraid of being associated with the closet queen Newman, even if he was allowed to play "Butch," as he had supported himself as a call-boy in his early days as an actor in New York and Hollywood, where he was warily jealous of the openly bisexual James Dean, just as later, in 1960s Hollywood, he would be jealous of Newman. (McQueen was the son of a 16-year old prostitute, so whoring came natural to him.) As his first wife said in her autobiography, McQueen admitted he was leaving her to prove his manhood to those in Hollywood who thought he was a sissy, by taking other, younger women.

Paul Newman and Steve McQueen later co-starred in The Towering Inferno, though they shared very few scenes in the film. Three of their lesser co-stars were Robert Wagner (Newman's "friend"), Robert Vaughn (a friend of McQueen), and the homosexual Richard Chamberlain, who did not come out of the closet publicly until he was 70 years old. (Sadly, rumors of his being gay in the late '80s did hurt Chamberlain's career as the "King of the TV Movie.")

Charles Bronson dropped out of Hollywood movies in the late 1960s and went to Europe, where he became a star, not to get better parts, as was assumed, but to squelch the rumors about his own sordid past as a call boy. Unlike former Navy frogman Aldo Ray, whom had to consent to letting George Cukor blow him for his role in Woman of the Year, "Chuckles" Bronson had to deliver even more "service" to the great director to get his big break in the same flick.