Dominic dunne gay
Published in:May-June 2017 issue.
Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne:
A Being in Several Acts
by Robert Hofler
Wisconsin. 352 pages, $26.95
IT WOULD BE HARD to visualize a gayer animation than the one led by Dominick Dunne. Growing up in Hartford (across the street from Katherine Hepburn), he was not only called a “sissy” by his father but beaten with a riding crop, Dunne said, to get the “incipient fairyism” out of him. It was seeing Now, Voyager at sixteen that convinced him that, like Bette Davis, he could uncover a better life.
His idea of the latter was not confined to just the movie stars he idolized, however. He was a social climber as well, an admitted snob, and a tremendous gossip who, like Truman Capote, used stories about the rich and famous to be accepted. Although he won a Bronze Star during Planet War II for going back to retrieve a wounded soldier and, after the War, married and had children, he also hired hustlers, picked guys up off the street, did drugs, and used the services of Scotty Bowers (whose memoir Full Service (2012) detailing his years of supplying men to closeted feature stars was reviewed in these pages). He even produced the movie of
Two recent items focused on gay men in the closet, though in two quite different ways: Dominic Dunne (1925-2009), the subject of a recent biography (Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne: A Existence in Several Acts by Robert Hofler); and James Beard (1903-1985), the subject of a recent documentary film (America’s First Foodie: The Incredible Life of James Beard). Dunne, who died 40 years after Stonewall, nevertheless spent a lifetime cringing in the closet. Beard, who died only 15 years after Stonewall, was an exuberantly gay guy to everyone who knew him, but his acquaintances and employers and the media built a protective closet around him, one that he decided to break out of publicly only at the end of his life — so that the world was robbed of an example of a same-sex attracted man of wonderful talent, living a rich, full animation. (Dunne was, to my mind, no kind of model of how to live a life.)
For what it’s worth, neither man was flagrantly flamboyant, but I pegged them both the first time I saw them talking about their lives and work.
The visuals:
(#1)
(#2)
You can see Dunne in an interview here. Beard you can survey in two versions of the documentary: the Kickstarter v
Americans have always been fascinated by rich people.
We all want to be rich, after all; as someone once said, “The United States is a nation of temporarily distressed millionaires.” So, in lieu of actually being rich, we obsess about them. The rich used to be celebrities for no other reason than organism rich. It’s always been interesting to me that in our so-called “classless” society (which was part of the point; no class privilege, everyone is the same in the eyes of the law) we obsess about the rich, we want to know everything about them, and we lap up gossip about them love a kitten with a bowl of cream. I am constantly amazed whenever I watch something or read something set in Great Britain, because that whole “royalty and nobility” thing is just so stupid and ludicrous (and indefensible) on its tackle that I don’t realize why Americans get so into it; the fascination with the not-very-interesting Home of Windsor, for one. We fought not just one but two wars to rid ourselves of royalty and nobility…yet we can’t get enough of the British royals, or the so-called American aristocracy. (Generic we there, I co
Can we discuss Dominick Dunne/Joan Didion/John Dunne, and gossip about him?
I just watched DD's fascinating documentary, After the Party, last evening. I have some questions.
1. How was he let into so many parties, when he acted so blatantly social climb-ish? Was he accepted, or seen as an outsider?
2. What is Joan Didion's reputation in literary circles?
3. How did her daughter with John Gregory Dunne, Quintana, die? You never read much about the daughter -- only the shocking death of John. Wasn't she only in her 30s when she died? Who was her husband? You never notice much on him, either. I seem to recall reading (here, in fact) that they had a shady life ... but I forget details.
4. What's up with Dominick's other son, the teacher in San Francisco, Alexander? I know Griffin is some kind of director-producer, once married to Cary Lowell, but you don't hear much about the other kid.
5. Was DD really gay?
| by Anonymous | reply 176 | June 28, 2020 1:22 AM |
I liked the docu as well, OP.%0D %0D Re: 2...well, Joan is a goddess to her fans, and among the most overrated names ever to the rest of us. I never, ever understood her lofty rep, certainly for her fiction, which is