Customer Reviews (1)

Ho-Hum Hollywood (and Detroit, too)
As one who spent teens and college in Detroit, I was very familiar with Shirley Eder. Even (physically) bumped into her and Edward G. Robinson in the Impressionist rooms at the Detroit Institute of Arts once. She was such fun. But her chatty, name-dropping style simply does not wear very well. Ok for some nostalgia, especially when she makes Detroit area references, which she does a lot. But really, not much of a book. But then again, what was I expecting? Ruth Gordon's MYSELF AMONG OTHERS? Hardly. That is a masterpiece of this sort of writing. This was just mild fun. ... Read more

Product Description
Helps blow the cover off the gilded cage. It opens the closet door for a look at, and conversation with, ten gay men of the silver screen. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Let's be real
I think some reviewers here are having a tough time coming to terms with alternative sexual orientations.I bought this book for my son and he loved it.While he questioned the credibility of the author at times, he still enjoyed reading the background on some of Hollywood's notorious flamers.

Laughable, but not in a good way.
WOW. This guy should be ashamed to present this as even being remotely journalistic. No sources, no tapes and such outlandish, unbelievable dialogue that you are embarrassed for the writer. Cary Grant at 80 came on to this guy? Its so ridiculous its funny. Just one of the many obvious personal sexual fantasies the author shares with the reader. I'm sure many of these people he supposedly interviewed were gay or bi-sexual, but it's not proven in this book. If anything it's disproven by the mere fact that the author has such little to back him up that he has to resort to faking interviews and offering anonymous sources.

The most obvious example is the Cary Grant interview, but the rest are just as blatant. There is no way a private person like Grant would speak to a known liar like Boze, let alone discuss his homoosexuality with him, when he had sued Chevy Chase around the time of the interview for calling him a fag.

The book is a waste of money and time. There are great biographies out there that contain substantiated facts rather than gossip and lies.

More garbage from Boze
As a journalist myself, I can testify that Cary Grant never gave interviews, even for articles about him.When he HAD to give an interview, he managed never to say anything. So you can write off the Grant interview right away.No conceivable way would he EVER EVER have spoken to Boze Hadleigh.In fact, I can't see how anyone would.

Someone mentioned their curiosity as to why Hadleigh's interview subjects are always dead.Uh, libel laws.He doesn't want to be sued.As he surely would have been - just look at what Cary Grant did when Chevy Chase called him "queer."And here's Cary, talking to good old Boze and coming onto him.Right.

Boze joins Hector Arce and Charles Higham in that wonderful world of - hey, they're dead, let's say anything we want - even fake an interview.And don't ever forget their liberal use of anonymous sources.

We know in many cases that the men allegedly spoken to by Hadleigh were indeed gay.Some we suspected.Now, did these people speak to Hadleigh - knowing full well what he's about?Perhaps some did and just as perhaps, some didn't.

Why we can't love and admire these people for what they brought to us with their work, I don't know.Instead, people like Boze try desperately to out actors like Tyrone Power (I bring this up because Hadleigh works Romero mercilessly on the subject) and manage to overlook first person accounts of affairs with him, such as Mai Zetterling's "All Those Tomorrows," Lana Turner's "The Lady, The Legend, the Truth," Linda Christian's "Linda: My Own Story," and Gene Tierney's autobiography. But why listen to those liars when we have BOZE??? Before Boze, there was Whisper magazine, a Confidential ripoff, and they outed Ty -as fooling around with Anita Ekberg while he was married to Linda Christian.Strange, isn't it - Confidential would have outed Rock Hudson if his studio hadn't traded another story.Odd they never felt compelled to do that to Ty...hmm...Again, Power may have been bisexual, and I do think in Hollywood, there was a lot of that going around.But why tell Boze about it.

Consistently entertaining and revealing
The lengths people will go to to "defend" their favorite deceased stars from accusations about their private lives is laughable. All of the men profiled and interviewed in this book were long rumored or known to be gay -- it was the Hollywood studios, with their desire to keep their stars bankable, that cringed and worried the most about the truth getting out...along with the actors themselves wanting to maintain their livelihoods, of course.

How accurately Mr. Hadleigh was able to recreate/reconstruct the actual interviews (especially since notes and recordings were not always permitted, understandably) is open to debate.... but one CAN "hear" the subjects' voices speaking.They do NOT all sound the same, as one previous overheated reviewer stated. As for whether or not Cary Grant hit on the author, who's to say what type of man Mr. Grant was attracted to, especially at the age of 80?Anything is possible in this world!

I recommend this book as a great piece of entertainment, and a glimpse into the private thoughts of some openly gay and closeted icons.

Who knows?
I agree that it is hard to know whether to trust this book's veracity (I found the moment when Cary Grant hits on the author particularly hard to take).

But I'm more bothered by all the vitriol in these reviews, as though saying someone is gay is the worst thing in the world!There is a lot of evidence outside of this book that these actors were gay or bisexual, so it's not absurd to think they were.And certainly not an insult.

The book is a fun read, whether it's based on actual interviews or not."Hollywood Lesbians" seemed somewhat more believable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A touch of envy!
It's impossible to understand why such a very poorly written and long-winded diatribe could have made it to press. This book is no more than a collage of information, better written by biographers preceding Mr. Harris. Awful does not even begin to describe the book's lack of journalistic bearing. Barbed comments abound which instead of shedding light on the book's subject matter, seem to be included to ridicule its subject.

Instead of delving deeper into the life of Mr. Grant, belabors whatever industry gossip he unearths and uses this unsubstantiated information to propel paragraphs of his own personal musings. He poses rhetorical questions, which with a little bit of research on his part could have been answered factually, the rhetorical query causally becoming completely moot. ... Read more

Product Description
Drawing on interviews with his family, friends, co-stars and many others who knew him, the authors have pieced together the reality of Cary Grant's life, unearthing many new facts to reveal the truth behind the one of cinema's greatest, most secretive stars. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Dreadful
My disgust with this book is not its gossipy nature or its interest in Grant's sexuality. I loathe this book because the authors seem incapable of getting the basic facts straight. Statements of fact -- rather obvious things like the year of Grant's first visit to America -- are contradicted within the space of a few pages. Did these guys read each other's work? The whole thing is just a stupid, stupid mess. The authors should be beaten and their editor should be shot.

The only book I've ever thrown in the trash.

Old Gossip
Depending on whom you ask, you will be told that Cary Grant was homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual; that he was a hard drinker and occasional drug user or that he despised both; that he was a miser or that he was uncommonly generous; that he was an abusive husband or a remarkably tender lover; that he was disturbed to the point of psychosis or that he was the most level-headed man imaginable.And it is quite possible that he was indeed all these seemingly contradictory things at various points in his complicated life.

But rather than actually explore any of these subjects, Mosely and Higham simply rake up a lot old gossip and let it go at that--and what emerges is not so much a portrait of Cary Grant but the extreme lights in which Hollywood scandal mongers tended to regard him.This is Cary Grant according gossip columnists, intent upon enticing readers with tabloid accusations instead ofmaking any actual exploration of the nature of the man behind the movie image.Not recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

HORRIBLE
This book was so horrible that I stopped reading it after a few pages.It detailed a false view of Cary Grant.Speculations have always been around of Cary Grant as a homosexual, but no basis for fact has ever arisen, therefore you cannot include such details without their false sense of themselves in the book.The books STINKS and its not worth the paper that it is printed on!

A Dissappointment
This book is a dissappointment to say the least! With very little basis in any fact the book is presented negativly by the authors. Has a good title but is weak from beginning to to end.

Entheogens: Professional Listing
"Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy"http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy ... Read more