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Sometimes when celebrities I interview won’t talk about gay—related issues, they reveal more than when they will. • Their most common reasons for declining are fear and apathy. In the latter category is Don Ameche, who recently appeared at Atlanta’s Harlequin Dinner Theatre. He takes a laissez-fairre attitude: “They’ve (gay people) never interfered with me and I’ve never interfered with them.” On the subject of gay rights: “I think I’m better off staying out of all that.” As far as he knows, Ameche says, he’s never played a love scene opposite a lesbian. Dick Cavett, who begins a nightly 30 minute talk show on PBS October JO, straddles the fence on most issues, calling himself a “political indepen dent.” In a nationwide press conference over closed-circuit TV, I asked him whether he would have Anita Bryant on his show and, if so, how he proposed to have an intelligent . conversation with her. “An intelligent conversationg with Anita,” he quipped, “would be a little one sided!... Anita once fixed my collar in the dressing room of the Merv Griffin Show; I won’t say what else she did.” Cavett described Bryant as “danger ous” but also said she’s “sincere, unfortunately, not a hypocrite” and suggested that “she might have an idea or two lurking there that might* have an intelligent base.” Otherwise, Cavett’s responses were basically pseudo-liberal non-committal: “I believe in equal rights for any group...Al though I find gay rights activism strident at times, they certainly deserve all the rights they can get.” Rock Hudson, who came through Atlanta in a dreadful summer tour of Camelot, fenced with reporters who tried to dig into his private life. To my direct question about his stand on gay rights, he gave a direct answer: “I don’t take a stand on anything.” November, 1977, The Barb — Page 5 : : * Star-Gazing by Steve Warren Shelley Berman Shelley Berman, the comedian who appeared at Atlanta’s. Midnight Sun Dinner Theatre last summer, also refuses to take a stand, for reasons he explains; but he lets his true feeling? be known. “I don’t give a damn about (gay rights),” he says. “If the movement is about denial of rights,” he adds in response to another question, “that’s where I’m at. I’m for everybody having their rights, but I’m not going to endorse any specific group.” He’s afraid, he elaborates, of alienating part of his audience and losing potential employ ment, if he expresses an opinion on a controversial issue. Later Berman relates an anecdote: ‘When I was in elementary school, we had one teacher who wore his hat too far over to one side — he wore a fedora — and he lisped slightly. No body knew what that meant and nobody gave a damn. All we knew is that he was the best teacher in our school and everybody wanted to be in his class!” But many celebrities are on our side and don’t mind saying so. When I talked to Marjoe , Gortner, evangelist turned ; movie star, he said he was booked on Good Moring, America the following week! and that Anita Bryant was supposed to be on the same day. “I hope I’m on right after her,” Marjoe said. “I’ve got it all worked out: I’ll come out and walk right- past her without looking at her, and then plant a big smooch on David Hartman!” Did anyone catch that show? I I’d like to know if it ever came about. Burt Reynolds is so open and sincere in expressing his feelings about equal rights and his contempt for Anita, I don’t know where to begin quoting him. Perhaps the most surprising thing he told me is that he thinks his large redneck following would be more likely to accept him playing a gay character than doing a love scene with a black woman. (He’s been offered a movie with Diana Ross, he says, and is still considering it because he thinks they’d be good together. Reynolds has some hilarious dialogue about gay athletes in his next movie, Semi-Tough, which open in November. Two actresses I’ve spoken with twice had some interesting, positive things to say about us. Kathryn (Mrs. Bing) Crosby was taken aback at a press conference when I pointed out some similarities between her and Anita Bryant: Both are red- . haired female entertainers borr. in the Southwest and raised in the Baptist church. Both were runners-up in beauty contests and both are seen selling orange juice on TV. Do they, I asked, 'have the same feelings about gay people? She was too startled — most of the previous questions had dealt with Bing’s gold game — to lie; and her response, though [disorganized, was a good one. t “I think love is the answer to everything,” she said, and went on to tell of a gay couple she had worked with in San Francisco who celebrated their anniver sary the same day as hers and Bing’s. “I think everyone in the whole world has full rights,” Crosby said. “I don’t feel I’m capable of condemning anyone’s lifestyle...” A month later she thanked for raising the question when , and how I did. It had been asked again “much less pleasantly” — in Ohio. Fred Williamson The only somewhat negative comment I’ve heard all year was from ex-football player Fred Williamson, who showed more ignorance than machismo when he said that gay athletes must be a recent phenomenon, because he never got groped in the locker room! Cloris Leachman demanded and got a retraction from the Atlanta Constitution because their reporter insinuated she was opposed to equal rights for igays. The Constitution reporter, who described me as “a long haired, male newsman who has made no secret of his support for the gay rights movement,” ■ thought she had witnessed the 1 opening shot of World War III, that Leachman had put her foot in her mouth and made a hasty i attempt to retrieve it. It’s significant that, of all the inaccuracies in a bitchy article that described her as “looking wrinkled and fiftyish,” the only thing Leachman wanted corrected was the implication that she might be in the Bryant camp. Leachman and I had discussed the subject- last year and I. was familiar with her views. When I caught the Californian drinking orange juice, I explained that we don’t touch the stuff in this part of the country. When I mentioned the sunshine sweetheart, Leachman started • raving about what a wonderful I thing Anita had done — ^meaning, as I understood and (she went on to explain that | she had united gays and spurred fus to fight for our rights.