Williams drew some of his most powerful images from his boyhood hometown in the Mississippi Delta, where an annual festival now celebrates the city’s role in Williams’ award-winning stories.

The name Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire” belonged to a friend of Williams’ mother in Clarksdale. Brick, the alcoholic athlete played by Paul Newman in the 1958 film, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” was the name of a local boy who bullied Williams while he was student at Oakhurst Elementary.

The Tennessee Williams Festival, produced by Coahoma Community College, begins Friday and features a Stella shouting contest, acting competitions, porch plays and panel discussions about Williams and his life in Mississippi. A BBC documentary of last year’s festival will be aired. Producer Carmel Lonergan said it shows links between Williams’ upbringing and surroundings and many of his dramas.

The Clarksdale gathering is one of several Tennessee Williams festivals held around the nation each year. Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis performed at one early in September in Columbus, the eastern Mississippi city where Williams was born in 1911. The 24th annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is next March. A Provincetown, Mass., festival on Williams was held last month.

The playwright – born Thomas Lanier Williams – lived as a child in Clarksdale with his maternal grandparents, The Rev. Walter Dakin and his wife, Rose. The locals say Williams would go on parish calls with his grandfather, and often heard church gossip and colorful tales in the early 1900s.

“Tennessee was just fascinated by the Clark family and the Cutrers,” Coahoma College spokeswoman Panny Mayfield said, referring to two prominent Clarksdale families. “The Cutrers were very flamboyant people. Their home was a mecca for international people. They had masked balls and elaborate house parties. We’re talking about cotton money.”

Mayfield said J.W. Cutrer was a successful lawyer, and his wife’s name was Blanche.

The St. George’s Episcopal Church, where Williams’ grandfather once served as priest, still stands, as does Cutrer Mansion, where masked balls inspired imagery in some of the writer’s plays, as well as the fictional home Belle Rive in “Streetcar.”

Stella Connell Salmon, 80, never met Williams, but she knew his grandfather, who often visited Clarksdale after he left the rectory. Salmon, who has participated in previous panels, said she always wondered why Williams never used her mother’s name, Thankful, in some of his work.

“He used so many local names. I always felt he slighted her,” Salmon said.

The morality conflicts woven through Williams’ plays are believed to have roots in his years living in the rectory, said Mayfield. Williams, who was openly gay, once said it wasn’t until he moved to New Orleans that he was able to “live freely,” she said.

Even after Williams moved away he kept up with the goings-on in Clarksdale, Mayfield said.

One of the highlights this year will be actor Johnny McPhail’s portrayal of the disenchanted traveling shoe salesman from “The Last of My Solid Gold Watches.”

McPhail, who starred in “Ballast,” a Sundance Film Festival winner in 2008, said Williams’ stories are true to Southern culture.

“It’s like he was writing about me. I know the language. If you read it the way it is written, you can’t help but say it with a Southern dialect,” said McPhail, who lives in Oxford, Miss.

The play takes place at Clarksdale’s Alcazar Hotel, where Williams’ grandfather lived for a spell after serving as St. George’s rector for 16 years.

“It’s the ‘Death of a Salesman’ in the Mississippi Delta,” McPhail said.

Clarksdale has become a kind of training ground for thespians involved in revived productions of Williams’ plays, said Mayfield.

British actress Ruth Wilson spent time here to prepare for her role as Stella in a West End production of a “Streetcar” that’s still running. Mayfield took Wilson, a Golden Globe nominee, to Cutrer Mansion, Moon Lake, and the Delta plantation homes. Mayfield said actress Frances O’Connor, who played Maggie in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” also was given a tour of the area several years ago.

Local diction coaches gave them tips on how to talk Southern.

“They sat around on the floor and listened to her say some lines,” Mayfield said. “They would say, ‘No you don’t say it like that.’ It was a fun thing. They were having a great time.”

Jones knew at an early age that she was gay. She grew up in Paris, Tenn., a small town, where she knew it would be difficult to come out.

She also knew very early that she wanted to be an actress. Jones studied at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and later at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.

She made her Broadway debut in the late 1980s, earning her first Tony nomination in 1991 for her role in Our Country’s Good.

In 1993, she starred in And Baby Makes Seven, a play where in her role as a lesbian, she kissed another woman. Audiences were shocked and the production flopped.

In 1995, her career picked up when she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in The Heiress. During her speech, she thanked her then-partner, Mary O’Conner, a move that received much criticism in her hometown of Paris, Tenn. Nationally she was praised. She became the first openly lesbian to win a Tony Award. She now has multiple Tony Awards and is partnered with actress Sarah Paulson.

And, although her passion lies on the theater stage, Jones’ other landmark roles have been on the big screen in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) ,Erin Brockovich (2002), and on television in the Lifetime movie What Makes a Family (2001), and a recurring role in the drama series, Clubhouse.

Cherry Jones  recently won her first Prime Time Emmy Award for her supporting role in 24.

The question takes on cosmic – and very real significance – when “Avenue Q,” the funny, often raunchy musical tribulations of twentysomethings, closes Sept. 13 on Broadway after a six-year run of more than 2,500 performances.

For Kate Monster, a teacher by trade, maybe a return to education. “This is a great chance for me to bring up a whole new generation of little monsters who can change the world,” the puppet says. Or Rod, a gay Republican, who’s looking for a something a little more personal: “I don’t have a steady relationship now, but I am on the prowl.”

As for Lucy the Slut, she has, uh, divided, if not exactly specific, aspirations. “I like the idea of being able … to give to humanity and mankind in whatever way you can,” explains the show’s freest spirit, red press-on nails gleaming. “You’ve got to work your assets.”

As for the human contingent involved in “Avenue Q,” the final curtain is even more bittersweet, although filled with proud accomplishment.

“My heart is a little bit broken although we do have a (licensed, non-Equity) tour going out for 35 weeks in the fall,” Robyn Goodman, one of the show’s producers, says. “It will keep the show alive across the country.”

For Jeff Marx, who co-wrote the music and lyrics with Robert Lopez, “It so far exceeded anything that we could have dreamed of – many times over.” And the monetary rewards haven’t been bad, either.

“‘Avenue Q’ let me put a lot of money in the bank,” Marx says. “I have the security of never having to wonder where my next meal is coming from, which has been a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it’s a lovely sense of security. But … it was a lot easier when my motivation was fed by hunger.”

The musical, which opened on Broadway in July 2003 after an off-Broadway run earlier that year and went on to win three Tony Awards including best musical, has done well for its producers and its creators, who also include book writer Jeff Whitty.

The Broadway production, capitalized at $3.5 million, recouped its investment in 10 months. As of now, it has grossed more than $119 million – a 553 percent return on its investment, according to Goodman. Not included in that figure is income from the still-running London production or the first tour of “Avenue Q,” which ended last May.

And community theaters and amateur groups will soon be able to rent the show, most likely before the end of the year, Goodman says.

One of the musical’s many beneficiaries has been the small off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre, where the musical first was presented in early 2003. It was one of two nonprofit theaters – the other being the New Group – which came aboard as producers.

“The show absolutely helped raise our visibility,” says Jennifer Garvey-Blackwell, the Vineyard’s executive director.

“It still does and we’ve done a lot of musicals since then,” she adds, such as “Miracle Brothers” and “title of show.”

The idea for “Avenue Q” was born where many musical-theater ideas seem to germinate – the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop for would-be writers of musicals.

Goodman went to a presentation of three songs – two of which still remain in the show – written by Marx and Lopez that also included puppeteer Rick Lyon.

“I just fell in love with it,” she recalls. “And I approached them and at the time they were trying to do a TV show” with the material. The television version never happened. Eventually, with producers Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller aboard, the musical finally was birthed.

“But we went through many permutations,” Goodman explains. “We had to change script writers at one point. We went up (in 2002) to the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (in Waterford, Conn.), which was a wonderful place to develop it. We really took a big step forward. … That’s when we thought we could actually head toward a New York production.”

The producers weren’t sure what kind of reaction to expect from the subscription audience at the Vineyard, a small off-Broadway theater just east of Union Square. Would they accept puppets, as well as human actors, saying and singing four-letter words?

“I think it was like a week into previews that Jeffrey Seller and I turned to each other and said, ‘Oh my God. Maybe this is a Broadway show,’” Goodman says. “We didn’t want to say it out loud because we assumed it was an off-Broadway show because of the content. Clearly things have changed since then. But at the time, it was a pretty daring move.”

The right Broadway theater – the intimate, 800-seat Golden – contributed to the small show’s success, Goodman says, as did word of mouth, particularly among younger people.

“One thing we’ve learned is young people have to find things themselves – you can’t really sell to them,” the producer says. “So we had a lot of people come during previews for either free or reduced prices. And they spread the word.

“To this day, when I go to the show, it’s really wonderful because it’s a split audience. There are the tourists and there are the young people – and many of them seeing it for the fifth and sixth time, which I love.”

For the show’s actors, “Avenue Q” has been a monumental experience. Says Ann Harada, who plays Christmas Eve in the musical, “The greatest job I ever had.”

Harada has been with “Avenue Q” from its first readings, going on to off-Broadway, Broadway and the London production before leaving the show. When the producers asked her to come back this summer and help finish the run, she jumped at the chance.

“This is a great company and people always are finding new and different things with the characters,” Harada says. “But also, what’s weird is that you are acting with ghosts … you’re doing the scene with an actor on stage and you’re also sort of reliving doing the scene with all the other actors you’ve done it with.”

Harada has no other jobs lined up after Sept. 13, unlike Jennifer Barnhart, who will go into the Goodspeed Musicals’ puppet-friendly production of “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter,” running Dec. 5-Jan. 3 in East Haddam, Conn. It’s based on the children’s book and Henson’s television special, “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.”

Barnhart, who has handled such diverse “Avenue Q” puppets as Kate, Lucy, Mrs. T and Bear, has stayed with the show throughout its long run, only taking time off here and there for projects such as working on the PBS musical education series for young children, “Lomax, the Hound of Music,” in which she handles a white cat puppet named Delta.

Now, the humans and the puppets are getting ready for closing-night festivities where a few tears may be shed. But not by Lucy the Slut.

“The party is going to be pretty wild,” Lucy predicts. “We’re going to tear the roof off the joint completely. I heard there is going to be a pole, so I can do some dancing. Again, giving back. It’s all about giving back.

“And I’ve already got a gig at Scores,” the puppet revealed. “In these economic times, there are three industries that never close: hair salons, movie theaters and strip clubs.”

The mammoth, two-part drama by Tony Kushner will be presented by the Signature Theatre Company during its 2010-2011 season as part of a yearlong celebration of the playwright.

Artistic director James Houghton (HOW’-tuhn) says the play’s two parts, “Millennium Approaches” and “Perestroika” (payr-ehs-TROY’-kuh) will be performed in rep.

No casting was announced, but the play, a tale of AIDs in the Age of Reagan, will be directed by Michael Greif (GRYF), who also directed “Rent” and “Next to Normal.”

The Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels” was first seen on Broadway in 1993 and later was made into an HBO film starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep.

Kushner, who hadn’t yet decided what to write about, responded with a mouthful of a title that had been knocking around in his head for more than a decade: “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures.”

“Joe Dowling needed a title, and I figured well, I can make this play about absolutely anything and somehow or another, that title will carry it,” Kushner said sipping a late afternoon cappuccino during a break from a hectic rehearsal schedule for the new play.

The new play is about “sexuality, and the housing market, and religion, and Marxism, and stuff like that,” Kushner said. “It’s a very complicated text, so I don’t know how to explain it beyond that.”

A new work from the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning dramatist behind “Angels in America” is an event in American theater and a coup for the Guthrie. Long a leader in America’s regional theater scene, the Guthrie moved to expensive, sprawling new digs along the Mississippi River in 2006, and its leaders were looking for the right moment to turn over its three stages and ample public spaces to celebrating the work of a single dramatist.

Dowling said Kushner was his first choice as “the pre-eminent dramatist of our time.” Kushner signed on, he said, out of allegiance to the regional theater movement that helped spark his own career – “Angels” debuted in San Francisco before moving to Broadway.

Thus was born the Guthrie’s “Kushner Celebration.” Besides the new play, it includes a two-month production of his musical “Caroline, or Change,” the staging of a series of his short plays dubbed “Tiny Kushner,” and panel discussions, speeches and seminars on his work. You can even buy T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Intelligent Homosexual” in the Guthrie gift shop.

It’s quite a salute to a playwright whom Dowling called “not really a household name. Hopefully, we can help change that.”

Kushner hasn’t debuted a finished new play since the Tony-nominated “Caroline, or Change” in 2002, though he’s been plenty busy.

He won an Emmy Award for adapting “Angels” into a six-hour miniseries for HBO in 2003, co-wrote the Steven Spielberg film “Munich” and has been working on another script for an upcoming Spielberg film about Abraham Lincoln. He worked on adaptations and translations of other playwrights’ works, and always a vocal leftist, took up passionate criticism of the Bush administration.

But once Kushner signed on with the Guthrie, he actually had to sit down and write a new play.

Kushner copped the wordy title from a book he found among his late grandmother’s things after she died in the early 1990s: “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism,” written in 1928 by the playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw. It served as a nice jumping-off point for a new play that’s about people losing faith in the beliefs and personal relationships that once anchored their lives – themes Kushner said resonate more personally as he’s gotten older.

“This is a play about how you proceed when all the old theories have failed,” said Kathleen Chalfant, one of the stars of “The Intelligent Homosexual” and an “Angels in America” veteran.

Set in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood over one long weekend in 2007, “The Intelligent Homosexual” is about three Italian-American siblings – two of them gay – who gather to deal with their suicidal 75-year-old father, a longtime widower and retired union longshoreman who’s watched his leftist belief system rendered irrelevant over the years.

Chalfant plays the old man’s sister, a former Carmelite nun who got swept up in revolutionary South American politics in the 1980s, and now lives and works among the poor in a New Jersey housing project. Two other Kushner vets, Stephen Spinella (”Angels in America”) and Linda Emond (”Homebody/Kabul”) play two of the three children.

“On one hand it’s a very psychological family drama that’s about how siblings relate, how they vie for the attention of parents,” said the play’s director, Michael Greif, another longtime Kushner associate. “And then on the other hand it’s about people who have lost their way in the world, who’ve come unmoored from the things they relied upon in a radically changing world.”

It’s also Kushner’s first real “gay play” since the landmark “Angels in America,” a sweeping epic about AIDS, the closet, religion, politics and yes, angels, that debuted on Broadway in 1993. The gay rights movement has seen setbacks but also big advances since “Angels” first debuted, some just in the last few weeks as several states in quick succession legalized gay marriage either through the courts or the legislature.

Kushner, now 52, has also seen his life change a lot in that time. He started writing “Angels” around the time he came out of the closet, and today has been with his partner for more than a decade. They exchanged wedding vows in 2004, but as New York residents have not yet been able to legally marry.

“We’ve seen unbelievable gains in an unbelievably short time, and against the terrible odds of AIDS, which was a catastrophe on so many levels that might easily have dismantled an embattled social movement,” Kushner said.

Kushner, whose outspoken liberalism has prompted him to call conservatism a “thought disorder,” said he’d prefer that gay marriage be implemented nationwide by a Supreme Court ruling rather than “having to fight this thing state by state for the next 10 years.”

As for links between “The Intelligent Homosexual” and “Angels in America,” Kushner said they share some themes but that the new play is more intimate and less filled with “liberational energy.” It’s shorter, too, running just a little more than three hours.

“This is a much more middle-aged play,” said Kushner. “I think because of things that are happening in my own life – an aging father, aging friends and my own aging body – it seemed like it was the right moment for this.”

So about that title. “There is something kind of ridiculous about it,” he said. But in the term “Intelligent Homosexual” he sensed an interesting contradiction between the mind and the body.

“Everybody has trouble thinking their way through sex and thinking about sex and the way the body expresses itself and gets and gives pleasure,” Kushner said. “The relationship of intelligence to pleasure and life, which is not an easy relationship, is something I was interested in exploring.”

Drama advisor Ron Martin tells the Los Angeles Times that principal Fal Asrani ordered him to drop “Rent” because of its gay characters.  Asrani disputes Martin’s claim.  She says she only asked to see the script.

“Rent” tells the story of a group of struggling artists in New York City, several of whom are gay.

Martin tells The Times that he chose the story to teach tolerance after hearing students use gay slurs.

“My responsibility as a drama teacher is to expose my students to a variety of different types of plays,” Martin told The Times.

He also said that he removed a portion of the script that showed a sex scene between two of the gay characters and that he discussed the production with Asrani before assigning it.

Further, he asserts that at a recent meeting with Martin and a representative from the teachers union, Asrani said the production could not go on and that she needed to review the script because of “prostitution and homosexuality.” There is no prostitution in the musical.

Asrani tells The Times she did not order the play cancelled and never received a copy of the script.

Dana Black, president of the Newport-Mesa Board of Education, said that the district does not shy away from edgy subject matter, and, “we don’t want anybody feeling alienated.”

In the meantime, Martin said he replaced “Rent” with “Charlie Brown” because it “is safe.”

Scott Eckern stepped down from his job at the California Musical Theater in Sacramento after some gay activists called for a theater boycott.

He said he is leaving “after prayerful consideration to protect the organization and to help the healing in the local theatergoing and creative community.”

Eckern said he “chose to act upon my belief that the traditional definition of marriage should be preserved” but had no idea his contribution would generate such controversy. He said his sister is a lesbian in a domestic partnership, which he understands to carry the same legal rights as marriage.

The boycott calls – led by artists including “Hairspray” composer Marc Shaiman – began after activists learned Eckern contributed $1,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. Last week, voters approved Proposition 8, which changes the constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Lisa West, regional spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Eckern is a member “in very good standing” and the Mormon church supports his decision to resign.

Fred Karger, the founder of Californians Against Hate, which was created to publicize donors to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign, said he was not involved in the theater boycott effort and was saddened that Eckern resigned.

“That’s not good news, but there’s going to be a lot of fallout from this (gay marriage ban),” Karger said. “Of course, a lot of lives were ruined on the other side.”

He said his Web site has received thousands of visits from those tracking Yes on 8 contributors.

Ron Prentice, chairman of the Yes on 8 campaign, issued a statement criticizing gay marriage supporters who “cherish tolerance and civil rights (but) are unabashedly trampling on the rights of others.”

The theater company, Sacramento’s oldest arts organization, said it is not involved in political issues but doesn’t interfere with employees’ rights to express their views. The company issued a statement thanking Eckern for his 25 years of service.

Eckern was the company’s chief operating officer and its artistic director since 2002. The company produces Sacramento’s annual Music Circus and plays at Broadway Sacramento and the newly opened Cosmopolitan Cabaret.

Broadway said goodbye Sunday to “Rent,” 12 years and 5,124 performances after it first became a rock musical with a message for theatergoers of all ages.

“Like we did when we opened, we dedicate this performance to Jonathan Larson,” said actor Adam Kantor, referring to the man who wrote the show’s book, music and lyrics.

Then “Rent” was off and running toward its final curtain that had the last cast as well as members of its original company together on stage at the end of the evening to sing an electric version of “Seasons of Love,” one of the show’s best-known songs.

“There’s mixed emotions, but it’s time,” said Allan S. Gordon, one of its producers, talking about the closing.

The show, book was born off-Broadway in triumph and tragedy. Larson died of an aortic aneurism after its final dress rehearsal in January 1996. He was 35.

“It was the most shocking thing,” Gordon recalled. “I still can’t believe Jonathan is dead. All you need is one (big hit), and he had that. I don’t miss what he didn’t write. I feel bad that he isn’t here to enjoy what he did.”

Larson’s tale of free-spirited artists and street people in a gritty drug- and AIDS-plagued East Village of the early 1990s touched several generations.

Rave reviews propelled “Rent” to Broadway where the musical opened the following April at the Nederlander Theatre, a house often shunned by producers because it was on the wrong side of 42nd Street.

The show, inspired by Puccini’s “La Boheme,” found a ready-made audience in young people. Its fanatical supporters were nicknamed “Rentheads,” and many of them saw the show after the musical instituted a same-day, front-row ticket price of $20. The plan proved so popular that it was changed to a lottery format to accommodate the demand.

Yet the show’s fans were more than just young theatergoers.

“It’s 80 percent the traditional audience,” Gordon explained. “‘Rent’ was not defined by age. It attracted a wide spectrum of people. People of all ages love it. That’s why it survived.”

Survived and thrived – winning Tonys, Obies and the Pulitzer Prize for drama as well as grossing more than $280 million during its Broadway run. Millions more were made from national tours and foreign productions that performed on six continents. A film version, using much of the original cast, was released in 2005.

All Broadway shows have a finite life, a beginning and, no matter how successful, an end. Even “Cats” closed, and, one day, so will “The Phantom of the Opera.” But what made “Rent” stand out and be embraced by so many people?

“In my mind, it’s simply the message,” said Gwen Stewart, a member of the original cast and the performer who came back for the final performances.

“‘Rent’ speaks to people’s hearts,” Stewart said. “There is a universal truth that I think everyone can identity with: Living today to the fullest because you don’t know if tomorrow will be promised to you. Live. Love. Laugh. We have all gone through loss. Not necessarily AIDS-related, but everyone loses someone at some point.”

Rodney Hicks, another original cast member, agrees.

“‘Rent’ is about love and learning how to love – under whatever circumstance,” he said. “And learning how to accept that love. And loving unconditionally. The commonality in the show is the universal language of love that everyone can relate to. That’s why the show has translated so well into other languages, into other countries.”

Hicks, who first met Larson in 1995 when he was 21, had a small role in the original production and says he grew up with the show. Now he is back in the musical, in a bigger part, portraying Benjamin J. Coffin the landlord, the role originated by Taye Diggs.

“I had always wanted to play Benny,” he recalled. “At the time, I looked like I was 14, 15 years old. When you are 21, you don’t realize how young you actually look – or are. … Now, at 34, I’m actually old enough to play the character.”

Hicks said Sunday’s closing gives the Broadway production “a feeling of completeness.”

But it’s not the end of “Rent,” according to Gordon.

Another tour starts in January for some 30 weeks with several members of the original cast. Plus a new cinecast of “Rent,” filmed in High-Definition video by Sony Pictures during the musical’s last performances, will be shown in movie theaters in the United States and Canada for four days (Sept. 24-25 and Sept. 27-28). Check http://www.thehotticket.net/rent for locations.

“‘Rent’ is recorded for history, so it’s not like it’s disappearing off the map,” Gordon said. “Hmmm, maybe I should bring back a revival next year.”

The Yankees versus the Dodgers. Subways versus suburban sprawl. Hot dogs versus hummus. New York and Los Angeles are opposites in many ways.

Including, it is said, the way two of these town’s most famous entertainment industries — theater in New York, and TV and movies in Los Angeles — treat their openly gay and bisexual actors.

In the anything-goes world of theater, they say, it’s all about the work. But while the creative folks in the Hollywood movie and TV industry may be just as open-minded as their New York counter-parts, the financial stakes are higher — and they’re producing entertainment for more than just a liberal New York audience.

According to the conventional wisdom, this has made them far less accepting of actors who are out to the general public.

But is the conventional wisdom true? And even if it is, how have things changed in recent years?

In looking for answers, AfterElton.com turned to insiders in both New York and Los Angeles, as well as out TV and theater actors including Chad Allen, Mad Men’s Bryan Batt, Cheyenne Jackson, and Christopher Sieber.

City of Illusions

For decades after its founding as the movie capital of the world, there were no openly gay actors in Los Angeles.

“We live in such a different world today when everyone knows [about gay people],” says David Ehrenstein, author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood, 1928-1998.

“In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, “’gay’ was not talked about anywhere, ever, publicly. But if you were gay in show business, you were a hell of a lot better off than if you were a clerk back in Sheboygan. People worked at the studios all day, then they went home and lived their lives and no one bothered them.”

There were definitely arranged marriages and fake opposite-sex “dates” for gay actors, Ehrenstein says, but these were for the public’s benefit, not the Hollywood community, which practiced an early form of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In the 1960s and 70s, flamboyant comedians such as Rip Taylor, Paul Lynde, Alan Sues, and Charles Nelson Reilly camped it up on television, displaying what seems, in retrospect, to be obviously stereotypically “gay” characteristics. But none of these actors were openly gay — Nelson Reilly finally came out a few years before his death in 2007 — and most of Middle America perceived them to be colorful eccentrics, not “gay” per se.

“Paul felt stigmatized by the industry about being gay,” Steve Wilson, one of the authors of Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story, told Salon.com. “He got very fed up with [Hollywood Squares] and after a while, through a combination of the writers getting more risqué as the ’70s wore on and Paul not caring one way or the other, he gradually let his guard down. Eventually, his gayness became incredibly obvious. His jokes came straight from gay culture, but mainstream America back then had practically nil exposure to that world.”

Everything changed in 1985, when Rock Hudson, formerly one of the biggest movie stars in the world and a strapping, supposedly heterosexual heartthrob, died of AIDS and was subsequently revealed to have been gay — something widely known in Hollywood circles.

“A big beloved star has his secret come out,” Ehrenstein says. “Everyone suddenly was given leave to discuss the idea of being closeted in Hollywood. That was the start of it, when the dam burst. You could no longer talk of ‘gay’ as this secret, shameful thing.”

Few Hollywood celebrities voluntarily came out in the years that followed — though British actors Ian McKellen and Rupert Everett were exceptions to that rule, coming out in 1988 and 1989, respectively.

Meanwhile, other gay actors were outed. Thorn Birds hunk Richard Chamberlain was revealed to be gay in a French magazine in 1989, though he didn’t actually come out until his 2003 autobiography, Shattered Love, in which he writes that he felt it necessary to stay closeted to protect his career. (Chamberlain declined to speak with AfterElton.com.)

Next Page! Those tabloid rumors about Kevin Spacey!