Double Life

by Shayne, Alan; Sunshine, Norman; Nichols, Mike

• ISBN13: 9781936833023
• ISBN10: 1936833026
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-15
• Publisher: Magnus Books

Summary

Gay marriage is at the forefront of America''s political battles. The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life: A Love Story, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a 50 plus year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century. At the same time, they share inside stories from film, television and media featuring the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Truman Capote, Bette Davis, Robert Redford, Lee Radziwill and Frances Lear. "We both grew up at a time when homosexuality was not even spoken about," the couple writes. "There were certainly no books that could help a young person understand that two people of the same sex could build a happy, productive and loving life together. When we entered our 50th year, another same sex couple told us we were ‘an inspiration', so we began to feel we had the responsibility to make what we've experienced available to others. We also wanted to show people who were not gay that our life was not unlike theirs. We are all pretty much the same, so we deserve equal protection under the Constitution." Alan Shayne retired as President of Warner Brothers Television in 1986, following a career that included Broadway, playing opposite Lena Horne and spanned forty years. As a leading casting director, he worked on such films as Catch 22, All the President's Men and many others. At Warner Brothers, he shepherded such long-running television series as Alice, Night Court and The Dukes of Hazard. Norman Sunshine was a successful magazine illustrator in New York who went on to be a painter and sculptor whose works are in museums and in important collections. In the early years of his career, he was vice president, creative director of an advertising agency, and coined the phrase, "What Becomes a Legend Most?" as well as "Danskins are not just for Dancing." He interrupted his painting career when Frances Lear asked him to spearhead Lear's Magazine in the 1980s. Upon the two men meeting in New York in 1958, "We didn't want to live together," says Shayne. "We didn't have any examples of what a good love relationship between two men could be. And there was always the problem of hiding so no one would know we were gay. There was no question that if I were known to be gay, living with another man, it would make it more difficult for me to get work as an actor." As an artist, Sunshine was able to maintain a moderately out lifestyle. But when the first exhibition of his paintings in New York brought on a profile in The New York Times in 1968, he was photographed in the apartment that he admitted sharing with Shayne. At both his advertising agency and Shayne's television production company, the article was met with absolute silence. Even in the 1970s, when Sunshine won an Emmy for the graphics and title design he had created for one of Shayne's television productions, "Alan and I agreed it was not a good idea for us to be seen together at an industry event," he remembers. "Alan, after all, was one of the very few homosexuals who had such a powerful, high profile job, and who lived openly with a man. Homophobia had its adherents and some ruthless climber up the executive ladder would certainly love an opportunity to use it...'Better to be seen with a woman,' we were advised by a very trusted friend, ‘Makes everyone more comfortable.'" Happily, in 2008, the State of Massachusetts allowed the opportunity for the couple to be married on a beach in Nantucket. "We were like a long, empty, closed-up house where the windows have just been opened," writes Shayne. "The fresh air thrilled through us, and after years of only being who we were in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending. We were at last free." Double Life is a trip through the entertainment world and a gay partnership in the latter half of the 20th century. As more and more same sex couples find it possible to say "I do," the book serves as an important document of how far we've come.

Excerpts

Highlights from Double Life

• Lena Horne gave parties in her West End Avenue apartment frequently during the run of Jamaica, composed by Harold Arlen, in which Shayne understudied Ricardo Montalban. Horne graciously invited Sunshine to accompany him to the parties. But years later, Shayne went backstage to see Horne after her one- woman Broadway show and was greeted without any sign of affection. Rather, she berated him by saying, ‘Mr.Mogul…how come you never got me a job, Mr. Mogul?’”

• After Sunshine came up with the tagline for the Blackglama mink campaign, “What Becomes a Legend Most?”, the first ad featured Lauren Bacall and was photographed by Richard Avedon in 1960.

• Shayne edged out Marlon Brando for the lead in Twelfth Night while a student at the New School studying with Stella Adler. Brando got back at Shayne by playing bongo drums during his short time on stage in the minor role of a priest. “He ruined the production,” Shayne remembers.

• In 1961, Shayne went to work in David Merrick’s casting office. “I’ll never forget the first day I saw Barbra Streisand,” he recounts. “I watched as an unattractive girl, dressed in shapeless clothes a homeless person might wear, walked onto the stage chewing gum. She took the gum out of her mouth and parked it under the lid of the piano. The pianist played an introduction and the voice, that was to make history, sang Sleeping Bee.” Knowing that Merrick would never go for someone with her looks, Alan, his boss and the director Arthur Laurents conspired to cast her in I Can Get it for you Wholesale, her first Broadway show.

• Shayne cast a young unknown in Carnival, and when she went on for the lead, Merrick, not liking her looks, had her fired. She went on to become the opera star Julia Migenes.

• Working for David Susskind, Shayne was responsible for casting the television productions of Death of a Salesman with Lee J. Cobb and a young George Segal as Biff, A Case of Libel with Van Heflin, Hatful of Rain with Peter Falk, All the Way Home with Joanne Woodward and Look Homeward Angel with Geraldine Page.

• In one remarkable chapter, Shayne recounts his work on the Truman Capote television adaptation of Laura, starring Princess Lee Radziwill. Although she had no experience as an actress, Susskind insisted on building a production around her. Shayne suggested a remake of the famous movie. “They talk about her all the time but she doesn’t appear until a third of the way into the picture,” he said at the time, “and then all she has to do is just stand there and look enigmatic.” The terrible script submitted by Capote had most likely been written, Shayne determined, by a would-be-writer gas station attendant in Palm Springs with whom Capote had fallen in love. The cast included Robert Stack, Farley Granger and Arlene Francis, all of whom, Shayne writes, “had written off the Princess. They thought she was terrible but they had all decided to do their jobs and just get it over with.” Stack even asked that Radziwill be replaced by Elizabeth Taylor. Despite Susskind’s last-minute attempts with editing wizardry, Laura got devastating reviews.

• During his career in Hollywood, Shayne cast Barbara Feldon in Get Smart, created The Snoop Sisters with Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick, suggested Alice as a vehicle for Linda Lavin, signed Richard Chamberlain for The Thorn Birds and Katherine Hepburn for The Corn is Green with George Cukor directing, and championed Lynda Carter to play Wonder Woman. “The great thing that Lynda has is a sweetness,” he argued to the network at the time. “Her goodness will shine through and make the whole thing work.” Later, upon reflection, he writes, “As for sweetness and goodness, everyone changes with success and Lynda was no exception.” During that time, six of his television shows ran for more than five seasons: Alice, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Growing Pains, Head of the Class, Night Court and Dukes of Hazard.

• In 1983, Sunshine and Shayne’s Los Angeles House burned to the ground. Their neighbor across the street, Rock Hudson, insisted that they stay in his home while they re-built. While they were there, Hepburn and Cukor surprised Sunshine while he was painting in his studio, and insisted on a tour. They came by to purportedly inspect the fire damage, but he soon realized that what Hepburn really wanted was to see Rock Hudson’s house.

• “Rock’s goodness to us and our ensuing friendship gave us an unwanted privilege,” Sunshine writes. “We were on the list of friends who were permitted to visit him at UCLA Medical Center and watch him die of AIDS. It was a terrible time and we lost good friends, and more importantly, valuable human beings.”

• Shayne signed Bette Davis to work opposite Helen Hayes as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s Murder with Mirrors. The first day on the set, after Hayes greeted Davis, Davis replied, “Listen, we’re going to be here for days and there’s no point in wasting our breath saying ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’ every time we see each other. Let’s just do our work.”

• In 1988 Frances Lear, starting her eponymous Lear’s Magazine, called Sunshine out of the blue and said, “I have this gut feeling about you and I know you will be right for me. Get on a plane immediately and come talk to me.” Sunshine put down his brushes and flew to New York. This began a whirlwind year in which Sunshine totally re-designed the magazine. “It seems that Frances was a manic depressive,” he writes, “and held in a precarious emotional balance with lithium. I was one of her ‘high’ inspirations. And somehow, I was letting myself be taken on one of her trips.”