OUT IN PRINT

Apparently Frank Langella Was Catnip To Gay Celebrities

Actor Frank Langela has just published his memoir, Dropped Names, and, appropriately, its filled with anecdotes about famous co-stars, friends, lovers and enemies.One of the more interesting elements of the book, according to a review in the New York Times, is how alluring the young Langella, a rising star on Broadway and Hollywood, was to other well-known men.

ā€œOn Cape Cod, NoĆ«l Coward hits on him in the presence of President and Mrs. Kennedy. In Arizona, filming a TV remake of ā€œThe Mark of Zorro,ā€ Yvonne De Carlo (better known as Lily Munster) plays Langella’s mother by day, and by night treats him ā€œlike a pretty girl in the back seat of a convertible on a hot summer night.ā€

In the south of England, on location for ā€œDracula,ā€ Langella flashes Laurence Olivier through the doorway of their adjoining suites, calling, ā€œOh professor, see anything you like?ā€ He and Jill Clayburgh come ā€œdangerously close to a tumble,ā€ and backstage they and Raul Julia become ā€œa pulsating Oreo cookie with nothing remotely chaste about where our hands and mouths wandered.ā€ The book’s subtitle should be ā€œBad Girls Go Everywhere,ā€ although Langella is no girl—as Anthony Perkins rather bluntly attempts to verify one night in a dressing room.ā€

Though heterosexual—and famously attached to Whoopi Goldberg—Langella isn’t above admiring the ā€œcarefree, rangy masculinityā€ of Robert Mitchum, the ā€œdevotion to physical pleasureā€ of director Roger Vadim and the ā€œoriginal and mesmerizingā€ beauty ofĀ  Paul Newman.

Was Langella the James Franco of the 1960s and 70s?

Reviewer Ada CalhounĀ  describes Names as celebratingĀ  ā€œsluttiness as a worthy—even noble—way of life,ā€ an idea we can certainly get behind. ā€œThere was so much happy sexuality in this book that reading it was like being flirted with for a whole party by the hottest person in the room.ā€

Sounds like we’ve got our summer beach read.