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.
“On Cape Cod, Noël Coward hits on him in the presence of President and Mrs. Kennedy. In Arizona, filming a TV remake of “The Mark of Zorro,” Yvonne De Carlo (better known as Lily Munster) plays Langella’s mother by day, and by night treats him “like a pretty girl in the back seat of a convertible on a hot summer night.”
In the south of England, on location for “Dracula,” Langella flashes Laurence Olivier through the doorway of their adjoining suites, calling, “Oh professor, see anything you like?” He and Jill Clayburgh come “dangerously close to a tumble,” and backstage they and Raul Julia become “a pulsating Oreo cookie with nothing remotely chaste about where our hands and mouths wandered.” The book’s subtitle should be “Bad Girls Go Everywhere,” although Langella is no girl—as Anthony Perkins rather bluntly attempts to verify one night in a dressing room.”
Though heterosexual—and famously attached to Whoopi Goldberg—Langella isn’t above admiring the “carefree, rangy masculinity” of Robert Mitchum, the “devotion to physical pleasure” of director Roger Vadim and the “original and mesmerizing” beauty of Paul Newman.
Was Langella the James Franco of the 1960s and 70s?
Reviewer Ada Calhoun describes Names as celebrating “sluttiness as a worthy—even noble—way of life,” an idea we can certainly get behind. “There 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.”
Sounds like we’ve got our summer beach read.
Marriage Equality
I hope he’s not trying to pass himself off as straight, he’s at least bisexual… I know 2 guys who have had affairs with him.
MARCUS BACHMANN
And I know of at least another who Langella begged not to tell anyone. Frank Langella is anything but straight.
dvlaries
They -or Whoopi- can have him. This one never did anything for me.
abel
Regardless of his persuasion (whatever it may be), the book is a sheer delight, and I highly recommend it.
Matt
This guy is clearly bisexual.
EJC
I understand from anyone that knows him, he is great guy, a wonderful partner in any production he has ever been in and having sex truly does not have anything to do with your sexual preference. Why not just read the book and make all those ” inner thoughts” till the last page has been read..
Lifer
have big dick, will travel
JKB
He has the most intense eyes!
Lance
EJC-You’re one of those queens who has to pretend that she’s actually had sex with LOL real “straight” men. Queens like you need this fantasy and are a dime a dozen.
Brandon
If this dude was actually really hetero/straight he wouldn’t have sex with men at all.
UsualPlayers
@Brandon: Agree. Its a bit strange when people say “he’s straight but will have sex with me.” He’s bi, but somehow that’s “labeling them”
People are truly strange. So many hang ups. Like there is something wrong with being bisexual even if its infrequent terms of acting on the same sex attraction.
If you are attracted and have sex with even one person who is both same and opposite sex- that to me suggests bi. Now if its situational – e.g. you are in prison, isolated, I may think differently. but that’s not the situation being described.
Will
Laurence Olivier is bisexual, and so is Frank Langella. Then again it’s not surprising that queerty practices biphobia and bisexual erasure by saying that Frank Langella has sex with men yet is somehow magically “Straight”.
It’s not like he’s in prison or having non-consensual sex which happens in prisons like usual players said.
vixlad
@Marriage Equality: U so do not!
vlad
@Will:
Langella identifies as straight. He had a three-way. That doesn’t make him bi. Just because some anonymous commenters say that he has sex with men doesn’t make it true. Seriously, I could say that I know that ran naked through the streets but that doesn’t make it so.
Lefty
@vlad: There’s plenty of gay men who “identify” as straight, too.
His Olivier story seems to suggest Olivier wasn’t interested, despite Langella making overtures. Poor Frank. :(
(Olivier definitely had affairs with men – he may have identified as straight, too; who knows?)
David Ehrenstein
@Marriage Equality: Beat me to it! The last time I saw him (at an event two years ago) he was all over Dennis Christopher.
EJC
To Lance;
Honey you need to get a life . . .so sorry for your extremely limited life, a one big shame.
Just keep living in your little magic world, maybe magic will happen, sometime !
If not . . .NOT !
Tomas
LMAO the only sham here are queens like EJC and vlad who want to pretend that they’ve actually had sex with straight men or need to believe their fantasy that actual hetero men somehow really do have sex with men.
Carlos
David so which other male actors/celebs are bisexual?
pierre
I can personally attest to the fact that Frank is at least bi. I had a brief affair with him in 1982 when he was on Broadway doing Amadeus. He was a nice guy who was quite affectionate and passionate in the boudoir.
ron
@pierre: I for one would like details……