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I was terrified of Club Rage and being seen there. in the ’70s and ’80s, so West Hollywood was kind of the beacon of. NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, ACTOR, 46 I lived in L.A. THE ’80 s : “THERE WAS A REAL FEELING OF BEING OSTRACIZED” After that, ABC did not pick up our contract. Well, Anita Bryant was in the news at the time, and I did a line, “She even quit the church because the choir insisted on singing, ‘Go Down Moses.’ ” The next day the national news says, “Avowed lesbian Robin Tyler takes on Anita Bryant.” They couldn’t call you a lesbian they called you an “avowed lesbian.” You had to sign in blood you were a lesbian. TYLER My comedy duo Harrison and Tyler opened The Krofft Comedy Hour. But the press was very discreet back then - the fan magazines and all that. Within the business, it was not a big secret. Nobody cautioned me against it, and I didn’t talk about it. It never occurred to me to hide who I was.ĬHAMBERLAIN I had a few dalliances. HARVEY FIERSTEIN, ACTOR/ PLAYWRIGHT, 65 When I was a little kid, I knew I was attracted to men. I said something to her, and she was like, “Oh no, no, no, no, that’s wrong, you don’t think like that and don’t say that again.” I was like, “Oh, OK - so this is different.” Then one of my older brother’s girlfriends, I had a crush on her. WANDA SYKES, COMEDIAN/ACTOR, 56 I knew that something was different back when I was in the second or third grade and I crushed on teachers. So because I read this one piece of literature, I came out. ROBIN TYLER, COMEDIAN/ACTIVIST, 78 I read this article in 1959: “If you are a woman who loves another woman, what you are is a lesbian.” It was by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. And so I had not only this feeling that there was something wrong with me, which I got from the childhood experiences, but that it would have been the end of my acting career. It took me ages to understand that being gay wasn’t quite acceptable there.ĬHAMBERLAIN Being a kind of romantic leading man, I thought being gay would be a disaster for me careerwise. But graduating into a world like the cinema was completely different. And this was the ’70s, so it was the time of Studio 54, and it seemed in those clubs, underneath the glitter ball, that there was an incredibly liberal world. RUPERT EVERETT, ACTOR, 61 At age 16 or 17, I hit the discos and the clubs. And I spent a great deal of my life pretending to be a regular person.
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RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, ACTOR, 86 Growing up in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, being gay was not an option. THE BAD OLD DAYS: “IT JUST WASN’T AN OPTION”