Boze Hadleigh

Boze Hadleigh (born May 15, 1954) is the author of several books that cover popular culture and show business.

Biography

Hadleigh has an M.S. in Mass Communications and has traveled to more than 60 countries. As of 2015 he has published 20 books and has written for more than 100 magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including TV Guide, Playboy, and Us Weekly. He won $16,400 as a contestant on the March 20, 1998 episode of the game show Jeopardy! He lives in Beverly Hills, California and Sydney, New South Wales. Hadleigh's books have been translated into 14 languages, and several of them have been made into television specials and documentaries in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere.

Writings

Several of his books deal with pop culture and/or entertainment history, and how the media and status quo shape and manipulate audiences' perceptions and opinions. Six of his books are exclusively about the LGBT presence in and contributions to entertainment; Hadleigh himself is gay. Some of Hadleigh's books are quotes collections, some are histories and overviews, and some are interview books with movie personalities. Several of these interviews, as with Rock Hudson, were published in periodicals before the subjects died. The author had committed himself not to out any of his subjects against their will, at least as long as they were living. Some interviewees agreed to speak only on condition that the published result be posthumous. Nearly all the interviews were recorded; a few individuals, like director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Mae West, however, refused to speak if they were recorded—which was their policy with other interviewers as well.

Hadleigh's second book, Conversations With My Elders (republished as Celluloid Gaze) includes interviews with actors Sal Mineo and Rock Hudson; directors George Cukor, Luchino Visconti, Fassbinder, and designer, photographer/author Cecil Beaton. Their conversations with the author reveal much about the lives and careers of these celebrities and how their homosexuality affected both.

Hollywood Gays is a collection of interviews with prominent film personalities, such as Liberace, Anthony Perkins, Randolph Scott, and several others, most of them widely known as homosexual. Publishers Weekly said about the book: Hadleigh (is) evidently taking up where the great gossip columnists of yesteryear left off. The book includes an interview with producer David Lewis, who talks freely about his longtime companion James Whale, as well as a conversation with William Haines, whose career was destroyed by Louis B. Mayer after Haines refused to marry a woman, and was later caught with another man in his cot at a YMCA.

Hollywood Lesbians is a collection of interviews with ten lesbians in the entertainment industry. Publishers Weekly wrote: "Fans of Hollywood's golden age will find this collection of interviews conducted over many years revealing, though hampered. The subjects - director Dorothy Arzner, designer Edith Head, actresses Judith Anderson, Marjorie Main, Barbara Stanwyck, Nancy Kulp, Capucine, Patsy Kelly, Agnes Moorehead and Sandy Dennis — were raised in a generation terrified of voicing support for fellow homosexuals, let alone daring to come out of the closet to acknowledge their own sexuality... Still, with carefully couched questions from Hadleigh (Conversations With My Elders), though some of the respondents dance around the subjects of sex and sexuality. Still, an enlightening picture emerges of Tinseltown, different from that presented in the fanzines."

Disputable claims

Amongst the claims Hadleigh has made is that Rock Hudson had an affair with Liberace. In a filmed interview, journalist Woody McBreairty confronted Hadleigh with the information that Tom Clark, publicist and friend of Hudson had stated "Nonsense. It never happened. I knew Rock for thirty years...Rock did not know this writer and never spoke to him."

In Hadleigh's book Broadway Babylon, Madeline Kahn is quoted as saying: "Nathan Lane has a wonderful sensibility for comedy...It does rather surprise me that as a gay man he participates in that degree of homophobic humor in The Producers." Lane's first appearance in The Producers was the stage musical version in 2001. Madeline Kahn died in 1999.

In the book Leading Ladies, referring to the film Brief Encounter, Hadleigh writes: "Sir Noel did not believe any of the remakes worked nearly as well, including the highly publicised 1975 British telefilm starring Sophia Loren and Richard Burton." Noël Coward died in March 1973.

Other works

• In or Out: Gay & Straight Celebs Talk About Themselves & Each Other is a compilation of celebrity quotes from stars who comment on themselves, their sexuality, on others, on the closet, and on society's homophobia, as well as that of show business.
• The Lavender Screen: The Gay and Lesbian Films — Their Stars, Makers, Characters, and Critics is an illustrated overview of LGBT-themed films, most of them starring heterosexual actors in the lead gay, lesbian or bisexual roles, such as Robin Williams in The Birdcage. It was updated and re-released in 2001.
• The Vinyl Closet: Gays and Lesbians in the Music World focuses on present and past gay, lesbian and bisexual singers, composers, musicians and dancers in North America and Britain, with a foreword by Leonard Bernstein, and is one of the first books that document their artistic contributions. According to Madonna, it "cuts through the role-playing crap and shows the music world as it really ... is! It's camp with a High-C!"

Bibliography

• (also published as Celluloid Gaze)
• (also published as Sing Out!)
• (UK only)
• (published in the UK as Hollywood Bitch)

External links

• The Boze Hadleigh interview of Sal Mineo.
• Boze Hadleigh at the Internet Movie Database