William J. Mann – The Gayest Author on the Face of the Planet

 

It was an unexpected Christmas present that brought my attention to William J. Mann. I had wanted a book on the noted director of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, Victor Fleming, but under the tree was How To Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood.

 

Pleasantly surprised, as this was a book on Taylor that I hadn’t read and it looked intriguing, I finished it over the next several days. Mann’s attention to detail and innovative way of arranging the chapters in the book led me to interview him. Mann is an outstanding biographer. His previous book called Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn was named “one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year” by The New York Times.

 

He also is an award-winning novelist and has written four books on the lives of gay American men. Most recently one called Object of Desire. William’s approach, ethics and imagination all come into play for this uber-successful gay author.

 

 

William J. Mann: Exactly, because there’s been so many of them. In fact, when my editor suggested to me after I finished up my book on Katharine Hepburn, he said, “What do you want to do next?” I said, “Well…I don’t know. Give me some ideas.” He said, “How about Elizabeth Taylor?” My first reaction was it’s been done a million times before. He said, “What if we call it ‘how to be a movie star?’

 

Then, the gears started turning in my head and I said, “I get ya. I see where you are going with this.” It was going to be very different. It wasn’t going to be a retelling of all the marriages, the divorces and the scandals. I was trying to understand how she did it and the machinery of stardom back then and how she helped evolve it to what it is today.

WJM: She really helped create that template of stardom that we still have today. Where your private life is just as important if not more important than what you do on screen. She kind of created the business model too. She came out of the studio system where they used to put actors under contract. Then with Cleopatra, she and her agents created this business model. She had very smart agents who said, “How about you get a contract where you get a percentage of the box office?” In a sense, it was changing the way that Hollywood did business. She was at the forefront of all of that.

 

WJM: The studio system was fabulous in many ways. It was a very proficient and productive system for making movies and making stars. There is an awful lot of good that came out of the studio system. Some people thrived with it…somebody like a Joan Crawford. She was the perfect kind of creature to work in the studio system.

 

Elizabeth Taylor was not. She always hated it. She never liked the regimen of it. For someone who sold her image so brilliantly, she never really followed the studio’s playbook on how to do that. She did it her own way. She was always chaffing and couldn’t wait to get out of that studio system to create the business model that ultimately replaced it.

 

WJM: Yes I did. He was terrific. I really enjoyed doing that chapter. I also had the personal diary that was kept by Ernest Lehmann who was the producer and screenwriter so he recorded some really interesting moments of the day. So I had some very good, very fresh, up-close sources for that chapter. That’s a tough movie as in your emotions go up and down…it’s difficult. Yet, it’s brilliantly directed and brilliantly acted. It’s magnificent.

 

WJM: That’s right. I’ve pretty much gone back and forth from fiction to non-fiction.

 

WJM: I started off as a journalist. That’s how I was making my living. I sold the proposal for Wisecracker because I’d been writing for film journals and Architectural Digest. So it wasn’t my intent to just write film biographies…I really saw myself as a novelist. I had been working on The Men From The Boys for several years. Shortly after I sold the proposal for Wisecracker, I then sold my novel. I thought I’m going to stay a novelist now. But Wisecracker did pretty well and they wanted me to do a sequel.

 

Suddenly I found myself with this dual career. The Men From the Boys did pretty well and they wanted another one. I have two different publishers so I’ve got a double career going on. It wasn’t intentional but it’s just kind of the way it worked out.

 

WJM: Oh yeah. Definitely. Absolutely and still am. It was writing Wisecracker that I ended up with so much surplus material that they said, “There’s another book here.” I’d interviewed so many gay and lesbian survivors of the studio era. Gay history in Hollywood is ironic because it’s the fact that gay people were so much involved. The gay experience and involvement in Hollywood was tremendous on so many different levels.

 

Yet, because of homophobia, you’ll find a lot of people scared to admit that or you’ll get other people who’ll say, “The gays must be exaggerating this! They are trying to claim everything now.” You get some gay authors who’ve written outrageously sensational books without any documentation all based on rumor and gossip and all that.

 

My struggle was, I want to document this as best I can. To do it without sensation or scandal and really try to study it as seriously as somebody who would study the Jewish experience in Hollywood or the experience of women in Hollywood, to look at it with that same kind of reasoned and open-minded consideration. I think it’s important to give someone his or her full due.

 

To understand what their story was and to do it in a way that has respect and understanding and also tells the truth. I don’t think there is anything wrong with telling the truth.

 

WJM: (laughter) It is. I’ve become the gayest author on the face of the planet. My editor really wanted me to tackle Barbra Streisand. Again, I said, “Why? It’s been done a million times.” He said, “I don’t think what we’ve ever known is how she did it.” How she came out of Brooklyn from nowhere and was this kind of awkward little girl with very unusual looks. How did she become by the end of the decade, the biggest star in the world?

 

So, that’s what I’m doing. It’s called Hello Gorgeous! Becoming Barbra Streisand and begins in 1961 and ends in 1968. It’s a real close-up of this young girl and how she transformed herself. They would like this out by 2012, which would be essentially her 50th year in show business.

 

WJM: It’s not an authorized book but I don’t think she would be upset with it. Just as I understand Elizabeth is happy with this one [How To Be a Movie Star]. I’m not turning them into saints by any means. I’m telling the full story…warts and all. But it’s not about scandal or tell-all. I think this will go well for whatever commemoration there might be in 2012.

 

WJM: Great. Thank you.