Although in Abbott and Costello, and straight man was first. That's a very interesting concept.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The first gay person I ever met was surely not the first gay person I ever met.
Abbott and Costello were huge for me as a very young person.
It would have been convenient to be gay. Just because of the grooming, the narcissism, stuff like that. But I have this kind of roaring heterosexuality. Traditional, uncomplicated heterosexuality, an almost cliched Robin Askwith thing.
I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.
The straight man has the best part. He gets to be in the show and see it, too.
We didn't know anything about comedy duos - Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis - we didn't know anything about that. Kim Fields showed us a tape of Martin and Lewis and their old shows and they come through the curtain so we started doing research on them.
I grew up on Jerry Lewis and Abbot and Costello, the Marx Brothers.
My dearest friend in the movement is Jack Nichols. If there were no such thing as gay or straight, we would still talk and share experiences till the end of time.
The first film role I deliberately chose to play after I came out was a raging heterosexual, John Profumo.