Billy Booth Comes Out on the Set of "The Twilight Zone"

Billy Booth was playing on his Little League team in LaCrescenta, California, about 20 miles from Hollywood, when an agent approached his mother and asked if he would be interested in doing some tv commercials.  A decade of tv and movie work followed: The Snow Queen (1957), Goodyear Theatre (1959), The Slowest Gun in the West (1960), Donna Reed (1964), and Andy Griffith (1964), plus a recurring role as Tommy on Dennis the Menace  (1959-1963).

But his favorite role, the one he would remember forever, was "Short Boy" on The Twilight Zone, when he was 11 years old.

"A Stop at Willoughby" (May 6, 1960) was one of many episodes about harried business executives who escape to what narrrator/writer Rod Serling thought of as the kinder, simpler world  of the 19th century, with people riding on penny-farthings and bands playing "Beautiful Dreamer" in the park

In this case, harried ad exec Gart Williams (41-year old James Daly) escapes from his obnoxious boss and harridan wife when his commuter train makes an unexpected stop at the small town of Willoughby, July 1888.

For the rest of the episode, he tries desperately to return.  Finally he succeeds.  In the twist ending, it turns out that he jumped out of the train to his death, and "Willoughby and Sons" is the name of the funeral home.

Billy played one of the two barefoot boys walking toward the fishing hole, then returning to town later. The older (Butch Hengen) tells Williams that "the fish are biting."  Williams says "I might go with you tomorrow."

That's all: two walk-ons, shot together on a single afternoon, uncredited, no lines.  But what happened after stayed with Billy forever.

After his scene, he expected someone to take the fishing pole and fish prop from his hands, but no one came.  He started walking, but took a wrong turn and got lost, still dressed like Huckleberry Finn.  The hard ground hurt his feet.  He was getting a little worried, when suddenly Jim Daly was beside him.

"Are those real fish?" he asked, smiling

"Yep. Boy, do they smell!"

"We'd better get them back to props.  Come on, I'll show you the way."  Jim put his hand on his shoulder and steered him in the opposite direction, back across the Willoughby set.

Jim was very big and tall.  Billy felt like a big man just walking next to him, like they were pals.

"Do you think you'd like to live in a town like Willoughby?"

"Naw -- it sounds real square.  No tv, no movies, no comic books!  But I liked working here.  Butch is cool -- me and him, we're going to the beach tomorrow, if his Mom says it's ok."

"That's fine  That's all you need, really, in this life -- one special friend.  They're hard to find."

"Oh, I got lots of friends."

"Sure, but do you have a special friend?  Someone who makes you smile whenever you look at him, who makes you sad when you have to say goodbye."  Jim was staring straight ahead, reciting as if remembering a scene. His words made Billy feel warm and happy inside.  "Who you don't want to say goodbye to, ever -- you want to spend you life with him."

"That's pretty cool, Mister Daly.  Is it from a movie?"

"No, it's from real life.  Or at least, how I wish life could be.  Maybe it will be, when you grow up."

They handed the fish and fishing pole to the prop master, who snarled "It's about time!  I thought you nicked it!"   Then Jim walked Billy to where his mother was waiting.  They shook hands and said goodbye.

Billy never saw him again.  But he remembered the warm hand on his shoulder, the distant, faraway look, the sadness.

One special friend.  

Billy's next job was on an episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver were both nice to him,  but the only cast member who made him smile just by looking at him was Mike Burns, a cute teenager with big muscles and a hairy chest.  But Mike ignored Billy, or talked like he was just a little kid.

One special friend.

Jay North, his costar on Dennis the Menace?  Nice, but not very cute.

Mickey Sholdar on The Farmer's Daughter?  Cute, but not very nice.

Like many child stars, Billy found acting jobs scarce once he hit puberty.  But he didn't mind: he could go to a regular school with regular kids, and do normal things like ride bikes and go to the beach.  He started fantasizing about cute guys climbing into his bed, hugging and kissing him, touching him down there.

A guy from his biology class; his gym teacher; Robert Vaughn, the Man from Uncle;  Mike Burns; and Jim Daly, who (in Billy's fantasy) had muscles and a hairy chest, big hands, and a gigantic penis.

In high school Billy began dating girls.  His favorite dates ended with him and a friend dropping off the girls and then parking and going down on him, feeling a buff guy's cock thrust against his tongue and throat.  But it was just a physical release -- his friend could never be a special friend.  He was too busy thinking about girls.

Billy graduated from LaCrescenta High in 1967- and enrolled at USC.  Some of his classmates were growing their hair long, smoking pot, and joining in the anti-war protests, but Billy never did.  He was a good boy, quiet, respectful, studious, a square.  Besides, with their long hair and beads, hippie boys looked like girls.  He liked "real men," strong, masculine, powerful.

Like the football jocks he invited to his dorm room to beat off while looking at Playboy.  Sometimes he went down on them, but again, it was just a physical release.  They were both supposed to be thinking about girls.

In 1974 Billy graduated from USC with a degree in political science.  He moved to San Francisco to go to the Hastings College of Law, and met gay people for the first time.  Men who acted like women, flouncing and sashaying down the street.  Not a problem -- he was open-minded -- but with no connection to his life at all.  Instead he started dating Kathy, a Berkeley undergrad majoring in English.

She was certainly a friend -- they had a lot of fun together.  And they had sex - it was simply a matter of closing his eyes and fantasizing about a muscular guy with a hairy chest.  That desire to touch her, to be touched by her, was absent, but it was probably just a childhood fantasy -- it didn't exist in the real world.  Kathy must be his special friend.

In June 1977 they married and moved to Los Osos, California, in San Luis Obispo County.  They bought a house near the beach.  Billy started a private practice in business and real estate law, and Kathy worked on her writing.  In October she announced that she was pregnant.

Billy was 28 years old, with everything he was supposed to want in life: house, job, wife, child on the way.  This was the life everyone wanted.

Wasn't it?

Well, wasn't it?

He had never been so miserable.

One day on a whim, he tracked down James Daly, who remembered their brief conversation 17 years ago!  He got an invitation to visit.

Kathy didn't understand why he wanted to cross the country to visit someone he met once, but she wasn't about to pass up a trip to New York, so in January 1978, shortly after the New Year, they flew out to Nyack.

Daly was 59 years old, graying but still big and tall, still acting in local theater and taking the train into Manhattan every weekend.  They went shopping for antiques, and walked on the beach even though it was in the 20s outside.  Nearly the first thing he told them was: "I'm gay."

He grinned at their shock -- you didn't just come out to near-strangers in 1978!  "For the last six months I've been telling everyone.  You'd be surprised how healing it is. Such a blessing to finally end the lies."

"How long have you known?" Billy asked.

"Oh, since I was a boy.  But when I was young, we thought it was a mental disorder.  [My wife] Hope and I tried all sorts of therapy to 'cure' me before figuring that it was hopeless and divorcing.  Even then, I stayed in the closet."

"Have you ever had a companion?" Kathy asked.  "Someone to spend your life with?  A special friend?"

Billy stared -- he had never used that term in front of Kathy.  How did she know it?

"Lots of lovers, but I'm afraid that the happiness of a special friend has always eluded me.  I think because I came out of the closet too late."

"It's never too late," Kathy said, glancing over at Billy.

They waited until their son Devon was five years old to divorce.  Billy continued to live in Los Osos and practice law, stayed close to Kathy and watched Devon grow up, but he was down in Los Angeles most weekends.

He had brunch at the French Quarter.  He visited the gay synagogue.  He had many boyfriends and lovers, and a partner who lived with him for 12 years.

Billy Booth died on December 31, 2006.  His family suggests that, instead of flowers, you can best honor his memory by calling an old friend.

Brandon DeWilde in Paul Newman's Bed

Born in Brooklyn, New York in April 1942, Brandon DeWilde was performing on Broadway at age 7.  At age 11, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Shane (1953).  That fall he got his own tv series, Jamie (1953-1954).

He was a big star.  And already sexually active. 

He always said that he was born horny.  As a teenager he rarely went more than a day without going down on a man or letting a man or woman go down on him.  Usually two or three.  He and a buddy often teamed up to work on a third guy or girl, then do each other.

How did he find all those willing partners, at a jailbait age, in the police-state 1950s, when sodomy and fornication would get you a prison sentence?  It helped that he had a stunning face and an enormous penis that kept getting bigger and bigger every year.  And that he looked...well, innocent.  Everybody thought they were his first.

Right, his first today.

Brandon wasn't sure whether he liked sex with men or women better -- why choose, they were both great!  But for sheer physical attraction, that jolt that hits you in the pit of your stomach, it was always men. 

Especially older, sophisticated, powerful men, the kind who would take you out and show you a good time before tearing your clothes off and throwing your legs in the air.

And maybe help your career.   Brandon's first real boyfriend was novelist James Leo Herlihy, who got him cast in the film versions of Blue Denim (1959) and All Fall Down (1962).

Not that they were monogamous -- no matter how many times they had sex the night before, Brandon still found himself getting aroused at the sight of muscular stage hands and pretty-in-pink script girls -- and he got a lot of invitations.  How could he refuse? 

In 1962, shortly after he and James broke up, Brandon landed a dream role --  Lonnie in Hud, an adaption of Larry McMurtrey's 1961 Western novel Horsemen Pass By, about a gay teenager who falls in love with his no-good uncle.

Ok, he wasn't explicitly gay, in the script, but that's how Brandon intended to play him!

Especially when he discovered that Hud was to be played by 37-year old Paul Newman, star of gay-subtext movies like The Long Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.   A major sex symbol, arguably the most beautiful man in the world.  How could Lonnie not be in love with him?

How could Brandon not be in love with him?

"Dream on," James said, still smarting a little from the breakup.  "Paul Newman can have any guy he wants, and he likes them big and built, like Brando, Yul Brynner, and Rocky Graziano -- why would he pick a skinny 20-year old kid?  Besides, you're both bottoms.  What are you going to do, exchange recipes?"

"I can screw with the best of them, Daddy-O!" Brandon exclaimed.  "And I can seduce with the best of them."

On May 21, 1962, location filming began in the town of Claude on the Texas Panhandle.  Cast and crew stayed at several hotels in Amarillo.  Brandon seduced the desk clerk at Paul's hotel into letting him into his room.  Paul came in later to find Brandon on the bed naked.

"I've been waiting all afternoon to suck the cock of Paul Newman," he announced.

Paul was hesitant at first -- he wasn't into skinny kids, even those with angelic faces and enormous penises -- but Brandon was very persistent.  Soon they were having sex every night, with each other and with whatever men or women they invited along -- both of them got a lot of offers! 

Brandon was mostly a bottom with men, but one night he topped a guy who was going down on Paul at the same time.  Then he switched positions -- what a kick!  He never topped Paul, though -- Paul had a smaller cock, but he was older, and a bigger star, therefore always dominant.

When the Texas shooting ended and they returned to Los Angeles, Paul said, "Look, it's been swell, but I'm a one-man man.  If we're going to do this, you're going to have to be faithful.  No other guys...or chicks either, unless you're married to them."

Brandon was completely captivated.  Paul's fame, his money, his connections that could push a career -- none of it mattered.  Even the sex wasn't important.  He wanted to be with Paul, share his bed, share his life, no matter what.

So he tried monogamy.  He cut back on the hookups.  He got married, to take some of the pressure off.  But he and Paul had different commitments, and just couldn't see each other often.  They had to make do with an occasional weekend fling.

What was Brandon supposed to do on the other days?  Sex with his wife Susan, of course.  But he got aroused so easily, and he had so many offers -- it was simply impossible to turn them all down. 

Brandon tried visiting Paul on the set for an occasional dressing-room blow job, but Paul didn't like that -- too dangerous.  If anyone found out about them, both their careers would be over.

Still, Brandon longed for some public recognition of their relationship, if only in code.

In 1968, Paul signed on as Butch in the intensely homoerotic buddy-Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Brandon thought that he should play Sundance -- a perfect way to display their commitment! 

Besides, his career was in the dumps -- he had barely worked in three years.  What good was having a superstar boyfriend, if he refused to use his influence to get you jobs?

Paul argued that it would look suspicious for him to promote Brandon for the role. The producers wanted Steve McQueen.

"Your new boyfriend?" Brandon sniped.  "What, does he suck your cock better than me?  Or does he have a tighter ass?  Here I've been trying my damnedest to stay faithful, and you're shacking up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry!"

The argument escalated, and became public -- they were nearly outed on the spot.  Paul angrily broke up with Brandon. 

Worried about being caught in the middle of a gay love triangle, McQueen backed out of the role, and Robert Redford took over.

Devastated by the breakup, Brandon divorced Susan -- they were mostly together for Paul's sake, anyway -- and distanced himself from Hollywood, returning to his old love, theater.  In March 1972 he remarried.  In July 1972, while starring in Butterflies are Free, he was driving through Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, when he swerved to avoid a drunk driver and was killed.

Paul Newman had a legendary career, in such memorable movies as The Sting (1973), Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), and The Color of Money (1986).  Never openly bisexual -- his 2010 biography just mentions Brandon as his costar in Hud -- he was married to Joanne Woodward for 50 years, and had three children.  He was a strong supporter of gay rights. 

Most of this story comes from Randall the Muscle Bear, who never met Brandon, but knew some men who tricked with him in the 1960s.  I took some details from Darwin Porter's 2009 biography of Paul Newman, but I found it to be generally unreliable.

See also: Paul Newman and Rocky Graziano