That is how Celia and I forgave each other.
And how we knew we couldn’t live without each other.
Because now we both knew what we were willing to risk. Just to be together.
PhotoMoment
August 14, 1967
EVELYN HUGO WEDS PRODUCER HARRY CAMERON
Fifth time’s a charm? Evelyn Hugo and producer Harry Cameron married last Saturday, during a ceremony on the beaches of Capri.
Evelyn wore an off-white silk gown and had her long blond hair down and parted in the middle. Harry, known for being one of the better-dressed Hollywood players, wore a cream-colored linen suit.
Celia St. James, America’s Sweetheart, attended as the maid of honor, and her fabulous hubby, John Braverman, served as the best man.
Harry and Evelyn have been working together since the ’50s, when Evelyn came to fame in such hits as Father and Daughter and Little Women. They admitted they were having an affair late last year when they were caught in flagrante while Evelyn was still married to Rex North.
Rex is now married to Joy Nathan and the proud papa of their little girl, Violet North.
We’re glad that Evelyn and Harry have decided to finally make it official! After such a shocking beginning to their relationship and a long engagement, all we can say is it’s about time!
CELIA GOT ABSOLUTELY SMASHED DURING the wedding. She was having a hard time not being jealous, even though she knew the whole thing was fake. Her own husband was standing next to Harry, for crying out loud. And we all knew what we were.
Two men sleeping together. Married to two women sleeping together. We were four beards.
And what I thought as I said “I do” was It’s all beginning now. Real life, our life. We’re finally going to be a family.
Harry and John were in love. Celia and I were sky-high.
When we got back from Italy, I sold my mansion in Beverly Hills. Harry sold his. We bought this place in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, just down the street from Celia and John.
Before I agreed to move, I had Harry look into whether my father was still alive. I wasn’t sure I could live in the same city he lived in, wasn’t sure I could handle the idea of running into him.
But when Harry’s assistant searched for him, I learned that my father had died in 1959 of a heart attack. What little he owned was absorbed by the state when no one came forward to claim it.
My first thought when I heard he was gone was So that’s why he never tried to come after me for money. And my second was How sad that I’m certain that’s all he’d ever want.
I put it out of my head, signed the paperwork on the apartment, and celebrated the purchase with Harry. I was free to go wherever I wanted. And what I wanted was to move to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I persuaded Luisa to join us.
This apartment might be within a long walk’s distance, but I was a million miles away from Hell’s Kitchen. And I was world-famous, married, in love, and so rich it sometimes made me sick.
A month after we moved to town, Celia and I took a taxi to Hell’s Kitchen and walked around the neighborhood. It looked so different from when I left. I brought her to the sidewalk just below my old building and pointed at the window that used to be mine.
“Right there,” I said. “On the fifth floor.”
Celia looked at me, with compassion for all I had been through when I lived there, for all I had done for myself since then. And then she calmly, confidently took my hand.
I bristled, unsure if we should be touching in public, scared of what people would do. But the rest of the people on the street just kept on walking, kept on living their lives, almost entirely unaware of or uninterested in the two famous women holding hands on the sidewalk.
Celia and I spent our nights together in this apartment. Harry spent his nights with John at their place. We went out to dinner in public, the four of us looking like two pairs of heterosexuals, without a heterosexual in the bunch.
The tabloids called us “America’s Favorite Double-Daters.” I even heard rumors that the four of us were swingers, which wasn’t that crazy for that period of time. It really makes you think, doesn’t it? That people were so eager to believe we were swapping spouses but would have been scandalized to know we were monogamous and queer?
I’ll never forget the morning after the Stonewall riots. Harry was at rapt attention, watching the news. John was on the phone all day with friends of his who lived downtown.
Celia was pacing the living room floor, her heart racing. She believed everything was going to change after that night. She believed that because gay people had announced themselves, had been proud enough to admit who they were and strong enough to stand up, attitudes were going to change.
I remember sitting out on our rooftop patio, looking southward, and realizing that Celia, Harry, John, and I weren’t alone. It seems silly to say now, but I was so . . . self-involved, so singularly focused, that I rarely took time to think of the people out there like myself.
That isn’t to say that I wasn’t aware of the way the country was changing. Harry and I campaigned for Bobby Kennedy. Celia posed with Vietnam protesters on the cover of Effect. John was a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement, and I had been a very public supporter of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But this was different.
This was our people.
And here they were, revolting against the police, in the name of their right to be themselves. While I was sitting in a golden prison of my own making.
I was out on my terrace, directly in the sun, on the afternoon after the initial riots, wearing high-waisted jeans and a black sleeveless top, drinking a gibson. And I started crying when I realized those men were willing to fight for a dream I had never even allowed myself to envision. A world where we could be ourselves, without fear and without shame. Those men were braver and more hopeful than I was. There were simply no other words for it.
“There’s a plan to riot again tonight,” John said as he joined me on the patio. He had such an intimidating physical presence. More than six feet tall, two hundred and twenty-five pounds, with a tight crew cut. He looked like a guy you didn’t want to mess with. But anyone who knew him, and especially those of us who loved him, knew he was the first guy you could mess with.