March 22

Thomas Tryon, gay actor and author

American film, stage and television actor Thomas Tryon (1926-91) was best known for his portrayal of an ambitious Catholic priest in the film The Cardinal (1963), for which he received a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor (Motion Picture Drama). He also appeared in two epic films about World War II, The Longest Day (1962) and In Harm's Way (1965). His television career was centered around roles in westerns.

Although he had been married for three years during the 1950s, by the 1970s Tryon was in a romantic relationship with Clive Clerk, one of the original cast members of the Broadway sensation, A Chorus Line. Clerk was also an interior designer, and the apartment he decorated for Tryon on Central Park West in New York City was featured in Architectural Digest. Tryon was also involved in a relationship with Cal Culver, also known as Casey Donovan, a famous gay porn star (see photo below). Culver’s best known film, Boys in the Sand, is a classic of the genre.

Disillusioned with Hollywood, Tryon retired from acting in 1969 and began a successful second career as a writer. His most popular novel was Crowned Heads (1987), a collection of four novellas inspired by Hollywood legends. The first of these novellas, Fedora, about a reclusive former film actress whose relationship with her plastic surgeon is similar to that between a drug addict and her pusher, was later filmed by Billy Wilder. It is considered to be a minor classic of the thriller/horror genres. Other novellas in the collection were based on the murder of former gay silent screen star Ramón Novarro (see post Feb. 6, 2011), and the quasi-Oedipal relationship between gay actor Clifton Webb and his mother.

Another popular book was The Other (1971), an influential psychological horror novel about personality transference between twins. It was made into a film about a boy whose evil twin brother may or may not be responsible for a series of deaths in a small rural community set in the 1930s. A later novel, Lady, written in 1975, concerns the friendship between an eight-year-old boy and a charming widow in 1930s New England and the secret he discovers about her.