Being in the public eye usually means your love life is too. These celebs,
however, kept their lovers very much in secret!
A British acting legend and handsome heartthrob, Dirk Bogarde appeared in
a number of groundbreaking films that touched on themes of same sex love in the 1960s. The
most notable and controversial of these was "Victim," which helped to decriminalize same
sex activity in the U.K., per The Guardian. In the 1961 film, Bogarde plays Melville,
a man leading a double life; married to a woman, played by the recently departed Sylvia Syms,
Melville is secretly gay and is blackmailed under the threat of his sexuality being exposed.
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“I only see people by appointment.”
“I think you ought to see this photograph.”
Although he never married, the actor's life behind the scenes was not dissimilar from Melville's.
His lover of just under 40 years was Anthony Forwood, a secret revealed after his death.
Although the couple lived together, Bogarde long maintained that Forwood was
his manager. When the actor John Fraser came to visit Bogarde and Forwood at their home,
he asked the former why he had remained closeted well into middle age. Bogarde
replied, per Fraser's autobiography, "Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales,"
"Everyone knows me. I can't go anywhere without being
recognised. There's blackmail... the News of the World. I would be ruined."
His devastating response eerily echoed the film "Victim." Tragically, when Forwood was
dying from cancer in the late '80s, Bogarde had to hide his grief for fear of letting on the
true nature of their relationship, as The Oldie notes. He poignantly said following the loss,
"The pain is starting right in now. For love it was... is."
"She was grinning with excitement even before she left the earth.
Even before the crowds here chanted "Ride Sally, Ride."
The first ever American woman to go into space, Sally Ride secured her place in
the history books after she flew on the Challenger in 1983. But Ride made history
twofold that day: she was also the first LGBTQ person to fly into space. However,
the importance of the latter milestone only transpired after her death.
In 2012, Ride sadly died of pancreatic cancer, with which she had been diagnosed 17 months
earlier. She was 61. Few knew that she was ill, as she opted to keep her diagnosis a secret.
This was not the only aspect of her life that she shielded from the public. Upon her death,
it was revealed that she had been with her partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy, for 27 years,
something she concealed from the public. Sweetly, Ride and O'Shaughnessy first
met when they were 12. They maintained their friendship throughout the years,
which eventually turned romantic. Ride's sister, Bear, told BuzzFeed following her death,
"I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay
that they know that another one of their heroes was like them."
Writing for Slate, Lynn Sherr, Ride's biographer and friend of 30 years,
pondered why the acclaimed astronaut had decided to keep her partner — and indeed
her sexuality — a secret. Sherr wrote that O'Shaughnessy told her,
"Sally didn't want to be defined by the lesbian/gay label just as
she didn't want to be defined by a gender label. We both didn't
like categories [and] didn't want to define ourselves by our sexuality."
Ride was married to former astronaut Steve Hawley for five years. After her death,
he echoed Sherr's claims, and showed his support for her, and her decision to keep
herself out of the public eye, saying, "Sally was a very private person who found herself
a very public persona. It was a role in which she was never fully comfortable. I
was privileged to be a part of her life and be in a position to support her as she became the
first American woman to fly in space. [...] While she never enjoyed being a celebrity,
she recognized that it gave her the opportunity to encourage children, particularly young girls,
to reach their full potential. [...] I think she would be pleased with that legacy."
As unlikely pairings go, poetic Canadian Leonard Cohen and hard-partying rock 'n'
roll star Janis Joplin seem mismatched to say the least.
But the pair had a brief relationship in 1968, which Joplin never publicly discussed.
Suffering from a creative and emotional slump, Cohen was residing at the Chelsea
Hotel in New York. His sadness was alleviated when he met Joplin,
who was also staying at the establishment, per Rolling Stone. Cohen recounted in 1988,
"She wasn't looking for me, she was looking for Kris Kristofferson;
I wasn't looking for her, I was looking for Brigitte Bardot. But we fell into each
other's arms through some process of elimination."
The pair met up a few more times before Joplin's death in 1970. Years after she died,
Cohen opened up about the duo's fleeting romance.
Ever the romantic, Cohen memorialized the affair in his bittersweet song "Chelsea Hotel No. 2,"
which is featured on his album "New Skin for the Old Ceremony" and contains the lyrics,
"You told me again you preferred handsome men / But for me you would make an exception."
However, Cohen later admitted that he deeply
regretted naming Joplin as his lover. He told the BBC,
"I've never spoken in any concrete terms of a woman
with whom I've had any intimate relationships,
and I named Janis Joplin in that song. [...] It's an indiscretion for which I'm very sorry,
and if there is some way of apologizing to the ghost, I want to apologize now."
Artist Thomas Kinkade was famed for his pastoral paintings that garnered widespread appeal across
middle America. In 2012, the 54-year-old died of an overdose of drugs and alcohol. At the
time of his death, he was believed to have still been married to his wife of 30 years,
Nanette. However, it was soon revealed that he actually had a secret lover,
Amy Pinto-Walsh, with whom he had been living and who found the artist dead.
In a bombshell statement following Kinkade's demise, Pinto-Walsh said,
"I am his live-in girlfriend. I've been with him 18 months.
My name is Amy Pinto and him and his wife have been separated."
Subsequently, Nanette and Pinto-Walsh became embroiled in a bitter dispute
over the latter's alleged threats to disclose personal and business
information about her late lover, the likes of which would supposedly ruin his reputation.
Moreover, Pinto-Walsh refused to move out of the artist's home and began battling with his
wife over his $100 million estate, claiming that Kinkade had left her millions in a barely legible
handwritten will. As reported by The Mercury News, Nanette's lawyer, Daniel Casas, reasoned,
"She's already received a substantial,
substantial sum of money that arose from her relationship with Thomas Kinkade."
But Pinto-Walsh insisted that she was the love of Kinkade's life,
claiming that the couple had been planning to tie the knot in the lead-up to his death.
The two women eventually settled out of court, the details of which remain private.
Best known for his role as the titular detective in "Ironside," Raymond Burr was an esteemed
character actor. But he was acting during a period in which same sex relationships were
forbidden and often criminalized. As such, the identity of his partner of 33 years,
Robert Benevides, was only made public upon Burr's death in 1993.
In fact, Burr went to extremes to cover up his sexuality, inventing a fictitious dead wife and
son to divert any suspicion, as revealed in his biography "Hiding in Plain Sight:
The Secret Life of Raymond Burr." In interviews, he addressed his unmarried status, claiming
that he was simply waiting for the right woman to come along. In 1959, he told Screenland magazine,
"It's true that I could like to be married and after this series is over,
perhaps I can take time to find someone."
The following year, he did find that special someone: Benevides. The pair
met on the set of "Perry Mason" and soon became smitten, sharing a home in Malibu.
In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter,
Benevides explained why his lover hid him away from the public for so many decades, saying,
"He was very old fashioned in that the only way that he ever felt that
he could be a leading man was to be unbesmirched and that he would not
be accepted any other way. And it's true. In Hollywood, they are very homophobic."
Following Burr's death, Benevides honored him by opening The Raymond Burr Winery,
an eco-friendly vineyard in California.