A Reluctance to Play

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Harry Hamlin ran into the same prejudice in 1982, when he played a gay writer in Making Love. Hamlin's character appeared straight. The only time he acted otherwise was when he went to bed with Michael Ontkean, who played another all-American. Though Hamlin's credentials as a heterosexual were beyond dispute -- he was living at the time with sexy Ursula Andress -- his realistic characterization cast his career into a gloom that was lifted only by TV's L.A. Law.

His TV success has now given him a happier memory of Making Love, but in 1986, when he talked to the Washington Post, Hamlin was still bitter about the shadow it had cast over his life. "A guy can play an ax murderer and still be considered sexy and still get another role as a leading man," he said then. "But if you play a homosexual, suddenly you're not in contention anymore for the ax murderers."

Aware of such stories, Jack Coleman, who played Dynasty's bisexual Steven Carrington, cannot help wondering what will happen now that he's on his own. "On network television, you're strongly identified with a role," he says. "Week in, week out, you come into people's houses. And since they don't pay, it seems less like a performance and more like a slice of life."

One thing that is probable is that Coleman, like Luckinbill, will not accept another homosexual role. Though he is proud to have been in The Boys in the Band, Luckinbill ruefully admits that afterward most of the cast did their best to set people straight -- and to let everyone know that they were. Says he: "We straight guys spent a lot of time being photographed with cigars in our mouths with our dogs, wives and children."

That is at least one worry a gay actor would probably not have had. Why? Because gay actors seldom take the risk of accepting gay parts. Like Rock Hudson, they often find it safer to play ladies' men.