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Buddy Rogers - "America's Boy Friend"

I was just watching Kevin Brownlow's brilliant 1980 documentary series HOLLYWOOD about the silent era and one of the interview subjects was Buddy Rogers. He kinda pinged so I googled him and came across this interesting piece (link below)...

On WINGS:

[quote]In recent years, the scene where Rogers says a lovingly emotional goodbye to Arlen in Wings has been excerpted a lot as an early Hollywood gay kiss, but that’s not quite what’s going on if you look at this scene closely. “Oh, Dave, Dave—I was trying to get just one more Heinie for you—” Rogers exclaims via inter-title, a line that richly deserves a contemporary laugh. Rogers strokes Arlen’s hair as if they were lovers, but Arlen gives him a self-consciously masculine pat on the ear in response. When Rogers intensely kisses Arlen near his mouth, Arlen turns his face away a little from all that ardor. They do make a great-looking couple, but Rogers is the one giving it all he’s got while Arlen is holding himself back.

And his marriage to Mary Pickford:

[quote]And here’s where things get complicated. Rogers and Pickford shared adjacent cabins on their honeymoon trip to Hawaii with the recently married Gene Raymond and Jeanette MacDonald. According to Sharon Rich’s biography of MacDonald, Sweethearts, there came a point on this trip when MacDonald caught Raymond and Rogers in bed together. The shock waves of that did not outwardly affect the marriages that had been made, both of which lasted until the deaths of MacDonald and Pickford. But maybe Pickford had other reasons for her heavy drinking as time went on.

[quote]“I prayed fervently…to make Buddy happy, for he deserves it,” Pickford wrote in her memoir. “I don’t believe to this day he has stopped telling everyone I am the only woman he ever loved.” She takes pains in her book to say about her husband that “although his good looks might belie the fact, he is essentially a man’s man.” No doubt Rogers went out of his way to prove that when he served during World War II, and in the many years afterward as Pickford’s consort.

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by Anonymousreply 11November 30, 2018 2:04 AM

I googled him. Very sexy guy. I thought he was black in the pic you posted. Definitely gay face.

by Anonymousreply 1August 4, 2016 6:26 PM

There's a bizarre tirade against Rogers in Chauncey Holt's autobiography, 'Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel'. Holt claimed he was one of the three tramps who were arrested in Dealey Plaza just after JFK was assassinated. He also claimed to be a mafia man who was working for the CIA and that he was involved in the plot to frame Oswald. Pretty much all of those claims have been debunked, so his story about being a popular painter of celebrity portraits and of painting pictures of Mary Pickford and Rogers are probably horseshit too. He referred to Rogers as "the most conceited individual I have ever met" and goes on to claim he was entrusted as Pickford's auditor, a position he used for "diverting funds, which would eventually have ended up with that arrogant parasite, Buddy Rogers, who would probably only lavish the money on one of the handsome, young homosexual prostitutes, that he often took to Palm Springs, or invited to Pickfair, where Mary Pickford was a recluse, who never left her second floor bedroom".

by Anonymousreply 2August 4, 2016 8:06 PM

He was a very talented musician too. There is a short that was filmed around 1927 where he plays different instruments with his band. Very good looking.

by Anonymousreply 3August 4, 2016 9:49 PM

That face looks odd for some reason I cannot place...

by Anonymousreply 4August 5, 2016 2:31 AM

Buddy's boyfriend Gene Raymond, pinged to the high heavens. And why not?

"A 2001 biography of Nelson Eddy and MacDonald, Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, states that Raymond had affairs with men during his marriage to MacDonald. The book has documentation showing that Raymond was arrested three times for having sex with other men. This includes a photo of Raymond's arrest sheet in January 1938;[8] a US Army nurse is named and quoted concerning his second arrest; and a retired Scotland Yard detective named Joe Sampson confirms the third arrest, which occurred in England during World War II."

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by Anonymousreply 5November 29, 2018 5:21 AM

As a child, I recall Buddy Rogers as an old man appearing on the Academy Awards from time to time. Even then he looked like an old queen to me. I hear he was a lovely guy with many devoted friends. He won their Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award one year and apparently was very deserving of it.

by Anonymousreply 6November 29, 2018 6:09 AM

R5, just a note, the author of that book was a nutcase with an agenda to prove Jeanette was in a decades long clandestine relationship with Nelson Eddy

by Anonymousreply 7November 29, 2018 6:45 AM

Rainbow crossing at the intersection of Buddy Rogers Ave. and Palm Canyon Dr. in Cathedral City, CA. (Right by the Mary Pickford Theater!)

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by Anonymousreply 8November 30, 2018 12:25 AM

Buddy Rogers was also good friends with Al Capone during Capone's heyday in Chicago. Rogers referred to Al as "my pal". I don't think Rogers had anything to do with crime, just that Al Capone loved movies and movie stars so wanted to be friends with Buddy Rogers, who was a huge Hollywood star at that time.

by Anonymousreply 9November 30, 2018 12:42 AM

R7, yes, I've heard that. She seems obsessed with MacDonald & Eddy, to say the least.

by Anonymousreply 10November 30, 2018 1:58 AM

But other books (like 'The Fixers') also back up at least the fact that the marriage was arranged, and Gene Raymond was indeed gay.

by Anonymousreply 11November 30, 2018 2:04 AM
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