After 1981's 'Clash of the Titans,' the Yale-grad wanted to tackle "something relevant and cutting edge." But he says the way-ahead-of-its-time drama torpedoed his job prospects until 'L.A. Law': "The door shut with a resounding smash." Harry Hamlin says playing a gay writer in the 1982 big-screen drama Making Love put his career on ice for several years.
The actor, looking back now, says the film "was too early. It was 10 years too early, I guess, and it completely ended my career. That was the last studio picture I ever did. The door shut with a resounding smash."
Hamlin, 68, was an in-demand actor in Hollywood at the time, he tells the It Happened in Hollywood podcast. Warner Bros. had offered him "the Clint" — a three-picture deal named for the one given to Clint Eastwood.
But when he learned the two movies the studio had in mind for him were Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and First Blood, the Yale-educated actor decided the deal wasn't for him. (The parts ended up going to Christopher Lambert and Sylvester Stallone, respectively.) Instead, he made the schlocky Greek-myth epic Clash of the Titans, a part he took because it would allow him to work alongside his acting hero, Sir Laurence Olivier, who played Zeus to Hamlin's Perseus. The film shot in 1978 but was released in 1981 — as it took Ray Harryhausen three years to complete the painstaking stop-motion effects.
For his follow up, he was brought in by director Arthur Hiller (Love Story) to read for 20th Century Fox's Making Love, which was to be groundbreaking film about a same-sex affair, the first of its kind for a major studio.
"Everyone in town had turned the movie down," says Hamlin. "Because at that time the idea of a gay world was still not accepted." Hamlin read the script and thought, "this is exactly the kind of movie I'm looking for. I want to do something that's relevant and cutting edge."
He took the part — but as production wore on, the script was toned down considerably from the one he signed on to. (One scene, involving a sex act with a pay phone, was cut out completely.)
Hamlin had a tradition of cooking a chicken dinner for his female co-stars before shooting commenced, and continued the tradition with his male romantic lead, Michael Ontkean.