BRNout said:
mleach said:
It was pretty much the exact same thing with a number of other gay actors back then such as Richard Deacon, Rock Hudson, Dick Sargent, Raymond Burr, Robert Reed, Sal Mineo, Edward Everett Horton and Agnes Moorehead. True Sargent had came out not long before his death but I do remember hearing a radio interview with Elizabeth Montgomery shortly after Sargent's death ( and sadly not long before Montgomery's ) claiming that she knew that both Sargent and Moorehead were gay when all of them were still doing Bewitched.
Some are more obvious than others. Even today, where it's so common to see gay people in all stripes of life, you still can't tell that most of the people you listed were gay by watching their performances on TV or in a movie. Paul Lynde was pretty obvious. In retrospect, Robert Reed was sneaking out of the closet during the last year of Brady, and Dick Sargent visually and aurally had some of the tendencies.
However, I'm sure it was a shock to many when Rock Hudson came out and the likes of Richard Deacon and Raymond Burr still have me in disbelief. They all hid their proclivities pretty well. As did Dusty Springfield.
Not that there's anything wrong with it...... 
It's obvious why actors are hesitant to come out of the closet to this day - they're afraid of being typecast. Remember that it's
acting, people - there's no reason a male actor who is gay in real life can't pretend to be in love with a woman in a movie, any less convincingly than a hetero male.
Having been around gay people of both sexes for many years, I've learned that some have "gay tendencies" - mannerisms, tastes. etc, but that many don't. I've known a gay male couple for years that are both totally macho male jock types with none of the stereotypical mannerisms or lifestyle choices (they like football, not musicals...their house isn't particularly tasteful - they're not even tidy!). To this day, I still want to ask them if they've been engaging in a decades long April Fools joke, and are really just roomates.
