Word: wheeler
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...movie industry is accustomed to seeing stars begging for parts. What it is not used to is a part begging for a star. That is exactly what happened, however, when Producer Jerry Wheeler ran a pleading ad in Hollywood's trade publications earlier this year. Didn't anybody, he seemed to be saying, want to appear in his film The Front Runner...
What was the catch? Did he want someone to play a rapist, a child molester or a drooling maniac? No. Those would have been easy parts to fill. Wheeler wanted a rugged star to play a college track coach who happens to be gay. And despite all the gains made by homosexuals in the U.S. in recent years, playing the part of a gay is still considered by many to be a fast ride to oblivion...
Trying to knock down that so-called wisdom, Wheeler listed 92 actors and actresses -- everyone from Marlon Brando to Robert Redford, Jane Alexander to Susannah York -- who have portrayed homosexuals or lesbians and lived to tell about it. He might just as well have saved his money. Not only did his ad fail to produce a star, but Jon Pennell, the young actor who had been signed as the coach's lover, withdrew, deciding that he did not want the role...
...actors Wheeler approached might have turned him down, of course, because they disliked the script or the pay, a relatively meager $1 million. But most made it clear that they were frightened by the role. "There's a general feeling that homosexuality is a dangerous subject," says Front Runner Director Marshall W. Mason, who has made his name in the theater (Burn This, Fifth of July...
...clothing distributor in the Bronx had found it cheaper to turn rejects over to a trucker deadheading back to North Carolina than to dump the stuff in New York. Enterprising Wheeler-Dealer Lee ("Red") Wright spread the bales over a one-acre field. Last week Wright was collecting a $5 parking fee, then permitting ragpickers to take away whatever they could carry. There were a few drawbacks: no dressing rooms, no alterations, and the "as is" nature of the merchandise, a condition likely to worsen as time and weather take their toll. But never mind. Bargain hunters jamming local roads...