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A Lavender marriage: The wife is a Lesbian, the husband is a Gay male. There were numerous Lavender Marriages up until the 60's/70's, particularly in Hollywood, its purpose was to fool the movie goers/public into thinking they were in a heterosexual Marriage.
Kate Hepburn's first husband was a Gay male and she carried on a relationship with a Lesbian. All for image.
I do believe Lavender marriages still exist today, even with Gay liberation. It's all about image, deceiving the public.
Kate Hepburn's first husband was a Gay male and she carried on a relationship with a Lesbian. All for image.
Nonsense.
I've heard about those kinds of relationships but none of that kind of thing can be true about Katharine Hepburn. She was only married once in her life, in 1928, and that was to Philadelphia broker Ludlow Ogden Smith. Ludlow and Katharine divorced in 1934 so that he could marry another woman he was in love with, named Elizabeth Albers. Ludlow and Elizabeth had two children together, son Lewis and a daughter Katharine (named Katharine in honour of Smith's still very good friend and ex-wife Katharine Hepburn).
Katharine Hepburn had a brief affair with one of her agents, and another brief relationship in 1936 for 18 months with billionaire Howard Hughes who asked her to marry him but she refused. Katherine went into an open 26 years long deeply loving and intimate relationship with Spencer Tracy who she met and became involved with in 1941. They would have married but Tracy's long estranged wife, being a Catholic, would not grant him a divorce. Katharine and Spencer were in love and remained an openly involved couple until Spencer died in 1967. Katharine never became romantically involved with or married to any other persons after Spencer died.
So no Lavender marriages there. Which leads me to be suspicious of whatever source you got your information from about Katharine. She was a tomboy as a child and was a very strong proponent of suffragism and women's rights so that might have caused some people to choose to believe that she was a lesbian.
The OP certainly wasn't about the Katherine Hepburn I remember, who undoubtedly had the love of her life with Spencer Tracey.
Yes indeed. Very much like the infamous openly acknowledged loves of their lives relationship that happened between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. But at least Bacall and Bogart (who was twice her age) were able to get married.
None of them cared about maintaining an "image" for the sake of Hollywood.
As a matter of fact the only gay actor that I can think of for whom a Hollywood straight image was important was Rock Hudson.
I thought it was common knowledge that Katharine Hepburn had a relationship with Greta Garbo at some point, so she was at least bi.
Common gossip, maybe?
I think the whole "Katharine Hepburn was gay!" narrative stems from a "biography" written by one James Robert Parrish that seemed to contain a signficant amount of speculation, but not much substance.
I imagine Ms. Hepburn's preference for wearing pants and speaking her mind caused a lot of tongues to wag during her time in the spotlight; keep in mind that even now, those who deviate from societal norms are often designated as gay or whatever by the peanut galley.
As to whether I know anyone in a "lavender marriage," I haven't the slightest, and neither do I care. Domestic partnerships are domestic partnerships AFAIC, and whatever they do with themselves or with others behind closed doors isn't something that sparks my interest.
Last edited by Metlakatla; 11-08-2023 at 04:30 PM..
How is it deception, when you know the couple is a gay man and a lesbian?
I've never heard the term, but in my opinion there's no deception in such a marriage, relationships in marriages are as individual as the people who are in these marriages. If the couple is happy with the way things are between them, than I see it as no concern of anyone else's.
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