Double Life: Portrait of a Gay Marriage From Broadway to Hollywood

by Alan Shayne, Norman Sunshine

Overview

“A fascinating, frank and page-turning memoir about the lifelong love affair of two extraordinary men” (Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City).
  The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a fifty-plus year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising, and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century. At the same time, they share inside stories from film, television, and media featuring the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Truman Capote, Bette Davis, Robert Redford, Lee Radziwill, and Frances Lear.
Double Life is a trip through the entertainment world and a gay partnership in the latter half of the twentieth century. As more and more same sex couples find it possible to say “I do,” the book serves as an important document of how far we’ve come. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781480442559
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	07/30/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	360
Sales rank:	446,495
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Alan Shayne retired as president of Warner Bros. Television in 1986. There, he was responsible for launching the hit shows Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard, Alice, and Night Court, among others. He began his career in television with David Susskind’s production company after heading the Broadway casting office for David Merrick. Prior to that, he was an actor on Broadway and in television.
Norman Sunshine is a painter and sculptor whose work is in permanent collections around the country. Earlier in his career, he was a fashion illustrator and creative director at the Jane Trahey Agency, where he coined the phrases “What becomes a legend most?” for Blackglama Minks, and “Danskins are not just for dancing.” He won an Emmy for graphic and title design in the 1970s.
Shayne and Sunshine live in Connecticut. 

Read an Excerpt

Highlights from Double Life

• Lena Horne gave parties in her West End Avenue apartment frequently during the run of Jamaica, composed by Harold Arlen, in which Shayne understudied Ricardo Montalban. Horne graciously invited Sunshine to accompany him to the parties. But years later, Shayne went backstage to see Horne after her one- woman Broadway show and was greeted without any sign of affection. Rather, she berated him by saying, ‘Mr.Mogul…how come you never got me a job, Mr. Mogul?’”

• After Sunshine came up with the tagline for the Blackglama mink campaign, “What Becomes a Legend Most?”, the first ad featured Lauren Bacall and was photographed by Richard Avedon in 1960.

• Shayne edged out Marlon Brando for the lead in Twelfth Night while a student at the New School studying with Stella Adler. Brando got back at Shayne by playing bongo drums during his short time on stage in the minor role of a priest. “He ruined the production,” Shayne remembers.

• In 1961, Shayne went to work in David Merrick’s casting office. “I’ll never forget the first day I saw Barbra Streisand,” he recounts. “I watched as an unattractive girl, dressed in shapeless clothes a homeless person might wear, walked onto the stage chewing gum. She took the gum out of her mouth and parked it under the lid of the piano. The pianist played an introduction and the voice, that was to make history, sang Sleeping Bee.” Knowing that Merrick would never go for someone with her looks, Alan, his boss and the director Arthur Laurents conspired to cast her in I Can Get it for you Wholesale, her first Broadway show.

• Shayne cast a young unknown in Carnival, and when she went on for the lead, Merrick, not liking her looks, had her fired. She went on to become the opera star Julia Migenes.

• Working for David Susskind, Shayne was responsible for casting the television productions of Death of a Salesman with Lee J. Cobb and a young George Segal as Biff, A Case of Libel with Van Heflin, Hatful of Rain with Peter Falk, All the Way Home with Joanne Woodward and Look Homeward Angel with Geraldine Page.

• In one remarkable chapter, Shayne recounts his work on the Truman Capote television adaptation of Laura, starring Princess Lee Radziwill. Although she had no experience as an actress, Susskind insisted on building a production around her. Shayne suggested a remake of the famous movie. “They talk about her all the time but she doesn’t appear until a third of the way into the picture,” he said at the time, “and then all she has to do is just stand there and look enigmatic.” The terrible script submitted by Capote had most likely been written, Shayne determined, by a would-be-writer gas station attendant in Palm Springs with whom Capote had fallen in love. The cast included Robert Stack, Farley Granger and Arlene Francis, all of whom, Shayne writes, “had written off the Princess. They thought she was terrible but they had all decided to do their jobs and just get it over with.” Stack even asked that Radziwill be replaced by Elizabeth Taylor. Despite Susskind’s last-minute attempts with editing wizardry, Laura got devastating reviews.

• During his career in Hollywood, Shayne cast Barbara Feldon in Get Smart, created The Snoop Sisters with Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick, suggested Alice as a vehicle for Linda Lavin, signed Richard Chamberlain for The Thorn Birds and Katherine Hepburn for The Corn is Green with George Cukor directing, and championed Lynda Carter to play Wonder Woman. “The great thing that Lynda has is a sweetness,” he argued to the network at the time. “Her goodness will shine through and make the whole thing work.” Later, upon reflection, he writes, “As for sweetness and goodness, everyone changes with success and Lynda was no exception.” During that time, six of his television shows ran for more than five seasons: Alice, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Growing Pains, Head of the Class, Night Court and Dukes of Hazard.

• In 1983, Sunshine and Shayne’s Los Angeles House burned to the ground. Their neighbor across the street, Rock Hudson, insisted that they stay in his home while they re-built. While they were there, Hepburn and Cukor surprised Sunshine while he was painting in his studio, and insisted on a tour. They came by to purportedly inspect the fire damage, but he soon realized that what Hepburn really wanted was to see Rock Hudson’s house.

• “Rock’s goodness to us and our ensuing friendship gave us an unwanted privilege,” Sunshine writes. “We were on the list of friends who were permitted to visit him at UCLA Medical Center and watch him die of AIDS. It was a terrible time and we lost good friends, and more importantly, valuable human beings.”

• Shayne signed Bette Davis to work opposite Helen Hayes as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s Murder with Mirrors. The first day on the set, after Hayes greeted Davis, Davis replied, “Listen, we’re going to be here for days and there’s no point in wasting our breath saying ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’ every time we see each other. Let’s just do our work.”

• In 1988 Frances Lear, starting her eponymous Lear’s Magazine, called Sunshine out of the blue and said, “I have this gut feeling about you and I know you will be right for me. Get on a plane immediately and come talk to me.” Sunshine put down his brushes and flew to New York. This began a whirlwind year in which Sunshine totally re-designed the magazine. “It seems that Frances was a manic depressive,” he writes, “and held in a precarious emotional balance with lithium. I was one of her ‘high’ inspirations. And somehow, I was letting myself be taken on one of her trips.”

Table of Contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• FOREWORD
• THE MATINEE
• THE STAR DRESSING ROOM
• THE MULTICOLORED DINNER
• ROGER
• CAL
• SUNDAY NIGHT AT P.J. CLARKE’S
• LA ULTIMA NOCHE
• WHAT BECOMES A LEGEND MOST?
• YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BE A STAR
• THE CASTING COUCH
• BUCKS
• LAURA
• ARTIST
• BREAKING AWAY
• THE HOUSE WITHOUT A CHRISTMAS TREE
• HOLLYWOOD
• ART ON THE BALCONY
• INCIDENT IN THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS
• LESLIE
• THE UPSIDE AND THE DOWNSIDE
• DOWNTOWN, UPTOWN
• THE SELLING SEASON
• THIN ICE
• THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE CALLER
• THE ADVENT OF FRANCES
• THE SIX O’CLOCK NEWS
• I’VE LOST MY ZEST
• LADY IN THE DARK
• TED’S GIFT
• THE FRENCH CLAIRVOYANT
• JACQUELINE
• FRIEND, PARTNER, LOVER, COMRADE…
• EPILOGUE
• Acknowledgments
• Image Gallery
• About the Authors
• Copyright

Editorial Reviews

This entertaining, invigorating story of Shayne and Sunshine's enduring relationship seems like something from off the silver screen. Their relationship began in 1958 when homosexuality was considered a disease; at the time of their first meeting, the divorced Shayne was trying to cure himself of his homosexuality via deep analysis. Shayne, an aspiring actor at the beginning of the book, became a casting director, and, eventually, the president of Warner Brothers Television. Sunshine started out as a freelance illustrator in New York and developed into an accomplished painter, media consultant, and Emmy Award winner. Despite their career successes, the couple lived a less-than open life. In 1968, when Sunshine admitted to a New York Times reporter that he lived with Shayne, they were met with deafening silence from colleagues and friends. The authors include entertaining stories about stars, from a young Marlon Brando, to a generous Rock Hudson, to a bitter Lena Horne. As much a love letter as a look at how society's views on homosexuality have changed over the last 50 years, this is a fascinating book. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Advance Praise

“Though Double Life is a perfect plea for equal rights, it never preaches but merely looks candidly at the terrific, if at times turbulent, relationship of two fabulous, sexy men who dared love each other openly. I laughed and gasped at its inside-show-business stories and was intrigued by the cutthroat advertising and art worlds. Brilliantly written, filled with humor—and occasional heartbreak—Double Life follows a fifty-year marriage, revealing its love and warts.”

—Joan Rivers

“A love that once dared not speak its name sings freely—and beautifully—in Double Life, a fascinating, frank and page-turning memoir about the life-long love affair of two extraordinary men.”
—Candace Bushnell

"How exceptionally fine at this precarious moment in our history to be able to read the moving story of a lifelong love affair between two men, spanning some fifty years of faithful togetherness, utter and complete devotion and responsible and fulfilling achievement. Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine have written a valuable document to show the world that yes, we can do it too.”

—Larry Kramer

“I read the Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine’s Double Life in one big gulp. This memoir becomes their legends most!”

—Liz Smith

"Anyone living in a long term relationship, gay or straight, will find him/herself in the pages Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine have written. They know what it's like to be together for a long time and they tell it like it is, with wit, courage, honesty and tenderness. From Broadway to the Village to Madison Avenue to Hollywood they have tales to tell and they tell them brilliantly. I love this book!”

—Alfred Uhry, Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning author of Driving Miss Daisy

“A life well lived does not always make a book well written, but here, in this truthful and affecting work, are two carefully maintained lives without a mortgage, paired by fate and synchronized from two points of view like a pair of mated butterflies. Reading about their lives has taught me a lot about my own—one riveting, wisely observed revelation after another by two extraordinary men with a lot to give. When I grow up, I want to be just like Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine.”

—Rex Reed

“What gives the book additional measure of depth is the consistently strong melody of the love story that plays underneath almost every incident, and provides the various pressures, cultural and otherwise, that challenge its survival.”

—A.R. Gurney, author of the play Love Letters

Publishers Weekly

This entertaining, invigorating story of Shayne and Sunshine's enduring relationship seems like something from off the silver screen. Their relationship began in 1958 when homosexuality was considered a disease; at the time of their first meeting, the divorced Shayne was trying to cure himself of his homosexuality via deep analysis. Shayne, an aspiring actor at the beginning of the book, became a casting director, and, eventually, the president of Warner Brothers Television. Sunshine started out as a freelance illustrator in New York and developed into an accomplished painter, media consultant, and Emmy Award winner. Despite their career successes, the couple lived a less-than open life. In 1968, when Sunshine admitted to a New York Times reporter that he lived with Shayne, they were met with deafening silence from colleagues and friends. The authors include entertaining stories about stars, from a young Marlon Brando, to a generous Rock Hudson, to a bitter Lena Horne. As much a love letter as a look at how society's views on homosexuality have changed over the last 50 years, this is a fascinating book. (Oct.)

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