Was william hopper gay

Best acknowledged and loved by his fans as "Paul Drake" on the hugely famous Perry Mason television series (), William DeWolf Hopper Jr. was born in New York Town, the son of movie actress-turned-gossip-columnist Hedda Hopper and the legendary Broadway thespian William DeWolf Hopper, who was 32 years her senior. Hopper's parents began making films around the time of his birth and he received his first film credit as an infant in a neonate carriage in the film Sunshine Dad. Following their divorce in , Hedda continued performing on film, stage and radio into the late 30's, when she became prominent in her second career as a Hollywood gossip columnist. In the meantime her son had grown into a tall (6'4") handsome young man who she encouraged to sign a shrink with Paramount in at the age of As his estranged father had died by this time, he started out with the stage name of DeWolf Hopper Jr. Young Hopper languished in bit parts at Paramount, but after moving to Warner Bros. in , he was able to obtain some leading

It's been an interesting last week or so if you've been trying to keep up with concrete people, fictional people, and real people who turned out to be quite different from who they pretended to be. It brought a whole unused meaning to the saying, "You can't tell the players without a scorecard." And while most people were no longer surprised that Lance Armstrong was not the man he wanted us to think he was, there was fairly universal shock over the story of Manti Te'o and his phony dead girlfriend.

As that story picked up steam during the week, taking one bizarre turn after another, it was easy to assume that this was probably going to be one of the strangest news stories of the year. The tale of a star football player and a fake lifeless girlfriend (doesn't that expression just trip off the tongue?) boggled the imagination.  Was Te'o involved in the deception? Was he the most naive football player in the universe? What, we demanded, was the rest of the story?

And it was somewhere in the middle of all this that my wife turned to me. "It kind of reminds you of Raymond Burr, doesn't it

To my parents' generation, Perry Masonwas The Lawyer, what lawyers were all about: stern but caring, eminently professional (with no social life to speak of), defending clients on trial for murder, using logic and luck to expose the real murderer, who is usually sitting right in the court room:  "I had to accomplish it!  He would possess ruined me, don't you understand?"

Created by Earle Stanley Gardner, in , Perry Mason appeared in over 80 novels and compact stories, becoming one of the best-known fictional characters of all time.  Feature adaptions began almost immediately, in   A radio series began in

The iconic tv series began in , and ran for nine seasons.  Years later, tv movies began to air, three or four per year, thirty in all ().

In the original series, there were five main characters:

1. Perry,  played by busy personality actor Raymond Burr.  Burr was gay, but invented a heterosexual back story for himself, and refused to be seen in public with lover Robert Benevides. He never came out to the relax of the cast; they knew, sort of, but they

Screening: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Case of Gay Life

Screening

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Case of Gay Life

Wednesday, May 8 at pm
Michelson Theater, Broadway, 6th Floor

Perry Mason (–, CBS-TV) is known for its formulaic plots—attorney Mason (Raymond Burr) defends an innocent client and forces the real murderer to confess in a courtroom finale. With its stylish noir filming, outdoor locations, and deep background characterizations, the series arguably also featured a prescient queer subtext. Burr was a gay man who led a covert life, but on the show, Mason is consistently paired with his investigator, Paul Drake (William Hopper), in balanced, sometimes domestic contexts—especially notable in the episode we’ll screen: The Case of the Borrowed Baby (). 50 min. With commentary by Drake Stutesman, Adjunct Professor of Cinema Studies (TSOA) and Costume Studies (Steinhardt), NYU.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies and Grey Art Gallery. 

Free of charge, no reservations, capacity limited, and subject to change. Photo ID required for entrance to NYU buil