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Now before Michael made the aforementioned film he first appeared in what can only be described as a gay version of the blacksplotation films that were so popular at the time like BLACULA or COFFY… THE GAY DECEIVERS hit the drive-in circuit around 1969 when the Vietnam War had the youth market up in arms with the draft. So this film addressed the situation by suggesting that if the going gets really rough, forget a student deferment, just pretend to be gay and avoid the draft permanently. (Popular entertainment and gay sensibilities don’t seem to have progressed as far as one would have hoped when the big summer hit of 2007 is a comedy with Adam Sandler pretending to be gay to receive domestic partnership benefits.)

THE GAY DECEIVERS was at best a minor affair except for the performance of Michael Greer as Malcolm. Greer played the well-meaning landlord of a West Hollywood apartment complex that was so over the top it ventured on occasion into Barbara Cartland territory. Our faux gay couple sleep in a pink heart-shaped bed with even hotter pink silk sheets. Michael was more than aware of the stereotype he was asked to play, so he went about rewriting his dialogue and in the process making his character into a sympathetic, caring man who just happed to be a screaming queen.

Michael’s legacy for all the openly gay actors that followed in his wake would always be his tour de force on stage and screen as “Queenie”. I cannot think of another performance of its kind to match it and I am including William Hurt’s much praised Oscar winning turn in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN. Michael was focusing the real thing and audiences knew they were in the presence of a damaged soul, whereas with Hurt’s performance you were never really convinced for a moment that William Hurt was this character and, like most straight actors playing gay, he did enough bits of camp business with his acting to let the audience know he really was just acting.

That is the crucial difference between acting the truth and acting what you hope looks like the truth. In spite of Harvey Hart’s misjudged interpretation of John Herbert’s play, Michael Greer was that character; he could sense-memory the hell out of the role because he knew what being an outcast was all about, allowing him to reach deep down into his gut and channel that instinct right back into his acting.

At this point I think it is important to back up a bit and discuss the sexed-up and sensational Sal Mineo version of FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES that Mineo produced and directed at the Coronet Theater in Los Angles. This version featured the debut of the relatively unknown Don Johnson playing innocent young Smitty, with Mineo himself playing the role of the predatory Rocky. Michael was the definitive “Queenie” for anyone lucky enough to see his performance on stage. He would continue to play the role over four hundred times, bonding with both Sal Mineo and Don Johnson for life. (Other actors did play the role as well during the long run of the play on both coasts.) Michael even appeared in one of Johnson’s earliest films, THE MAGIC GARDEN OF STANLEY SWEETHEART, in a small but showy role.

Al Pacino was a major supporter of FORTUNE in its early stages and had at one time hoped to act in it as well. Sal staged the play with a daring, no-holds-barred approach involving nudity, with the sexual content front and center for the first time. The infamous rape scene where a naked Don Johnson is taken from behind by Mineo left audiences shocked and aroused in a way you weren’t supposed to be in 1969.

Sadly the man behind it all, John Herbert, did not stay true to his convictions, sending Sal a three-page letter denouncing his restaging of the play. This will always remain a mystery to me since he allowed MGM to utterly reinvent his play to make it more acceptable to a homophobic audience. Michael told me the director kept asking him to really play up “the funny drag queen element” in his performance. I mean what film with anal rape and suicide doesn’t need a screaming queen telling you it’s all in the game?

Michael Greer should have been catapulted into the big time with such exposure, plus the rave reviews for this performance. However aside from repeating his work on screen he remained in the shadows of the entertainment world

In today’s Show Business world all it takes is someone outing you during the run of a hit TV series to become openly gay and still work, but one must remember in Michael’s case he was never in the closet in the first place. He was the first to tell you “I was just a gay actor at the wrong moment in time.” It was far safer to behave like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter or Richard Chamberlain and play straight as long as the acting jobs came along.

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