With 99 appearances on The Tonight Show, nearly two thousand game show episodes, and starring roles from Broadway to sitcoms to cartoons … for decades, Charles Nelson Reilly WAS television. But it almost never happened: At Charles’ first TV audition, an NBC executive took one look at him and said, […]
How did Dolly Parton become a gay icon? And what did she do for the queer community? Her style inspired countless drag queens, and her big open heart brought people together across religious and political divides. Her outspoken support for marriage equality, trans rights, and people living with HIV would […]
James Burrows elevated sitcoms to an art from with Cheers, Frasier, Taxi, Will & Grace, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and many more. The son of legendary Broadway director Abe Burrows (Guys & Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying), James became a television legend in his own […]
Despite being one of the most wholesome couples on television, when Modern Family debuted Mitch and Cam were the one household on the show that wasn’t allowed to get married. Getting these guys to the altar was a multi-year effort, both on-screen and behind the scenes, on the part of […]
You probably know Angela Lansbury as the sweet grandmotherly Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote. … Or you might know her as a sexy seductress from her early film roles. … Or as a scheming villainess. But in real life, Dame Angela’s life has been nearly as tumultuous as those […]
You probably recognize Leslie Jordan for his role on Will & Grace. But long before he became famous for that, he spent years toiling in thankless bit parts, suffering with shame and guilt for being gay, spiraling into drug and alcohol abuse that nearly destroyed him. It wasn’t until one […]
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope is famous for how it was filmed: To look like one continuous scene playing out in real time with no cuts. But there’s something else that makes it an even more audacious film, which is the unstated fact that its main characters are a gay […]
The movie The Birdcage had a long, strange journey to America’s big screen. To tell that story, we’re going back in time to a French royal palace in the 1970s, where two comedians created a gay farce called La Cage Aux Folles … then we’ll meet a trio of revolutionary […]
Starring a young Martin Sheen and developed by the guys who created Columbo just a few years earlier, the TV movie That Certain Summer was a groundbreaking project that many thought could never be made. Before it was even filmed, the movie caused an uproar behind the scenes and in […]
Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out episode was a massive TV milestone. The first openly gay lead character on a primetime sitcom, it opened the door for countless shows that followed. But not everyone was happy about it, and behind the scenes, some of Ellen’s biggest battles were with the executives in […]
