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Forgotten Queers

Forgotten Queers

Von: Gary M Thoren Jr
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This is Forgotten Queers, a show about the queer figures history pushed aside. They were once stars, leaders, icons — but time, shame, and prejudice buried their names. We’re here to remember them, to honor them, and to say: you don’t get to forget us.

Cover art photo provided by Alexander Grey on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@sharonmccutcheon?utm_source=spreaker&utm_medium=referral

Cover art photo provided by Shannia Christanty on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@shanniacy?utm_source=spreaker&utm_medium=referral

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/forgotten-queers--6719466/support.8-24-2025 Hygiene & gesundes Leben Politik & Regierungen Welt
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  • Richard Chamberlain

    Richard Chamberlain
    Oct 4 2026
    Richard Chamberlain was famous famous. For decades, he was one of those actors almost everybody recognized, even if different generations knew him for completely different reasons. To some, he was the impossibly handsome young Dr. Kildare. To others, he was the romantic hero of The Thorn Birds, the adventurer of Shōgun, or the leading man who seemed perfectly designed for the television miniseries. For me, though, Richard Chamberlain came into my life through disaster movies. And yes, that probably tells you quite a bit about me. I knew him from movies like The Towering Inferno and The Swarm—big, ridiculous, star-filled spectacles where something was always burning, collapsing, exploding, or, in the case of The Swarm, attacking in enormous numbers while Michael Caine tried very hard to convince us this was all terribly serious. Somewhere in all of that, I noticed Richard Chamberlain. I was young. I didn’t have the vocabulary yet to explain exactly why I noticed him. I just knew I did. Years later, of course, I understood. In this episode of Forgotten Queers, I look back at the extraordinary life and career of Richard Chamberlain—not simply as an actor, but as a gay man who became one of Hollywood’s biggest romantic idols during an era when being honest about who he was could have destroyed everything he had built. Born in Beverly Hills in 1934, Chamberlain became a household name in the early 1960s as the star of NBC’s Dr. Kildare. Almost overnight, his face was everywhere. He wasn’t merely a successful television actor; he became a heartthrob. And Hollywood knew exactly how to sell him. Handsome. Sensitive. Romantic. Available. Especially, supposedly, to women. Behind that carefully constructed public image was a much more complicated reality. Chamberlain was gay at a time when Hollywood didn’t simply discourage actors from coming out—it could make openness virtually incompatible with being marketed as a romantic leading man. So he did what many queer performers of his generation believed they had to do. He kept that part of himself private. His career continued far beyond Dr. Kildare. He worked on stage, in movies and television, and eventually became known as the King of the Miniseries. Centennial. Shōgun. The Thorn Birds. These weren’t small productions tucked away somewhere on cable. They were enormous television events watched by millions of people. Richard Chamberlain became one of the most recognizable romantic leading men in the world. Think about the contradiction in that for a moment. A gay man was being sold to America as the ultimate heterosexual romantic fantasy while knowing that telling the truth about himself might cause audiences—and more importantly, studios and networks—to see him completely differently. That contradiction is at the heart of this episode. But I also wanted to be careful about something. It’s very easy, looking backward from 2026, to ask why someone didn’t simply come out earlier. Richard Chamberlain himself eventually spoke about the fear and shame that kept him closeted for so many years. But the world he entered wasn’t our world. Careers disappeared. Queer actors were whispered about, threatened with exposure, or quietly pushed aside. Survival sometimes meant silence. Chamberlain publicly came out in 2003 with the publication of his memoir, Shattered Love, when he was nearly 70 years old. And something happened later in his career that affected me far more deeply than I expected. I saw him on Brothers & Sisters, playing a gay man. I cried. Then I saw him on Will & Grace, where he got to be wonderfully funny playing a straight character. And I cried again. I’m still not completely sure I can explain those tears. Part of it was happiness. Here was someone who had been an influence in my life since I was young, still working, still funny, still interesting, still vital. Part of it was sadness because I understood why it had taken him so long to live publicly as himself. And part of it was pride. After spending so many years watching Hollywood tell queer actors which parts of themselves they needed to hide, there was something beautiful about watching Richard Chamberlain reach a point where his sexuality no longer had to determine which characters he was allowed to play. He could play gay. He could play straight. He could simply be an actor. That shouldn’t feel revolutionary. But considering the world in which his career began, it kind of was. Richard Chamberlain’s story also raises one of the questions I keep returning to with Forgotten Queers: What does courage look like when simply being yourself carries consequences? Sometimes queer history gives us people who kicked open doors. Sometimes it gives us people who marched, protested, shouted, and demanded change. And sometimes it gives us people who survived long enough to finally walk through a door that earlier generations never believed would open. Richard Chamberlain’s story ...
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    16 Min.
  • BobMackie

    BobMackie
    Sep 24 2026
    Forgotten Queers: Bob Mackie — Sequins, Camp, Cher, and a Curtain Rod This week on Forgotten Queers, Gary is joined once again by guest cohost Sion to celebrate the life, career, and absolutely fabulous legacy of Bob Mackie—the legendary costume designer who understood that sometimes more really is more. Mackie, who died September 14, 2026, at the age of 87, spent more than six decades transforming fabric, feathers, beads, sequins, rhinestones, and occasionally an entire set of curtains into unforgettable pieces of entertainment history. Born Robert Gordon Mackie in Southern California, Mackie entered Hollywood in the early 1960s as a sketch artist. He worked around some of the great names in costume design, including Edith Head and Jean Louis, and quickly demonstrated that he had an extraordinary eye not simply for fashion, but for performers. That distinction would define his career. Bob Mackie wasn’t interested only in making someone look beautiful. He wanted the clothes to help tell the story. Television proved to be the perfect playground. During the golden age of the television variety show, performers needed an astonishing number of costumes. There were musical numbers, comedy sketches, guest stars, dancers and elaborate production numbers—sometimes all within the same hour. Mackie thrived in that world. His work with Mitzi Gaynor helped establish him as a designer in his own right, and in 1967 he became the costume designer for a new television variety series starring Carol Burnett. He stayed for all eleven seasons of The Carol Burnett Show. Mackie’s contribution to the series went far beyond dressing Carol beautifully. His costumes helped create characters. Mrs. Wiggins, Eunice, Nora Desmond and countless others became funnier because Mackie understood exactly what Carol Burnett needed the moment she walked onto the stage. And then there was the curtain dress. For the show’s legendary 1976 parody Went with the Wind!, Burnett played Starlett O’Hara in a send-up of Gone with the Wind. The script called for Starlett to fashion a dress from the curtains. Mackie decided simply wrapping Carol in drapery wasn’t funny enough. So he left the curtain rod in. Burnett descended the staircase wearing an enormous green velvet creation—with the rod extending across her shoulders—and television history was made. The costume became one of the most recognizable comedy costumes ever created and eventually entered the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. It demonstrated something essential about Bob Mackie: underneath all those rhinestones was a wicked sense of humor. Then came Cher. Mackie’s collaboration with Cher would become one of the great performer-designer partnerships in entertainment history. On The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and later Cher, Mackie helped create a visual identity that was unlike anything else on television. Cher’s long dark hair, impossibly glamorous gowns, feathers, beads and strategically placed sheer fabric challenged conventional ideas about what a woman could wear on American television. Their partnership continued long after the variety-show era ended. One particularly memorable moment came at the 1986 Academy Awards. Cher had received acclaim for her performance in Mask but had not been nominated for Best Actress. When she arrived to present an award, she did so wearing one of Mackie’s most outrageous creations: a black ensemble with an enormous feathered headdress, exposed midriff and plenty of sparkle. Whether it was intended as revenge, rebellion, humor—or some combination of all three—the message was impossible to miss: You didn’t nominate Cher? Fine. You’re still going to look at her. Two years later, Cher returned to the Oscars in another Mackie creation, this time to collect the Academy Award for Best Actress for Moonstruck. Mackie’s influence, however, stretched far beyond Cher and Carol Burnett. He designed for an extraordinary collection of performers including Diana Ross, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Tina Turner, Bette Midler, Ann-Margret, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Madonna, Bernadette Peters and many more. And if you grew up during the age of television variety shows, chances are you saw Bob Mackie’s work even when you didn’t know his name. His career eventually expanded into ready-to-wear fashion, collectible Barbie dolls, QVC’s enormously successful wearable-art collections, stage productions and more. The industry recognized him as well. Mackie earned nine Emmy Awards from 32 nominations, received three Academy Award nominations for costume design, was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical for The Cher Show. That Tony was especially fitting. Decades after Mackie helped invent Cher’s visual image, Broadway was celebrating both Cher’s life and the clothes that helped tell her story. But Bob Mackie’s ...
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    31 Min.
  • GeorgeNader 2

    GeorgeNader 2
    Sep 15 2026
    What happens when one of Hollywood’s most handsome leading men is gay in an era when being honest about it could destroy everything? This week on Forgotten Queers, Uncle Gary takes us back to 1950s Hollywood for the story of actor, writer, and certified heartthrob George Nader. And honestly, this episode started exactly the way some of the best Forgotten Queers stories start: completely by accident. While researching something for a Forgotten Sci-Fi post, Gary stumbled across a television series from 1959 called The Man and the Challenge. The star was George Nader—a tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered leading man who looked like 1950s Hollywood had decided shirts were merely a suggestion. Naturally, more research was required. And that’s when the story got much more interesting. George Nader was born in 1921 and built a successful acting career during the 1950s, appearing in movies and television at a time when Hollywood was manufacturing handsome leading men by the truckload. But unlike most of the carefully constructed romantic images being sold to audiences, Nader had a secret the studios absolutely did not want moviegoers to know. George Nader was gay. Even more remarkable, this wasn’t simply a series of hidden Hollywood affairs. George shared his life with Mark Miller, his partner for an extraordinary 55 years. Their relationship is at the heart of this episode because George Nader’s story isn’t simply another tale about a closeted Hollywood actor. It’s about two men who managed to build a life together during decades when their relationship had to exist largely outside public view. Before becoming a television leading man, Nader also earned himself a place in wonderfully strange science-fiction history. In 1953, he starred in Robot Monster, one of those gloriously bizarre low-budget movies that has developed a cult following precisely because there is nothing else quite like it. Yes, this is the movie featuring an alien that basically looks like a gorilla wearing a space helmet. George somehow survived that and kept his career going. By the middle of the decade, he was working at Universal and moving into increasingly prominent roles. He also became close friends with another extraordinarily handsome Universal star: Rock Hudson. And this is where Hollywood history, gossip, and legend collide. The notorious scandal magazine Confidential was threatening the careers of celebrities by publishing—or threatening to publish—details about their private lives. Think of Perez Hilton at his nastiest, except this was the 1950s, when outing a gay actor could end his career almost overnight. For years, a story has circulated that George Nader was essentially sacrificed to protect Rock Hudson—that information about Nader’s sexuality was allowed to surface so Hudson’s secret could remain protected. It’s a great Hollywood story. It also isn’t nearly as simple or as firmly documented as it is sometimes presented. Rather than turning the legend into fact, Forgotten Queers looks at what we actually know, what has been repeated over the years, and why the story became so believable in the first place. Because whether or not there was ever a literal studio bargain exchanging one gay actor’s career for another, the danger surrounding both men was very real. George’s American movie career began changing. But George Nader didn’t disappear. In 1959, he became the star of the television adventure series The Man and the Challenge, playing scientist and adventurer Dr. Glenn Barton. The series ran for 36 episodes and put George right at the center of the kind of rugged television adventure that was enormously popular at the time. And when Hollywood opportunities became more limited, George did something else queer people have been doing forever. He adapted. He went to Europe. There, Nader found a new audience starring as FBI agent Jerry Cotton in a successful series of German crime films. He ultimately appeared in eight Jerry Cotton movies, becoming a recognizable star to European audiences even as his name gradually faded from American popular culture. But George Nader had another act waiting for him. He became a writer. And this may be the most fascinating part of his story. In 1978, Nader published the science-fiction novel Chrome. At a time when mainstream science fiction was hardly overflowing with positive gay representation, George wrote a futuristic story involving love and desire between a gay man and a male android. Think about that for a moment. The Hollywood leading man who had spent much of his career in an industry where openly acknowledging his own relationship could have destroyed him eventually created a future where queer desire could actually exist on the page. There is something incredibly moving about that. George couldn’t completely rewrite the world he had been born into. So he imagined another one. And through everything—the movies, television, Europe, writing, and...
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    13 Min.
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