With the story out today that the late Paul Newman was supposed to have had an affair with a female journalist during the making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I’m reminded of stories I heard years ago from some big time gossips from the Hollywood gay community that Newman would have done anything but. Here’s something to chew on:

From www.associatedcontent.com- Paul Newman and Gore Vidal shared the Three-Faced Eve, Joanne Woodward, in the late 1950s, living as a happy threesome for a while. Paul and Gore remained close throughout the ’60s, until Gore’s live-in “husband” got him to vamoose for Italy and away from the sultry arms of the box-office star.

Paul took Robert Wagner as a lover sometime in the early 1960s, after Wagner was dumped by his wife Natalie Wood. In turn, Newman dumped “Babs” (Wagner’s nickname given to him by the denizens of the New York transvestite demimonde he loved to flock with) in the late ’60s, after New Blue Eyes became the top box office star in America (1968-70, ranking #1 twice). His disdain for Babs’ TV career bled over into Newman’s relations with rival (on the queen scene) James Garner….

….Steve McQueen dropped out of The Sundance Kid & Butch Cassidy over the rumors about his own sexuality. (The Sundance Kid & Butch Cassidy was the original working title of the 1969 megahit. Newman — who owned the property — originally was slated to play Sundance, but after McQueen dropped out and Marlon Brando refused the role, he took the role of Butch.

The name “Butch” has hyper-masculine connotations, so Newman might have switched roles as a joke, as the movie was written as a straight Western. Without warning, Newman changed it into a comedy, through his performance on the first say of shooting, according to director George Roy Hill. ) McQueen was afraid of being associated with the closet queen Newman, even if he was allowed to play “Butch,” as he had supported himself as a call-boy in his early days as an actor in New York and Hollywood, where he was warily jealous of the openly bisexual James Dean, just as later, in 1960s Hollywood, he would be jealous of Newman. (McQueen was the son of a 16-year old prostitute, so whoring came natural to him.) As his first wife said in her autobiography, McQueen admitted he was leaving her to prove his manhood to those in Hollywood who thought he was a sissy, by taking other, younger women…

…Robert Redford (a.k.a. “Butch” to the Newman crowd, a kind of in-joke) never made a sequel to his two blockbusters with Newman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, both among the most popular movies ever made) not necessarily out of disgust with his on-screen pal’s sexual shenanigans (which were winding down at that point anyways), but to protect his standing as primo box office star (#1 three times in mid-1970s).