Cary Grants

Jo Anna Walker writes that she will be “pleased” and “relieved” to read a forthcoming account of Cary Grant’s relationship with Maureen Donaldson, but has “absolutely no interest” in another book “which will chronicle the late actor’s alleged homosexual liaisons” (Calendar Letters, June 19).

The reason?

Grant epitomized “elegance, sophistication, and masculinity,” she says with emphasis, and no ludicrous allegations are going to convince her otherwise.

Walker mistakenly believes that masculinity and homosexuality are mutually exclusive; furthermore, she crudely assumes that “homosexual liaisons” are intrinsically distasteful in a way that heterosexual ones are not.

If, as she claims, Grant’s private life is “nobody’s business,” why does she interest herself in the subject at all?

The sad truth is that Grant’s private life, for people like Walker, makes all the difference in the world. Her remarks place her firmly among those who refuse to accept sexual ascriptions as morally neutral, and for whom the term homosexual, in particular, is automatically defamatory.

This prejudice paradoxically creates the atmosphere in which it becomes profitable to tar a celebrated figure with exactly the sort of expose that Walker claims to deplore.

A. VALERE

Los Angeles