Previously: Alice Walker and Tracy Chapman totally went out.
There are, I think, drawbacks to being constantly incredulous. I wouldn’t say that a substantial dose of skepticism isn’t a good idea; I will merely suggest that excessive mistrust can result in the loss of potential joy, and I do not want that for you. I want you to maximize your possible happiness, while maintaining a healthy, wary outlook that protects you from getting eaten by predators.
The possibility that I want you to entertain is that Eartha Kitt once had a threesome with Paul Newman and James Dean. All I ask, for those of you who need to be convinced, and are not willing to take my good word for it, is that you accept that the probability of this threesome is not zero. Can you do that? Good.
It’s gossip, I’ll grant you that. I am not suggesting the case that I hold in my hands contains irrefutable proof. There’s never anything more than a smoking gun in cases like this, which is why everyone makes-believe that Old Hollywood was full of people who only had heterosexual affairs with one person at a time, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that anyone thought of adding someone else into the mix.
I guess before we go any further you’ll have to ask yourself: if you were Paul Newman, or Eartha Kitt, or James Dean, in any of their primes, what would you have used your body for?
Let us begin. The first obstacle must be removed: namely, rumors of Paul Newman’s exclusive heterosexuality. “Everyone knows about James Dean’s bisexuality,” I hear you say, “but Paul Newman was born faithful to Joanne Woodward.” Okay, well, Dean was dead three years before Newman married her, so don’t worry so much about it.
Watch this honestly, and with an open mind:
Can you say – truthfully, now – that there was nothing there? Yes, even taking into account that they are actors, and that on-screen chemistry doesn’t always translate into offscreen attraction, can you say the odds are still set at zero?
Look now at this:
I am not attempting to prove anything to you yet. I am merely setting a stage. Perhaps people will choose to walk onto it, and act out a scene; perhaps not. But the stage is there for them, if they so choose.
Paul knew James. James knew Eartha. The possibility existed. All that is required of you is an open mind.
From PBS’ (PBS! That sexless, venerated American institution, that bastion of truth! Listen to them, if you will not listen to me) American Masters:
[James Dean] said to me, ‘I want to move like you, can you teach me how to move my body like you do on stage?’ And I told him where to meet me, here in New York and that’s where we met for dance classes. And that’s where Jamie and I always met downstairs from that studio to have coffee, to have our little tete-a-tete conversations…
He had something in him that he didn’t understand. He wanted to learn from me how to move on the stage the way I do, so I taught him how to control his body and how to let the words physically carry you from this point to that point. I was in a play and he’d just done his first film so we were both becoming known at that time. It was a good time.
Perhaps Eartha and Jamie merely danced. Perhaps Dean and Newman simply had excellent chemistry, which was briefly captured in a taped audition. Perhaps they all enjoyed vigorous, heterosexual love-making with one parter at a time and regularly ate cheese sandwiches and went to bed at eleven-thirty.
But so many things happen in this world. Perhaps this was one of them.
The problem with these kinds of stories, of course, is that no one is willing to talk about it with strangers while they are alive (and I don’t blame them! It’s still, frankly, none of our business, even though everyone involved is dead; I still want 
to know even though I haven’t got the right to), which means the most that trickles down is third-hand hearsay decades after the fact. And that’s not proof, of course. There’s never proof, and if you haven’t got proof, well, then you have to admit that everyone involved was straight as an arrow and you’re just projecting your wretched, dissolute fantasies onto perfectly nice dead people.
There’s a book – it isn’t a very good book, but there’s a book – that talks about it, a little. It’s the kind of book that has mostly 5-star or 1-star reviews. (“Disgusting. Smearing perfectly good people with your lurid gay fantasies.” You know the kind. No proof.)
Anyhow, someone asked Eartha about it once, and Eartha maybe said something like this:
“I had both of them that afternoon, and I came to the conclusion that white boys are so delicious.”
I like hearsay. Don’t you?
Tags: eartha kitt, history, relationships, threesomes
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did I ever tell you about the time I had sex with Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom?
Kindly SEE YOURSELF OUT.
What? I thought it came up organically.
This is everything.
envisioning Chris Pratt as a Newman/Dean/Kitt shipper is making my NIGHT, lemme tell you.
What makes it even better is that he said that in response to an interviewer asking him if he knew about fanfic with him and the avengers and he responded “You mean, like me, Chris Evans, and Robert Downey? I have to say, I agree.”
SO CHARMING.
UGH is there any end to the Pratt adorability? Methinks, no.
Why would anyone think of anything else ever
(As for James Dean, I didn’t pick up in the gay subtext of the Sal Mineo character in rebel without a cause because I assumed that was everyone’s reaction to being near James Dean regardless of gender of preference)
It’s kind of like Adrian Pasdar having sexual chemistry with everybody in every scene he’s in.
“if you were Paul Newman, or Eartha Kitt, or James Dean, in any of their primes, what would you have used your body for?”
Delicious, hot, fantastical sex with the other two. And eating cheese sandwiches. Both those things.
My body is currently in its prime and all I’m using it for is drinking heavily and taking dumps that defy euclidean geometry; so I think I’m making the most out of it.
“Give me brandy on my breath / And I’ll breathe them all to death!”
…Hopefully you understand why this character came to mind just now.
HELLO, MY DOPPELGANGER
If my mid-twenties aren’t for Jameson and giant shits then what are they for, really?
If I had Eartha Kitt’s metabolism, I’d be eating a hell of a lot more cheese sandwiches, that’s for sure.
Perhaps Eartha Kitt didn’t have Eartha Kitt’s metabolism, but instead kept her toned physique through marvelous dancing and athletic, earth-shattering sex.
You know, in some ways it doesn’t really matter to me if it actually happened or not? Just the mere possibility, the suggestion of such a glorious thing existing, is plush and fertile ground for the imagination to run wild. Mmm, mmm, mmmmmmmm.
IT MATTERS TO ME
I was talking about this the other day and…
Friend: She seems like the odd one out.
Me: Okayyyyyy ~’that was probably racist’ sideeye~
“Oh you mean because Paul and James weren’t blackballed in the United States for speaking out on political injustice? Or perhaps you meant her two Tony awards. Maybe she’s the odd one out because she was a frequent and vocal supporter of LGBT rights? YOU ARE SO RIGHT, FRIEND!”
You are on fire today Mallory. Swooning – at you and at the thought of the threesome.
Whenever I am having a really shitty day, I think about this exact threesome. I saw a post about it on Tumblr just ages ago and I realized I had my new You Will Get Through This mental distraction. Something I’ve been needing today. My only question is how did Mallory know about this migraine I’ve had building since 7:30am?
Whenever I am having a really shitty day, I think about this exact threesome = new inspirational poster for the Toast merch store
I’d buy it!
Would also make a great tote bag.
The Toast comment boards are the only internet community where I truly believe I have found my people
Ok, not that we were ANYWHERE near as cool as any of those three, but I (cis bi gal) was in a very odd momentary threesome with a boy who was 95% gay and another boy who was 90% straight. (We were all late teens-early 20s.) It’s awkward as HELL, but not impossible. (Remained friends with gay guy; had summer fling with occasional later one-night-stands with straight guy.)
Even before I heard the threesome rumors I watched that dang audition video like a million times and goodness. gracious. JUST KISS ALREADY.
I have never seen that before, but it is HOT HOT HOT. Wow!
They both have that slightly bashful I’m-so-excited-I-got-paired-with-the-cute-boy-in-class look! It’s like watching two cute puppies that you just want to play together and be cute together forever.
This would also be the most charming threesome ever to occur. They would laugh after, and sometimes during, just out of pure delight.
The mere possibility of this GIVES ME LIFE.
That video though. I am too damn familiar with cishet actor dudes aping queerness for chuckles, and this ain’t that. If your bro-who-is-heterosexual asks you, who are also totally a straight guy, to kiss him, “we can’t here” is not going to be the response.
with that half a second hesitant pause before hand and laughter thrown in after to cover it up.
Pair that with the “we can’t print that” response earlier, and I’m on BOARD with this train. Which had better have air-conditioning and ice-baths because I NEED ONE NOW.
I LOVE HEARSAY
I can’t tell you how much I want this to be true.
My dad once helped Eartha Kitt move apartments, and she gave him an old table, which became our kitchen table that I grew up scribbling on with crayons, and…well, it is a fairly large and very sturdy table, is all I’m saying.
dying
If you are for real, you need to write this up.
I am for real, but that’s the whole story!
I don’t want to imagine the sort of miserable, bitter and unfulfilled life a person would have to have led to NOT want this to be true.
And anyway in this postmodern era truth is subjective
Oh MAN that video. Apart from what they actually say to each other (“KISS ME” AHHHH), they just seem so *charged* around each other – shifty, restless, a little nervous, a little excited – like how you get around someone you’re really attracted to/starting to crush on. And Newman cannot keep himself from smiling at Dean for the life of him. They never quite touch but it’s just THERE. Goodness me.
Although, in fairness, I think Paul Newman might have just looked at everyone like that.
This motivated me to re-read your post about how Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman almost certainly did it. The world is filled with beautiful things.
that was the first toast thing i ever read! i liked it so much i read it aloud to my mother in law while she cackled and joked about teaching it to her 10th grade english students
It was also the first Toast piece I read! So that was my introduction to the wonder that is Mallory Ortberg.
New history ot3 accepted.
THAT VIDEO. Merciful heavens. Someone get those boys a room.
ngl, that video reminds me of the start of a Cocky Boys porno.
Incidentally, Eartha Kitt is wonderful in the Isaac Mizrahi documentary Unzipped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eFW8TjGlDo
In addition to which, Mizrahi does an amazing Eartha Kitt impersonation.
Eartha Kitt is my new patron saint.
Oooh I’ll bet she was the top too! This is too perfect to be true, but my heart will always insist on its reality….Thank you Mallory!
I think I should add some more circumstantial evidence. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward DID live with Gore Vidal – and have you SEEN the young Vidal? There were rumours.
“I had both of them that afternoon, and I came to the conclusion that white boys are so delicious.”
EXACTLY