Although pretty much every dead celebrity has to have a ‘were they gay?’ moment when someone steps forward to claim they were a big ‘mo, it isn’t the first time that it’s been said Ben Hur star Stephen Boyd liked boys more than girls.
The latest to say he was into guys is Raquel Welch, who appeared alongside Boyd in Fantastic Voyage. PinkNews reports that at a film retrospective this weekend in New York, she said: “He was so hot with his cleft chin and he was so not interested in me. I tried to seduce him one time. I was so smitten with him and I was so excited every time I would come on the set I would see Stephen, and think, ‘Oh God, he’s so cute.’ He had what sounded like a Welsh brogue that was so charming.
“For my first trip to New York, when we opened the movie, we were both staying at the Plaza Hotel, so I thought, ‘Here’s my chance!’ So Darryl Zanuck took us all out to dinner at 21 and on the way back to the hotel we shared a cab. I said to him as we were going up in the lift, ‘So Stephen, would you like to come in for a drink?’
“We got out of the lift and he walked me to my room and he said, ‘I’d like to tell you a little story that was told to me by John Gielgud when I was working with the National Theatre. You’ll have to think about it for a moment but I hope you get my drift: An actress is a little bit more than a woman, but an actor is a little bit less than a man.’
“I thought, ‘Oh! He’s not interested in me; I am the wrong sex!’ To be honest, while she assumes it meant he was gay, he might just not have been interested in her.
Boyd was married twice, but both were very short unions, with the second marriage taking place only months before he died of a massive heart attack at the tragically young age of 45. Since his death rumours he was gay have swirled around but there’s been nothing substantiated, and Welch’s claims are unlikely to put matters to rest.
It is believed however that in Ben Hur he went along with screenwriter Gore Vidal’s idea that he should play Messala as if Ben Hur was treating him like a scorned gay lover. Charlton Heston denied this, but if you watch the finished movie, Messala’s love for Ben Hur is quite apparent.