Richard Chamberlain who played Allan Quatermain among other characters was gay in real life.
In the 1960s, Chamberlain did an album. He included a Burt Bacharach-Hal David song. It was a god song, but in Chamberlain’s hands it went nowhere fast. They gave it to Dionne Warwick, a surefire success. Nothing.
It lingered for seven years. Various singers tried it with no success. Finally Herb Alpert (the A in A&M Records) gave it to a band he had just signed. They’d won the Battle of the Bands. He told them to come up with a new arrangement, not to listen to any of the prior ones.
Those “kids” made the new arrangement of the song a hit and it made them household names.
It was called “Close to You.”
There are many in Hollywood that people don’t know about, and it been that way since the beginning...........
I saw one of those Quatermain movies. Entertaining, but that’s more due to Cannon film productions. I never got why he was a star. No charisma.
As was Tony Geary (who played General Hospital's Luke to Genie Francis' Laura), who also died recently (and is not on this list). The same day as Rob Reiner, in fact.