Raymond Burr, who played Perry Mason in the wildly popular television show "Perry Mason" and later in "Ironside," lived a secret gay life in Hollywood when such a revelation would destroy a career.
Burr invented a biography for himself that included a wife and son who'd died, and used his busy schedule as a way to explain why he wasn't married. But Burr and his partner, Robert Benevides, had a relationship for 35 years that was secret to most of the world except for a handful of close friends.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=4930725&page=1