What Became of the Happy Hustler?
A new book by actor and activist Michael Kearns, The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? revisits one of American pop culture's more notorious sex scandals. In our current era of celebrity sex tapes that don't end a career, but enhance them, it may seem almost quaint to recall the mid-'70s furor over Grant Tracy Saxon, the purported author of a sizzling memoir cheekily titled The Happy Hustler.
The delicious twist to this scandal is that Warner Books hired Kearns — then an up-and-coming gay actor who had appeared on the wholesome, beloved series The Waltons — to portray Saxon in a media blitz that ended up lasting for several years. While the book and promo campaign was originally intended to ride the coattails of The Happy Hooker, Xaviera Hollander's scandalous and massively successful memoir, Kearns found himself at the center of a national furor that quickly took on a life of its own.
In fact, to this day, three decades later, Kearns is still recognized as the Happy Husler. He's workedteadily onscreen in all genres, from the erotica classic L.A. Tool & Die to mainstream TV shows including Cheers and Beverly Hills, 90120. He's also had an acclaimed career as a dramatist, director, and teacher in the Los Angeles theater community, but through it all, the legend of the Happy Hustler persists.
Kearns was one of the first out gay actors (he was out and on TV nearly 40 years ago!) and was the first actor to come out on national television as HIV positive (20 years ago on Entertainment Tonight, of all places). Yet throughout his career as an activist, the one thread that has remained constant is the Happy Hustler. A cover blurb from no less a luminary than Ian McKellen states the Kearns' new memoir The Truth is Bad Enough "puts most other show-biz autobiographies to shame." We talked with Kearns about this most unexpected legacy, as well as what he considers his greatest accomplishment: fatherhood.
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/film/2012/07/27/actor-michael-kearns-talks-sex-scandals-fatherhood-and-happy
