One-time gossip queen Rona Barrett on outing

There’s a fantastic interview on Advocate.com with Rona Barrett who, if you’re too young to remember, was a one-woman Hollywood gossip industry in the 70s. Whenever one of her monthly magazines would hit the stands (at one point she had three), I’d snap it up then become a hermit in my room until I had read every delicious page. She had interviews with everybody, exclusive photos, all kinds of tidbits.

Rona also used to have television specials in the way Barbara Walters now does. Jeremy Kinser catches up with Miss Barrett upon the release new DVD compilation, Rona Barrett’s Hollywood: Nothing But the Truth. It offers 10 of her favorite sit-down chats from her private archives.

Here is an excerpt:

In your interview with Burt Reynolds he actually addressed the rumor that he was gay. That seems a bold topic for TV in the mid ‘70s.
I’d met Burt Reynolds when he was a stunt person before he went into acting. He’d dated a girlfriend of mine. Whenever I needed to ask an important question, he was there to answer it. I broke a lot of the original guidelines. People had never asked those questions before about a star’s sexual life.

What’s your opinion on outing closeted celebrities who you know are gay?
I’m totally against it. We all knew Rock Hudson was gay. I always felt that was something personal. When Ellen DeGeneres came out and said she was gay, it was her right. It’s not my right or any journalist’s right to out them. I saw no purpose in it. [Sexuality] is just something that is. You accept it and get on with it. I’ve always believed in letting people live and be who they want to be.

Did you ever protect celebrities that you knew were gay by printing cover-up stories?
I probably did once or twice, but not a lot. I would always go to the person or their representative and say, “Look, someone is going to do this story. If it’s true, you’re better off putting it in my hands than someone else’s.” If I’d slipped in a line about the marriage of Rock Hudson and Phyllis [Gates, who married Hudson to cover up his homosexuality] being a lie, I couldn’t get away with it then, but now you can

(One dollar from each DVD sold will be donated to the Rona Barrett Foundation, which helps senior citizens who are unable to afford assisted-living care.)