Page "George Cukor" Paragraph 24

It was an open secret in Hollywood that Cukor was homosexual, although he was discreet about his sexual orientation and " never carried it as a pin on his lapel ", as producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz put it.

He was a celebrated bon vivant whose luxurious home was the site of weekly Sunday afternoon parties attended by closeted celebrities and the attractive young men they met in bars and gyms and brought with them.

At least once, in the midst of his reign at MGM, he was arrested on vice charges, but studio executives managed to get the charges dropped and all records of it expunged, and the incident never was publicized by the press.

In the late 1950s, Cukor became involved with a considerably younger man named George Towers.

He financed his education at the Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences and the University of Southern California, from which Towers graduated with a law degree in 1967.

That fall Towers married and his relationship with Cukor evolved into one of father and son, and for the remainder of Cukor's life the two remained very close.