Tom Gregory's Blog Archive

Old Hollywood Meets New Hollywood: Gregory Way TV

Follow my latest creative project -- a web series -- at GregoryWayTV.com.

Brokeback Mountain Sears Its Brand Into the American West

Five years ago when Brokeback Mountain was released it ripped across the boundaries of the American Western. Its timing was perfect -- the right's rhetoric against gay America was at a fever pitch...

Hit and Run in the Beverly Hills Bermuda Triangle

The brutal slaying of Sharon Tate in the summer of '69 sent Hollywood's elite and powerful into paranoia. Stars carried guns, bosses treated overworked and beleaguered employees with kid-gloved respect, and movie magnates left town for well-timed impromptu vacations. The days between the August 9 killings and the November arrest...

1975: Clela Rorex Issues America's First Same-Sex Marriage License (VIDEO)

Clela Rorex is hardly a household name, but her determination to do her job responsibly put her at the flash point social change. In Boulder Co, on March 26, 1975, Clela issued the first same-sex marriage licenses in the United States...

Rona Barrett: The Fame Monster Goes Senior

For more than thirty years Rona Barrett reported entertainment. She was the "Perez Hilton/TMZ/ShowbizTonight" of her day. If it mattered she knew it. Gossip became news if it came to us through Rona. She had an uncanny direct-to-the camera delivery that catapulted her across ABC's line-up as the "go-to" source from all the network's Tinseltown news.

Barrett's talent and tenacity fed her skyrocketing inertia. She was publishing three magazines simultaneously - all with an insider's seat to Hollywood's stories. Anti-war, sexing, boozing, beautiful and vibrant Hollywood had a dialogue with America because Rona got the jaws flapping. From Presley, to Paul Newman, from The Rolling Stones to Raquel Welch, Rona's conversations were famously intimate and benchmarks for Barbara Walters, Oprah, and even Larry King to follow.