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Frank McCarthy (June 8, 1912 – December 1, 1986) was the secretary of the General Staff of the United States Department of War during World War II; briefly United States Assistant Secretary of State for Administration in 1945; and later a distinguished film producer, whose production Patton won the 1970 Academy Award for Best Picture.
Frank McCarthy was born near Richmond, Virginia, on June 8, 1912. He attended the Virginia Military Institute, graduating in 1933. After graduating from the Virginia Military Institute, McCarthy worked as a reporter for the Richmond News Leader. From a comfortable middle-class Virginia family, Frank had grown up with black servants in an upscale neighborhood of Richmond. His father, for whom he was named, was a well-respected agent for the Home Life Insurance Company and a member of the exclusive Commonwealth Club. His mother was the former Lillian Binford, of an old and equally prominent Virginia clan. When Frank McCarthy Sr. died in 1927, it made the front page of the local paper. Young Frank had just turned 15. It had been his father's dream that he attend the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, "the West Point of the Confederacy," the younger Frank called it. Enrolling upon his high school graduation in 1929, he was a good a student as he was a son, eager to please his parents and make them proud. During his time as a Brother Rat (cadet) at VMI, Frank was a captain in the Corps of Cadets, editor of the yearbook, and a reporter for the school newspaper. Upon graduation in 1933, he was awarded the Cincinnati Medal, given to the cadet who had most distinguished himself by efficiency of service and excellence of character. He was also commissioned as a captain in the army reserves. After a short period teaching at VMI, he went to work as a police reporter for the Richmond News-Leader.
McCarthy moved to New York City and became the press agent for legendary Broadway theater producer George Abbott's Brother Rat (1937), a farce about students at the Virginia Military Institute. (In 1938, Brother Rat was made into a film starring Priscilla Lane and Wayne Morris. Ronald Reagan was cast in a minor role, and it was during this film shoot that Reagan met his future wife Jane Wyman.) McCarthy'd watched with some envy as his former fellow cadets, Fred Finklehoffe and John Monks, had gone on to theatrical success with their play "Brother Rat," based on their experiences at VMI. Through them, Frank managed to get hired as a press agent for producer George Abbott. When "Brother Rat" was made into a movie by Warner Bros. in 1938, McCarthy was sent out to Hollywood to serve as technical adviser. He stayed at the Hollywood Athletic Club with Eddie Albert, one of the stars of the film, and even did a cameo himself, showing Priscilla Lane how to use a saber. But after working again for Abbott, on the road promoting the play "What a Life," McCarthy made the rather surprising decision to instead go back to school for a graduate degree. His fellow publicists all agreed that he could have had a successful career in show business; in fact, in May 1939 he had been named Abbott's chief rep. But just a few weeks later, he abruptly resigned from Abbott's employ and returned to the South, the first of the mysterious about-turns in McCarthy's career. He signed up for active duty in July 1940 with the intelligence division, studying reports received from Germany and disseminating them to officers. Whether he maneuvered it that way or not, he thus avoided combat duty.
In mid-1940, following the Second Armistice at Compiègne, McCarthy enlisted in the United States Army Reserve. By 1941, McCarthy had attained the rank of colonel and was aide-de-camp to the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General George Marshall. They became close; perhaps not coincidentally, it was Marshall who, in 1942, was instrumental in suspending the military's practice of court-martialing homosexuals, calling it a costly drain on time and manpower. According to Andrew Roberts' book Masters and Commanders (2009) McCarthy was a homosexual, a fact unknown to Marshall who kept on introducing him to attractive young women. In 1941 Marshall supported McCarthy's elevation to captain; less than a year later, with the onset of American involvement in the war, the young secretary was appointed major. By 1943 he was a colonel, the army's wunderkind, just 30 years old. From 1943 to 1945, McCarthy served as the secretary of the General Staff of the United States Department of War. For his service in World War II, McCarthy was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He left the Army with the rank of brigadier general. Shortly after the end of the war, President of the United States Harry Truman named McCarthy Assistant Secretary of State for Administration under United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. Only 33 years old at the time, McCarthy is thus the youngest Assistant Secretary of State in United States history. However, he only held the office as a placeholder, from September 1, 1945, until October 11, 1945, when he was replaced by Donald S. Russell.
On October 8, just three weeks after Truman sent his name to the Senate for confirmation, McCarthy resigned "due to ill health." The president accepted his resignation "with regret." The bright and promising young secretary seemed to disappear from public view. Two years later, when his old mentor George C. Marshall was named secretary of state, McCarthy's name was again floated to the press as a possible appointee. To explain away his resignation in 1945, the "ill health" was described as "bursitis in his shoulder," a painful condition, to be sure, but one most wouldn't consider grievous enough to forfeit a promising career. Much later, having apparently forgotten all about the bursitis, McCarthy offered a more candid explanation, telling an interviewer he'd been "miserable" at the State Department. But he hadn't been in official Washington long, just a matter of weeks, in fact. Long enough, however, to meet Rupert Allan, the young Oxford-educated Rhodes scholar working as a political affairs officer at the State Department. Friends recall this is where the longtime lovers first met, either during or after the war. Apparently there was no controversy about McCarthy, but there was a problem with his fellow nominee, Spruille Braden. Braden's nomination was held for three weeks, opposed by none other than the fiercely partisan Kenneth Wherry, who thought Braden too liberal. Wherry's name in the record raises a lavender flag: in just a few years' time, he would be the one to lead the charge against homosexuals in the State Department. It raises the very real possibility that McCarthy may have taken the fall in a backroom deal that traded him for Braden. Wherry and others likely knew McCarthy was gay; he was investigated by the FBI that summer of 1945. His file starts with an apparently benign letter of congratulations from J. Edgar Hoover upon McCarthy's appointment to State. But at the same time, the FBI director was having a dossier prepared on the golden-boy appointee. It's likely that evidence was uncovered on McCarthy's homosexuality and either never placed in his file, he did, after all, have friends in high places, or removed later when he became an important contact for the government in Hollywood. But surely it was known to Wherry and the Republicans at the time of his nomination.
Having sacrificed him on the altar of politics, Democratic politicians and military leaders owed a debt to McCarthy, and he didn't take long to cash in his chips. Eric Johnston at the MPAA was persuaded to create a position expressly for him, as a diplomat, representing the film industry to both government and corporate America. Rupert Allan, too, was hired, and in 1948 both Allan and McCarthy were sent to Paris to help reinvigorate European markets for American films. Few homosexuals of the period could have imagined a cozier or more privileged assignment. When he was investigated again by the FBI in August 1951, as part of his work with the Voice of America, it was during the height of the State Department purges; yet there is again no mention of homosexuality in the report, and even his resignation from State is barely referenced. McCarthy convinced Darryl Zanuck, for whom he had helped secure wartime assignments during the movie mogul's tour of duty, to create a position for him. Once more, extraordinary access and privilege: McCarthy arrived on the Fox lot with little more to do than soak up the mechanics of moviemaking and collect his paycheck.
In his pre-movie career, McCarthy had risen high in the army and the State Department, so high he was nearly cabinet level. Then, just as the political tides changed after the war, he beat a hasty retreat to Hollywood under somewhat mysterious circumstances. "I used to watch him," Gavin Lambert recalled, "he and his lover, Rupert Allan, who was a publicist and really very nice, an adorable man. They would always arrive separately at parties with separate girlfriends, and they'd act surprised to see each other. "Oh, how are you?" and all that. It was hilarious because everyone knew what was going on. But that's the way things were." Such was indeed the climate of the period, although people like Roger Edens and Harriet Parsons, p, producers contemporary with McCarthy, managed somewhat greater degrees of personal authenticity. But discretion had always been a watchword for McCarthy, ever since his days as a young, ambitious, disciplined student at the Virginia Military Institute.
After the war, McCarthy moved to Hollywood and became a film producer, first for 20th Century Fox, then for Universal Studios. In 1951, Decision Before Dawn, a spy picture that McCarthy produced with Anatole Litvak was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He later produced Sailor of the King (1953) and A Guide for the Married Man (1967).
"It's hilarious when you think about it," said Gavin Lambert about Frank McCarthy. "All the trouble he went though to pretend. So much work. It must have been very tiring." When Lambert arrived as a young writer on the Fox lot in 1956, Frank McCarthy was a presence. He had achieved the rank of colonel during his wartime service in the army; within months of Lambert's arrival, McCarthy would be named a brigadier general in the army reserves. He was personal friends with Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and had been right-hand man to General George C. Marshall. he had the respect of Fox president Darryl Zanuck and the ear of Eric Johnston, Will Hays' successor at the MPPDA (now rechristened the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA). And, added Lambert, "He was an uptight closet queen."
Eventually McCarthy produced two pictures at Fox, the war dramas Decision Before Dawn (1951) and Sailor of the King (1953), and in 1962 served as military adviser on The Longest Day (in which MGM set decorator Henry Grace was cast as Eisenhower, given his striking resemblance to the general.) McCarthy found his greatest influence, however, in the newly formed position of studio public relations director. As liaison with the MPAA, he was the in-house censor who watchdogged films before they were passed on for Production Code approval. In Let's Make Love, he objected to love scenes between Yves Montand and Marilyn Monroe, telling director George Cukor there was no use shooting them, as the MPAA woudl certainly insist on cuts. Cukor held out (friends recall Cukor, predictably, didn't care for McCarthy, although they were cordial), and so Geoffrey Shurlock from the MPAA came out personally. He sided, of course, with McCarthy.
"Frank was rather cool to me at first," Gavin Lambert recalled. "I think because he felt if he got friendly with me, since people knew I was gay, they'd think something was up. But when he discovered that I had friends he felt he should know, like Tennessee Williams, that changed." Such discretion was followed even in his home on Seabright Place, high in the Hollywood Hills. Constructed in 1957, the house was extensively remodeled and enlarged in 1971. On the former tennis court of the King Vidor estate, he and Rupert Allan actually built two structures, linked by a covered gallery lined with art by Toulouse-Lautrec. They shared a living room with a stunning view of Los Angeles and a courtyard complete with swimming pool, but their two separate kitchens and bedrroms gave at least the nominal appearance of living separately. "It was typical that I got to know them separately and, as they lived in separate houses, was at first unaware of their relationship," recalled Gavin Lambert. "It was also typical that I learned about it from Rupert. He had come to terms with his sexuality and enjoyed letting down his guard with friends. Unlike McCarthy, who was conflicted and devious, and had no real friends." "They tried so hard," said one man, whose lover worked with Allan. "They really did care about keeping up the appearance. I wonder why on some level, for everyone in the industry knew, and the public, well, they didn't care about producers or publicists. But it was just the way things were done then, even if it was very transparent."
Rudolf Nureyev performed in the United States for the first time in 1963. Rupert Allan was at the time a leading Hollywood press agent who represented Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe and other stars. As a friend of Erik Bruhn's brother, Christopher, Allan invited Nureyev to stay with him during his Los Angeles sojourn. In addition, Nureyev was the guest of honor at a party at Allan's home cohosted by Allan's life partner, film producer Frank McCarthy. Among the stars in attendance: Bette Davis, one of Nureyev's idols; Fred Astaire, whose films Nureyev had not yet discovered; and Natalie Wood, who chatted with Nureyev in Russian. Also on hand was British gay photographer and designer Cecil Beaton, who found Nureyev moping in the guest bedroom. Beaton later quoted Nureyev as saying he was "very lonely — this awful house — you suffer so." Nureyev also was missing Bruhn: "We have been traveling a month without meeting, and when you love, you are apt to be sad, and there's no hope for us...."
McCarthy spent nearly twenty years working on a biographical film of General George S. Patton. This film, Patton, (1970) was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starred George C. Scott as Patton. In 1971, at the 43rd Academy Awards, Patton won the Academy Award for Best Picture (with McCarthy, as the film's producer, accepting the award); Schaffner won the Academy Award for Best Director; and Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Scott refused to attend the 43rd Academy Awards, so McCarthy accepted Scott's Oscar on Scott's behalf. The next day, Scott refused his Oscar (the first actor to do so) and McCarthy therefore returned it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. McCarthy planned a Tom Swift feature movie in 1968, to be directed by Gene Kelly. A script was written and approved, and filming was to have begun during 1969. However, the project was canceled by 20th Century Fox owing to the poor reception of the movies Doctor Dolittle and Star!,[1] despite a $500,000 airship being built as a prop.[2] After the release of Patton, McCarthy continued to work on a script to be filmed on a lower budget.[3] McCarthy later produced an early TV movie, Fireball Forward, a 1972 war drama. In 1977, he produced the film MacArthur, an account of General Douglas MacArthur's life from 1942 to 1952 starring Gregory Peck.
McCarthy died of cancer on December 1, 1986, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, at the age of 74. His Oscar was (and still may be) displayed at The Marshall Foundation on the campus of The Virginia Military Institute.
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