Setting the Record Straight

On Basset Hounds & Being Out

by Brett White

Production began on I Dream of Jeannie in earnest in March 1965—and the cast and crew worked hard and fast. Jeannie's production schedule was upended when Barbara Eden revealed to Sidney Sheldon that she was pregnant. Eden, a humble sweetheart, feared that she would be replaced since she was expecting and Jeannie's costume was, well, Jeannie's costume. Her worries were immediately assuaged when the show set out to film as many episodes as possible as soon as possible. A total of nine episodes went into production in March alone, with another three in August 1965—mere weeks before Eden gave birth to her son, Matthew Ansara. For that last stretch of filming, Sheldon and the directors hid Eden's pregnancy behind a series of veils and closeup shots.

Thrown into the deep end of turning out episodes lightning fast, Hayden had to make a decision that every gay person has to make upon starting a new job: Will I come out to my new coworkers? This is something that gay people still have to do in the 21st century, even though homosexuality is more accepted today than yesterday. But still, straight people—any time a person you've just met mentions being gay, having a same-sex partner or any celebrity crush, know that there's a very good chance they are doing that deliberately to come out to you right away.

Hayden also had the added wrinkle of being a public figure and a homosexual in Hollywood when that was punishable by law and definitely public scorn. To this day, many I Dream of Jeannie and classic sitcom fans are still in the dark about Hayden's queerness, and they only learn about his personal life from two sentences on his Wikipedia page, sourced from Barbara Eden's 2011 memoir Jeannie Out of the Bottle. They read:

That's it. The complexity of Hayden's experience as a gay man navigating an international tour of duty in World War II and Blacklist-era Hollywood, the pain of being listed as a friend on his partner of 40 years's death certificate, the anachronistic acceptance he and Jus found in their extremely Catholic families, the dozens and dozens of people whose attitudes towards gay people were forever changed by knowing Hayden Rorke—all of that is reduced to two sentences in Eden's memoir.

And both of those sentences are incredibly inaccurate summations of Hayden's life.

Let's start with Sentence #1: "In his private life, Hayden was unashamedly gay."

The details of when Hayden's homosexuality came up on the Jeannie set have been lost, partly because matters of that sort just weren't discussed openly between coworkers back then. Eden has been quoted as saying that Hayden was never closeted. As she recalled,  "Well, you know, we didn't even think about it. It wasn't something that was discussed. It just was."

What is clear, however, is that Hayden was unquestionably out on set. Maybe no one talked about it with him, but everyone—from Sidney Sheldon to the makeup department—knew that Hayden was... you know. There was no difference between his private and public lives. The truth is that Hayden Rorke was unashamedly gay, period.

Michael Wills, the man Hayden shared his life with for seven years after Justus's passing in 1979, said this matter-of-factly when asked if Hayden was ever closeted. "He didn't [hide who he was]. He didn't. As I said, he was Noël Coward. He developed that character. For an older gentleman to be very elegant and dashing and a little bit flamboyant, it was completely acceptable. Because if you were a Hollywood actor, that concept of what an actor was and how they behaved, it was 100% acceptable to be himself, you know? Because you just have to shrug it off to, 'Well, that Hollywood actor, you know, of course he acts like this. He doesn't act like my friend who's the factory worker over here.' But that's acceptable because of who he is and what he does."

That's how Gene Nelson remembered Hayden as well—and Nelson served in World War II with Hayden and Justus (and a platoon of other gay men). "He had this pseudo-sophistication that I just loved," Nelson was quoted saying in Dreaming of Jeannie. "Hayden was homosexual. He and Jus Addiss lived together for over twenty years. They were a pair. Jus was very straight acting. Never in a million years would you know he wasn't straight. Hayden could slip into [a slightly effeminate demeanor]. He was in so many English plays he had adopted this marvelous English manner, so he could get away with a little fey gesture. I don't think most people knew he was gay."

Wills echoed this sentiment, saying, "He was also very lucky [that] his voice was in quite a low register. And you know, he had quite a dashing deep voice, which is not associated with gay men."

It seems like when it came to outing himself to the people in his life, Hayden took a laissez-faire approach. Details about personal, off-set relationships mostly likely wouldn't come up in conversation; Eden admitted she never asked Hayden how he met Jus, just as no one asked her how she met her husband. But, as Eden recalls, Jus was welcome on the set and was the co-host of the many, many dinner parties the couple threw for the cast in the house that Hayden and Jus owned together. And if there were any doubts about these two men being, essentially, husbands, dinner guests often used white napkins that were monogrammed with "Hayden & Jus" in blue. Platonic roommates do not get monogrammed napkins together.

Moving on to Sentence #2: "He and his partner, Justus Addiss, lived together for many years in Studio City, along with their menagerie of dogs."

This sentence is so close to being accurate, and then it just goes to the dogs. Hayden's partner was Justus Addiss and they lived in Studio City together for 25 years. They did not, and this cannot be stated clearly enough, have a "menagerie of dogs." They did not even have a dog, let alone many dogs to constitute a menagerie. This bizarre little factoid has followed Hayden for decades, popping up on trivia sites, in newspapers, and in multiple books. At least Eden's memoir left out the even weirder aspect of this rumor, which was presented in Dreaming of Jeannie as fact: "Rorke and his partner, Jus Addiss, lived a quiet life together in Studio City, California, during the Jeannie tenure and they remained in that home for years, along with a number of basset hounds and beagles. In the dog-show circuit, Rorke became a well-known breeder of champion bassets."

None of this is true. No one remembers Hayden and/or Jus ever owning dogs, let alone Basset Hounds. Justus' half-brother James Addiss visited the Studio City home in the 1950s: "When we saw them on that trip with my father, I don't remember dogs at all. I'm trying to imagine [Hayden] as a breeder of Basset Hounds and it just does not click with me."

James's wife Gail chimed in with some logic: "It would mess up their clothes and everybody always talked about how well they always looked."

The house remained dog-free into the 1960s and into I Dream of Jeannie's run. Bill Daily's son Patrick, who spent a lot of time at his Uncle Hayden's, said: "I don't remember dogs. I don't remember any Basset Hounds at all... This would be in '68, so maybe the Basset Hounds came later."

They did not come later. Multiple people who visited the house frequently in the 1970s, including Jus's cousin Leslie, were equally perplexed by this dog rumor. Same goes for Steve Olim, a dear friend of Hayden's who lived in the house for a few months in the late '70s, and Olim’s friend John Wooley. "I don't recall any animals in there," said Wooley, a Night Walker super fan whose visit with Hayden is etched into his memory. "I'm a dog person. I know Steve says he doesn't remember Hayden having any when he knew him either."

Michael Wills, Hayden's partner in the 1980s, confirmed that Mr. Rorke did not spend the last years of his life showing off Bassets at dog competitions. And lastly, the smoking gun of this investigation: Barbara Eden doesn't remember him having dogs either. "No, I don't remember that," said Eden before adding with a laugh, "And their bark is rather distinctive."

The only person who vaguely remembers a dog being in the house is actually Hayden's niece-in-law, who visited the house frequently in the '70s. While she doesn't believe the Basset Hound thing, she said that she thought they may've had a "small dog, more like a Westie or something." Could that little Westie have actually been a fluffy gray cat? 

That's likely the case, as most of these people recall Hayden and Jus having a cat. "I remember the cat very, very, very vividly," said Patrick Daily. "I could pick the cat out of a lineup."

What seems like a tiny goof actually sums up the problem with queer history. Because of the cultural pressure that existed for queer people to remain private and straight people—even well-meaning ones—to not ask questions, so few actual facts have been recorded about the lives of so many gays of pop culture history. So little is known about Hayden Rorke, for example, that this false canine narrative has been affixed to him for over 50 years. Biographers, journalists, historians, and trivia night hosts have had to include this tidbit because... what else is there to include? It makes you wonder what other bits of anecdotal ephemera attached to historical queer figures are equally apocryphal. 

So how did an off-the-wall bit of trivia—about dog breeding of all things!—affix itself to Hayden and follow him for decades? The rumor can be traced all the way back to a little bit of newspaper trivia, the kind of cutesy fact that would be syndicated nationwide in entertainment sections, presumably to fill up empty space in layouts. It's attributed to no one, yet appears in dozens of newspapers starting in February 1968. The blurb reads:

No author, no source, no quote, nothing. Just a persistent lie about Basset Hounds that can finally be put to sleep.