If laughter truly is the key to happiness then the performers who provide us with humor and joy are among our most important. This Halloween season I thought it would be fun to take a look at two queer actors who, while best known for farcical fare, also had at least one significant credit in genre cinema.
A notably light presence for years on The Dick Van Dyke Show, character actor Richard Deacon was a familiar face for many viewers.. His film and TV credits include such horror canon as Them!, This Island Earth, Piranha, The Addams Family and The Munsters. In 1956 alone he appeared in 11 movies. Most famously of those, he was the physician who doubted Peter Graves’ sanity in the studio enforced revisions to the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While the film’s initial ending was ruled to be too downbeat for viewers, Deacon himself thrived offscreen. He has been noted as being a gourmet chef and a generous advocate for the less fortunate. After his death at the age of 62 in 1984, it was also revealed that he had been one of the industry’s “quiet” homosexuals, living a private life while maintaining his many high profile acting gigs.
Comic genius Sherman Hemsley was another of the many gay actors of a certain age who kept his private life close to his sleeve. Described as almost being reclusive, his The Jeffersons‘ co-star Damon Evans noted in 2025 that the two often cruised the same places and frequented the same bars but they never talked about their orientation or any of their kindred experiences. Due to his most famous roles, George Jefferson and Amen‘s Ernest Frye, Hemsley’s career was filled with characters noted for their opinionated boisterousness. His spirited cameo in vampire comedy Love at First Bite definitely fits that milieu. There, his lung expanding Reverend Mike gets his cartoon-like comeuppance from George Hamilton’s slyly humorous Count Dracula.
