In both the play and movie "Cabaret" Joel Grey played the role of the naughty MC whose part glued the story line with humor and sometime pathos. (Above: Grey playing his role.) He won a Tony for his part in the play and an Oscar in the movie, playing with Lisa Minnelli and the handsome Michael York.

Grey had been married with children, but at 82 he has admitted he was always gay.

"Cabaret" was based on the writings of Christopher Isherwood, a gay man who lived in Berlin in the stormy political period before WW II. The 1970s film took the gay theme to a new level when Michael York's character admitted he had slept with Sally Bowles' boyfriend. How shocking this was in the 1970s. Yes, the gay film "Boy in the Band" had come out two years early, but these were gay youths living in New York and not played by major holiday actors. Somehow they didn't count. How naive we all were forty plus years ago.