Trailblazers end up marked from a life of fearless forward motion – gay pioneer Don Kilhefner often says, “Scars are a sign of an active life” – and no one celebrates his life’s blemishes and victories better than veteran actor Michael Kearns in his new book The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler?

Mr. Kearns will live on in history as the first working openly-gay actor to appear on mainstream television, having appeared on the thoroughly wholesome, TV series The Waltons in 1974 (Ellen DeGeneres was age 16 that year) and an award winning episode of TV’s Cheers (a 1982 show in which Sam – Ted Danson - publicly supports an old teammate who has come out of the closet).

Michael Kearns tells of a life n stage and TV spanning over 40 years in his new autobiography.

But those and numerous other roles on TV and stage came at an expense, as the actor notes in his recently released and almost painfully honest autobiography.

Beginning as do most autobiographies, with a description of a youth bent on making his way through life the best and most natural way he could conjure while fighting cultural and familial restraints, Mr. Kearns demonstrates how one gay man could become an actor par excellence through action.

His book, divided into three “acts,” shows the progression of a caring and loving man through a life full of thickets and how that advance shaped and formed an artist and an activist – and finally a father.

Far from bringing him wealth and fame à la Ellen, Mr. Kearns describes how the backlash against his performances in some of the most avant-garde stage plays of the 1970s both vaulted him into the spotlight and threatened to ghettoize him as a “type.”

Along the way, we see what it was like to play one of the most controversial characters Hollywood has ever see – that of the “Happy Hustler,” the creation of personage to play the role of a memoirist.

He tells of the time that Warner Bros. hired him to portray Grant Tracy Saxon in a book and promotional campaign intended to piggyback on Xaviera Hollander's scandalous book called the “Happy Hooker,” a portrayal that lasted several years and, for Mr. Kearns, resulted in no small amount of crossover of personal and professional lives.

He describes scenes of partying and hustling, sometimes out of professional obligation, but oftentimes out of a personal yearning for the acceptance and adulation – and escape – the activities provided him.

Michael Kearns co-starring in an award-winning episode of the show "Cheers."

He holds back little in telling the story of how both playing and “being” the Happy Hustler devastated him, “My descent into real-life hooker… was swift, exacerbating my alcoholism to staggering depths.”

The book tells of his associations with a veritable “Who’s Who” of Hollywood, with mentions of such names as Rock Hudson, Greg Louganis, Alan Carr, Michael Jeter, Burt Reynolds, Lew Wasserman, Barney Frank, Kitty Carlisle, George Maharis, Ann-Margret, Nick Nolte, Richard Thomas, Cal Culver, Betty White, Frederick Combs, Charles Pierce, Richard Chamberlain, Randy Shilts, Charles Nelson Reilly, Craig Russell, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Monette, Robert Reed, Bruce Vilanch, Sal Mineo, John Ritter, Paul Lynde, Judy Garland, Merv Griffin, Tim Miller, and Armistead Maupin.

In his honest way, Mr. Kearns tells the stories of closeted Hollywood superstars and the “B” list of their ‘best friends” (a tryst with George Maharis, watching Charles Nelson Reilly flit about his BFF Burt Reynolds)’s house in Florida, and much more…), making his cover piece’s  blurb by Ian McKellen – the book “puts most other show-biz autobiographies to shame," a pronouncement of fact, not hyperbole.

Addressing his activism he tells of the compelling circumstances leading up to his becoming the first Hollywood actor to come out as HIV positive on air in the early 1990s.

The aftermath shows him taking on the mantle of activist and presenting – as actor, writer and director - some of the culture’s most profound tales of human suffering, forbearance and fulfillment.

An actor of renown and director in demand, Michael Kearns has shaped an accomplished life.

The book itself is a reflection of a life dedicated to the art of self-making, of a self-made man who happens to create characters for stage and for life, who falls in love and in lust and who learns along the way to love and accept himself.

The candid, and often raw, style Mr. Kearns uses to tell his personal tale reminds one of an emotional support group’s conversations.

Having appeared in porn, been a drunk, a hustler – and being beyond self-judgment, he writes non-judgmentally about others, himself, his life, his errors and his dreams.

He bespeaks the yearnings of so many gay men, single not by choice but by tragic happenstance, who wish to see the life of another nurtured and attempt to adopt a child.

The final third of his book is dedicated to his fatherhood and to the marvelous uniquity and the wondrous banality of raising a child as an openly gay man.

Anyone who has struggled to define themselves, who feels “different” as they strive to fit into life – gay straight or wondering – will find great value in this story frankly told.

He asks, “Why am I alive?” against the backdrop of a life full of challenges – “survivor’s guilt,” he calls it – and finds the answer in the blossoming of a young life for which he has responsibility, his “ravishingly beautiful thirteen-year-old fully” embodying a stage role at her first high school production.

When all is said and done, this description of a life of active soul-searching and soulful reckoning with the world as it is should be read by anyone who struggles to make sense of the human condition and their place on this planet.

Thank you, Michael Kearns, not only for sharing your life’s story, but for making it such a helluva good read.

Mr. Kearns will read exerpts from and discuss his memoir locally next on 

Wednesday, August 19, 2-4PM at 

The Village at Ed Gould Plaza

1125 North McCadden Place

Los Angeles, CA 90038

The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler?

Author: Michael Kearns

Paperback: 306 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1475067550

ISBN-13: 978-1475067552