Sheila James Kuehl

It’s not as though she was out. It’s not a Tommy Kirk situation, where the parents of an ex went to the studio. Certainly it wasn’t like Raymond Burr, where Hedda Hopper almost certainly knew and was almost certainly protecting him because her son played Paul Drake. In the case of Sheila James Kuehl, it was just gossip. But the gossip was enough. It appears the cleaning staff at her sorority found the letters from her girlfriend, and they talked. She was expelled from the sorority, and while they claimed they wouldn’t tell anyone, it seems clear that they did. It was Hollywood in the early ‘60s, and the calls dried up.

Kuehl took tap lessons at age seven, and she was in a skit that involved her listening under a table. Her facial expressions appealed to the audience, and her drama teacher suggested she audition for one of the last radio shows. Kuehl, who had skipped two grades and read well above her level, landed the role on The Penny Williamson Show, which had proto-feminist leanings. From there, she moved to television and played a tomboy on The Stu Erwin Show. She’d played a sister of one of the brides in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

And then, there was Zelda. I’ve seen a little of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Zelda Gilroy was introduced on the third episode. She was only on thirty-three of them, I suspect missing most of the ones where Dobie’s in the army. (That show had a lot more plot changes than I realized.) Her character was popular enough so that there was discussion of a spinoff, but the rumours surrounding her, and the thought that she was too butch, prevented it from happening. She did a similar number of episodes of a show called Broadside, and slowly, the calls stopped coming.

She had scattered roles for a while after that, including an episode of Emergency!, but that’s pretty much it. She returned to UCLA, where she’d graduated, and became adviser to students in campus activity groups and from there associate dean of students. When she was passed over for a promotion that went to a man instead, she became interested in law and specifically women’s legal issues. She attended Harvard Law, having been denied admission at UCLA.

At Harvard, she finally accepted the sexuality that had so terrified and confused her when she first realized it. She helped develop actual laws about domestic violence. She was a professor. She cofounded the California Women’s Law Center. In 1994, she became the first openly gay person elected to the California State Assembly, where she cofounded the California Legislative LGBT Caucus. She was the first woman to be president pro tem of the Assembly. She was elected to the state senate, the first openly gay person there as well. When term limits forced her out of office, she became a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. She’s a smart, public-spirited woman; arguably it’s better than being on TV.