Celebs Who Took Huge Secrets To The Grave

It's awfully hard for celebs to keep secrets from the public these days. Their daily lives are tracked feverishly by fans and the media. Their pasts, their hidden shames, and their families are well known to just about everyone. As hard as they may try, living a private life can be nearly impossible for the famous.

However, that wasn't and isn't always the case. We know that some lived a long time without their most monumental secrets ever being revealed to the public. Hell, the stars on this list lived their whole lives without us ever finding out their secrets. But the truth doesn't always stay private. While the celebrities on this list were able to hide parts of their lives from nearly everyone, many things they'd kept hidden were revealed after their deaths. Some secrets even came to light because of the stars' deaths. 

Here are celebs who took huge secrets to their graves.

On July 26, 1985, news broke that Rock Hudson, one of Hollywood's sexiest leading men from the '50s and '60s, had AIDS. This ended the speculation as to what ailed the gaunt-looking Hudson when he'd previously appeared at a press conference alongside Doris Day, as noted by People. Back then, AIDS was largely associated with gay men, and Hudson soon became the most famous person afflicted with it.

But the actor never made an explicit statement about his sexuality before he died in October of 1985. The truth seemed confined to tight Hollywood circles, friends, and family. It wasn't until after his death that it was confirmed that Hudson was a gay man. Shortly after his passing, the autobiography Rock Hudson: His Story touched on the star's sexuality. 

In the book, he called ex-boyfriend Lee Garlington his "true love," as reported by People. Years later, a recorded conversation between Hudson and his ex-wife, Phyllis Gates, leaked to The Hollywood Reporter. In the private talk, Gates confronted Hudson about his sexuality and his sexual exploits from the 1950s.

Throughout the '40s and '50s, Billy Tipton was imbedded in the popular jazz scene taking hold of the country (via The New York Times). In 1951, Tipton founded the Billy Tip Tipton Trio and created a number of hits. In the late '50s, however, when Tipton was offered a recording contract and the opportunity to open for Liberace, the musician turned it down and slowly faded from popularity.

Over the course of his life, Tipton was reportedly married at least five times, and he adopted three children. His family considered him a caring family man. Yet, when Tipton collapsed in 1989 and paramedics arrived to try and save him, they discovered that Tipton was not biologically male at all. No one — not even his family — knew.

Born Dorothy Tipton, the musician began dressing as a man to allow for entry into the world of jazz. He would wear Ace bandages and a prosthetic device to pass as a man, and led a very private life to avoid detection.

According to Diane Middlebrook, author of the book Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, the "Tipton story is about the indeterminacy of gender identity." She added, "I believe Billy's relationship to herself was female. She was the actor; he was the role."

After Prince Rogers Nelson passed away in 2016, secrets began to emerge about the music legend. The secrets revealed about Prince, however, were not salacious. Rather many of the things we learned about him after his death surrounded his philanthropic efforts.

Van Jones, an environmentalist who worked on the Green Jobs Act, told Rolling Stone about a $50,000 check he received from an anonymous donor around 2006. Jones, who wasn't in the business of accepting anonymous checks, returned it to the sender. But it came back ... this time with a phone call.

"I cannot tell you who the money is coming from, but his favorite color is purple," the caller told Jones. It was around this time that Jones learned about some of Prince's other work. There was the co-founding of the educational effort teaching urban minority youths technology, #YesWeCode, and his donations to the family of deceased teen Trayvon Martin. These charity efforts were kept quiet, seemingly done for the cause and not the recognition.

Prince's ex-wife, Manuela Testolini, who called the musician a "fierce philanthropist," worked for his Love 4 One Another organization, as reported by Rolling Stone. She said that her ex-husband kept his name secret in order to ensure that it never overshadowed the charity or the cause.

Whitney Houston's personal life was often media fodder. The press spoke about her drug use and her sometimes turbulent marriage. But Houston was able to keep a secret with her until she died, telling only a few people who were very close to her. When Kevin Macdonald set out to make his documentary Whitney, he stumbled upon a dark family secret, as reported by Vanity Fair. Houston's brother, Gary, accused singer Dee Dee Warwick, their cousin, of molesting him, and, as reported by Macdonald, Warwick allegedly abused Houston too.

Mary Jones, Houston's assistant and friend, told Macdonald's cameras of the day she learned of the iconic singer's secret. "[Houston] looked at me and said, 'Mary, I was molested at a young age too. But it wasn't by a man — it was a woman,'" Jones recalled. "She had tears in her eyes. She says, 'Mommy don't know the things we went through.'"

Though Houston never spoke publicly about the alleged abuse, Macdonald suggested that she once hinted at it in an interview. After Houston was asked what makes her angry, she said, "Child abuse makes me angry ... it bothers me that children, who are helpless, who depend on adults for security and love, it just bothers me. It makes me angry."

In 1978, Bob Crane, the star of Hogan's Heroes, was found dead. According to The New York Times, he was struck with a blunt object and had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck. Yet, while the public never learned who killed Crane in the ensuing investigation, they did learn more about Crane himself (via AZ Central).

As details emerged about the crime scene and case, a new picture of Crane was painted. In the star's possessions, investigators found countless Polaroid pictures and videotapes, homemade pornography that the actor had been creating for years. According to the Daily Mail, Crane's dressing room was "porn central." He is believed to have been a sex addict before that term was used.

Crane's secrets weren't kept from everyone, however — just the public. Crane shared in his exploits with electronic salesman John Carpenter, who became the prime suspect in the actor's murder (via AZ Central). Crane also reportedly showed co-star Richard Dawson's son some of his homemade tapes. Even a few members of Crane's family were aware of his double life.

Patricia Crane, his wife, told ABC News that her husband told her his "hobby was photography — I didn't figure it was landscape! He brought over a double-thick briefcase, and it was filled with like four rows of slides in a box about that big. So there were thousands of slides in there ... of all the women in his life."

Anthony Perkins lived a quiet and private life. His sheltered personality inevitably drew similarities to his most famous character, Norman Bates from Psycho, a comparison that Perkins reviled. When, in 1992, Perkins died at his home surrounded by his close family and friends, it seemed to be without warning, at least to the public. But Perkins was prepared. He had been sick and had kept it secret from the outside world.

According to The New York Times, for two years prior to his death, Perkins was secretly receiving treatment for AIDS. "He went twice to stay at the hospital, and once as an out-patient, and we went under another name," his wife, Berry Berenson, said. "You think that this man has spent his entire life giving people so much pleasure in show business, and this is his reward. He can't even be himself at the end."

According to Perkins, who wrote a statement to be read after his death, his reasons for secrecy were largely because he didn't want a big deal made of it. "I chose not to go public about [having AIDS]," he said through spokesperson Leslee Dart (via Los Angeles Times), "because, to misquote Casablanca, I'm not much at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of one old actor don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Several years after her death, it was revealed in a lawsuit that Farrah Fawcett had remained in touch and was even still lovers with her college sweetheart Greg Lott after rekindling their relationship in 1998 until she died in 2009. Fawcett and Lott attended the University of Texas and dated during their undergraduate years. Fawcett even left money in her will to sweetheart Lott. "Farrah Fawcett and I reunited ... in a relationship, a loving, consensual, one-on-one relationship," Lott told ABC News.

 After her death, Fawcett was rumored to be in a love triangle with her ex Ryan O'Neal and Lott. O'Neal and Fawcett had on-again, off-again relationships for three decades. Lott told ABC that he and Fawcett's relationship was kept under wraps and away from the public eye.

Lott purported that O'Neal kept him from being with Fawcett during her final days. Fawcett died after a battle with cancer at the age of 63.

Decades after his death in 1960, and shortly before her own, Loretta Young admitted that her daughter Judy Lewis was conceived with Clark Gable. Young and Gable were co-stars in the 1935 movie "Call of the Wild." Young confirmed the parentage in her authorized biography "Forever Young: The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend," published only a few months after Young's death.

The biography notes that Young became pregnant by Gable while they were filming "Call of the Wild." She then left public life and said she adopted her daughter after secretly birthing her. Lewis herself published her suspicions that Gable was her father in her book "Uncommon Knowledge," but her mother never confirmed the longtime rumor. When she was 31, Lewis confronted her mom about who her father was, and that was when Young finally told her the truth.

Gable's only other child was John Clark Gable with his fifth wife Kay Spreckles. His son was born after his sudden death in November 1960.

Not only did Bing Crosby hang out with low-level mobsters, but he was also pals with some high-level ones, including Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, one of the alleged gunmen in Chicago's Valentine's Day Massacre. FBI documents obtained in 1999 revealed that Crosby's ties to organized crime were reportedly long.

One of the reasons Crosby spent so much time with mobsters was simply because he wanted someone to play golf with. Biographer J. Roger Osterholm noted: "Crosby just loved golf; he didn't care who he played with. I stress that it was just very innocent — it was just to play golf." Although some of the interactions may have been innocent, one of the FBI documents states that Crosby had to pay $10,000 to eliminate a mob-related threat.

FBI documents dictate that there were several threats on Crosby's life by various members of the organized crime syndicate. And that he was far from the only Hollywood mobster hobnobber.