Who would have thunk of a subject like this when I was rushing out to catch the last showing of BRIDES OF DRACULA back in l961 in Mason City (because I had blown my 50 cents allowance and couldn't go the previous weekend) as my 8th grade class got out. One can wonder - certainly can't prove - that someone's sexual preference can affect how they come across on the screen (certainly I never saw anything but real manliness in Rock Hudson or George Nader from that early period - and were both quite gay, so it would turn out). Noel Willman - Charles Gray (I'm told) certainly added a special spice to their roles. But whether it came from "this" or "that". Hell, I don't know!
Just as an aside to one comment that it wasn't so much illegal to be gay but to be caught in a gay act, in the UK, I was at Elstree Studios in 1984 visiting Roy Skeggs as Hammer was shooting their HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE series. We were watching rushes from the previous days shooting on "...And the Walls Came Tumbling Down." The wonderful actor Peter Wyngarde appeared in several scenes (remember him in NIGHT OF THE EAGLES?). My friends with me told me that his career had nearly been ruined by being caught in some sort of "hole in the wall" situation. What a shame - and I've always thought that private is private and is none of my business.