Personal Life
Being a period of that era of the 1950's I think being gay must have been pretty harsh for Graham. I can imagine...everybody knew, nobody cared, but I think it was such a time when you didn't talk about issues that were personal, and I think that made him much more secretive and reclusive, and I think that was probably quite a tough thing for him... — Susan Gaye Anderson
Kennedy's homosexuality was considered an open secret to many in the Australian entertainment industry, although Kennedy himself never publicly acknowledged that he was gay.
In the 1960s Bob Dyer described him as "probably the loneliest young man in Australia."
In 1973 Melbourne newspapers reported that Kennedy was engaged to 28-year-old American singer Lana Cantrell (born 7 August 1943), who became a successful New York lawyer.
Many years later, Kennedy wrote to a newspaper that a photographer, taking pictures of Miss Cantrell and him leaving a restaurant together asked if he could "hint at a romance". The following Sunday a poster proclaimed "GRAHAM AND LANA TO WED". His former housekeeper, Mrs Devona Fox, in the 2009 television documentary The Real Graham Kennedy, produced by Bob Phillips, one of the producers from Kennedy's break-thru Channel 9 program In Melbourne Tonight, is quoted as saying:
Graham always told me right early on that he would never get married. He told me that his life was devastated when his parents split up, and he said straight out, "Mrs Fox, I'll never get married", so I never expected anything more of him than what did happen. Even when Lana Cantrell came into the scene I was puzzled and I did say to him why all this, and of course we all know it was good publicity. Lana came to the house and I had to go up, and have it all cleaned, ready for her and her party to come one Sunday night. And then on the Monday night, this great big announcement was going to be made that he was supposed to be engaged to Lana Cantrell. well the ratings went through the roof...
In his 2006 book King and I: My Life With Graham Kennedy broadcaster Rob Astbury stated that he and Kennedy had been lovers. Kennedy is portrayed as homosexual in the 2007 biopic The King.
Read more about this topic: Graham Kennedy
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