An iconic actor’s secret ex-boyfriend said, “We were ordered never to have our picture taken together, because somebody would know that we were gay.”

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She said, "Thinking back, I felt very strongly that he kissed me like that to protect me. Nobody knew, but they said kissing could be one of the ways that you could catch it, possibly. And the thing that was so hard, so hard, was the press was so brutal with him after that. And they didn't realize what he was going through."

After his death, the donations to AIDS research reportedly doubled from the previous year. He also willed $250K to support the research.

Additionally, a month before the actor died, President Reagan — who was friends with him but had refused to help him get treatment at a military hospital — spoke about AIDS publicly for the first time. Finally, in the days following Rock's death, Congress designated $221 million toward the search for a cure.

Merle never told anyone the truth, not even her own kids.

Mayukh Sen, who wrote Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star, told TAAF, "For Merle, the lie created for her by studio publicists back in 1932 — one that involved not only concealment of her racial identity, but also a fictitious birthplace — was so involved that unraveling it herself would have sacrificed that cocoon of safety she'd built for herself. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I just don't think Merle would have put so much on the line in the final years of her life."

She also said, "I'm proud that I did my part in helping advance transgender visibility, awareness, and acceptance. As painful as it was to endure what I did in my life, it's all worth it when you hear you've saved lives or helped people find direction in theirs."

Loretta even kept the secret from Judy for as long as she possibly could.

Two weeks before her wedding, Judy had an identity crisis, telling her fiancé, Joseph Tinney, "I can't marry you. I don't know anything about myself." She was distraught over her relationship with Loretta and the mystery of her father's identity. Joseph told her, "It's common knowledge, Judy. Your father is Clark Gable." This spurred her to confront her mom, who finally told her then-31-year-old daughter the truth. Loretta reportedly told Judy, "Why shouldn't I be unhappy? Wouldn't you be if you were a movie star, and the father of your child was a movie star, and you couldn't have an abortion because it was a mortal sin?"

Before Loretta's memoir was published, Judy shared the truth about her biological parents in her 1994 memoir, Uncommon Knowledge, writing, "It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child."

You can read a more in-depth article on what Loretta endured here.