The Quiet Ones Die Too
The Tragedy of Ramón Navarro
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”
— Audre Lorde
Brave defenders,
Welcome back to the tea table. You have made it through another week in this hellscape we find ourselves in. That in and of itself is cause for celebration.
Yesterday was the first special edition of Lady LiberTea to ever be published. We held space for grief and for rage. We shouted a war cry to the sky.
Today’s truth however is for the quiet ones, the ones who have been hiding in the closet or hoping that this moment would pass by and leave them in safety. Today, we must speak a truth that shakes and sears:
No amount of silence will save us.
We’ve seen it time and again—through policies that cut life-saving resources and through histories that disappear our dead. Just yesterday in the companion piece to this work, we grieved the LGBTQ+ lives lost to suicide and violence, lives made more vulnerable by a government willing to slash crisis lifelines with clinical cruelty. We held space for fierce warriors and heroes, as we have done in every piece up until this moment. People who were active and resisted however quiet.
Today, however we shift gears a little, for todays article is for the quietest amongst us. The ones who up until now have believe that obscurity or privacy might save them. That compliance has rewards. Today we honor someone who lived the life they told us was safe: quiet, careful, respectable. He never “made it political.” He never shouted. He never asked to be a symbol.
He was everything they said we should be. And they still killed him.
This is the story of Ramón Novarro—a Hollywood star, a devout Catholic, a closeted gay man who played by all the rules. And it still wasn’t enough.
The Sainted Lover of the Silver Screen
Ramón Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico in 1899. His family fled to Los Angeles during the Mexican Revolution. Even as a child, his beauty was impossible to ignore: dark eyes, sculpted cheekbones, that whisper of melancholy in his smile. Hollywood took one look and decided he would be a star.
And so he was.
After early roles in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923), he ascended to superstardom with Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). The chariot race—still one of the greatest sequences in film history—was his. For a time, Novarro was the highest-paid actor at MGM, and one of the most bankable stars in America.
He was known as the “Latin Lover,” a romantic icon and a global sex symbol. But unlike Rudolph Valentino, Novarro wasn’t permitted to die young and beautiful. He lived long enough for the industry—and the country—to grow uncomfortable with his enduring fame and his refusal to settle down into heterosexual domestic bliss.
The Price of Respectability
Novarro was gay. That much is certain. But like many queer actors of his time, he was never allowed to speak it aloud.
To survive, he performed a life. He attended studio-arranged dinners with actresses—fake romances cooked up for columnists and cameras. He was linked to Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, and other starlets, always with the silent understanding: smile pretty, keep your truth quiet.
He lived alone in the Hollywood Hills, devout in his Catholicism and private in his personal life. Some biographers note that he struggled deeply with self-acceptance, often caught between faith and identity. He turned to alcohol to numb the tension. His career waned with the arrival of talkies, and though he still found work—appearing in films like Mata Hari (1931) and The Big Steal (1949)—his leading man days were over.
But he never made a fuss. Never made demands. Never asked for representation or visibility. He lived the way they told us would keep us safe.
The Murder
On Halloween night, 1968, mere months before the Stonewall Rising which would shape the world in new ways, Novarro invited two brothers to his home: Paul and Tom Ferguson. They were 22 and 17, hustlers looking for cash. A rumor had long circulated that Novarro had stashed thousands of dollars somewhere on his property—leftover from his Hollywood glory days.
There was no hidden fortune.
When they couldn’t find money, the brothers turned violent. They tortured him for hours, allegedly forcing him to drink cleaning fluid, and ultimately beat him to death with a metal shower rod—reportedly one he had once used as a sexual prop. His body was found face-down in his blood-soaked bedroom.
He was 69 years old.
The crime scene became a punchline. Tabloids reveled in the salacious details. The fact that the killers were male hustlers was treated as justification—as if Novarro’s sexuality invited his death. Hollywood barely responded. His funeral was quiet. His name, if mentioned at all, became a cautionary tale whispered in shame.
What Happened to the Killers?
Paul and Tom Ferguson were arrested and convicted of murder. Both were sentenced to long prison terms, but justice was inconsistent at best.
Paul Ferguson, the elder, was sentenced to life but served only seven years before being paroled in 1976. Tom, a minor at the time, was also released after serving a reduced sentence. Both would be repeat offenders, and would be re-arrested to serve time for unrelated crimes, for far longer than they served for the death of Novarro.
Neither expressed remorse. In later interviews, one claimed Novarro had “attacked” him—reviving the old lie of gay panic, used to excuse violence time and again. This is the legal theory that a man is justified in killing the victim because he made a pass at them and they felt threatened. Made with a straight face in the courts of a nation that currently—as of this writing—have women in jail because it was “unclear” that the rapist who attacked them really meant to do them harm, or that it was entirely self defense. After all they could have run from the rapist, broken a window or escaped. Did he really need to die?
The legal system, all too familiar with turning a blind eye to queer suffering, did little to hold them accountable.
A Mirror to the Present
Ramón’s story is a tragedy. The act itself brutal and violent and his treatment in the press afterward—ridiculed and shamed—echoes in the world today. When the federal government cuts funding to LGBTQ+ crisis services—when they erase affirming resources and tell queer youth to stay silent—they are reviving an old, deadly myth:
That if you keep quiet, you will be safe.
But silence did not protect Ramón Novarro.
Ramón didn’t march, he didn’t protest. While he did have relationships with men during his lifetime, he always sacrificed these for fear of being outed. He was not loud nor was he someone we could consider as an activist. He is not a hero of the gay rights world, but he is a member of our community. Ramón could be any one of the millions of LGBTQ+ people living in this country and trying to survive.
Just like every person has a story to tell or a lesson to teach, we learn one too in his death. Ramón was everything that the Republican party today claims they would like us to be: Religious. Private. Quiet. Compliant.
Silence did not protect Him. He was killed, mocked and dismissed while his killers received a performative slap on the wrist.
Silence will not protect the youth reaching out today to a hotline that may not be there tomorrow.
Silence will not protect you.
We Remember You, Ramón
To Ramón Novarro—
You were not too much.
You were not a sin.
You were not a cautionary tale.
You were a man who gave the world art, beauty, dignity—
And in return, they stripped you of the right to exist fully and safely.
But we remember.
And we speak your name.
Because your story reminds us: the quiet ones die too.
And we are done dying quietly.
Until our next bold move,
~ Lady LiberTea ✨🫖
Silence Kills. Action Saves.
If Ramón Novarro’s story moved you—if in this piece you heard his lament to words not said—don’t let it stop here. Let it move you. Let it move others. Here's where to begin:
1️⃣ Share the Story. Break the Silence.
We published a companion piece, “To the Ones We Lost,” honoring LGBTQ+ lives lost to suicide and calling out the federal proposal to cut LGBTQ+ crisis hotline funding. If you read only one piece this Pride, let it be that one.
📢 Share it and let others know that LGBTQ+ stories—and lives—are worth defending. Share it because Ramón stayed silent, and he died anyway.
2️⃣ Call Congress Before the Hotline Goes Cold.
The LGBTQ+ subnetwork of the national suicide hotline is facing a proposed $50 million in cuts—despite saving lives every single day. Call your representatives. Tell them this isn’t up for debate.
☎️ Use 5 Calls to contact your elected officials. It provides scripts, phone numbers, and even lets you leave voicemails after hours.
📬 Or contact them directly here:
3️⃣ Support the Lifeline. Literally.
The Trevor Project handles over 50% of the 988 LGBTQ+ crisis call volume. And they’re already underfunded.
Your time, your voice, your dollar—any one of them could save a life.
It’s not enough to mourn quietly. We must honor loudly.
For Ramón. For Bobby. For the ones who didn’t survive their silences.
And for those still here—fighting to be heard.
Until our Next Bold Move,
~ Lady LiberTea ✨🫖
Thank you for sharing this story Lady Libertea
Thank you so much for speaking truth to power with such eloquence. This is a heartbreaking and infuriating story, and I hope it is shared far and wide.