Biografia

11 de outubro de 1935 · Canton, Ohio, EUA

19 de setembro de 1992 · Los Angeles, Califórnia, EUA (AIDS)

George Frederick Combs Jr.

Playwright/director.

Commemorated in the AIDS Memorial Quilt block #3078.

During a 2024 interview with Tonya Mosley on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," the actor, director, and producer Griffin Dunne told a story about his father (Dominick Dunne, an executive producer of The Boys In The Band) and Frederick Combs (who played Donald). Dominick Dunne, though he was married for a decade to Griffin's mother and was the father of their three children, was gay (though at the time deeply closeted). As Griffin recounted, "I found out [Dominick] was in love with one of the cast members, a guy named Frederick Combs, who later became a very close friend of mine, who told me, you know, about how heartbroken my father was that his love wasn't reciprocated. And of the cast of eight, I believe five died of AIDS, and Frederick was one of them. . . . And, you know, toward the very end of his life, he called me, and I could hear how sick he was. And there was all this noise in the background. And I said, 'where are you?' And he went, 'I'm in LA County Hospital.' I went, 'what are you doing there?' And his insurance had run out, his SAG insurance. And I was producing a movie at the time. We were just about to go into production, and we gave him a job as an actor, which, of course, he couldn't fulfill. And his insurance kicked in right away. And he ended up dying with hospice care. And he died in his own bed in his own home.".