He and Ware had three children, Kate Geer, Thad Geer, and actress Ellen Geer. Ware also had a daughter, actress Melora Marshall, from another marriage. Although he and Ware divorced in 1954, they remained close for the rest of their lives. In 1934 he met Harry Hay at the Tony Pastor Theatre where Geer worked as an actor. They became lovers. He and Hay participated in a milk strike in Los Angeles. Later that year, he and Hay performed in support of the San Francisco General Strike, where they witnessed police firing on strikers, killing two. He was a committed leftist, with Hay later describing him as his political mentor. He introduced Hay to Los Angeles' leftist community, and together they took part in activism, joining demonstrations for laborers' rights and the unemployed, and on one occasion handcuffed themselves to lampposts outside UCLA to hand out leaflets for the American League Against War and Fascism. He became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1934. After Hay had become increasingly politicized, Geer introduced him to the Party. In 1934, he and Hay gave support to a labor strike of the port of San Francisco, part of the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike. Geer became a reader of the West Coast Communist newspaper People's World. He maintained a garden at his vacation house, called Geer-Gore Gardens, in Nichols, Connecticut. He visited often and attended the local Fourth of July fireworks celebrations, sometimes wearing a black top hat or straw hat and always his trademark denim overalls with only one suspender hooked. He also had a small vacation house in Solana Beach, California, where his front and back yards were cultivated as vegetable gardens rather than lawns. As he was dying on April 22, 1978, of respiratory failure at the age of 76, his family sang Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and recited poems by Robert Frost at his deathbed. His remains were cremated; his ashes are buried at the Theatricum Botanicum in the Shakespeare Garden in Topanga Canyon, California. TV and filmography Misleading Lady (1932) as McMahon – Asylum Guard Spitfire (1934) as West Fry Wild Gold (1934) as Poker Player (uncredited) The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) as Village Lamplighter (uncredited) Union Pacific (1939) as Foreman (uncredited) The Fight for Life (1940) as 2nd Teacher Deep Waters (1948) as Nick Driver The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre