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Goetz George: A Gay Dad with a Chest

October 3, 2014, 4:31 am
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This Chest belongs to Goetz George, playing a rancher trying to find his father's killer in Treasure of the Silver Lake (1962), a German Western that tried to introduce famous boys' book characters Winnetou and Shatterhand to America.   Unfortunately, it didn't sell well outside of Germany, even though Shatterhand was played by muscleman Lex Barker of Tarzan fame.

In this scene The Chest about to be rescued by Winnetou and Shatterhand.








 Here's a shot of his shoulders and biceps.

Perhaps you're wondering what else the Chest has been in?

According to the IMDB, 123 movies and tv shows, beginning in 1953, at age 15, and extending through 2013.  But mostly small roles in his young adulthood; he is most famous for his starring role in the police procedural Tatort (1981-1991).










Ok, but what about movies where he displays his Chest?

Surprisingly, not a lot.  An internet search revealed this photo from, apparently, a boxing movie.





This daddy shot of Goetz fully nude, approaching a bed containing a lady wearing black fishnet stockings.















And this candid shot of The Chest peeking out from behind a child, no doubt his daughter.

There's also some gay content in his career: in The Trio (1999), he plays Zobel,  a gay thief in a gang with his lover and his daughter.  When the lover dies, he recruits the bisexual Rudolf (Felix Eitner), and Dad and daughter end up competing for his affections.

See also: Winnetou: German Gay Western.





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The Heterosexual Gay Kid of "Ugly Betty"

October 4, 2014, 1:00 am
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Feminine boys on tv are usually ridiculed, made objects of jokes ("He's into fashion!  He's not a real man! Isn't that hilarious?"), and in the end heterosexualized ("You were worried for a moment, but he's not gay after all!  Isn't that hilarious?").

Justin (Mark Indelicato) on Ugly Betty (2006-2010) was an exception.  After a few years of dissimulating.

Based on the Colombian telenovela Betty la fea, Ugly Betty features a fashion-deprived journalism student (America Ferrara) who lands a job as an assistant to the editor at a high-profile fashion magazine.

 She draws the ardor of a huge number of men who have never seen anyone so attractive in all their years of working with supermodels, such as buffed staff accountant Henry (Christopher Gorham, left).

And the ire of some of the magazine's glitterati, including Marc St. James (Michael Urie), the stereotyped-gay assistant to big boss Wilhemina Slater (Vanessa Williams).

Back home in Brooklyn, Betty lives with her father, sister, and nephew, Justin, who is 12 years old and already a fashion-and-show-tune maven.

What do good moms say to their feminine sons?
"Of course you can wear that ascot to school!"
"For your birthday, I got you tickets to a Broadway musical!"
"No, you can't have those shoes.  36 pairs are enough for you to accessorize to!"

Grandpa and Aunt Betty are equally nonchalant about Justin's femininity.  Plus Mom has a series of boyfriends who try to score points with the boy by promoting his feminine interests ("Let's go shopping!").

Is the show-tune maven gay?  Mom is ready for that possibility: over and over again, she says, "I will love you no matter what happens..." (by which she means "If you happen to be gay.")

Other than the tip-toeing around the word gay, and the implication that being gay is bad enough to make Mom's continuing love a noble thing, this is all perfectly sensible.  Feminine boys aren't necessarily gay, and masculine boys aren't necessarily heterosexual, so no one will have any idea about Justin's sexual orientation until he starts expressing an interest in someone.

And he does: heterosexual interest.

1. In the second season, he becomes a juvenile delinquent and kisses girls.
2. In the fourth season, he insists "I'm not gay!"


Then he starts dating boys, but he's conflicted about it, and really worried that his family will turn out to be homophobic.

1.When someone seems him in a same-sex lip-lock, he begs, "Don't tell Mom!"
2. He postpones announcing that he is gay until the final episode of the series, whereupon everyone tries to look surprised and supportive.

Wait -- parents who accept feminine boys usually have no trouble accepting gay boys.  Besides,  the family obviously has gay friends, and Mom asks Marc to hang out with Justin to provide a gay role model.

What is Justin's problem?

Part of the hesitation may be due to actor Mark Indelicato's horrifying experiences on the show.  He received constant hate mail, including death threats, quite a lot for a 13-year old to deal with along with the stress of his first major acting role.

Maybe the writers hung back on his character's gayness to give him a reprise from all the hate.  Maybe, in the second season, they actually intended for him to be heterosexual.

Mark is now 20, in college, but still acting occasionally.  He is apparently as feminine as Justin in real life, but heterosexual or bisexual, with a long-term girlfriend.
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Top 16 Public Penises of the Cowboy States

October 4, 2014, 2:27 am
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I'm afraid of the Cowboy States, that swath of ranches, grassland, and mountains west of Minnesota and east of California.  I've driven through them four times, and they are very pretty, with the amber waves of grain and the shirtless cowboys and all.

But they also have survivalists, right-wing extremist groups, hate crimes, Republican majorities, homophobic laws, and billboards about Jesus.

Still, if you find yourself driving through the Cowboy States en route to West Hollywood, there are some nice public penises.  Working south from Canada:

1. North Dakota doesn't have a lot of public art, but there's a shirtless CCC worker at the entrance of Fort Abraham Lincoln Park in Mandan.

2. Everyone goes to South Dakota for the Sturgis Bike Rally, but also check out the Crazy Horse Memorial, about 17 miles south of Mount Rushmore.  When it's finished, it will be the biggest statue in the world, 563 feet of pure beefcake.

3. There's also a replica of Michelangelo's David, penis and all, in Sioux Falls.




4. I lived in Nebraska for five weeks with my first boyfriend, Fred the Ministerial Student.  It was awful.  But the Joselyn Art Museum in Omaha has a very impressive collection,  and a naked Sioux Warrior out front sculpted by John David Brcin.









5. Kansas is very flat, and the waves of Protestant fundamentalists made me nervous.  I could see why Dorothy wanted to stay in Oz (in the original novels, not in the dreary 1939 movie).  But I like the loincloth-clad Native American atop the State Capitol in Topeka Sculpted by Richard Bergen in 1988, he's called "Ad Astra" ("To the stars").

6. The Oklahoma State Capitol in Oklahoma City also features a semi-nude Native American, "The Guardian." He wasn't erected until 2002.










7. Another Native American is offering a peace pipe to students at the University of Oklahoma.

8. For a more modern beefcake image, check out the Air Force Monument in Oklahoma City.  It features a naked young man holding an airplane aloft.


More after the break.















9. And the Golden Driller, a 75-foot tall shirtless oil field worker, erected in Tulsa in 1953, dedicated to the oil companies that "created from God's abundance a better life for mankind."

That's the only time I've heard the oil industry described in such religious terms.










10. I told you that the square states were religious.  In 2012, when a copy of the Ten Commandments was placed on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol, in direct violation of the separation of church and state, a Satanic group petitioned for equal time with this 7-foot statue of Baphomet, the "Satanic Goat." They haven't been successful yet, but the Oklahoma blogosphere is livid with rage.













11. Working south from Canada again, we hit Montana.  I had a job interview in Havre once.  They were having a "Family Values" rally on the Courthouse lawn.  No way, sorry.   But I like this muscular male angel cuddling with a soldier at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Missoula.














12. I couldn't find anything good in Idaho, and Cheyenne,  Wyoming, the heart of cowboy country, offered only "The Greeting and the Gift," a cowboy waving "hello" to a Native American offering him a horn of plenty.  It's in a "visitor area that is now closed."











13. I've visited Denver, Colorado a few times for conferences.  It has the biggest gay community between Minnesota and California, but not a lot of public penises. Just another of those ubiquitous CCC workers, and these bodybuilders jumping for joy at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.












14.-16.  But Utah is surprisingly well stocked with beefcake art: Mormon saints, a Native American standing outside the State Capitol, another standing guard over the library at the University of Utah, and this mural of shirtless railroad workers at the railroad station in Ogden. 



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The Secret Message at Washington Junior High

October 4, 2014, 2:30 am
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One Saturday in the summer of 1974, just after eighth grade, the sky was clear and bright, the air smelled like new lilacs, and the grass was sprinkled with dandelions. Darry had the flu and was too sick to work on our fantasy novel, so I invited my friend Craig (from the famous streaking incident) to ride bikes.

As we passed the back of Washington Junior High, we saw a small, strawheaded seventh-grader in a blue windbreaker standing against the red brick wall, near the windows of the gym. When we drew closer, we saw that he had a sponge and a yellow bucket sloshing with soapy water. He was scrubbing furiously at a piece of graffiti.


I recognized him as Brian, the boy my parents used to babysit.  They stopped because he had a smart mouth.  Once when we were playing in the back yard, he offered to tell us “a dirty joke,” right in front of my Mom! It didn’t matter to her that the joke was “The boy fell in the mud!”

“Hey, Brian!” I yelled. “You’re not supposed to be writing on school property.”

“You gonna call the fuzz, big guy?” Except for the belligerent smirk, he was cute, with a tanned face, sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes with eyelashes so blond we were almost white, and thin, pinkish lips.

His hands were raw from scrubbing at a line of graffiti: Brian gives free LBJs in letters nearly a foot high.

“What’s a LBJ?” Craig asked.



“It’s the president, Gomer!  I mean the old president, Lyndon Baines Johnson.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Craig said.  "You can't give away presidents!"

“So what do you give?” I asked. “Can I have one?”

“I didn’t write it, ok?  It was a Mean Boy. Now can it, before I pound you.”

I tried to restrain a laugh at the thought of this slim, slight boy trying to pound me, after years of wrestling and judo. The posturing seemed to be hiding something scared, something wounded. I thought of Bill, who also threatened to pound me, long ago.

What kind of insult did giving LBJs signify?  Brian's feverish attempt to destroy the evidence made me suspect Acting like a Girl -- but graffiti was an unlikely Mean Boy punishment.

“You can’t erase paint with soap and water.  Why don’t you just mark it out?”

“Sometimes you can  And the paint’s in the garage, and if I go through there, Emmitt will see me. Ok, Mr. Know-it-All?”  Emmitt was his Dad.

“Why would Emmitt care what a Mean Boy says about you?”

Then we heard a clumping noise inside the building: a teacher or custodian, insanely working on the weekend, coming to the window to accuse us of disfiguring the school!  Brian kicked the bucket over and started to run away, but I knew he'd never find a hiding space by running east: the schoolyard in that direction was empty scrub for hundreds of miles. So I yelled “Get on my bike!”

Brian jumped on without protest and wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, and we sped away past the back of the school. We hid in the alley for awhile, panting and laughing. Then we went back to pick Brian’s bucket and sponge, and rode him home.

We became friends, of a sort, after that, but Brian didn't tell me what LBJ meant, or who wrote it, until many years later, when we were both in college.  By that time, I had already figured it out (You probably think it has something to do with sex, but it doesn't.  I reveal the meaning in this post)

Season after season, year after year, Brian gives free LBJs remained on the wall, faded but still faintly legible, stubbornly resistant to the generations of custodians who attempted to erase it.  It was the biggest riddle of my childhood, and not mine alone.  Generations of junior high students have wondered who this Brian is, and what LBJs are, and if they find out, how such things can exist on 20th Avenue in Rock Island, Illinois, in the world of everyday experience.

As far as I know, it's still there today.

The story of Brian continues here, with kissing under the mistletoe.

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Top 15 Public Penises of Texas

October 5, 2014, 5:55 am
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Long ago, before I moved to West Hollywood, I spent a terrible year teaching at Hell-fer-Sartain State College, the worst place on Earth.  Houston had some very nice shops, museums, and restaurants, and the biggest gay neighborhood in the Cowboy Belt, but it was 20 miles away, and in the nonstop gridlock traffic it might as well have been 2,000 miles.

So I didn't do much sightseeing, and I certainly didn't have the time or energy to go scouring the countryside for beefcake art.  But, apparently, Texas has more than its share.  Starting with Houston:

1.-3. The Cullen Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Fine Arts features a reproduction of Rodin's Walking Man, Émile-Antoine Bourdelle's Adam, and this stylized nude man atop a horse.
















4. Austin, about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Houston, is the site of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas.  When I visited, it was frightfully crowded, with streets torn up for construction everywhere.  But the entrance to the university campus features the muscular semi-nude Torchbearers.











5. I've never been to San Antonio, about 1 1/2 hours south of Austin, but evidently it has become a cultural center rivaling Houston, with ,many museums and art galleries.  This nude fisherman stands outside the McNay Art Museum.














6. This hunky, well-endowed statue of Marcus Aurelius is in the San Antonio Museum of Art.













7. This sculpture outside the Children's Museum is called "Firstborn Son," but it looks like the child has just broken the dad's neck.

More after the break.















8. Waco, about  1 1/2 hours north of Austin on the road to Dallas, is pronounced "Way-co," not "Wacko." It's famous chiefly for the Branch Davidian cult that blew up there.  But it has a more sedate past, such as a large Masonic Temple, with this frieze by Raoul Josset depicting muscular, nude workers.

9. There's another frieze of hunky football players at Farrington Field in Fort Worth.





10. I've been to Dallas.  but I didn't visit the Freedman's Cemetery, where this African prince stands guard.

11-12. There are several muscular, half-naked freedmen inside the cemetery.















13. According to Google Images, this is "Cattle Drive," in Dallas, depicting a number of naked boys leaping into the river. Why "Cattle Drive"?  I have no idea.















14.Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, is the home of the stadium of the Dallas Cowboys football team, where this frieze depicts scenes from Texas history.  Apparently many Texas in the past were naked a lot.






15. This Nature Boy is playing with the birds in a pier in Galveston.

It's a big state. I didn't have time for Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, San Angelo, or Corpus Christi.

See also: Male Nudity in Italian Class.
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What Does "Brian Gives Free LBJs" Mean?

October 5, 2014, 6:10 am
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After reading my posts on "The Secret Message at Washington Junior High" and "I Catch Cousin Joe in the Act," you probably thought that the graffiti "Brian gives free LBJs" referred to some sort of sexual act.  I turned it into a sexual act when I fictionalized the incident in The Boy Who Loved Robbie Douglas.  (I also changed Brian into a trickster god and Cousin Joe into my brother.)

But the real meaning was something much more profound.  I found out in the spring of 1981, my junior year at Augustana.  A student who was from Chicago, like Brian, said that in his grade school, the older boys would force or bribe the younger boys to run errands and do chores for them,  like the "fags" of British boarding school (possibly the origin of the derogatory term for gay men).

 It was called "doing a LBJ" or "giving a LBJ," after President Lyndon Baines Johnson (he didn't know why).



That summer, the famous summer of 1981, I looked up Brian, an undergraduate drama major at Carthage College.  We had a pizza at Happy Joe's, and then parked on the levee and watched the cars glistening by on the Centennial Bridge.  I talked about the day we  found Brian scrubbing at the graffiti on the wall of Washington Junior High, and how I had just discovered that a LBJ meant a chore.

"But I don't understand why a Mean Boy would write 'Brian gives free LBJs.' What's so bad about doing free chores?"

Brian hesitated for only a moment.  "They weren't bad.  The big boys were cute, and sometimes they would let me hang out with them.  Sometimes we would hug.  I liked the way a big guy's arms felt around me. . .I wanted that. . ."

My face reddened as I realized that he was revealing something very personal.   "Um...did you ever find out who wrote it?"

"You know what? I’ve never told anybody this before, but it was me. I wrote it.”

His face was turned away, toward the  rushing river. “Why would you write 'Brian gives free lbjs’ about yourself?”

“I don’t know. I was a mixed up kid, I guess. That’s why I was trying to erase it."

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you’re gay."

Brian stared at me for a moment, small and fragile, alone. Then he was angry. “I am not!” he exclaimed.  “Maybe I was a confused kid, but no way am I gay!”

"Ok, ok, whatever," I said.  "But do you still like it when big guys hug you?"

I didn't wait for him to answer.

Brian and I dated a few times during the very busy summer of 1981, but that night was more about friendship, and recognition, and belonging.
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Homophobic Moments in Music #35: My Girl, Bill

October 6, 2014, 2:56 am
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In the spring of 1974, while I was arguing about Freedom to Marry in Mrs. Dunn's class at Washington Junior High, a ballad-style song by Jim Stafford called "My Girl, Bill" began  playing on KSTT radio.  But not for long.  Parents and preachers started screaming, and radio stations cut it from the air, and record stores yanked it from the shelves.

In order to find out what all the fuss was about, my boyfriend Dan and I had to wait until his album, Jim Stafford, appeared.

We still didn't understand.  It seemed to be a straightforward song about two men who are in love with the same women.  They meet to talk things through.  The narrator says: "I know that we both love her, and I guess we always will, but you're going to have to find another, because she's my girl, Bill."

What was the problem?  Maybe parents got riled because it mentions wine?

Two years later, when I figured out what gay people were, I realized that Jim Stafford was playing a trick on listeners: the comma was inaudible, so they thought that Bill was "my girl," a gay relationship was being described.  Unthinkable in 1974!

Of course, gay men never referred to their partners as "my girl." In the 1970s, the most common terms were "my lover" or "my boyfriend." It was only clueless heterosexuals who imagined that gay relationships must be divided on gender lines, with "a boy" and "a girl."

I don't know who was more homophobic: Jim Stafford, with his  nasty "joke," or the audience, who got all riled over the possibility that two men might be in love.

Stafford hasn't had a charting song since "Turn Loose of My Leg" hit #98 in 1977, but apparently he's still performing in Branson, Missouri.  I wonder if "My Girl, Bill" is still part of his repertoire.

See also: Discovering what "Gay" Means.
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Summer 1973: Two Boys Kissing at the Longview Park Pool

October 7, 2014, 12:00 am
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I don't remember much of what happened on that day in the summer of 1973, about a month before we visited my Kentucky kinfolk and I met the Teenage Indian God.

 I don't know why practically everybody I knew was at the Longview Park pool:

Peter, the only Asian boy in school, who would participate in the streaking adventure next year.
My best friend Bill.
Dan, the boy I met in the girls' locker room, who had dirty blond hair and a gay-coded lilt to his voice (thought I didn't know what gay meant yet)
Darry
My brother and his best friend.

It was one of those bitingly hot, oppressive days that you sometime get in the Midwest, where the heat literally sizzles in the air and you can't walk more than a few steps without getting soaked. The pool was crowded with glistening bodies, mostly high schoolers, breathtakingly beautiful although dangerous – a bounce in the step or a lilt in the voice might draw their wrath, and result in a shove at a girl or a forced swimsuit removal.  I was standing with Dan at the four foot mark, where the bottom slid abruptly into the deep end, relishing the feeling of endless space. But when I bobbed under the water for a moment, Dan was gone!

Anxiously I scanned the surface of the pool for boys with dirty-blond hair.

The pool had been noisy, with screams and laughter and fifty gossiping or bragging voices, but now it was so quiet that I could hear David Cassidy singing “I Think I Love You” from far away, maybe from a transistor radio over by the bath house, or farther afield, from someone’s picnic on the grass that sloped down the Bluffs. But the song hadn’t played regularly on the radio for years! I had a strange feeling of being unstuck in time, as if I had tripped accidentally into the past like Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows.

I pulled myself out of the pool. The damp concrete was hot beneath my bare feet, the air thick and heavy, smelling of chlorine and suntan oil and Raid, the spray used to keep bugs off. I walked around the shallow end, past the baby pool, and then along the western perimeter, where a chain link fence looked down the Bluffs. Then I saw a churning in the deep end, like a cauldron boiling.

Some Mean Boys were trying to drown Dan!

Why wasn’t the lifeguard intervening? Or any of the adults?  Why were they all pretending not to notice?
I dove into the hot, frothing water to rescue him myself.

I don't know if the rest was a dream or not: I saw Dan's torso, his shoulders, his tousled dirty-blond hair -- he was kissing Bill!  Their arms and legs were intertwined, their bodies were pressing rhythmically together, and they were kissing!

Writhing with jealousy, I tried to pull them apart. Dan pushed me away with his hand. I head a sickening thud.

The next thing I remember is lying on the concrete at poolside, a hard-muscled guy, sopping wet, kneeling over me, holding my eye open.  He had blood on his hands.  I found out later that he was a medical student who had fished me out of the water and performed first aid.

An emergency room visit and five stitches later, I was back home in bed, eating ice cream.

They told me that I tried diving off the edge of the pool and doing a somersault, but I miscalculated and hit the side.

That makes more sense than what I remember, unconscious fears and anxieties bubbling to the surface when I didn't even know the word "gay" yet.

Afterwards I rarely went into a swimming pool again, and I always jumped in feet first -- no diving. And Bill and I grew even more distant.  The last time I visited his house was for a Halloween party in 10th grade, and I spent most of the evening talking to his big brother Mike, who used to call me "Bud" and drive us places.

Bill's story concludes here, with the Kissing Bandit.

The story of Dan continues here, when we decide to escape to Saudi Arabia.

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Homophobic Moments in Music #683: It's a Man's World

October 7, 2014, 2:16 pm
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From the moment I turned 13 to the moment I moved to Texas at age 24, my life consisted of a nonstop interrogation of girls! girls! girls!

From parents, teachers, Sunday school teachers, bosses, neighbors, and friends:
"Is there any girl in school that you like?"
"That girl is cute -- why don't you ask her out?"
"You'd have a girlfriend if you weren't so picky!"

From friends, classmates, bullies, jocks, and strangers on the street:
"Doesn't that girl have large breasts - why don't you ask her out?"
"Which actress on tv would you like to have sex with?"
"How many girls did you have sex with last night?"

So the last thing I needed during my senior year in high school was the most uber-heterosexist song on Earth.


During Homecoming, the orchestra had to play for the Gong Show, an adaption of the popular game show where singers could perform for a panel of judges until they were "gonged" off.  The one who made it through the entire performance without a "gong" was the winner.

There were 20 songs, mostly pop hits of the era: "Convoy,""I Write the Songs,""Stand Tall,""You Make Me Feel Like Dancing."

Some dinosaur numbers that got quickly gonged: "Blue Suede Shoes,""My Boyfriend's Back,""Luck be a Lady Tonight."

A duet, "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," from last spring's musical, Annie Get Your Gun.

"Voi che sapete," an aria from The Marriage of Figaro, got gonged after just a few bars.

The song that won: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," originally recorded by James Brown, the flamboyantly feminine but apparently heterosexual "Godfather of Soul" (1933-2006).  It's a heavy-beated, immensely sexist number about how men are in charge of everything:

This is a man's world, this is a man's world, this is a man's world.
Men make cars and trains, electric lights, toys, well, just about everything.
If you're a man, you're in charge.
But you're nothing without a woman or a girl.
Yeah...you're nothing, nothing at all, without a woman or a girl.
You're lost in the wilderness
You're lost in bitterness

Great, just what I needed to hear.
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The Middle: Axl in Underwear

October 7, 2014, 7:00 pm
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I've been watching The Middlesince it premiered in 2009.  It's a striking contrast to Modern Family, which comes on ABC shortly afterwards: two "family sitcoms," but the families are rich/poor, big city/small town, West Coast/Middle America, and inclusive/not-inclusive

White -- all white all the time.  Christian.  And heterosexual.  I was holding out for quirky youngest kid Brick (Atticus Shaffer) to be gay, but nope, he "discovered" girls, and now he's as hetero-horny as his brother Axl.





The flamboyantly feminine Brad, one of high schooler Sue's friends, appears occasionally.  But the joke is that no one thinks that he's gay except Sue's parents.  Not even him.

Other than that, nothing.  Not a word or a scene suggesting that same-sex desire, behavior, or identity exists.  This is a complete, utter heterosexist wasteland.

To what can we attribute this void?

Maybe the producers, Eileen Heisler and Deanne Heline believe that all gay people live in L.A. or Manhattan, so Orson, Indiana must obviously be gay-free.

Or the suits at ABC

Or the cast.  Most are not exactly gay allies:

1. Patricia Heaton (Mom Frankie), formerly the wife on the heterosexist Everybody Loves Raymond, is openly conservative, although she states that she has gay friends.  She complains that the kids of The Middle would never display themselves as sexual objects, like the kids of Glee.  Um...Axl and his friends are displayed semi-nude in nearly every episode because....?

2. Neil Flynn (Dad Mike), formerly the sardonic janitor on Scrubs, doesn't have any gay roles on his resume and hasn't made any pro-gay statements.

3. Charlie McDermott (the shirtless Axl) has played in several movies with "aren't gay people ridiculous?" jokes, such as Sex Drive (2008) and Hot Tub Time Machine (2010).

4. Eden Sher (the over-enthusiastic Sue) has a gay best friend.

5. Atticus Shaffer (Brick) had a role in the homophobic Year One (2009), but he was only 11 years old at the time, so you can't really blame him.  He hasn't made any pro- or anti-gay statements.

I guess we'll have to make do with subtexts.

See also: Raising Hope/The Middle and Brock Ciarlelli: The Uncle Tom of The Middle



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Be an Athletic Supporter

October 8, 2014, 12:00 am
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When I was a kid, I hated sports -- who would willingly submit to having hard round projectiles hurled at them? -- but my parents wouldn't believe me.  "You're a boy!  Boys like sports!" they kept insisting as I unwrapped Christmas presents of basketballs and baseball bats.

Denkmann Elementary School didn't offer gym classes, so they insisted that I choose something from the Parks & Recreations Department "Kids Sports" program.  So I took judo lessons for three years, stopping only when the dojo moved to Davenport.

Washington Junior High offered a full range of team sports, so they began pushing me toward baseball, basketball, or...shudder...football. I compromised with wrestling, but dropped out after an unfortunate penis incident at a tournament.

In the fall of 1975, when I began tenth grade at Rocky High, home of the Rocks, the litany began again: play a sport, play a sport, play a sport...  And not just my parents.  Teachers, peers, jocks...play a sport, play a sport, play a sport.  With even more urgency, since a boy with an aversion to athletics might be a Swish.

Noticing my dismay, my gym teacher, who was also the football coach, came up with another idea.  He asked if I had my Red Cross First Aid certificate.  I did. Then he suggested that I might like a job as an athletic trainer.

What do they do?

1. Run tape measures over athlete's muscular bodies to measure them for uniforms
2. Make sure the cups are snug but not so tight that they squeeze their extra-large sex organs
3. Massage their muscles if they get a cramp
4. Watch them carefully in the locker room after games to make sure they're feeling ok
5. Pass out towels as they walk naked toward the showers.
6. Tape and splint their muscles if they are injured.

Um...there are jobs like that, and not just in gay fantasy novels? Why didn't anybody tell me about this before? Sign me up!

Oh, and you get to watch all of the games from the sidelines.

Well, every job has its drawbacks.

I've often wondered why the coach thought of me for the job.  Was there a special sparkle in my eye as I looked at the first aid kits?  Or maybe I spent so much time gazing at muscles that he figured I'd get a kick out of working with them.
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Max & Shred: Nickelodeon's New Drake and Josh

October 8, 2014, 7:18 pm
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Nickelodeon has always been very good at gay-subtext teencoms, from Salute Your Shorts in the 1990s to Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide in the 2000s to the contemporary Henry Danger.   

Max & Shred, which premiered a few days ago, is a reprise of Drake and Josh, which in turn was a reprise of The Odd Couple: two guys with opposing personalities are forced to live together.

 Here it's celebrity snowboarder Max (Jonny Gray, right), cool, athletic, a teen operator in the mold of Drake, who moves to Blizzard Springs, Colorado to train for a snowboarding event, and must room with science nerd Shred (Jake Goodman, left), Josh without the extra weight.

There's also a mad scientist girl-next-door who climbs in through the window, a sister who is older and popular, a couple of parents, and the usual friends, jocks, bullies, and science nerds at school.

Max and Shred have the same physicality as Drake and Josh -- their hands are all over each other all the time.  And Shred draws has a pleasant non-gendered transgression.  But the show seems to be trying to avoid the gay-subtext-filled Drake and Josh.  Their hetero-mania is established through drools and double-takes, and in the second episode, they both fall in love with the same girl.




Jonny Gray is a relative newcomer, with only a few credits on the Imdb, but Jake Goodman has appeared in 18 projects, including a starring role in the Canadian teencom Life with Boys (left, with "brothers" Nathan McLeod and Michael Murphy).
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Let's Get Physical

October 9, 2014, 2:00 am
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I heard Olivia Newton-John a lot during the 1970s. Her easy-listening, feelings-drenched songs appealed mostly to girls. "If Not for You" (1971) and  "I Honestly Love You" (1974) didn't specify pronouns, and  "Have You Never Been Mellow?" (1974) wasn't about romance at all, but I still wasn't a fan.

But after the success of Grease (1977), Olivia's music became as sexually liberated as her character.  Her next big hits included: "Totally Hot" (1979), "Physical" (1981), "Make a Move on Me" (1981), and "Heart Attack" (1982). Again, no pronouns, and this time desire was added to the cuddliness.

 One of ten or twelve songs with gay subtexts from the early 1980s, "Physical" (1981), has about the same theme as "You're The One that I Want," and for that matter, "Show Me" from My Fair Lady (1964): we've done the dinner and movie thing, we've talked about our feelings.  I've got nothing left to say except "Let's get horizontal."
 

The music video responds directly to gay fans.  Olivia plays a personal trainer whipping men into shape, leering at various disembodied, muscular pecs and arms, and semi-nude men in jockstraps.













She gives extra attention to an out-of-shape specimen, until he gets stronger, younger, and more handsome.  And seems to change his race.  But to her consternation, he goes off with a man, one of the first explicit evocations of same-sex desire in popular music.

"Make a Move on Me" (1981) makes a similar plea to stop talking: "Spare me your charms and take me in your arms."  (You couldn't carry on a conversation anyway, with disco music blasting).


Not that the romance was absent.  The movie Xanadu (1980) was about the Greek goddess of. . .um, roller disco. . .helping a nebbish  (Michael Beck, left) open a nightclub.

But the song "Xanadu" is about leaving the straight world behind, running away to West Hollywood.

 A place where nobody dared to go
The love that we came to know
They call it Xanadu

See also: Madonna, Gay Diva of the 1980s
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Walk on the Wild Side

October 9, 2014, 3:00 am
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The gay world is always hidden, flickering on the edge of our vision, invisible to the average person.  Merely a shadow to us.  But then one day something happens.  By accident or design, we go down the rabbit hole, or through the wardrobe, or to Platform 9 3/4, and we can see the gay world, bright and colorful.

With a bit of a mind flip, you're into the time slip, and nothing can ever be the same.

"Walk on the Wild Side," by Lou Reed (1972), is about several people making that slip from dull Mundania to the gay world, where all gender and sexual norms vanish and you can find yourself -- or lose yourself -- in the savage possibilities.

Holly shaved her legs and then he was a she.

Candy was everyone's darling in the back rooms.


Little Joe never gave it away, everybody had to pay.

Sugar Plum Fairy visited the Apollo, where the "colored girls" sang.

Jackie Curtis thought she was James Dean and crashed.

Transvestism, back-room sex, male prostitution, interracial sex, drugs -- heavy stuff for 1972.

When I first heard the song, in high school, I didn't understand most of the sexual references.  I didn't know that the people mentioned were all members of Andy Warhol's Factory: Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Joe Campbell, and Jackie Curtis.



But I knew that there was a world out there, "beyond the fields we know," the Wild Side, frightening, dangerous, disturbing -- and free.

See also: Searching for a Gay Comic; Andy Warhol

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Fall 1985: Watching Brothers in the Hollywood Hills

October 10, 2014, 6:44 am
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When I first moved to West Hollywood in 1985, every Wednesday night my friend Mark, who introduced me to Michael J. Fox,  drove me up to a house in the Hollywood Hills, where there were about twenty gay men, most involved in the film industry, drinking wine, eating fancy hors d'oeuvres, and waiting until 10:00.

To watch tv.

What was all the fuss about?

Brothers (1984-89), a sitcom on the premium cable network Showtime, about three grown-up brothers who run a bar.

1. Macho ex-football player Joe (Robert Walden, left, formerly the roving reporter on Lou Grant).


2. Macho construction worker Lou (Brandon Maggart, left).

3. Cliff (Paul Regina, right), who, in the first episode, dumps his fiance on his wedding day and tells his brothers that he is...gay!

A gay character on tv!

In 1984, gay characters appeared on network tv very rarely, usually in "old high school buddy comes out" episodes of sitcoms. There were no gay characters in starring roles.  There were no tv series about gay people.



Brothers was revolutionary.

Cliff knows nothing about the gay world, so he and his brothers work together to explore cruising, dating and romance, gay organizations, gay rights, AIDS, and homophobia of various types.  Their tour guide is Donald (Philip Charles Mackenzie), a stereotypic swishy queen who is loud and proud.






Both are actually shown dating men, getting involved in relationships, and even kissing guest stars like Charles Van Eman, Jay Louden, Matthias Hues, and John Furey (right, the one with the basket).

Other gay characters in the 1980s were portrayed as completely sexless, announcing that they are gay but never doing anything about it.  Revolutionary again!

As the show progressed, episodes increasingly focused on non-gay topics, like machinations at the bar, Joe's dating and eventual marriage, or Lou's wife and kids, including a seminary student (John Putch) and a teenage prodigy (Yeardley Smith, later the voice of Lisa on The Simpsons).  


In the fall of 1986, I enrolled in a Wednesday night class at USC, and couldn't go up to the Hollywood Hills anymore. Brothers aired until 1989.

You can watch episodes on youtube, but I don't think I will.  I prefer to keep it part of my memories of those first months in West Hollywood, when everything was exciting and fresh and new.


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R. Crumb: From Fritz the Cat to Gay Marriage (Sort of)

October 11, 2014, 2:24 am
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Growing up in 1950s Philadelphia, Robert Crumb was a sissy -- he hated sports; he was scrawny; he liked comic books, especially girls' comics like Little Lulu.  According to a 1998 sketch, he "almost turned into a fag." The only thing that "saved him" was his heterosexual mania.  He liked big women -- tall, broad-shouldered, with muscular legs.  He wanted to ravish a giantess.

In an era when women were expected to be frail and petite, this interest in Big Women marked Robert as "queer," as a sexual outsider. His autobiographical comics read like a gay coming out story.

But he was heterosexual, just too shy and overcome by self-loathing to fit in.  Even when he moved to San Francisco and made a name for himself as an underground comic artist, he was an outsider, observing the sit-ins and love-ins and acid trips from a distance.






When I was in high school in the 1970s, the older kids passed around his underground comics, Zap!, Head!, Home Grown Funnies, and Snoid!  When I was in college, they were a fixture at Adam's Bookstore, but hidden under the counter, away from those who wouldn't understand.

Later I found copies of Fritz the Cat, which became an X-rated cartoon in 1972, and Mr. Natural, about a cynical guru.




R. Crumb's comics were a minefield, grotesquely drawn, full of profanity, sex, and drugs.

And extreme racism. A black female character who speaks with a racist drawl and is named Angelfood McSpade? Really?

And extreme homophobia, grotesque caricatures of Gay Liberation pioneers.





And extreme sexism -- Big Women desire nothing more than complete subjugation by scrawny men.  To be slapped, beaten up, ridden like horses.

There was a lot of male nudity -- mostly scrawny men, but with very long penises.  In the 1970s, just seeing a penis in a comic strip was a cause for celebration.

But any beefcake interest was completely overwhelmed by the female nudity -- Big Women, naked, gyrating, shoving their breasts and buttocks and other parts savagely into every spare inch of the frame.


Yet there was something fascinating about the comics, something almost endearing about R. Crumb's constant self-exploration: castration anxiety, sadomasochistic fantasies, paranoia, weird fetishes, cranky old-man rants about everyday hassles....

And gay subtexts. Pairs of men, or anthropomorphic animals, often set out together to find meaning in a bizarre, meaningless world.  They got laid, of course -- usually sharing the same Big Woman -- but in the end the heterosexual shenanigans could not assuage their elemental loneliness. They found glimmers of happiness only with each other.


Although he submitted a comic to AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia) in 1988, R. Crumb is still quite homophobic.  In 2009, The New Yorker commissioned him to draw a cover on gay marriage. Whose crazy idea was that?

He submitted this grotesque parody of a gay couple, and stated that he approves of gay marriage because "How are you supposed to tell what gender anyone is if they're bending it around?"

Um...Robert, did you know that most gay people have a conventional gender presentation?  

He was actually surprised when the cover was rejected!

See also: Gay Comix of the 1980s
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10 Stage Plays with Unexpected Beefcake

October 12, 2014, 4:20 am
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You should go to the theater as often as possible, even to productions that don't seem to have any gay content.  If you can't get to the great theater capitals of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, try your local community theater or high school drama club.

Why the productions that don't have any obvious gay content?   Because you never know when a director or is going to call for a theater hunk to take his shirt off, and the beefcake is more intense and immediate when it's live.

Of course, you might have to deal with actors gushing at each other that everyone on Earth longs for hetero-romance, that the Meaning of Life lies in men and women kissing, but you hear that a thousand times a day anyway.

Here is a random assortment of 10 stage plays that yielded unexpected beefcake.


1. Gabriel, by Moira Buffini, about a naked man who is washed up onto the beach in the Channel Islands during the Nazi occupation of World War II.  He has amnesia, so he is christened "Gabriel." Hetero-romance ensues.  Lee Aaron Rosen (top) stars off-Broadway.

2. Unity(1918), by Kevin Kerr, is a favorite of university theater departments in Canada.  It's set in a small town in Saskatchewan during a flu epidemic, with a soldier returning from World War I involved in hetero-romance.









3. The Play about the Baby, not one of gay playwright Edward Albee's more popular dramas, was performed off-Broadway in 2001.  It's a sort of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf redux, set in a timeless world where an older couple, The Man and the Woman, try to explain the hopelessness of hetero-romance to a younger couple, The Boy and the Girl.

The Boy was played by a nude David Burtka (now married to Neil Patrick Harris).








4. Shakespeare is always good for some beefcake scenes.  How about Jon Michael Hill (now starring in Elementary) as a rather buffed Ariel in The Tempest at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago?















5. King Lear actually has nudity in the stage directions.  Only the elderly king is required to be nude, but in this Orange County production, his buddy Edwin (Shaun Anthony) strips down, too.

More after the break.










6. Farragut North is a very boring drama about politics, here featuring soap hunk Eric Sheffer Stevens as the shirtless politico,  with his doting wife in the background.
















7. Speaking of politics, Obama Spy Drama, currently playing in Los Angeles, pairs off President Obama (Travis Snyder-Eaton) and Vladimir Putin (Christopher Robert Smith) as competitors for the mind and soul of Edward Snowden. Don't get too excited -- there's lots of hetero-romance in addition to the shirtless presidential machismo.



8. I'm not a big fan of Sam Shepherd, but at least soapster Jake Silbermann unbuttons his shirt for True West, about two brothers, one a politician and the other a thief.
















9. A musical about finding a place to urinate?  That's the premise of Urinetown, which sets its hetero-romance in a future dystopia, where those who can't pay for public urinals are forced into a prison colony (there are no bushes around?).  At the London premiere, Richard Fleeshman played Bobby Strong, who died fighting for urinary freedom.











10. A musical about spree murder?  That's the premise of Bonnie and Clyde, which sets its hetero-romance among sociopathic thugs in Depression-era Kansas.  The Broadway production closed after four weeks, but at least it featured Clyde (former teen idol Jeremy Jordan) playing the guitar in the bathtub.

See also: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; and Tarzan: The Stage Musical.










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My Grandmother's Surprising Gay Connection

October 12, 2014, 11:00 pm
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My Grandma Dennis was an ultra-devout fundamentalist Christian who always carried her worn study Bible, corresponded with a dozen missionaries, and got angry at the "hippies and radicals" she saw on tv.  Yet she seemed remarkably nonchalant about my junior high boyfriend Dan, and when we broke up, she found a new boy for me to "go around with."

When she died, during my sophomore year in high school, we had to sort through her  possessions.  I found an old trunk in the attic with surprising evidence that she had encountered gay people before.  It contained:

1. Jazz records: Hoagy Carmichael, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke.

2. Some paintings: a young woman with long red hair, wearing a blue evening gown and pearls; a still life; an old-fashioned cottage with a huge back yard covered with flowers, labeled "Devon." When was Grandma Dennis in Devon?



3. Some photographs of men, hugging, holding each other. One in a swimsuit, with a smooth, hard chest, standing on a beach, his arm around a taller, blond guy in a U.S. navy uniform (top photo).

Another of two very muscular, shirtless guys, one in white chinos, the other in overalls, apparently holding hands. (I asked for and got to keep them both.)

Dad could explain the music: "When your Grandma was younger, she was big into jazz.  Always going to concerts."

And the paintings:  "Right after high school, must have been in 1921, she went down to Indianapolis to art school.  Then, for some reason, she suddenly dropped out and went back home to Rome City.  That summer, 1923, she got saved at a Nazarene camp meeting, and married your Grandpa. "




John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis
I wondered what compelled a young woman to abandon her studies, her art, and her friends, shut them all away in a trunk in the attic for 52 years?

Did it have something to do with the hugging men?

Dad didn't know who they were.

A couple of years later, when I was in college, her younger brother Harry came to Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Nora's house.  He was only ten when Grandma went to Indianapolis, but he remembered that their parents disapproved:



Indiana Dunes
"This was during Prohibition, and Gracie and her friends went wild, with hooch and jitterbugging -- two things Nazarenes hate most.  It makes sense that she would want to hide away memories of her old, sinful life after she converted."

"But...who were the hugging men?" I showed him the pictures.

"This one looks like a fellow she knew from art school, Carl something or other.  She brought him up to Rome City a couple of times. The others are probably his friends.  Oscar, maybe. I remember one time they all went skinnydipping up at Indiana Dunes, and got arrested, and Pop told her not to associate with such 'vulgarians' again, but of course she didn't listen."

Vulgarians?  Code for "gay"?  I looked in a directory of Indiana artists, but didn't find any Carl or Oscar from Indianapolis who was the right age.




Wood Woolsey
Then in 2004, I was visiting friends in New Mexico, and I stumbled upon the name of regional artist Wood Woolsey (1899-1970).  He lived in Indianapolis from 1921 to 1927, and he studied at the John Herron Art Institute at the same time as Gracie.

He had a younger brother, Carl, also an artist, who lived with him.  My grand-uncle must have mixed the names up.

Wood Woolsey never married.  Could he have been gay?

Grandma Dennis at the start of her life, skinnydipping with some gay guys!

Did finding out cause her skittish retreat into fundamentalist Christianity?

Or did she have only warm memories of her gay friends?  There's also evidence that she may have married a gay man.  And that fifty years later, when her 13-year old grandson began talking about boys he liked, she understood, on some level, and advised "You should find a nice Christian boy." And when he broke up, she found him another boy to "go around with."

See also: Was My Grandfather Gay? and My Gay Family Tree.
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The Halloween Homophobe

October 13, 2014, 6:04 am
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When I was growing up, my church deemed alcohol the worst possible sin, worse than murder or reading the Sunday newspaper or talking to a Catholic.  We couldn't eat food that once contained alcohol, like "beer batter shrimp." We couldn't set foot in a bar, a restaurant that sold alcohol, or a grocery store with a beer section.  Some Nazarenes wouldn't let the doctor swab their arms with alcohol before giving them a shot.

 I've overcome many of the strictures of my childhood, but to this day I can't bring myself to drink anything alcoholic.  I've never had wine.  I've had only one and a half cans of beer in my life.

Why one and a half?

It was 1983, my second year at Indiana University, and my friend Viju and I had just moved into an apartment together.  On the Saturday before Halloween, we invited several of our gay friends and their dates to a party. We provided homoerotic snacks like penis-shaped cookies, plus Cokes and Sprites (and some of the guys brought beer).  We planned some double-entendre laden party games, an erotic Chamber of Horrors in Viju's bedroom, and finally the Halloween costume contest at Bullwinkle's.

I was going as Pan, the Greek god, with shaggy leggings and horns, Viju was a cop, and Jimmy the Bodybuilder on Crutches said he was coming as a vampire, The other guests included a shirtless Zorro, a Superman, a drag queen witch, and a gymnast.


Jimmy took a long time to get up the stairs, so I heard him coming, and opened the door to say hello.

My jaw dropped.  His  "date" was his friend Tony, who was straight,  and didn't know that Jimmy was gay.

Apparently Jimmy hadn't realized that it was a gay party.

In the 1980s, you simply did not come out, to anyone, except maybe your family and closest childhood friends, and then only after extensive preparation.  But in a moment a straight guy would be in our tiny living room with six gay men who weren't closeting their behavior 

Thinking fast, I yelled at Tony, where's your girlfriend?"

Girlfriend! Closet time! Mark and his date, Scott, immediately slid apart (I never did understand how he managed to land the extremely cute Scott, a shy undergrad who had never been among gay people before).   Joseph grabbed the tray of penis-shaped cookies and rushed them into the kitchen, Terry took off his wig and earrings to transform his costume from witch to Uncle Fester from The Addams Family, and Viju ran to slam the door to the erotic Chamber of Horrors. Someone turned on It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  



Tony helped Jimmy through the door.  "I don't have a girlfriend," he said, glancing around the room, probably thinking "whoa, sausage fest." "I was hoping to meet some girls here."

Glaring at Jimmy for being such a dope, I said,  "Sure, sure.  We're going trick-or-treating in the girls' dorm later."

You're probably thinking: why bother to closet ourselves? It was seven against one.  What could he possibly do?

We soon found out.

Tony asked to use the bathroom.  I pointed the way.

A moment later, I heard his shrill voice: "Jeff, get in here!"

Apparently he had opened the wrong door.  He was standing in my bedroom, where there was a replica of Michelangelo's David on my desk, and the wall by the bed plastered with pictures of naked men torn out of In Touch and Mandate. 

"Where are the girls?" he asked.

"What girls?"

For a moment he just stared, speechless.  Then the tirade began.  "Are you trying to tell me that you're queer?  Don't you know that this lifestyle spreads diseases?  Don't you know that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because they were homos?"

"Um...."

Suddenly he became more conciliatory.  "Look, it's probably not too late.  You could rethink your decision."

Rethink your decision!  I was already angry with him for forcing my party into the closet, and this was the last straw. "Oh, gee," I yelled, "I had no idea.  Thanks for the heads-up!  I'll turn back to straight right away!" I tore down some of the pictures from my wall, wadded them up, and threw them at his feet.

Then I ran back into the living room.  "Boobs!" I grunted.  "Boobs and football and...um, beer!" I grabbed a can of beer, popped the top, and guzzled some.  It tasted horrible.

Tony followed, no longer conciliatory. "Did you guys know that Jeff is a homo?  He probably wants to take you back into his little chamber of horrors and do nasty, perverted things to you."

Um...yes, I was counting on it," Joseph said.

"You're queer?" Tony asked.  "Maybe you're all queer! Did you invite me and Jimmy up here to try to turn us that way, too?"

Of course, we should have shown him the door.  But we were not "out and proud." We were coming from the dull despair of the 1970s Midwest, where gay people, when mentioned at all, were portrayed as utterly despicable.  Some of us were still working through feelings of guilt and shame, the nagging doubts: What if we really are sick?  What if God really does hate us?

"Count me out,  I just turned straight," I said, roiling with rage. "Boobs!  Football!  Beer!  Hey, turn the game on! This show sucks -- Charlie Brown is a fag!" I drained my beer -- it still tasted terrible -- and started another.

Viju glared at Jimmy, "Hey, psychology major, maybe you should tell your buddy something?"

Jimmy hung his head.

"Oh, no, not Jimmy, too!" Tony exclaimed.  "He's handicapped!  Couldn't you perverts leave him alone?  Stick to the schoolyards!"

"Hey, I've never done it in a schoolyard!  Schoolbus, maybe!" The room was starting to spin.  Was this what it felt like to be drunk?  "When I was six I married the boy next door."

Tony ignored me.  "How can you do those...those disgusting things?" he continued, this time addressing Mark and Scott.  "Do you hate yourself that much, or are you trying to get back at your parents, or do you just hate God?"

Scott the shy undergrad looked like he was about to cry.

Enough was enough!  I walked over to Tony and calmly poured the rest of my beer on his head.

That's why I've had only 1 1/2 cans of beer in my life.

Surprisingly, Jimmy and Tony stayed friends.  And as my reward, I got to spend 7 minutes in the Chamber of Horrors with Scott the shy undergrad.

See also: The Bodybuilder on Crutches




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Why Is Bomba the Jungle Boy Always Tied Up?

October 14, 2014, 12:00 am
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Johnny Sheffield (1931-2010) spent the first 24 years of his life being filmed in a loincloth cut to the thigh, first as "Boy," son of Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller in 8 movies (1939-1947), and then as the teenage Bomba the Jungle Boy in 12 movies (1949-1955).  After all that, it proved impossible to find a fully-clothed role, so Johnny went to UCLA, got his degree in business, and had a successful second career in real estate.

The movies were on tv constantly during my childhood, and now they're all available on DVD. 







I noticed something interesting: in all of the Tarzan movies featuring the adolescent Boy, and in all but one of the Bomba movies, Johnny gets tied up. 

Did the directors have a bondage fetish?

Or is it a matter of maximizing beefcake?

Johnny begins to get an impressive physique in the last 3 Tarzan movies, which are terrible.  Maureen O'Sullivan refused to do them, so Jane was recast with Brenda Joyce.  

The Bomba movies are even worse: endlessly recycled stock footage of African animals, and an endlessly recycled plot about Bomba falling in love with a visiting colonial administrator's daughter while fighting poachers or insurrectionists.  

How can you get audiences to fork over money to see such stuff?

Easy: show some pecs and biceps, and maybe a loincloth-bulge now and then.

So you add a few scenes of Johnny asleep, or else unconscious after falling out of a tree.  The camera zooms in for a close up of his face, shoulders, chest, stomach, and loincloth.  Then it starts over again.  Before we're done, we've been staring at Johnny's body for five minutes.  

But sleeping/unconscious shots show the muscles at rest.  Audiences want big, bulging, flexing muscles.  Fight scenes with bad guys or wild animals cause bulges, and sometimes the loincloth rides up to reveal the underwear beneath, but there's too much moving around for a serious gawk at Johnny's body.

Idea: why not have Boy/Bomba tied up, threatened by poachers or about to be sacrificed by an evil cult or something? That way he can strain against the bonds, flexing his muscles, but he's not moving.  The camera can zoom in, and audiences can stare as he struggles for five minutes.




I'd pay money to see that.


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