Which 1960s Sitcom Star was Gay?

Picture it: the mid-1960s.  The height of the Flower Power generation, when the teenagers were wearing long hair and tie-dye t-shirts and grooving on the Beatles, and kids read comic books, listened to "The Monster Mash," and fought aliens in the red deserts of Mars.

There were kids everywhere, a dozen third, fourth, and fifth-graders on every block in every city, and tv was catering to them with a huge number of kid-friendly series.

Think of all the boys your age who you were watching every week in the mid-sixties, on The Andy Griffith Show, Family Affair, Lost in Space, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Maya, The Lucy Show, Flipper, Daniel Boone, My Three Sons, and Tarzan.

Quite a large number turned out to be gay or bisexual.

I have dating or hookup stories about four of them, so far.
1. Jay North (Maya).
2. Manuel Padilla, Jr. (Tarzan)
3. Ron Howard (The Andy Griffith Show)

Can you guess the fourth?

Hint: When the show ended, he never appeared on screen again, except for reunions and interviews, his half-brother was also an actor, and his aunt was Broadway singer Ruby Keeler.

Answer after the break







Ken Weatherwax, who played Pugsley Addams on The Addams Family (1964-66).


Born in September 1955, Ken Weatherwax grew up in a family of celebrity dog trainers: his uncles and cousins Frank, Jack, William, Rudd, Jackie, and Bob, owned the Weatherwax Kennels, where they trained dogs for such programs as Lassie, Old Yellow, A Dog of Flanders, and Sounder.  Weatherwax Dog Training is still in business in Simi Valley, California.

 His aunt was Ruby Keeler, and his older half-brother Joey D. Vieira, who starred in n Lassie  (1954-57) under the stage name Donald Keeler.

Joey was rather pudgy, too.  His character was named Porky. Later he played "Roly-Poly Bates" on My Three Sons and "Fat Kid" on Arrest and Trial.


Of course, Pugsley was supposed to be unattractive, an antidote to the cutie-pies on all the other programs (his original name was Pubert, and in Portuguese, it's Feioso, "Ugly").  So the makeup crew tried their best to make him unappealing, and he paid for it later.

Typecast, Ken never acted again, except to voice his character in the Addams Family cartoon show (1973) and do a walk-on as a grown-up Pugsley in Halloween with the Addams Family (1977).

And in public school, the kids never let him forget that he was Pugsley.

The rest of the story, with nude photos (adults only), is on Boomer's Gay Celebrity Dating Stories