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Who Killed Cock Robin
When I was a kid in the 1960s, I liked science fiction, like The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree, but I hated fairy tales, and I especially hated nursery...
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Happy Trails to Homophobes: The Roy Rogers Show
When I was a kid in the 1960s, preachers and Sunday school teachers hated all mass media: rock music ("the devil's music!"), science fiction ("atheism and evolution!"), Casper the Friendly Ghost ("the...
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The Gay Graduate
Gay subtexts usually require longing looks, physical contact, or at least a same-sex friendship, but in The Graduate (1967), there is none. The plot centers on Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a...
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Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch
I don't care for rap music, but who in 1991 wasn't paying attention to rapper Marky Mark (Mark Wahlberg) and the Funky Bunch, whose "Good Vibration" reached #1 on the US Pop Charts? They really weren't...
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Harriet the Spy: Gay and Lesbian Kids
Harriet the Spy (1964), by lesbian author Louise Fitzhugh, is a classic gay-subtext children's novel about an 11-year old writer and grade-school spy. Harriet is an oddball outsider with distinctly...
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Pinky and the Brain
The WB Network's Pinky and the Brain (1993-1999) was about two intelligent lab rats who shared a cage and collaborated on schemes to take over the world. At first they were coded as coworkers and bunk...
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Benjamin Rojas: Argentine Disney Channel Teen Idol
Born in Argentina in 1985, Benjamin Rojas got his start in Chiquititas (1998), as a jungle boy who gets a girlfriend. He gained teen idol attention in the telenovela Rebelde Way (2002-2003), about...
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Golden Cities, Far: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
I discovered The Lord of the Ringsin junior high, and thought it the best thing ever written. Heroic fantasy! Elves, dwarfs, and wizards fighting the Dark Lord in an alternate Medieval world!...
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Don't Say Gay: Children's TV and Renaissance Drama in 1989
When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I enrolled in the doctoral program in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. We had to select a historical period and three languages,...
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Garrett Clayton: Disney's Next Big Thing (So to Speak)
The Huffington Post, a liberal-slanted online magazine, is not usually heterosexist. But when Jackie K. Cooper reviewed Holiday Spin (2012), he couldn't help gushing over Clayton Garrett as Blake, a...
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Jason Marsden, the Pocket Gay
Jason Marsden is often mixed up with fellow teen idol James Marsden. James has the muscles, but Jason has the smile. And he's a stronger gay ally.An active child star, Jason got his start at age 11,...
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Indiana Jones: White Heterosexual Male Adventure
During the famous summer of 1981, when I went to an Italian Film Festival, moved into my own apartment, and learned about gay German literature, The Canterbury Tales, and the Beat Generation, I saw a...
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On the Road: The Gay Beat Generation
On June 21st, 1985, I drove cross-country 1860 miles from my parents' house in Rock Island, Illinois to West Hollywood, my 10-year old Dodge Dart packed with bedding, dishes, clothes, and mementos....
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They Had Faces Then: TV Hunks Before Beefcake
On a February 6, 1969 episode of That Girl, Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) helps out a nun, and then asks a passing priest for directions out of the convent. He points the way, and she says "Thank you,...
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Ben Hur: A Gay Tale of Christ
Ben Hur (1959), based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ, by Lew Wallace, was one of those big-budget epics with "a cast of thousands" that studios in the 1950s hoped would draw people away...
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Ken Clark: Bodybuilder with Something Extra
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've seen live performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacificabout a dozen times, but never the 1958 musical. Until now.Beefcake abounds, of...
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Chris and Patrick Petersen: 1970s Ninja Kids
During the late 1970s, as networks scrambled to find enough child actors to fill their "after school special" kid-angst movies, Brothers Chris and Pat Petersen (no relation to the 1950s teen idol Paul...
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Pro Wrestling's Gay Villains
My brother was a big fan of pro wrestling. He bought lots of magazines with pictures of beefy men in tight shorts pummelling each other. He watched the WWWF (which stood for World Wide Wrestling...
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Gay Self-Defense in 1982: Siege
In an era where gay people were portrayed as sashaying male "fruitcakes" and murderous lesbian psychopaths, the Canadian movie Siege, aka Self-Defense (1982) is a rarity: a gay guy as hero. During the...
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Adventures of Pete and Pete
Juvenile tv programs of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Captain Kangaroo, Shari Lewis, and Andy's Gang, were dedicated to socializing kids into the norms of adult society. The rules may seem odd, the...
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