Jan-Michael Vincent: His n*de photo was the talk of West Hollywood

  

Link to the n*de photos

In the 1990s, you rarely saw male actors with their shirts off, and seeing them n*de was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So when the photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends appeared in the gay magazine In Touch, it was a sensation.  Everybody bought a copy.  Everyone having brunch at the French Quarter was speculating on it.  The blurb told us that he was Jan-Michael Vincent in Buster and Billie (1974), but was it a gay movie?  Was it adult?  Was Jan-Michael Vincent one of us?

Some of us remembered him from Danger Island, a serial on the Banana Splits Saturday morning show (1968-69): An archaeologist, his daughter, and his assistant Link (Jan-Michael)) are shipwrecked on a desert island, where they befriend a stranded gay couple -- nearly overt, with lots of "we've been together for years" and "I won't leave you." 

And Big Wednesday (1978), with Jan-Michael, William Katt, and Gary Busey as surfer buddies.

But otherwise we came up blank. In the days before the internet, you couldn't look up an actor's works easily, and Jan-Michael's movie and tv appearances weren't of much gay interest.

The Mechanic (1972): Assassin Charles Bronson takes on his buddy's son (Jan-Michael) as an apprentice.

The World's Greatest Athlete (1973): Coach John Amos goes to Africa and recruits a Tarzan-type (Jan-Michael) to be a track and field star.  He falls in love with a girl named Jane. 

The n*de vine-swinging scene on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends does not appear in the movie.  It must be an out-take.

Bite the Bullet (1975): A newspaper sponsors a 700-mile horse race across the Old West, and a group of misfits, including Gene Hackman, Candace Bergin, and Jan-Michael, compete.

Vigilante Force (1976): Um...Jan-Michael fights Kris Kristofferson while The Girl serves drinks?

More after the break

Jay R. Ferguson: The "obviously gay" teen idol of the 1990s moves on to play a 1960s sleazoid and the dad of two gay sons. With Jay and Carter c*ocks

 

Link to the Jay and Carter c*ocks

In the early 1990s, I was living in West Hollywood, and completely immersed in the LGBT community.  Media from the Straight World was suspect, if not homophobic than heteronormative, presenting men and women gazing at each other as the meaning of life.  So we chose our television programs carefully. On Monday nights, it was Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Carleton, sigh!), Blossom (Joey Lawrence, sigh!), and Designing Women (drag queen inspiration Suzanne Sugarbaker).  Certainly not Evening Shade (1990-94), with Burt Reynolds as a football coach (ugh!) in a small town (ugh!) in Arkansas (ugh!).

So when this photo of a shirtless, partying young man began appearing on all of the gay celebrity websites, we had no idea who he was. 

The photos kept coming.  We discovered that he was Jay R. Ferguson, who played Taylor, son of Burt Reynolds' character Wood.  Wood?  Really?

 Generally he was swishing it up, as in this iconic photo: apparently saying "Hey, Girl!" in a classic twink outfit, a short top. a bare midriff, and jeans with a club bulge.  Obviously gay!  

In the days when television was entirely heterosexist or homophobic,when even the most flamboyant actor stayed in the closet or saw his career fade away, seeing "one of us" was amazing.  

Unfortunately, the only way to conduct research was to buy a teen magazine -- and the Different Light bookstore on Santa Monica did not stock Tiger Beat.  

The show ended, the photo stream ended, and we forgot about the obviously-gay Jay.  .

For thirty years.

Until 2025, when The Real O'Neils (2016-2018) appeared on Hulu:  a conservative Irish-Catholic family having to deal with a number of problems: Dad wants a divorce; the daughter is an atheist; the oldest son (Matthew Shively) has an eating disorder; the youngest son (Noah Galvin) is gay.  

Yeah, I don't like "gay" being portrayed as a problem, either, but I like Noah Galvin.

And the hunky dad is played by...Jay R. Ferguson!

Three questions:

1. What has he been doing in the years since Evening Shade?

2. Any n*de photos?

3. Is he really gay?

1. What has he been doing?

Jay's first project after Evening Shade was Higher Learning (1995), which is not a teen sex comedy: Omar Epps (left) stars as a student experiencing racism at Columbia University.  But Jay did show us his backside (whilewith a girl).

And an under-the-covers e*rection.

Next  Jay moved into teen horror (Campfire Tales, 1997),  sex comedy (Pink as the Day She Was Born, 1997), teen angst (Blue Ridge Falls, 1999), and dark secrets (The In Crowd, 2000), before finding his niche in television:

Glory Days (2001-02).  Oddly, it's not about soldiers, it stars Eddie Cahill as a writer who dished the dirt on residents of his home town, and is surprised when he returns to find that they don't like him.  Jay plays the sheriff.

Judging Amy (2003-4), which is not about a judge named Amy.  A woman has problems with her mother, husband, and child.  Jay plays a doctor.

In a 2005 episode of Medium, Allison realizes that her troubled half-brother Michael (Ryan Hurst) has a "secret."   One assumes that it's being gay, but it's actually that he shares her gift of seeing the future.  Jay plays his buddy.  That's as close to a gay character as he gets.

Surface (2005-2006):  Marine biologist Lake (Lake?): her "will they or won't they?" sparring partner, insurance salesman Rich (Jay), and a teenage boy (Carter Jenkins, left, recent photo) discover a "new and dangerous" species of marine life.  This one actually looks interesting.

By the way, Carter, who went on to star in Shadow Diaries, has an adult video (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Harold Monro: Lost Gay Poet

The 1960s was all about heroic fantasy; hippies were all agog over The Lord of the Rings and its precursors and imitators, especially those published in Lin Carter's Adult Fantasy Series: The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, The Wood Beyond the World.  Beyond the Fields We Know.

 But by the disco era, we preferred stories about big, bright spaceships hurling through the galaxy.  So when Elsewhere: Tales of Fantasy appeared in Adam's Bookstore in September 1981, the start of my senior year in college, I bought it for nostalgia only.

The illustrations by Terri Windling involved ample nudity, mostly female, but sometimes you could see the curve of a male backside or the hint of a penis.

The stories were usually heterosexist, but I found something evocative in "Overheard on a Salt Marsh."  It's about a goblin who begs a nymph for her beads.  She refuses.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

I kept thinking that there was something gay about it, but what?  It's a male goblin encountering a female nymph, complaining that the beads are "better than any man's fair daughter."

Is it his gender-atypical desire for the beads, green glass, stolen out of the moon?

Maybe it's the desire itself, desire with all of the trappings of civilization removed, raw, savage, and terrifying.

I could find out very little about the author, Harold Monro, in those days before the internet.  He was born in 1879, opened the Poetry Bookshop in London in 1912, and managed it for the rest of his life, except for a few years of service in World War I.  He married twice, was plagued by alcoholism and depression, and died in 1932.

But as I read his other poems, I found more hints of an openness to male beauty:

Man Carrying Bale:
And the same watchful sun glowed through his body feeding it with light.
The muscles will relax and tremble.
Earth, you designed your man beautiful both in labour and repose

And same sex desire:

 Children of Love, about Cupid and Jesus meeting:
And now they stand
Watching one another with timid gaze;
Youth has met youth in the wood,
Are you afraid of his arrows, O beautiful dreaming boy?

Then in 2001, a biography of Harold Monro appeared, and I discovered that my impressions were correct. Monro was gay, but closeted, and his earlier biographers either didn't know or didn't want to tell.  Like most gay lives of the past, his was hidden, requiring you to read between the lines.

See also: Golden Cities, Far: In junior high, we write a heroic fantasy novel with absolutely no connection to "The Lord of the Rings"

Manawyddan Son of the Boundless: a gay Theosophist writes about two gods in love

Justin Berti: The Movie Rewards Godfather finds his niche in Shakespeare and adult videos. We see his backside a lot, but what about his front?

  

Link to the n*de photos

If you've been to a movie theater within the last year, you've seen this commercial: A moviegoer stumbles upon three Godfather-parodies discussing what seems to be illegal activities.  The movie premiered over 50 years ago, but it's been parodied so often that the guys and their mannerisms are instantly recognizable.

She asks, "Are we going to make somebody sleep with the fishes?"

"Aee-oh," the Head Godfather protests. "We just do Movie Rewards."  He explains: "Maybe a free ticket falls from a truck.  Or the online fees just...disappear!"  Laughter.

They settle in with their voluminous snacks.  "It's an offer you can't refuse."

This commercial has made actor Justin Berti more recognizeable than anything else in his career.

Wait -- what else has this guy been in?

According to his resume, Justin was born in Connecticut, spent time in Texas and California, and then attended Columbia University. After graduating in 2003, he moved to Japan, where he modeled, played semi-pro baseball, and performed in Fiddler on the Roof, Little Shop of Horrors, and Macbeth.  

And he had a guest spot in The Ramen Girl (2008), about a woman stranded in Tokyo who trains to become a ramen and takes off her stuff a lot. 

Back in New York in 2015, Justin appeared in King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus & Cressida, and the non-Shakespearean A Fool for Love, Glengary Glen Ross, and The Full Monty

His American on-screen roles begin with some video game voices and music videos, but he quickly finds his niche, as you can see from the titles: Submission, The Love Machine, His Secret Past, High Heel Homicide, Secret Life of the Surgeon's Wife, Forbidden Love, Lethal Desire, My Dark Romeo...

It's softcore, so no d*ck shots, and his backside is on display only when he's doing stuff with a lady.

I don't see a lot of gay content. The Stepbrother I Hate to Love (2026) is about two stepbrothers who get with each other during a  hookup with a girl, but Justin is far down the cast list, playing someone named Victor.  Matthew Campbell (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) is far down the cast list, too.

Torn Between My Stepbrothers (2026) shows a bi encounter with two stepbrothers (not the ones in I Hate to Love), but the plot description is quite different: "a young man faces many challenges after losing everything."  Justin plays their dad.

 

His "known for" list on the IMDB has four movies:

 Secret Lives of Housewives (2022): Kendra starts an affair with the younger Erik (Bo Yokely)   When he is killed, she suspects her husband (Justin), but it turns out that he was doing stuff around the neighborhood, so lots of husbands are angry.

Divorce Bait (2022):  Alexis pretends to be divorcing her husband (Justin), to see which of her friends tries to move in on him. If they think he's divorced, what's the problem?  Meanwhile, an old flame (Erik Fellows) tries to move in on her! 

More after the break