Billy Gray: The Hunk of "Father Knows Best"

Of the teenage boys who populated 1950s sitcoms -- Jeff (Paul Petersen) on The Donna Reed Show, Wally (Tony Dow) on Leave It to Beaver, and so on, Bud (Billy Gray) on Father Knows Best (1954-1960) was the most assiduously coded as gay.  He was shy, quiet, frequently called a "sissy", and full of secrets; he spent a lot of time hiding in the basement or even in "the closet."  He had no interest in sports, and his mother overprotected him (a 1950s signifier of gayness).  He had a series of best buddies, but not a girl -- he recorded a song with the line "I'd rather have a pal than a gal -- anytime."

His parents didn't try to jump-start his girl-craziness, but told him to play the game, to pretend to be heterosexual regardless of what he may feel.

In "Bud The Snob" (1955), the family learns that Bud never talks to girls at school.  This "problem" could have two explanations: he may like girls so much that he gets tongue-tied around them, or he may not like girls.  The family's solution is to force him.  Sister Betty tries to get him to talk to a girl on the telephone, but he runs for the closet. "You can't keep running away!" she yells.

In "The Matchmaker" (1955), Bud declares that he never intends to marry, arguing that he will be perfectly happy living with his buddies.  Dad scoffs: "You haven't got a chance!  If a man wanders around unmarried, every woman in the world takes it as a personal insult!"  That is, you don't need to experience heterosexual desire; you will marry a woman, regardless.

In "Bud the Wallflower" (1956), the 18-year old declares that he doesn't like girls, and plans a camping trip with his buddies to avoid a Sadie Hawkins dance.  But one by one his friends get dates and drop out.  When his best friend Kippy (Paul Wallace) accepts a date right in front of him, Bud is heartbroken.

But he can't hold out forever; he has to learn to play the game.  By the fourth season, Bud has become adept at ogling girls, pretending to have crushes, going out on dates.  By the time of "Bud the Romeo" (1959), he has become so effective at wooing girls that he must turn down dates, and they get even by going on an "anti-Bud" strike.  He has become heterosexually adept.  He has arrived.

Years later, Billy Gray revealed that he knew it was all a hoax, that Father Knows Best was misleading people into imprisoning themselves and lying to their children, but he could hardly state his concerns at the time: he was a teenager, and an outsider.  About a year after the show ended, he spent three months in jail for marijuana possession, and no one from the show came to visit except the prop man.  Today, after a long career in music and motorcycling, and many starring roles in movies (including The Explosive Generation), Billy Gray barely mentions Father Knows Best on his website.

See also: Beefcake Dads of 1950s Sitcoms

Matt Dillon

Androgyny was in during the  late 1970s and  early 1980s -- there was Peter Barton, Michael Gray, John Stamos -- but no one encapsulated raw androgynous erotic energy more than Matt Dillon.  Born in 1964, Matt got his start playing a surly high schooler in Over the Edge (1979).

Edgy roles followed.  He became famous, in a sleazy, controversial way, for Little Darlings (1980), in which he helps some underaged summer-camp girls lose their virginity.  But much more often, the main relationship in his movies was with a brother --  Jim Metzler in Tex (1982), Mickey Rourke in Rumble Fish (1983) -- or a buddy, as in the The Outsiders (1983) and The Flamingo Kid (1984).  Sometimes the buddy-bonding was even domestic.

Never a teen magazine fave rave, but a favorite of gay teens, Matt bulked up, filled out, and moved seamlessly from the world of serious films about troubled teenagers to serious films about troubled adults: a professional gambler, a heroin addict, an ordinary guy caught up in a murder plot, a neo-noir antihero.

And non-troubled adults.  In the comedy In and Out (1997), Matt plays a movie star who accidentally "outs" his old high school teacher (Kevin Kline) during an Oscar award speech -- except his teacher isn' really gay.  Except he is.







Matt remains a reliable presence in Hollywood, nonchalantly recognizing his gay fans, and regularly starring in movies that they enjoy seeing, well-written, well-acted, and with just as much buddy-bonding as boy-meets-girl fade-out kisses.

Hell Night

Almost every psycho-slasher movie features teenage girls in their underwear, or taking a shower, or having sex with full-nude backsides, while the teenage boys stay full-clothed, even during sex.  The opposite, fully-clothed girls and and nude boys, is vanishingly rare.

So Hell Night (1981) stands out as a non-heterosexist gem.  It's about some fraternity pledges, including Seth (Vincent Van Patten) and Jeff (Peter Barton), who have to spend the night in a haunted house occupied by a psycho-slasher. The girlfriends go along, too.

But the girls are fully clothed or hidden under the covers of the bed the whole time.  And Seth and Jeff spend about half the movie showering or dressed only in boxers.













But it's not just about the beefcake.  I could swear that Seth and Jeff were being presented a same-sex couple, in spite of some heterosexual dalliances.

1. When in danger, the two together as tightly as boy-girl couples in heterosexist flicks.

2. Jeff investigates a mysterious noise twice, once with girlfriend Marti (Linda Blair) clinging fearfully to his back, and then with Seth clinging to him in the exact same position.

3. Jeff escapes from the haunted house and runs into town.  When no one believes him he steals a gun, uses it to hijack a car, and rushes back to rescue -- not his girlfriend, who is already dead -- but boyfriend Seth.

4. They escape together and walk off into the sunrise together, a gay reversal of the standard "fade-out kiss."

Director Tom DeSimone got his start directing gay porn in the 1970s, so it is understandable that he might accentuate the beefcake and the bonding.