Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet (La Planete savage) first appeared in 1973, a cut-out stop-motion animated movie (based on a  novel by Stefan Wul).  It has been a standby of film festivals and film classes ever since, praised for its weird, surreal imagery and "can't we all just get along" message.

The plot: humans, or Oms ("hommes"), live on a weird, surreal planet where the dominant species are the gigantic but serene Traags.  Not realizing that the Oms are sentient, the Traags keep them as pets, dress them in weird costumes and force them to do tricks.

Others are "wild."  Planet leaders often complain about the Om infestation, and suggest extermination.

An Om boy named Terr ("Earth") becomes the pet of a young Traag girl, who gives him access to her mechanical-learning device.  Eventually he grows into a young man.  He manages to steal the device, run away, and live with a tribe of wild Oms.  Under his leadership, they become guerilla warriors, sabotaging the Traags' spiritual migration to another planet, disrupting the civilization so effectively that they call for a truce.

In the coda, centuries have passed, and the two species are living in harmony.

The gay connection:

1. Lots of male nudity. Terr become particularly attractive as a young man.

2. I can't recall Terr getting a girlfriend or expressing any heterosexual interest whatever.

3. The gay symbolism of being trapped in a world where the rules don't make sense and the slightest misstep could mean disaster.




A stage version appeared in 2010 at the Transmodern Festival in Baltimore, with actors in weird masks playing the Traags and Tim Paggi (top photo) in a revealing green-and-yellow jumpsuit as Terr.

The Mickey Mouse Club: Were any of the Mousketeers gay?

When Annette Funicello died on April 8, 2013, the world mourned one of the iconic figures of the Boomer generation.  She was the first crush for many heterosexual boys and gay girls who watched her every week on The Mickey Mouse Club, and later in the beach movies with Frankie Avalon

If you are too young to remember, The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-59) was the first children's television program that starred real children, "the Mouseketeers."  They wore wore mouse ear-shaped caps and white sweaters emblazoned with their first names, and performed song-and-dance numbers interspliced with Disney cartoons, amateur talent contests, and dramatic serials.







24 kids were hired in 1955, but only nine made it to the Red Team, the starting lineup.  Four were boys. In the hyper-masculine 1950s, singing and dancing were widely labeled "sissy" pursuits, so they were all gay-coded, though none are apparently gay.

1. Bobby Burgess (born 1941), who was very tall, well-scrubbed, and always smiling.  He went on to dance on The Lawrence Welk Show.

Here's a shirtless shot of Bobby in middle age.

2. The short, sandy-haired Lonnie Burr (born 1943) was the intellectual of the group (his website commemorates Annette Funicello's death with the Latin phrase "ave atque vale"). He is a poet and playwright as well as an actor.


3. Tommy Cole (born 1941) was hired primarily for his singing ability, though had a handsome face and the hunkiest physique among the Mousketeers (left). After MMC, he had a stint in the air force and then became a makeup artist.

4. Cubby O'Brien (born 1946), the kid of the show, became a professional drummer.

Many Boomer kids also remember the boys who stayed for a year, or less, including : Don Agranti  (Don Grady), Johnny Crawford (right, with his older brother Bobby), Dickie Dodd,  Larry Larsen, Mike Smith, Paul Petersen (The Donna Reed Show), Jay-Jay Solari, Ronnie Steiner, and Don Underhill.

Davis Day, the only original Mousketeer who has come out as gay willingly (Tommy Kirk was outed), stayed for two years










The dramatic series (Spin and Marty, The Hardy Boys, Clint and Mac, Annette) typically offered cute boys in shirtless and semi-nude swimming pool shots:  Jonathan Bailey, Tim Considine (left), Kevin Corcorran, Tommy Kirk (right), Larry Larsen, B.J. Norman (top photo), Sammy Ogg, Steve Stevens, David Stollery.

And some even offered some strong buddy-bonding subtexts, counterpoints to the heterosexism of the main song-and-dance numbers.

David Mendenhall and the Older Man

Born in 1971, David Mendenhall spent his adolescence doing voices for cartoons (The Berenstain Bears, Rainbow Brite) and starring in movies in which his characters are mentored, nurtured, and rescued by a series of bicep-bulging older men; all fathers or father-figures, but still, they allowed many gay boys to fantasize about riding off into the sunset with a hunky older boyfriend.

 Space Raiders (1983): Space pirate Hawk (Vince Edwards) bonds with 12-year old stowaway Peter (David), and rescues the boy when he is captured by evil bounty hunters. But in the end the two part company.

Over the Top (1987): Truck driver/arm wrestling champion Hawk (Sylvester Stallone) reunites with Mike (David), the 15-year old son whom he hasn't seen in many years, and rescues him when he is kidnapped by thugs hired by his evil grandfather.  In the end, they start a trucking business together.

They Still Call Me Bruce (1987): Korean martial artist Bruce (Johnny Yune) mentors the orphan Billy (David), who gets assaulted by a gang and goes into a coma. But he wakes up in time to inspire Bruce to win an important karate contest.

In Going Bananas (1988), David is nearly 17, but still small and slim, with a boyish face that makes him look like a child rather than a teenager, especially when paired with plus-sized actors (Dom Deluise and Jimmie Walker) in a plot about a talking chimp.

But his small starture facilitates gay subtexts: in the tv drama Our House (1986-88): he played J.R. Dutton, best friend to the teenage David (gay actor Chad Allen), but he actually seems more interested in the feminine-coded friend Mark (Thomas Wilson Brown).

In 1990 David retired from acting to go to college, getting a law degree in 2003.  But recently he has returned to show biz to guest star in some tv series and produce the game show Take it All. 

Toran Caudell, Boy Wizard

Born in 1982, Toran Caudell followed in his father Lane Caudell's footsteps with the gay subtext Max is Missing (1995). On vacation in Peru, Max (Toran) encounters a dying man, who gives him an ancient Incan mask.  It doesn't have magic powers, but  does send him on a wild flight through the wilderness,  chased by the bad guys, accompanied by the Quechua boy Juanito (Victor Rojas).

Nick of time rescues and physical buddy-bonding moments ensue.

Toran's shoulder-length blond hair and feminine pretty-boy features got him cast as a as shy, sensitive, gay-vague boy in Johnny Mysto: Boy Wizard (1997): he finds a magic ring that transports him to King Arthur's Camelot (where he fails to get a girlfriend).

Between 1997 and 2001, he had a recurring role on Seventh Heaven, the preachy, heterosexist "family" drama about a minister with a large brood of hetero-horny kids. Goth kid Rod (Toran) enters the series by dating daughter Lucy, naturally, but he ends up running away from home and butting heads with his mother's psychotic boyfriend.

Otherwise Toran did mostly voice work on Nickelodeon cartoons: Recess, Hey Arnold, Rocket Power. 

Today he is a song writer and music producer. He composed music for The Osbournes and My Super Sweet Sixteen.  Still androgynous though no longer blond, he has made no public statements about his sexual identity.

Fugitive from the Empire: Jonny and Hadji Grown Up

There have been many Europeans or Americans involved with South Asians, on tv (Maya, Jonny Quest, Gunga the Indian Boy), in books (Haji of the Elephants), in comics (Corentin) -but they are nearly always teenagers.  An exception came in 1981, in The Archer, also known as The Archer and the Sorceress, also known as Fugitive from the Empire, a tv movie pilot that never became a series. 

The rather convoluted plot draws on Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian.  In a weird post-apocalyptic world, barbarian Toran (Lane Caudell, left) sees his tribe wiped out by the Evil Empire, and goes off in search of revenge.  He hooks up with a gay-vague South Asian thief named Slant (Kabir Bedi), who at first is in it for the money, but then begins to care for Toran.  The two are quite physical in their interactions and rescue each other several times.  The addition of a third team member, Estra (Belinda Bauer), does not detract from the romantic interaction; in fact, at the end of the movie Estra goes off on her own, leaving Toran and Slant to their own fade-out.

There isn't much beefcake, so the gay subtext is the only reason to watch The Archer; the plot is nonsensical, the special effects laughable, and the dialogue purple prose at best.  But on a Sunday night in April 1981, watching grown-up versions of Corentin and Kim or Jonny and Hadji was enough.

28-year old North Carolina native Lane Caudell had been playing Southern athletes, rednecks, and musicians for several years, mostly in tv movies like Hanging on a Star (1978) and Good Ol' Boys (1979).  He didn't do much of gay interest afterwards: a starring gig on Days of Our Lives and two country-western albums, including one entitled I Need a Good Woman Bad.  Oh, and he liked his character so much that he named his son Toran Caudell.

35 year old Kabir Bedi, however, was already well-known in India, Italy, and the U.S., with credits in several buddy-bonding movies, including Sandokan (1976), The Black Corsair (1976), and The Thief of Bagdad (1978).  In 2010 he starred in the Hindi movie Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun (Don't Know Why), an entry in India's first gay film festival.

I'm Dickens...He's Fenster: Early 1960s Bonding

When I was a kid,  I knew John Astin as the mustached, googly-eyed Gomez Addams on The Addams Family (1964-66), as the Riddler on Batman (a replacement for Frank Gorshin), and as various kooky characters thereafter, such as Professor Gangreen in Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988).  Funny, but not really swoon-worthy -- I was more interested in his teen idol sons, Sean and Mackenzie.

And Marty Ingels as a voice on Cattanooga Cats and Grape Ape on Saturday morning tv, married to Shirley Jones and the stepfather of David, Shaun, and Patrick Cassidy.  Again, not really swoon-worthy.

Then a Boomer of the older generation suggested the sitcom I'm Dickens -- He's Fenster (1962-63), which appeared after The Flintstones on Friday nights.   I looked up some episodes on youtube.

John Astin (age 32) and Marty Ingels (age 26) play bumbling carpenters Harry Dickens and Arch Fenster.  Dickens is married, and trying to be stable and respectable.

Arch is a swinger (with a Little Black Book full of women's phone numbers), and keeps trying to drag his partner into crazy adventures.

But in spite of the blatant girl-leering, there's a blatant homoromantic subtext.  The two behave as if they were romantic partners, in that unself-conscious way that performers had before they were aware that gay readings were possible: an amazing physicality, a devotion to each other, and even a domesticity, as Fenster practically lives with Dickens.

And they are swoonworthy.  No nudity, but 32-year old John Astin displays a respectable chest and nicely-toned biceps in a tight black  t-shirt, and 26-year old Marty Ingels has a beefy, promising physique.

Producer Leonard Stern was also responsible for the beefcake-heavy Run, Buddy, Run and the buddy comedy The Good Guys.