Hunter (1984-1991) aired during the Reagan-Bush years of conservative retrenchment, on Saturday nights, aimed at an audience of oldsters sitting at home complaining about how much better things when they were kids. It took the new "tough on crime" stance -- forget about social programs, go out and break some heads -- with tough, trigger-happy Sgt. Hunter (Fred Dryer) and his female partner/eventual romantic interest McCall (Stephanie Kramer).
I never saw it; in West Hollywood we went out on Saturday nights (after
The Golden Girls, of course).
Born in 1946, Fred Dryer spent 13 years as a pro-football player (for the Giants and the Rams), only hitting Hollywood after retiring in 1980. He had "muscle stud" guest roles on
Laverne and Shirley, Lou Grant, Hart to Hart, and
Cheers, and a few man-mountain roles in movies:
The Star Maker, The Kid from Nowhere, Something So Right, before being cast as uber-macho Sgt. Hunter.
Since
Hunter ended in 1991, he's done several reprisal movies, and a sequel tv series (2003), plus some tough-cop movies.
There was a serial-killer-targeting-gays episode of
Hunter, but otherwise no specific gay content in Dryer's works. He's a hard-core Republican who supports the homophobic Tea Party movement.
So why does he have gay rumors?
Maybe it's just the incongruity of the uber macho having a "feminine" gay side.
Or the fact that he didn't marry until he was trying to make a go of Hollywood, and his marriage lasted for only five years.
Or this nude beefcake photo.
I don't know where it came from, but it looks like some of the physique photos gay magazines began to publish when the restrictions on nudity eased in the late 1960s.
Excpet in the late 1960s, Fred Dryer had hair. Quite a lot of it. This was the hippie generation, after all.
The uncensored photo is on
Tales of West Hollywood
That's not him
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