A Gaggle of Shirtless Jeremys

Somebody found this blog using google search terms "Jeremy naked."  Jeremy who?  The only Jeremys I have posts about are Jackson and Lelliot.  But, just for fun, I put "Jeremy shirtless" into google images to see who popped up.

1. Jeremy Irvine of Stonewall, with his ridiculously huge bulge.  What's he packing, about four rolled-up socks?

2.  Jeremy Renner, who I first saw in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013).    Where did I get the idea that Renner was a twink?  He's 46.

3. 1990s teen heartthrob Jeremy Jackson still has abs.

4. Steven R. McQueen.  Nice physique, but he's no Jeremy.

















5. Jeremy Bloom, a football player and Olympic skiier.  No wonder I never heard of him.

More after the break.

Paul Newman and Rocky Graziano: Somebody Down Here Likes Me

Paul Newman and James Dean met in 1952, when they were studying at the famous Actors Studio in New York.  They began a passionate affair.

But there were problems from the start: Paul didn't like sneaking around under the nose of his wife, and he wanted exclusivity, whereas Jimmy had a roving eye (Paul had the same problem when he dated Yul Brynner a couple of years before).

In 1953, they both auditioned for the roles of the twin brothers in East of Eden -- check out the homoerotic screen test on the Eddi Haskell blog.

Jimmy got the part, but Paul lost out.  He was devastated, and the relationship cooled.

After James Dean's tragic death on September 30, 1955, Paul was offered several roles that had been earmarked for him, including  Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), a biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano (top photo) based on his bestselling autobiography.

It was a Hollywood rags-to-riches story, with a juvenile delinquency twist.  The young Rocky is abused by his father, joins a street gang, gets into fights, is drafted into the army but goes AWOL, is sent to prison, finds a new life as a boxer, and finally triumphs over an evil rival (real boxer Tony Zale).

Oh, and there's a requisite hetero-romance, but there's a strong gay subtext between Rocky and best buddy Romolo (gay actor Sal Mineo), plus the gay symbolism of a blackmail plotline.

The story doesn't end there. The real 37-year old Rocky appeared as an adviser, and he and Paul hit it off. They were often seen socializing together off the set.

I couldn't find any information on whether they became lovers, but since Rocky also hung out with the bisexual Marlon Brando, it's a possibility.

The t-shirts are from Grossinger's Resort in the Catskills.

Paul went on, of course, to become the most famous actor of the 1960s and a master of gay subtexts.  Rocky Graziano had a respectable tv career and opened a restaurant.

The Gay Photographer in Eastern Kentucky

In 1964, gay documentary photographer William Gedney, known for documenting the Bohemian subcultures of New York and San Francisco,  traveled to the Blue Diamond Mining Camp in Pike County, Eastern Kentucky, about 60 miles from where my mother's family lived.

He wrote that he was looking for poverty and despair at the collapse of the mining industry, the "mental and physical depression of the people, almost complete lack of future and hope"






He met Willie Cornett, recently laid off from the mine, and ended up staying with Willie, his wife Vivian, and their twelve children in Big Rock, Kentucky.

He found poverty and pain, but not a "lack of future and hope."

He found resilience and strength and beauty.

He found a complex masculinity: cars, guns, country-western music, and redneck machismo, but also tenderness, physical intimacy, strong emotional bonds.

And, a thousand miles away from the gay community of New York, a blatant homoeroticism.

Photographs from his days with the Cornett family were displayed at a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in 1968 and 1969.

Gedney stayed in contact with the Cornetts, and photographed them again in 1972.

He didn't publish the photographs during his lifetime, except for one of the girls in the kitchen, for $35.

They were private, depicting the unexpected joy he found in the hills of Eastern Kentucky.

Gedney died of AIDS in 1989.  Today his reputation is based chiefly on the moments he captured in the Kentucky photographs.