Three's Company

Three's Company (1977-84) premiered at the height of the disco era, when sex was on everyone's mind,  so of course it was about people having sex.  Or, rather, about people thinking that other people were having sex:

Janet eavesdrops on Jack, the cooking student, talking to a girl in the kitchen.  "Ok, take it out, slowly...that's it...careful...work your hands more..." 

They're having sex right on the kitchen table!  Disgusting!  Outraged, Janet bursts through the door, to find Jack and his classmate...cooking.

No one actually had sex at any time during the eight year run, not even long-married apartment complex managers, Mr. and Mrs. Roper: joke after joke branded him impotent.  Nor, when they left, self-designated ladies' man Ralph Furley (Don Knotts of The Andy Griffith Show).

Certainly not the two single girls who occupied the apartment near the beach in Santa Monica: plain-jane Janet (Joyce DeWitt, right, next-door neighbor to one of my friends in West Hollywood) and dumb-blond Chrissy (Suzanne Somers, left, who was eventually replaced by two other blondes).

Or their roommate, Jack Tripper (John Ritter, who would later star on Eight Simple Rules with Martin Spanjers).

Wait -- a guy with two girls?  Mr. Roper/Mr. Furley is horrified.  This is the 1970s -- it's impossible for a man and a woman to be alone together without sex happening.  Jack can't live here!

Jack hits on a novel solution: he'll pretend to be gay!  Whenever Mr. Roper or Mr. Furley are around, he'll sashay about, limp-wristed and lisping, and maybe bat his eyes at them.   He'll have to hide his girlfriends, of course, or explain them as drag queens.

What could possibly go wrong?

Not much.  Most episodes ignored the pretending-to-be-gay angle in favor of "thinking someone is having sex" gags and heartwarming sitcom antics:
The roommates get a new puppy.
They buy Mr. Roper's car.
Jack and Chrissy take over Janet's babysitting job.
Janet has two concert tickets, and can only invite one of the roommates.

Jack's gay persona was a negative stereotype, no gay characters ever appeared, and at the end of the series, when Jack plans to get married to a woman, he explains to the landlord that he's been "cured."  The writers had apparently never met a real gay person.  But still, there was a lot for gay kids to like on Three's Company.

1. In the fall of 1977, Anita Bryant's Save Our Children campaign was in full force and our preacher had just discovered gay people, so all I heard about gay people was: subhuman monsters, bogeymen who lived only to seduce and destroy.  It was remarkable that anyone would pretend to be such a being, for any reason.

2. Or that a landlord would rent such a being an apartment.

3. Or that others would willingly flirt with the guilt by association. Even horndog neighbor Larry (Richard Kline) had no qualms about people thinking that he wa friends with a gay guy.

4. Jack eventually forgot to do the limp-wristed bit, becoming a conventionally masculine pseudo-gay guy.

5. You could hear the word "gay" frequently.

6. There were frequent muscular men as guest stars, such as Steve Sandor

In 2012, Three's Company was rebooted in the stage play 3C, starring Jake Silbermann.

Charlie Gillespie: Gay Characters? Gay in Real Life? Beefcake? Or Not

In 2018, I reviewed 2nd Generation as "the worst television program I have ever seen."  I don't remember it now, nor do I remember Charlie Gillespie.  I'll have to just repeat the profile I wrote seven years ago:

His Superman-cape photo was mega-hot, and I'm pretty sure his character was gay or gay-coded.

Any other beefcake photos?
Any other gay roles?
Gay in real life?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any biography at all, not even a single line, and every time I search for a shirtless photo, Google Images tries to push a photo of someone else.  Like Austin Mahone.

Charles Melton of Riverdale

Or someone named Gronkowski who I've never heard of.

Social media has proven fruitless.  There are over 100 Charlie Gillespie profiles on Facebook, most elderly, some women,  over 20 Charlie Gillespie instagram pages, and over 15 Charlie Gillespie twitter accounts.  You'd think that the guy with 7,500 followers would be the right one,but no, that's an airplane pilot.

Do you think this might be him? It's a frame capture from a video uploaded to one of the Charlie Gillespie instagram pages.

How about this guy, sticking his tongue out at a girl? (Obviously his girlfriend: they appear arm-in-arm, hugging, or groping each other n 3,543 other photos on the page.)

Well, at least I can go through his film credits, to see if there are any gay roles.

1. Charlie played himself in the documentary Bienvenue chez nous - La gang à Richibouctou Village (2014), about a New Brunswick village (where they speak English) welcoming a film crew.

2. The film is La gang des hors-la-loi (The Outlaw League, 2014), a sort of French Canadian Bad News Bears, where the kids have names like Shogun, Charlemagne, and Pic-pic.

3. In 2015, Charlie appeared as a guest host on Galala, "un concours télévisé de jeunes talents qui s'adresse aux 5 à 15 ans."   They sought out local talent in a different city each week: Edmonton, Saskatoon, St. Boniface, Halifax.  Charlie's town was Dieppe, New Brunswick.

I don't understand why a French-language tv program is auditioning talent in English speaking towns.

4. Fast forward two years to July 2017.  Charlie has a two-episode story arc on Degrassi: Next Class, a teen soap about students in a fictional Toronto high school.   He plays Oliver, hospital roommate of gay kid Tristan (Lyle Lettau).  But Oliver is straight.

Only two years ago, and Charlie looks a little chunky.  That might explain the lack of beefcake photos.

5. Another guest shot, on a November 2017 episode of The Next Step, about a teen dance troup in Toronto.  Charlie plays Marcus, a member of the math team who becomes captain when Zara leaves.

6. Next comes the 6 horrible episodes of 2nd Generation (2018), which required long hair for the androgynous effect. I think his character is gay-coded,but I can't be sure; that would require watching the tv series.

7. Speed Kills (2018) starred John Travolta as an aging speedboat racer (based on real-life speedboat champion Don Aronoff).   Charlie played his son, Andrew.  Since Travolta is 65 years old, his son must be in his 30s.

8.  A two-episode story in October 2018 on the new Charmed: he plays a college student who is dating Maggie until she dumps him.  When he's possessed by a demon, she saves him, but they still don't get back together.  There's a lot of kissing going on.

9. In January 2019, he appeared in the 6-episode miniseries I Am the Night, something about the Black Dahlia murder case in modern L.A.  Charlie appears only in the pilot as "Surfer Hank."  You can probably figure out what he's doing.

I'm sorry I started this research.  Not many beefcake photos, not gay in real life (if the tongue-wagger is the right Charlie), only one gay-coded role.

And I had such high hopes. The 2nd Generation  bait-and-switch strikes again.

Wild Boy: The Gay Jungle Boy of 1950s Comics

There were many variations of the Tarzan mythos during the middle years of the 20th century, but one of the most fondly remembered by the first generation of Baby Boomers was Wild Boy, Prince of the Jungle.

He had a short run, appearing in 8 issues of a  Ziff-Davis series (1950-1952), which oddly starts with 10.  Then St. John took over the title, renamed it Wild Boy of the Congo, and published 6 issues (#9-#15), in 1953.  That's it.

But what he lacked in longevity, Wild Boy made up for in gay potential.

His origin story: the young American boy David Clyde goes to the Congo with his uncle, who hires evil native to kill him.  He escape and grows up in the jungle, but speaks a stilted "me, Tarzan" patois.

He has two animal companions, a panther (Daro) and a monkey (Kimba), and a native boyfriend, Keeto (who speaks the same patois.)

Artists vary in their interpretation of Wild Boy: should he be a little kid or nearly an adult?  And just how feminine should his wavy hair, lipstick, and eye liner get?

But he's definitely a gay icon. He displays no interest in women, but he rescues and hugs Keeto every five minutes.

The comics are hilarious today for their stereotypes of the white Western colonial master and the "childlike" natives.

Hint: the good ones wear Western-style clothes, and the bad ones wear loincloths.

Here he uses the old chestnut "I will make the sun disappear!" to avoid execution by an evil tribe.  How corny can you get?

But at least he's holding hands with Keeto.