Pages

May 10, 2020

"Love, American Style": I Will Defend Your Right to Shine

Love, American Style (1969-74)  aired when I was in grade  school and junior high, late on Friday nights, when my parents were already in bed and I was watching tv with my sleepover friends or my brother, loggy and yawning, eating enormous dishes of ice cream, feeling very grown-up and somewhat mischievous. 

It was an anthology, with three humorous stories every week, all somehow related to "finding love" (all heterosexual love, of course, but who knew that anything else existed?). 

Some of the episodes were actually dramas rather than comedies ("Love and the Ledge").  Some were paranormal or science fiction  ("Love and the Vampire".  Some were only tangentially related to romance.

Sex was hinted at ("Love and the Coed Dorm"),but no one actually did the deed.  This was at heart a conservative show, aimed at an audience that was home on Friday nights -- old people and kids, both confused and disturbed by this new world of sexual freedom, longing for the old days of "true love's first kiss."

No beefcake -- at least, none that I remember.  An occasional cute guy, like teen idol Kurt Russell or Ronnie Howard of The Andy Griffith Show, but mostly oldsters. like Charles Nelson Reilly (from Lidsville) and Paul Lynde (from Bewitched).

Wait -- both of those actors were gay.

Stuart Margolin (top photo) starred in risque interstitial gag pieces,  chasing secretaries around desks or trying to glimpse a bit of cleavage.

But there was some buddy-bonding, guys working together to acquire something of value or evade an enemy, with the "finding love" tacked on at the end so the story would fit the premise. One stands out in my mind:

The guy is afraid of girls, so he asks his buddy to hide in the closet and offer advice during the date. To explain why he is going into the closet so often, he brings out items that he wants to show the girl: a bowling ball, a tennis racket, skiis -- until the apartment is full of junk.  The girl expected sex, not an episode of Hoarders, so she gets up to leave.  Then the guy kisses her,and they get engaged.

Get it: he keeps going into the closet to meet a man.  And he keeps coming out of the closet with masculine-coded sporting equipment, to show the girl that he's really interested in...well, that's about as far as they could go on prime time television in the cold winter of 1972.

I'm only thinking of the gay symbolism now, of course.  When I was in grade school and junior high, what mattered was feeling warm and safe but also dangerous, glimpsing a world built for someone else, an outsider who somehow belonged.

On a star spangled night, my love,
You can rest you head on my shoulder.
And by the dawn's early light, my love,
I will defend your right to shine.


7 comments:

  1. Just sayin' hi! ๐Ÿงก๐Ÿ–ค๐Ÿ’š๐ŸคŽ๐Ÿ’›๐Ÿ’™

    ReplyDelete
  2. The original pilot for "Happy Days" was part of this anthology show- "Love and The Happy Days".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think I saw that. In the early days of television, Dad buys a new set, and says that each member of the family can invite one guest to watch it. Joannie invites a middle-aged black man, which makes the family uncomfortable. Richie betrays his friends to invite a girl, thinking that she'll have sex with him afterwards,but she was just using him to see television.

      Delete
    2. I know the Dad was played by a different actor.

      Delete
    3. Happy Days is a linchpin of the Tommy Westphall theory.

      Delete
    4. I don't think that the "Love and the Happy Days" segment actually has the same characters. It's set in the early days of television, the late 1940s, whereas the tv series is set in the late 1950s (they celebrate Hawaii's statehood in the first season). Then came "Laverne and Shirley," in which the girls have completely different pesonalities from their appearance on "Happy Days," and it's set in the early-mid 1960s (in the last season, LaVerne dates a Star Trek fan).

      Delete
  3. I saw this a few times on Nick at Nite. It's funny because my generation is obviously less homophobic than earlier generations, but we still have those romantic notions about first love, true love, first kiss, etc. It's just that gender doesn't matter for all that.

    ReplyDelete

No offensive, insulting, racist, or homophobic comments are permitted.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.