Shipwrecked: Jens Builds a Family

Blue Lagoon, Paradise, and the various  Swiss Family Robinson adaptions of the 1980s and 1990s were heterosexist fables, with the shipwreck on a tropical island just an excuse to get a girl out of her clothes and into a boy's arms.

At first glance, the 1990 Håkon Håkonsen (released in the U.S. as Shipwrecked) is no different.  Haakon (14 year old Stian Smestad), cabin boy on a ship in the 1850s, meets a young stowaway, who turns out to be a girl named Mary (Louisa Millwood-Haight).

But the romance between the two stars is minimal; they behave more like best friends than boyfriend and girlfriend.

Meanwhile hunky sailor Jens (Trond Peter Stamsø Munch) expresses no interest in women and takes a big-buddy interest in Haakon.  Although he doesn't express any romantic interest, he does acknowledge the boy's erotic desirability.  When they are on shore leave, Jens steers Haakon away from the ladies of the evening, admonishing him to “protect his valuables."











Although Jens steps aside to permit alone time with Mary, the result is not so much a romance as a familial connection.  At the end of the movie, all three return to Norway together.

The lack of a heterosexist fade-out-kiss can be attributed to the original 1878 novel Haakon Haakonsen: A Norwegian Robinson, which minimized the girl, as was common in juvenile fiction of the era (I can't read Norwegian, but she seems to disappear for large passages).   Or to director Nils Gaup, who also directed the Sami drama Pathfinder.

Trond Peter Munch has not acted outside of Norway.  Stian Smested is currently a director, specializing in documentaries.

The Cheerios Kid

From the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, the Cheerios Kid, a cute black-haired boy about twelve years old, was one of the beefcake-heavy breakfast cereal icons.  In a series of "damsel in distress" commercials.  His companion Sue would be grabbed by a monster, pirate, space alien, or mad scientist, and yell "Help, Kid!" in a weird Southern accent.  The Kid would then eat Cheerios, flex a gigantic o-shaped bicep, and pound the bad guy.  Sue would gasp "My hero!"

Extremely heterosexist plotlines -- that is, if Sue was his girlfriend, not a gal pal or sister -- the nature of their relationship was never specified.  No matter, the gigantic o-shaped muscles were nice to look at, and gay boys often removed Sue from the scenario and imagined that they were the ones being rescued and gasping "My hero!"

By the 1970s, Sue was an equal partner, eating the cereal with the Kid, flexing muscles of her own, and helping pound the bad guy.

Chai Hansen and Josh Thomson One to Hook Up with, One to Date

On The New Legends of Monkey on Netflix, Chai Hansen (front) plays Monkey, the deposed god, and Josh Thomson (rear) his sidekick Piggsy.  Pick one for a 15-minute hookup and one for a romantic date: dinner, cuddling on the couch, overnight, breakfast in the morning.















I choose Chai for the hookup and Josh for the date.

Sure, muscles are nice to look at, and so on, but cuddling with a slab of granite?  I'll take the belly any day.

I wanted to see moreof Josh Thomson.  His most famous starring role is in the Kiwi film Gary of the Pacific.  Youtube has the trailer.

Not a good start: Gary's girlfriend asks him to marry her.  But then we see Gary's bare butt (is it supposed to be humorous, not sexy?).

The plot:Gary is the son of the chief on an unspecified South Pacific island. He goes to New Zealand to get educated, and meanwhile gets an American girlfriend for some reason.  Then his father dies, so he has to go back home and take over. The economy is a mess, the island is sinking due to global warming, and there are sharks.

 Girlfriend, who tags along for "the wedding of her dreams," is less than thrilled by crass South Pacific culture. Auckland, it ain't.













Sounds rather heteronormative.  It's not available in the U.S., so I have no idea what this scene is about.

Thomson has been in about a thousand other movies and tv series, none available in the U.S.  But he's a big star in New Zealand.

No wife listed on wikipedia, but it's hard to research whether he's gay or not.  There's too much interference from another Josh Thomson, a  MMA fighter who compared gay marriage to incest, and then backtracked "I'm not against gay rights."

Maybe I should go on the date with Cha Hansen, instead.

Inner City Prettyboy: What's Happening!!

In 1971, there were no network television programs with all-African American casts.  In 1976, there were six, including such hits as Good Times, Sanford and Son, and The Jeffersons.  But only What's Happening!! featured teenagers (yes, two exclamation points in the title).

It began as a four-episode summer series about the exploits of Shirley (Shirley Hemphill), a sassy waitress in a poor African-American neighborhood.  When the regular series began, Shirley was still present, but the focus was on the bookish high schooler Raj (Ernest L. Thompson, right), his best friend, the rotund schemer Rerun (Fred Berry, left), and Duane (Haywood Nelson, center), a shy younger boy who was happy that they let him hang around.  Filling out the cast was Raj's imposing, no-nonsense Mama (Mabel King) and his little sister Dee, whose catchphrase "I'm telling Mama" enjoyed a brief popularity.

There were immediate complaints about the simplistic plotlines and the cultural stereotypes. Weren't Raj and Rerun just a teenage Amos and Andy?  And Mama just a new version of Aunt Jemima?  Mabel King wondered why her character had to be a maid.  Why not have her go back to school, get a better job, start a business?  It didn't happen, and at the end of the second season she left.  Without Mama as a moral center, the series limped along with low ratings and was finally cancelled.

But there was a lot for gay kids to like in What's Happening!!  

1. Minimal heterosexual interest.  During the first two seasons, no episodes involved Raj and Rerun liking girls or getting girlfriends (two involved Duane).

2. Homoromantic buddy bonding between Raj and Rerun.  In the third season, they even move into an apartment together.

3. Duane was shy, soft, passive, pretty -- gay-vague.  Maybe that's why he got girls, because audiences need reassuring about his sexual identity.

4. No shirtless or semi nude shots, but lots of bulging.  Duane looked good coming and going.

A sequel, What's Happening Now!!, aired from 1985 to 1988.  The gang was now young adults.  Raj, newly married, was working as a writer. Rerun sold used cars. Duane was a computer programmer with a spectacular bodybuilder's physique (but he took off his shirt in just one episode).  They also added a couple of teenage best friends (Martin Lawrence, Ken Sagoes).  The homoromantic subtexts were all but forgotten.

Ernest L. Thomas has busy since the 1980s, most recently in a recurring role as a creepy funeral director on Everybody Hates Chris.  I met him in Hollywood in 1988.

Fred Berry died in 2003.

Haywood Nelson was a popular teen star during What's Happening. His roles included The White Shadow (1979), where he got to buddy-bond with Timothy Van Patten (right), and Evilspeak (1981), where he had a nude scene.  Today he is well known as an inspirational speaker.  There are gay rumors, but he hasn't made any public statements.

Nude pics of Hayward Nelson are on Tales of West Hollywood.

Fall 1980: Billy Budd: Gay Sailor Romance

In the fall of my junior year in college, just after I cruised the Miracle Mile and bought my first gay book, I took a class in "The American Renaissance," the burst of creative energy in the mid-1800s: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville.

Our professor (not the one who taught the execrable class in Modern American Literature) admitted that Melville was "a little light in the loafers," but he tried to heterosexualize the texts as much as possible, so he merely claimed that Billy Budd (1888) was about a Christ figure destroyed by the world's evil.

The book cover tried to heterosexualize Billy Budd, too, conveniently placing a woman in the background.  But how could you miss the same-sex desire?  During the Napoleonic Wars, a young cabin boy, described over and over as stunningly handsome, draws the wordless longing of Captain Vere ("Truth") -- and the homophobic ire of Claggart, who falsely accuses him of conspiring to mutiny. While being interrogated, Billy accidentally strikes and kills Claggart, so under British naval law he must be hanged.

Billy forgives the Captain; his last words are "God bless Captain Vere."  But carrying out the sentence destroys Vere; his dying words are "Billy Budd."  I couldn't help but think of Aschenbach, destroyed by his obsession for the beautiful Tadzio in Death in Venice. 

TV adaptions of the novella have appeared twice, in 1955 (with William Shatner) and in 1959 (with Don Murray).


 There's also a 1962 feature film, with Billy played by Terence Stamp (later in Meetings with Remarkable Men and Priscilla Queen of the Desert). 

In 1951, gay composer Benjamin Britten produced an opera version, with libretto by gay novelist E.M. Forster.  It  has Vere survive to old age, when he reflects that once he knew what true beauty was.  It has been filmed in 1988 (with Thomas Allen) and 1998 (with Dwayne Croft), and remains a staple of the theater.  

Recent productions feature a shirtless, muscular Billy, such as those performed by Nathan Gunn (above) and Simon Keenlyside (left).

Also see his gay-subtext filled Benito Cereno.

"Killing Hasselhoff": Three Strikes, and I'm Out

What's worse, a half-naked, oiled-up David Hasselhoff or a bullet in your chest?

If your answer is "a bullet in your chest" and you are a guy, I have good news and bad news.

The bad news: you are heterosexual.
The good news: you will like the movie Killing Hasselhoff

In case you haven't been paying attention, David Hasselhoff was the star of Baywatch (1989-2001), a drama about mostly-female lifeguarts jiggling along the beach and having personal problems.  He's spent the last 20 years judging a lot of talent shows, becoming a pop star in Germany, and doing a lot of self-parodying.  Some people, not understanding parody, think that the aging prettyboy is just full of himself, and get vicarious pleasure out of wishing him ill.  Thus the movie.










Scene 1: Chris (Ken Jeong) doesn't actually dislike Hasselhoff; in fact, he got the Hoff to appear at the After Party at his nightclub this weekend, hoping that the draw will revive the failing business.  But he also happens to belong to a betting pool run by his friend Tommy that will pay out $500,000 to the person who correctly guesses the first celebrity to die.  His celebrity is David Hasselhoff.

Scene 2: The club's main investor Fish is distraught because his girlfriend is cheating on him with a guy with a big penis named Sebastian Hollingbone (Victor Turpin, left). She writes poetry to it.  Plus, as Tommy points out, he is gorgeous, with a massive, chiseled chest.  But Tommy's straight.   He tells Fish to wait for the After Party to revive the nightclub; after that he'll be swimming in....um...dates.

Scene 3: At the After Party.  Chris has a girlfriend who obviously doesn't like him; Tommy has a crush on girlfriend's roommate, but she's not interested.  Wow, heterosexuals have a lot of relationship problems.  

Cut to Fish from Scene 2 is at his day job, imagining that two of his coworkers turn into girlfriend and Big Dick and go at it on the conference table.  He disrupts the meeting and attacks the CEO. Uh-oh, I guess he won't be doing any investing.  And that means that he won't be appearing again.  Neither will Sebastian Hollingbone.  Darn!

Back at the After Party, Tommy, Chris, and a third friend Bill (Run Funches) toast the club's Hasselhoff-induced success.

Scene 4: Hasselhoff's block long limo.  Hasselhoff is kissing half-naked girls, while his agent (Jon Lovitz) tells him how great it is.  They decide to go to Orchid and blow off the After Party. Agent calls the guys to cancel, and calls Chris a "cocksucker."  That's Strike One, jerk.  I expected heterosexism for days, but not a homophobic slur.

Chris has another problem: he invited Gina, a 16-year old kid's tv star to the party, and she's in the VIP Suite, popping quaaludes, having alcohol poured on her, kissing other girls (gasp!).  There are even shirtless fat guys!  She gropes Chris, and when he resists, calls her mother to talk him into it.  Chris is outraged: "I will not have you turn this Judeo-Christian friendly nightclub into a whorehouse!"  Heterosexual kissing, no problem, but two girls kissing is the ultimate in degradation and evil!  That's Strike Two!

Scene 5: The next day, Gina tells all the tabloids that Chris sexually assaulted her.  Girlfriend kicks him out of the house.  Plus Mr. Wasserstein, the parable-spouting, zen-meditating loan shark, wants his $400,000 in 72 hours.  (His bodyguard gropes Chris while searching him for weapons).

Scene 6: Chris discusses his problems with a friendly homeless guy, who offers to give him a free hand job.  Suddenly the night club catches fire.

Scene 7:  Chris goes home to try to talk to his girlfriend, only to find her having sex with his friend Tommy (bare butt close-up is supposed to be disgusting, I suppose)  He runs to his car and has a meltdown (wouldn't you?)

Scene 8: Fish from Scene 2 at the mental hospital where he was sent for evaluationa after attacking the CEO.   He still sees Sebastian (and we do, too, lifting weights in his underweear)  Chris visits, and they discuss killing Hasselhoff to get the death pool  money.

Scene 9: Hasselhoff is lifting weights at his mansion while Chris gathers intel.  Agent brings him some scripts, but he wants to make his own superhero musical: Electric Man, who shoots lightning bolts out of his dick.  Agent wants him to focus on attainable goals.

Hasselhoff, Agent, and assistant get into his car, which he pretends is KITT from Knight Rider

They go to an autograph session at Venice Beach (closeups of girls in bikinis). Some of the fans are male, though.  Hoff tells one guy, "You look just like me.  Get his number -- I'll call you if I ever want to fuck myself."

Chris follows with a pizza loaded with shellfish -- Hoff is allergic.  But he insults the fans, they beat him up, and the pizza is ruined.

Scene 10: Wasserman's bodyguard meets with hired killer Redix, who is gay.  Bodyguard can't believe it because he is big and buffed: "You people confuse the hell out of me."

Scene 11: More close-ups of girls' boobs and legs.  A lot more.  I guess after the trauma of finding out there's a gay character in this movie, the audience needed reassurance.  Chris goes on to his next plan.  He knocks out an Asian dude.  Then, after about more 20 minutes's worth of close-ups of girls' boobs and legs, we're at Hasselhoff's party.  Chris appears as a waiter (why did he have to knock out an Asian dude?)  He poisons a glass of grapefruit juice and gives it to Hoff, but someone else drinks it.


Scene 12:  Long, lingering closeup of a girl's bare legs, up to her thighs, her stomach and -- bare breasts!  A closeup of bare breasts!  Filling the screen!   That's Strike 3.  I'm outta here.

Joel and Jody McCrea: The Bisexual Cowboy and His Beach-Movie Son

Speaking of showbiz families, Joel McCrea (1905-1990) was a tall, lanky, and muscular, perfect for roles as white-hat cowboys.  And he played a lot of them during his 50-year movie career.

But you're probably more interested in his movies with gay subtexts, such as The Silver Cord (1933), where he plays a young doctor with a domineering mother, or Ride the High Country (1962), where he and Randolph Scott play a pair of long-term cowboy partners.

Or at least the ones where he disrobes, such as the European-in-Polynesia romance Bird of Paradise (1932).

Bisexual in real life, he was married to actress Frances Dee from 1933 until his death, but also had male lovers, including Montgomery Clift.

Joel's oldest son Jody (born 1934) was tall and athletic, and a dead ringer for his father.  He started out playing cowboys, too.

But he is best known for his comedic roles, playing dopey sidekicks named Deadhead, Bonehead, and Big Lunk in six Frankie and Annette beach movies of the 1960s.  He still got to display his bulge in a swimsuit, when he wasn't self-consciously trying to hide it.

Typecast as boneheads, he retired from acting in the early 1970s, and became a rancher in New Mexico.

Of Jody's five children, only Wyatt is interested in show biz.  He has appeared in a few tv series, and produced Gen's Guiltless Gourmet (2009).  He also manages his grandfather's ranch, a tourist attraction in Thousand Oaks, CA

See also: Beach Movies 1: The Beefcake

More 1970s Saturday Morning Beefcake

During the late 1970s, I watched several live-action Saturday morning tv programs, like Space Academy and The Kids from C.A.P.E.R., but the 70s Live Action Kid Vid website gives some details about many that I never heard of.  They vanished quickly, and left little trace on DVD, though you may be able to find uploads on youtube.  Here are the four that look most interesting:

1. Ark II (1976-77): a sort of futuristic trucker show about Jonah (Terry Lester) driving around in a post-apocalyptic world solving people's personal problems, accompanied by his teen sidekicks Samuel (Jose Flores) and Ruth (Jean Marie Hon), plus a talking chimp.  Terry Lester, who was gay in real life, went on to become a soap opera hunk on The Young and the Restless.

2. Dr. Shrinker (1976-77), a segment of the Krofft Supershow: the teens Brad (Ted Eccles) and BJ (Susan Lawrence), plus their goofy friend Gordie (Boomer MacKay), are trapped on a desert island with a mad scientist who shrinks them.

Child star Ted Eccles starred in In Cold Blood (1967) and My Side of the Mountain (1969), and muscled up to hug James Coburn in The Honkers (1972) and get terrorized by Scott Jacoby in Bad Ronald (1974).

3. Bigfoot and Wildboy (1977-78), another segment of the Krofft Supershow: Bigfoot (Ray Young) and his teen sidekick Wildboy (Joseph Butcher) roam the Pacific Northwest, solving people's personal problems.  Sounds like some interspecies buddy-bonding occurred.

The Krofft Supershow was a very busy program. It also featured musical groups like The Bay City Rollers and Michael Lembeck (center) as Kaptain Kool (with the Kongs).

4. Jason of Star Command (1978-81): Jason (Craig Littler) and his assistants (including James Doohan, Scotty on Star Trek) work to keep the evil Dragos from taking over the galaxy in this Space Academy spin-off.

Craig Littler performed in many movies and tv programs, including Blazing Saddles (1974) and Laverne and Shirley.  In the 1990s, he became the voice of Grey Poupon mustard in tv commercials ("Pardon me -- do you have any Grey Poupon?").

"We Summon the Darkness":: Gay Heavy Metal Fans?

It's the distant, magical summer of 1988. Thursday night means Cosby, A Different World, Cheers, and Night Court.  Saturday is movie night: Die Hard, Cocktail, Rambo, Who Framed Roger Rabbit,   Everyone is listening to Cheap Trick, Tracy Chapman, and Madonna, or if you are into heavy metal, Bon Jovi, David Lee Roth, and Thrasher  And in the distant, magical country of Indiana, three little girls are driving to a heavy metal concert.   Their names are Alexis, Beverly, and Val, but that's not important. What's important is that they are just like millions of other little girls growing up in the distant, magical summer of 1988, discussing sex and fashion and Teen Bop magazine  and who ate the last Ding Dong.

At a gas station, the attendant is watching a televangelist scream about the evil of heavy metal music.  This is the summer of Satanic panic, the unfounded fear that thousands of kids were being abducted by their neighbors, the pastor, the school principal, or the mayor and sacrificed to Satan.  Somehow the two are connected. Foreshadowing? The girls scoff and move on.

You are probably guessing what will happen next.  You are wrong.

Continuing down a rural road in Indiana, they are passed by a blue van, which chucks a milkshake at their windshield.  OMG, what's wrong with people?

The girls arrive at the concert, negotiate scalpers and "Jesus Saves" protestors, and guess what?  There's the blue van!  Makes sense -- where else would anyone be going on that desolate country road?  They get revenge by throwing firecrackers into the van.  Three boys emerge:

Mark (Keean Johnson, top photo), Kovacs (Logan Miller), second photo, and Ivan (Austin Swift, left).

Turns out that they are aspiring musicians.  Yeah, in 1988, who wasn't?

Surprisingly, they don't do a ot of flirting with the girls. One might suspect that they are gay, except there aren't a lot of gay heavy metal fans.

They discuss Ozzy Osbourne and the epidemic of Satanic ritual murders. 15 so far this summer.  Gulp!

They go to the concert together, jump up and down, yell "Hail Satan!"

You're probably wondering, when are the real Satanists gong to show up?'''

Spoiler Alert:  




There aren't any real Satanists.

After the concert the girls invite the boys to "my dad's gigantic, elegant mansion," 30 minutess away.

Wait -- if they live 30 minutes away, what was with the driving for hours through the Indiana wilderness?

There they tie the boys up in their underwear, and prepare for the sacrifice.

Turns out that the girls belong to Daughters of the Dawn, the church of the pastor on the tv at the gas station.  They kill people and make it look like Satanic ritual murder, in order to illustrate the evils of heavy metal music.

What follows is a melange of unexpected visitors showing up to disrupt the plans, Pastor showing up to help, a lot of beefcake, and a lot of "I'll save you!" buddy-bonding.

One of the girls has a change of heart, and escapes with the Last Boy.

But other than the heteronormative ending, there's no  hetero-romance, and endless gay subtexts. (No texts, unfortunately).

And plot twists that I actually did not see coming.

My grade: B

Michael Lembeck

Speaking of One Day at a Time (1975-84),  the biggest hunk who entered the lives of the single mom Ann Romano and her two daughters (Barbara and Julie) was not William Kirby Cullen or Scott Colomby, but Michael Lembeck as the smiling, bearded, hairy-chested, tight-jeans wearing Max Horvath.

He first appears on October 14th, 1979, as the best man at Julie's wedding -- who falls in love with Julie himself.   Eventually they marry and have a child.  By the last season, Julie has run away, leaving Max a single dad. In an interesting triangulation, he is sharing a house with Barbara and her husband Mark (Boyd Gaines).

Born in 1948, Michael Lembeck was the son of Harvey Lembeck, famous as the juvenile delinquent foil in the Frankie-and-Annette beach movies.  He was visible through the 1970s, with guest spots on The Partridge Family, Happy Days, Love American Style, and Room 222, and a recurring role on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), plus several important movie appearances.

In Blood Sport (1973), mooning over high-school football star Gary Busey.

In the war drama The Boys in Company C (1978), as the wise-guy Vinnie Fazio, who buddy-bonds with Billy Ray (Andrew Pike).

In Gorp (1980), a spoof of summer-camp sex comedies, as muscular camp waiter Kavell, who buddy-bonds with the nerdish Bergman (Philip Casnoff, right) as they try to get laid and befuddle the authorities.

But he was most familiar to Boomer kids as Kaptain Kool, androgynous glam-rock lead singer for Kaptain Kool and the Kongs, the Saturday morning tv rock group that appeared on The Krofft Supershow and its various spinoffs in the late 1970s.

After One Day at a Time, Michael worked primarily as a director, with episodes of Coach, Major Dad, Ellen, Jesse, Veronica's Closet, Friends, Hot in Cleveland, and Baby Daddy (a sitcom with a queer theme, about two brothers raising a child together).  He hasn't played any gay characters, but he directed Connie and Carla (2004), about two women who hide out disguised as drag queens, and a 2012 episode of Baby Daddy in which the brothers' Dad turns out to be gay.