Once Upon a Mattress: The girl named Fred

December 12, 1972.  I'm in seventh grade at Washington Junior High.  After our usual Tuesday night dinner of tuna casserole, we gather in the living room and light up the Christmas tree-- we just set it up last night -- to watch tv.  But Maude and Hawaii Five-O are pre-empted by a musical called Once Upon a Mattress.  

A musical!  Gross!  "Can I be excused?" I ask.

"Don't be antisocial!" my father exclaims.  "Whatever you got to do, you can do it in here with the family."

I'm used to playing, reading, and doing homework in front of the tv  -- when I try to spend some time alone in my room, my father always yells at me to "Don't be antisocial!" and "Get out here with the family!"

What do they think I'm doing down there, anyway?

 But I have to get out of this stupid musical somehow!

"Um...I have to practice my violin."  I just joined the orchestra.

"Hey, if Boomer doesn't have to watch this junk, then I don't either!" my brother Ken complains.

So we get permission to hide in our  basement room.  But eventually I have to go to the bathroom, which means passing right in front of the tv set where that...ugh!...musical is playing.  I brace myself to rush through quickly, but I can't help glancing at the tv set.

It's Ken Berry from The Carol Burnett Show, who has nice muscles and a rackish smile.  He's singing "I'm in love with a girl named Fred."

Wait -- Fred is a boy's name.  Could he be...in love with a boy?

No, "Fred" is played by Carol Burnett.  But Ken goes on to explain why he loves her:


She is very strong.
She can fight.
She can wrestle.

These are the reasons that boys like boys!

I sit down to watch the last half.  It's a version of the "Princess and the Pea" fairy tale, about Queen Agrivain, who doesn't want her sissy son, Prince Dauntless, to get married, so she forces every potential bride to take impossible tests.

 But Winnifred, nicknamed Fred, is so tough and strong that she passes every test, so the wedding can take place.

(In 2005, Carol Burnett returned to the production as Queen Agrivain, with gay actor Denis O'Hare, below with his husband Hugo Redwood.)

I don't realize that,  when the original musical appeared in 1959, "clinging mothers" were assumed the cause of gay identity, so Prince Dauntless would be assumed gay.   I don't catch the sexual symbolism of the mute King who suddenly finds his voice.  And of course I have no idea  that director Ron Field is gay in real life.

But I know all about liking people who are tough and strong,  liking biceps and pecs instead of the soft curves that boys are supposed to long for.

And I know all about doing things on mattresses.

See also: Looking for Muscles on The Carol Burnett Show

Duke Van Patten's Beefcake and Romance Photos

Duke Van Patten (the one on the left) was recommended to me as a Facebook friend because we have one "mutual friend," Christopher Atkins.

Could he be related to the famous Van Patten brood of 1970s hunks?

Maybe, but before I click on "Yes! Add me!" I always check to see if the prospect is gay.

I've never met a guy named Duke, but that's probably not his fault.

He's an actor living in New York.  Otherwise his "likes" are empty: no music, no tv shows, no sports, friends other than Christopher invisible.

Not much to go on.

A lot of photos of Duke with guys.  This one may be joke.  He comments "I love snapchat captions."

But not this one under the Christmas tree.

Or this one.  They're engaging in the macho sport of fishing, but look -- seven guys, no girls.  My kind of vacation!

There are about a thousand pictures posted of Duke in a boy-boy pair.  Or in this case, a trio.

But what am I to make of this meme? Granted, there's a nice chest and biceps, and the girl is far in the background, but she's still a girl.

Ok, time to check Duke's other social media.

Instagram: 2 pictures of Duke in a group that includes girls, and 85,000 of Duke with guys, including this take on the "On top of the world!" scene from Titanic.  Comment; "10% of our brains?  I think we use only 10% of our hearts."

Twitter: He watches a lot of movies, he saw Angels in America in London, his dream dinner guest is Aslan, and he states "I'm glad I'm not a 12-year old girl anymore."











One more place to check.  If he's an actor, maybe he's on IMDB.

Hey, he's the son of Vince Van Patten, the 1970s movie hunk and tennis player, part of a whole show biz dynasty.

Five on-screen credits: two walk-ons, The Adventures of Velvet Prozac (sounds campy), The Guest House (about a guy with a gay stalker), and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (playing himself)

I'm convinced.  Sign me up.  I don't have any friends left in New York -- maybe he'll invite me for a visit. 

I could tell him my Vince Van Patten hookup story.

See also: The Van Patten Brothers.

Cameron Mathison: Gay Content and Abs

Have you ever heard of Cameron Mathison?

Me, neither.

When I saw this black-and-white photo of the muscleman with an old-fashioned swimsuit and hairstyle, I figured he must be a 1950s beefcake star, like Troy Donahue or Rock Hudson, maybe one of Henry Willson's stable of gay and gay-friendly actors hired for their physique rather than for their background in The Taming of the Shrew.

But I thought I had covered almost all of them, even the most obscure.

Turns out this guy was born in 1969: this is a faux-retro photo from the 1990s.

He grew up in Canada, and graduate from McGill University with a degree in engineering.  After appearing in a few movies, he landed a plum role as con man Ryan Lavery on the soap All My Children.  He appeared from 1998 to 2011, with a year off.

At the same time he was a correspondent for Good Morning, America, working on the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and other events, and interviewing celebrities from Mario Lopez to Wolfgang Puck.

In 2015 he began starring in a series of movies based on the Murder, She Baked novels, as Mike Kingston, boyfriend of the small-town baker turned sleuth.

Any gay content?  Oh, I don't know.  Look at those abs.

How have I not heard of this guy before?

Ok, ok, he plays a gay character in 54 (1998), with Ryan Philippe (with a gay kiss edited out), and Getty Images has some pictures of him at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in L.A. in 2011.

That's enough gay content for me.

By the way, he has a brother, Scott.  I want to know more about him, too.

Krazy Kat: The First Gay Comic Character

From 1913 to 1944, newspaper readers could read a sparely drawn comic strip, an anomaly in the era of lush art deco masterpieces like Little Nemo, in which a small, squiggly cat named Krazy professes undying romantic love for the mouse Ignatz, who responds by lobbing a brick at Krazy's head.  But the cat is not dissuaded, accepting even violence as a signifier of desire. And, in fact, Ignatz often gives in and grudgingly accepts Krazy's affection.

 Meanwhile Officer Pup hangs around to throw Ignatz in jail or pontificate on the evil of brick-throwing.

The general public wasn't impressed, but the elites loved it, exuding comparisons to Charlie Chaplin and German expressionism. Gilbert Seldes’ The Seven Lively Arts (1924) devoted a chapter to the strip, and today most histories of the comic strip include warmly appreciative paragraphs.  Literary figures as diverse as Jack Kerouac and Umberto Eco have praised it.  It has influenced every comic strip from Peanuts to Pearls Before Swine. 

But heterosexuals try desperately to avoid admitting that Krazy Kat is gay.

The evidence is incontrovertible.  Cartoonist George Herriman always refers to Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse with the pronouns "he," "him," and "his," not to mention "Mr. Kat" and "Mr. Mouse."  I haven't read all 1500 strips, but I've read several hundred, and never once is Krazy Kat referred to with any feminine pronouns.  Krazy Kat is most definitely a male, experiencing same-sex desire.  He's gay.

Yet Gilbert Selden ("The Seven Lively Arts") and Robert Harvey ("The Art of the Comic Book") insist that Krazy's gender is indeterminate or ambiguous.

Gene Deitch ("The Comics Journal") calls Krazy a "he/she."

Martin Burgess ("The Comics Journal") says that Krazy is "always changing genders."

Miles Orville suggests that there is some ambiguity, but adds “for the sake of consistency, I am going to refer to Krazy as ‘she.’”

Poet E.E. Cummings, cartoonist Bill Watterson, and encyclopedist Ron Goulart have no qualms it: Krazy is a girl. Period.

A classic example of refusing to recognize same-sex desire even when it is hitting you in the head like a well-thrown brick.

When cornered, even cartoonist George Herriman backed off.  He was questioned about Krazy's gender, but not with homophobic disgust -- with honest confusion, in those days before the general public knew that gay people existed.  Wow could a male possibly desire another male?  It made no sense.

He responded that "The Kat can't be a he or a she.  The Kat's a spirit -- a pixie -- free to butt into anything.  Don't you think so?"

No.

No evidence that Herriman was gay, but he was hiding, of mixed race in the all-white world of newspaper cartooning.  He explained his dusky looks by claiming to be half Greek, and always wore a hat to hide his kinky hair.  He knew all about masks.

See also: Pogo, the Gay Possum of Okefenokee Swamp

The Clones of "Saved by the Bell"

During the 1990s, as advertisers were squabbling over the affluent teen market and cable stations were struggling to fill slots, Saved by the Bell-like teencoms appeared regularly: Welcome Freshmen (1991-92),  California Dreams (1992-97), Running the Halls (1993), Saved by the Bell: The New Class (1993-2000), Hang Time (1995-2000), Breaker High (1997-98), USA High (1997-99), City Guys (1997-2001).

The formula was easy: take six to eight beautiful people, three or four boys (schemer, hunk, nerd, and ethnic minority), three or four girls (cheerleader, feminist, princess, and ethnic minority).  Give all of the boys some tongue-lagging, eye-exploding girl-craziness, and all of the girls an obsession over boys.  Give them three sets: high school hallway, locker room, and teen hangout.  Add a clueless principal and an occasional parent, and voila!  The scripts write themselves (or actually, they can be recycled from  40-year old episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis).









In spite of the dull repetitiveness of the plots, gay teens might find them worth a look.

1. The shirtless, swimsuit, and speedo shots were constant, and the muscles often spectacular.  Even those teens who weren't man-mountains got their turn in the wrestling singlet.

Or found some other reason to take off their clothes.

2. Many of the high school hunks came in pairs, polarized into white/nonwhite or nerd/jock.  Breaker High was notable for having two homoromantic pairs: the nerd  Sean (Ryan Gosling) was paired with the schemer Jimmy (Tyler Labine); and the jock Max (Scott Vicaryous) was paired with the ethnic minority Alex (Kyle Alisharam).

These pairs often enjoyed emotional bonds much more intense than those of their knee-jerk heterosexual romances.  Plots often involved threats to their relationships.  For instance, on Breaker High, Alex and Max break up, and Jimmy jumps at the chance to befriend the hot jock.  But then he realizes where his true affections lie and returns to Sean.

But at the same time, they constantly patroled the boundaries of their relationship, evoking and rejecting the possibility of homoromance in joke after joke, episode after episode.  The studio audience usually responded with hysterical laughter: they knew exactly what was not being mentioned.

Beefcake, buddy-bonding, and borderline homophobia.  What else could a gay teen want from a Saturday morning teencom?

I Saw John Amos Naked

 

This post has been revised as John Amos: Kunta Kinte, Gordy the Weatherman, James Evans, a gay husband, and my gym buddy