Mickey Rooney: Gay-Vague Teen Hunk of the 1940s

Mickey Rooney, who died in 2014 at the age of 93, played elderly men for so long that it's hard to remember that once upon a time he was the biggest teen hunk  in Hollywood.

Born Joe Yule in 1920, Mickey got his start as "Mickey McGuire," a preteen rapscallion in a popular series of silent movie shorts. In the mid-1930s, he moved on to teenage dramas, many with the strong gay subtext common in the era.

In  Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), his rough street kid Dick falls in love -- quite literally -- with the upper-crust Ceddie (Freddie Barthlomew).

In The Devil is a Sissy (1936), his rough street kid Gig is torn between regular guy Buck (Jackie Cooper) and upper-crust Claude (Freddie Bartholomew).

In Captains Courageous (1937), his rough ship mate Dan falls in love wih upper crust Harvey (Freddie Bartholomew).

Audiences never tired of two teenage boys gazing into each other's eyes.

But Mickey -- and MGM -- hit paydirt with the Andy Hardy series, 16 movies (1937-1946) about a rambunctious small town teenager.  Who was girl-crazy, a new and bizarre characteristic for teens in mass media of the day (previously boys were expected to become interested in girls at the end of adolescence, not at the beginning).

At first parents and peers -- and audiences -- disapproved of Andy's interest in girls, thinking it made him effeminate (see my post What Kind of Flower Are You?) 

The producers countered by displaying Andy's muscles as much as possible.  He strips down for bed; he bounces down the stairs shirtless; he goes swimming, even in winter, and in a revealing Speedo-style swimsuit.  As much as 30% of each Andy Hardy movie is devoted to beefcake shots of Mickey's body and bulge.

Here Jackie Cooper (left) is a little more obviously bulgeworthy.

The strategy worked.  The Andy Hardy movies hit the top of the box office, and Mickey Rooney was named the most popular star in Hollywood three years in a row.

He also starred with Judy Garland in three popular movie musicals about kids winning or saving things by putting on a show. 

Plus he continued the male-bonding romances in Huckleberry Finn, Boystown, A Yank at Oxford and Men of Boystown.

Mickey Rooney was always nonchalant about gay people, even in the 1940s, perhaps because his own heterosexual interests were so very obvious, with nine wives and innumerable affairs. 

In the 1950s, when gay beefcake hunk Rock Hudson hit on him, he was bemused but not offended: "I like girls," he said.  "I thought everybody knew that."



Mickey Rooney kept working into his 90s, with starring roles in such movies as Wreck the Halls (2008) and The Empire State Building Murders (2008), and small but memorable roles in The Muppets (2011), Driving Me Crazy (2012), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2014).

Humphrey Bogart Comes Out of the Closet

I just watched Casablanca (1942) again, about a suave American exile in World War II Morocco who helps his ex-girlfriend and her husband escape the Nazis, and was impressed by:
1. The war intrigue.  It's as important as the hetero-romance.
2. The gay subtexts.  Every man in Casablanca is in love with Rick, and the fade-out scene shows Captain Renault offering to go away with him, as he quips "This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
3. The humor.  Humphrey Bogart tosses out sardonic one-liners with the ease of a Woody Allen.  He could easily have been a comedian.

Bogie was the most famous actor of his generation, winning five Oscars for 86 film roles, mostly as suave, sophisticated guys with troubled pasts and passionate hetero-romances.  Also strong gay subtexts, at least in the movies I've seen:

Dead End (1937): Baby-faced gangster (Bogie) and architect (Joel McCrea) compete for the body and soul of a teenage hood.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938): Same plot, only baby-faced gangster (James Cagney) and priest (Pat O'Brien).

The Maltese Falcon (1941): Detective Sam Spade (Bogie) wrests the mysterious statue from the hands of a gay criminal.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948):  Gold prospectors (Bogie, Tim Holt) get more than they bargained for.

Knock on Any Door (1949): Attorney Bogie is in love with his hunky young protege (John Derek, below).

I really should see Key Largo, The African Queen, The Caine Mutiny, Sabrina, The Barefoot Contessa, and We're No Angels.

There is also, apparently, a gay connection in real life.  Due to his lisp, sophistication, and feminine mannerisms, Bogie was often assumed gay.  Even if he wasn't, any male Hollywood star was bound to get lots of offers.  He rejected them with good-natured aplomb -- or, according to rumor, sometimes not.  After all, he had a prodigious sexual appetite, and even the most wealthy, talented, and attractive of heterosexual men sometimes has trouble finding enough women.  

The occasional guy amid his thousand or so women made Bogie wonder about his sexual identity, especially when he found himself impotent with second wife Mary Philips (1928-37).  Was he gay?  The thought filled him with self-loathing; he considered suicide.



Wait -- he had no problem with gay people, yet grew suicidal over the thought that he might personally be gay.  Something doesn't add up here.

This all comes from Darwin Porter's obviously fictionalized biography.  One doesn't find any references to Bogie being bisexual in earlier accounts of Hollywood "scandals."

But it's undeniable that Bogie was a gay ally -- or as allied as you could get in that era.  He frequented gay bars and had close friendships with gay men throughout his life, including Charles Farrell, Spencer Tracey, William Haines, Noel Coward, and even a young Truman Capote (who beat him at arm wrestling).

A life full of beautiful friendships.

10 Gay Things You Didn't Know about "White Christmas"

1. White Christmas is not about Christmas.  It's a backstage musical that just happens to end at Christmastime.  Backstage movies were well-known for gay subtexts.

2. The songs are by Irving Berlin, who looked good in a swimsuit.
















3. It's about two showbiz partners, Bob and Phil (Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye), who find their relationship threatened by women.

4. The women, Judy and Betty (Vera-Ellen, Rosemary Clooney), are sisters.  At least, they perform as sisters, although their numbers would work well in a drag act.

God help the mister, who comes between me and my sister
And God help the sister who comes between me and my man!

5. Bob and Phil perform as "sisters," too.

6. Rosemary Clooney was a gay icon and reputedly bisexual.

7. Early in his career, Bing Crosby was the roommate of gay jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke.

8. Danny Kaye was bisexual.  He had a long term romance with Sir Laurence Olivier.

9. He played gay fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Anderson, whose psychiatrist coined the word "homosexual."

10. John Brascia was in the cast as a "special dancer."  You can see his physique, and his bulge, in several numbers.  As far as I can determine, he didn't have any gay rumors.

The Blonde Phantom and the Hunk in Distress

With the glut of superheroes during World War II, comic book companies were experimenting with new types of characters.  DC had Wonder Woman, so Marvel got the Blonde Phantom.

Louise Grant is the secretary to private detective Mark Mason, but he stumbles into so much trouble that she has to get him out, so she adopts the Blue Phantom persona.  She doesn't have superpowers; she is more of a masked vigilante, like Batman. 

She is romantically interested in Mark -- what secretary in 1940s fiction wasn't into her boss?  But Mark is more interested in the Blonde Phantom.

The duo first appeared in All-Select Comics in 1943, and soon spun off into their own series, which ran for 11 issues (1943-1947).  They also appeared as supporting features in Marvel Mystery Comics, Sub-Mariner Comics, and elsewhere through 1949.  Then they were forgotten.

In some 1989 issues of She-Hulk, they are retrofitted: it appears that they married in 1949, Louise retired from phantoming, and they raised a daughter, Mason, who became the second Blonde Phantom.



You're probably wondering what this overtly heterosexual relationship is doing in Boomer's Beefcake and Bonding:

1. Mark Mason as hunk-in-distress is rather gender-bending.

2. Do you want to see him with his shirt off again?

Steve Cochran: All Man

The Internet Movie Database tells us that Steve Cochran (1917-1965) was "all man," by which they mean "not gay." As evidence:
1. He grew up in Wyoming
2. He was kicked off his college basketball team for hanging out with  ladies.
3. He worked as a cowboy before getting his start in Hollywood.
4. He had a very, very, very hairy chest.
5. He had a very, very, very large penis (ok, that one's not from the IMDB).
6. He mostly played villains and gangsters.
7. He had sex with lots of  ladies.

8. He was married three times.
9. He died while on a boating trip with an all-girl crew.

#1-9 don't necessarily require heterosexual identity. And there's more:

The Chase (1945). He plays Eddie Roman, a gangster who is betrayed by his chauffeur/gunsel Chuck Scott (Bob Cummings).

White Heat (1949): He plays Big Ed, the sidekick/gunsel who betrays volatile boyfriend Cody (James Cagney).

Private Hell 36 (1954): detective buddies (Steve, Howard Duff, top photo) steal money, and count it while shirtless. The headless lady is Ida Lupino.

I haven't seen any of Steve's other films, but film noir often included a hint of homoerotic desire between the gangsters.

Then there's The Beat Generation (1959), which has nothing to do with the literary movement of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; in search of a serial rapist, detective Steve immerses himself in the seedy, decadent, gay-vague world of the Beatniks.  Sort of like Al Pacino's descent into the "gay world" in  Cruising twenty years later.

Even someone who is "all man" invariably has a gay subtext or two somewhere in his career.

You'd Be Perfect for My Grandson: Inner Sanctum

Authorial intent is not necessary for a gay subtext, but since about 1980, subtexts have usually been the result of actors, directors, or writers recognizing the gay potential in ostensibly heterosexual characters, and playing into it.  Before 1980, subtexts were usually the result of of actors, directors, or writers being unaware that same-sex desire, behavior, or romance existed.  Sometimes they were so utterly ignorant that it is mind-boggling.

Inner Sanctum (1948) is a thriller about an ordinary man, Harold Dunlap (Charles Russell), who accidentally kills his fiancee during an argument at a train station, then goes on the lam in a small town.  He ends up at a boarding house run by the elderly Thelma Mitchell (Nana Bryant) and occupied by the usual colorful small-town characters: a drunk, a failed doctor, a busybody, a sultry seductress -- and Thelma's daughter and grandson. Mike (Dale Belding) is a teenager who desperately wants to escape his small town hell -- and looks heavily embarrassed at being forced to wear a little kid's whirly-top beanie.

When Harold arrives, Thelma aggressively tries to push him into having sex with her grandson: "Oh, you must meet Mike!  Oh, you're just the kind of man he needs!  You must stay in his room tonight!"  Apprised that Mike's room has only a small single bed, she grins knowingly: "Oh, they'll manage!"

But she relents and permits a second rollaway bed to be installed.

I can't think of a good "real" explanation for Thelma's giddy match-making. A masculine role model?

Once they are in the bedroom, Harold undresses, giving us chest and basket shots unusual in film noir.  Mike stares wide-eyed.

"You want to see me with my shirt off?" Harold asks. Mike nods. "Well, come on, have a look."  Mike moves across the room, sits next to the underwear-clad Harold, and examines his muscles.

Ok, maybe Mike saw the accident earlier, and he wants to examine Harold's muscles to see if there's a telltale scar. But it looks very much like a gay teenager negotiating a crush on an older man.

Harold realizes that Mike knows too much, and decides to kill him.  As they struggle, the tenants downstairs hear curious bumping noises from the bedroom, and wonder what's going on.  "Oh, I'm sure they're all right," Thelma says with her knowing grin.

I have no "real" explanation for what she thinks is going on.

The movie ends with Mike saved and Harold turning himself in, and viewers scratching their heads, asking "Was it possible for anyone to be so completely unaware, even in 1948?"

Maybe not.  There's not much information on Charles Russell or Dale Belding, but Nana Bryant, a seasoned theatrical actress, was certainly aware of the existence of gay people, and director Lew Landers often made movies with homoerotic subtexts.

You can watch the entire movie on youtube.

Superhero Sidekicks in Bondage

Pulp magazine covers often featured a woman drawn in the style collectors called GGA or Good Girl Art, tied to something and about to be murdered or violated by a drooling villain, while the hero rushes to the rescue.  But in superhero comics of the 1940s, the teenage sidekick was either tied next to the GGA woman, or else tied up all alone, and while GBA is not an official comic book term, his muscles were displayed quite as prominently as her breasts, providing hours of fun and excitement for gay kids of the pre-Boomer generation.


The Human Torch’s sidekick Toro, nearly-naked, muscles straining, chest heaving, is tied spread-eagle in the path of a tank , tied to the barrel of a cannon, or being lowered into a buzz-saw machine.

 3 of the first 10 covers of Detective Comics after the introduction of Robin, and nine of the first thirty, feature a surprisingly fit Boy Wonder tied up and about to stabbed, shot, drowned, or otherwise violated, while Batman rushes to the rescue.

As World War II progressed, many other superhero comics followed suit. The magazine racks of every drugstore were overflowing with images of superheroes rushing to the rescue of bound-and-threatened GBA sidekicks.

Captain America rescues Bucky in eight of the first ten covers of his comic book, and fully half of the first thirty.  Bucky is often (but not always) drawn as a muscular teenager, and his green-skinned, fairy-tale ogre captors have devised much more creative methods of execution than Robin’s.  He is strapped to an operating table next to a monster, while a leering Nazi doctor prepares an injection; mummified and threatened with an Iron Maiden.

He is hanging from his wrists and threatened by hot coals; in a cemetery, about to be buried alive; thrown overboard with a 500-pound weight around his neck; strapped to a table while a bed of spikes lowers onto him.

Roy the Super Boy, his massive chest jutting out of his red-and-white striped shirt, is tied to a rocket about to be launched into space, or about to be doused with nitroglycerin and ignited, while his superhero, the Wizard, rushes to the rescue.

Dusty the Boy Detective, in a skin-tight blue costume, is about to be stabbed, or tied to a runaway jeep.

The Black Terror's sidekick Tim is tied up, muscles straining in GBA form, about to be run over by a jeep, castrated by a buzzsaw, executed by a Nazi firing squad, or used for archery practice by a weird cult.

Comic books and pulps were not alone in featuring attractive people tied to things and about to be violated in sexually symbolic ways. Men were rescuing women everywhere, in order to create suspense and clarify the emotional investment of rescuer and rescued, who finally realize how much they care for each other.  The woman generally reacts to the narrow escape by melting into the man’s arms for a fade-out kiss.

But superhero comics presented boy instead of girl bondage threats, identifying the teen sidekick as an alternative to the spunky girl-reporter as an object of desire. The comic book superhero and sidekick walked into the sunset together through the War and for several years afterwards, but by the 1950s, Robin, Buddy, and Bucky had surrendered to girl-craziness or retired.

The Gay World of Frank Sinatra

The first teen idol, Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) had bobby-soxers and gay greasers swooning  with syrupy-voiced romantic ballads like "Night and Day" (1942), "Begin the Beguine" (1946), and "I've Got a Crush on You" (1948).  















Like all teen idols, his fan base aged with him, so by the late 1950s, his songs had become "old favorites," the songs middle-aged couples danced to while they reminisced about when they first met: "My Blue Heaven" (1961), "I Love Paris" (1962), "It Was a Very Good Year" (1965)

By that time, he was making a splash in Hollywood, as the romantic lead in buddy musicals like Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), and Guys and Dolls (1955), in serious dramas like From Here to Eternity (1953), The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), and Von Ryan's Express (1965).

By the 1960s, he had re-invented himself as a fast-talking middle-aged sharpie who loved the fast life and had connections with disreputable types.  He played parodies of himself in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), Tony Rome (1967), and The Detective (1968), which apparently contains some savage homophobia, even by 1960s standards.








He was also in Las Vegas, singing, boozing, and clowning around with the fabled Rat Pack: Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop.



















He continued to perform though the 1980s, although more and more often as a relic of the past, an American institution whose work was revered rather than enjoyed.  His last studio album, released in 1994, included "Come Fly with Me," "The Best is Yet to Come," "Embraceable You," and "My Funny Valentine."  One imagines that the elderly couples who first danced to his songs as teenagers fifty years before were sitting on rocking chairs, reminiscing.

The gay connection: Frank was quite homophobic in real life, but he had strong emotional ties with the mostly-bisexual Rat Pack, he starred in many gay-subtext movies, like On the Town, and his daughter Nancy Sinatra is a gay ally.  She tweets: "Tell me if you are homophobic and I will unfollow you.  Don't like bigots."

See also: The Gay Rat Pack; On the Town

The Man on the Flying Trapeze: William Saroyan

During my first year in college, the drama club performed The Time of Your Life (1939), William Saroyan's Pulitzer-prize winning play about the lost and wounded denizens of a seedy San Francisco bar.  Every one of them expressed some type of heterosexual interest, with one exception: Willie, a teenage pinball player.  During the 1970s, all teenagers in mass media were portrayed as churning cauldrons of heterosexual horniness, but Willie never once looked at or mentioned a girl.

I didn't usually care for the heterosexism of Modern American Literature, but I tentatively sought out the other works of William Saroyan (1908-1981), and found melancholy stories about working-class Armenian immigrants in California, mostly with crushed dreams or memories of past glory.

And endless homoromantic subtexts.

My Name is Aram (1940). Aram grows from age 9 to young adulthood without ever falling for a girl, though he is drawn to many men and boys, including his best friend Panko and his beautiful cousin Dikran.

There is even a veiled reference to gay people. In one story, his Uncle Melik, about to travel by train from Fresno to New York, receives advice from his own uncle:  "An amiable young man will offer you a cigarette.   It will be doped." On the train, Melik waits for the cigarette offer, but it never comes, so he takes the initiative and offers a young man a cigarette.  They become friends.

The Human Comedy (1943).  Teenage Homer has a job delivering telegrams during the War, mostly about soldiers who have died; but he doesn't have to deliver the telegram about his older brother Marcus, because Tobey arrives, who knew Marcus "better than anyone in the world," to tell the family.

Meanwhile, though Homer gazes at a "beautiful girl," he finds solace in the eyes of men.

In the 1943 movie version, the actors who portrayed Marcus and Tobey, Van Johnson (left) and John Craven, were both gay.

"The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (1935): he doesn't really fly on a trapeze.  He is dying, with no women among his dying thoughts.  Instead : he remembered the young Italian in a Brooklyn hospital, a small sick clerk named Mollica, who had said desperately, I would like to see California once before I die."

On and on, a world where coming of age does not mean "sex with an older woman," where death does not mean "letting go of the faces of women," where life is big and dangerous and sad and lived among men.

Saroyan, by the way, had some ties to the post-War gay community.  He frequented the Black Cat Bar in San Francisco, became friends with gay director Vicente Minelli (they collaborated on a musical together), and in 1955, a radio biography starred gay actor Sal Mineo.

Borden's Elsie: Alpha Bull Dad and Gay Son

Sometimes when we were visiting my Grandma Davis in Indiana, my brother and I got permission to go up into the attic and browse through her piles of old magazines. Good Housekeeping, Saturday Evening Post, Grit...nothing really exciting, but we liked to marvel at the craziness of the past.

One day we stumbled upon a series of illustrated stories from the 1940s starring Elsie the Cow, the mascot for Borden's Milk.

Wait -- was this cow selling the milk that came from her body?  Disgusting!  And who would name it "Hemo," after blood?

The stories were about a battle of the sexes between housewife Elsie and her alpha-male bull spouse, Elmer, with an incredibly sexist passive-aggressive vibe and the hint of violence:

"But Elmer, all the answers in the book can't be wrong!"
"I'm not trying to turn the child against you, darling!"
"Why do men lose their temper more easily than men?"
"It's possible to kill a wife with kindness, dear."

Was this an idealization of the 1940s nuclear family, or a critique?

Borden created a whole back story for the cow couple, including a teenage daughter, Beulah, a mischievous son, Beauregard, and infant twins.  Stories of their domestic life appeared through the 1940s, and for the kids, there was a 1950s comic book series.  And so many advertising tie-ins that there's a whole book devoted to them.

Elmer the Bull, future mascot for Elmer's Glue, was blustering but, oddly, sexy.  He was naked though his family wore clothes.  He had thick bull-muscles.  And, most provocatively, his sex organs were coyly obstructed. I had seen bulls on the farm -- I knew what was being hidden.

Beauregard was a general mischief maker, but he also had some gender-transgressive qualities that lent him some gay symbolism.  Here he seems to be trying on green lipstick and hair dye.

In the 1950s comic books, he's a teenager, and also rather muscular.

By now I imagine he looks something like this.

(Image borrowed from Roberto Linares on YGallery).

See also: Grit

On the Town: Three Sailors on Leave in a Gay City

Long before I ever visited New York City, I learned all about the Battery, the Bronx, the Empire State Building, Central Park, subways, seltzer, and delis.  Like Los Angeles, it was a magical place, gleaming with steel and glass, where you could escape the constant "what girl do you like?" litany of the adults.

I learned all that through tv programs like That Girl and The Odd Couple, and through movies like On the Town (1949).

Based on a 1944 Broadway musical scored by gay composer Leonard Bernstein, On the Town follows the adventures of three sailors on leave in New York City before they ship out: the naive Gabey (dance master Gene Kelly), the fast-talking Chip (future Rat Pack singer Frank Sinatra), and the dopey Ozzie (comic relief Jules Munshin). They just have 24 hours, and they want to see and do everything, especially meet girls.

Then Gabey falls in love with a girl on a poster, Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), mistakenly thinking she's a famous actress.

So his friends obligingly give up their plans to help Gabey track her down.

They give up their plans to help a buddy?  Anytime a same-sex friendship trumps the quest for hetero-romance, you have some significant gay symbolism.

During the madcap scavenger hunt, female cabbie  Hildy (Betty Garrett) aggressively courts Chip ("Come back to my place!").

Ozzie is courted by anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller), whose mentor thinks she's a lesbian, uninterested in men; actually, she just prefers the big, brawny type ("Give me a prehistoric man!").

And Gabey catches the eye of  the gawky Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce).

Butch, aggressive women chasing unwilling, feminine-coded men: the gender atypicality gives the musical even more gay symbolism.

And even more: all of them become friends, boys and girls both -- when was the last time you saw a platonic male-female friendship in a musical?

They all help Gabey search.  When he becomes despondent, they all invite him to "Count on me."  

Gabey eventually meets the Girl, and the "three couples" share a final song and a kiss.  But there's no marriage and children: when the 24 hours ends, the three sailors head back to their ship.  Hildy, Claire, and Iris wave goodbye.

But they're not alone.  Strangers yesterday, the three women have found each other.

This movie is not about hetero-romance at all.  It's about friendship.  That's what makes it a gay classic.

Plus the energetic dance numbers, the gay connections of actresses Betty Garrett and Alice Pearce, and New York City, the most important character, brimming with light and color.  No wonder the posters call it "Twice as gay as Anchors Aweigh."

The original musical is a favorite of high school and college drama departments.  Not a lot of beefcake, but Tony Yazbeck dances shirtless in the Broadway revival.

The Life of Riley: Bullying Boys into Girl-Craziness

Before World War II, teenage boys were expected to be concerned with the gang, or with one special pal, and think of girls as "poison."  Those boys who expressed an interest in girls prior to graduating from high school were ridiculed by their peers as pansies and Percies, evaluated by school psychologists, and subjected to tense heart-to-heart talks with their parents.

But after the War, the image of the adolescent masculinity shifted from "woman-hating" to "girl-crazy," and some of the long-running radio teenagers who had previously been concerned solely with paper routes and bad report cards suddenly began casting longing glances at their female schoolmates.  You can find the exact date: Chester Riley’s son Junior (Scotty Beckett) on  Life of Riley in January 1948; The Great Gildersleeve’s wisecracking nephew Leroy (Walter Tetley) in March 1949; and Ozzie and Harriet’s eldest son David Nelson in November 1951

Left and below: in 1948, MGM arranged for  Scotty Beckett (later Corky of Gasoline Alley) and his friend Roddy McDowall to go on a "see, they're not gay!" double date with Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Powell, but they seem to have ended up cuddling with each other.

The teenage boy had to be bullied, cajoled, and if necessary forced into girl-craziness; it could not be taken for granted.

In the January 1948 episode of The Life of Riley, for instance, blustering working-class family man  Chester (William Bendix) is horrified to discover that his fifteen-year old son, Junior, plans to bring a boy to the big New Year’s Eve dance.

He tries to explain about “the birds and bees,” sexual difference, but Junior insists that he already knows about “all that jazz.”

So Chester puts his foot down: there are “boy people” and “girl people,” he argues, and “boy people” should only take “girl people” to dances.  “Don’t you like girls?” he asks in a timid, hesitant voice, afraid of the possible answer.

When Junior admits that he likes girls “sometimes,” Chester takes charge, forcing the boy to break his same-sex date and telephone the boss’s daughter.  She is noncommital, so Chester forces him to call the offspring of another VIP (resulting, of course, in two dates for the dance, both impossible to break).  He is as hysterical in his insistence that Junior should like girls as fathers of the pre-War generation were hysterical in their insistence that their teenage sons should not.

Chester continued trying to "encourage" his son into girl-craziness when the show moved onto television, and Scotty Beckett was replaced by Lanny Reese (above) and even the obviously-grown up Wesley Morgan (left).