Was Dr. Smith Gay?

Millions of Baby Boomers know exactly who Dr. Smith was: the foil/ pain in the neck/ comic relief on the iconic sci-fi series Lost in Space (1965-68).

A nuclear family (Mom, Dad, teenage girl, preteen boy and girl), blasts off into space to colonize Alpha Centauri (how are they planning to increase the population?)

Enemy spy Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) tries to sabotage the ship, so it won't reach its destination -- instead it will be Lost in Space.  But he is accidentally  trapped aboard.

How on Earth is he going to be redeemed after that?

Easy -- the writers just forget about it, transforming him from evil to a pain in the neck, occasionally helpful ("I'll negotiate with the aliens"), occasionally devious ("I'll sell you the boy in exchange for passage home"), but usually just annoying ("I'm much too fragile to do any work!").   A vain, prissy, glutonous, lazy, self-centered uncontrolled id. 

Also the most interesting character amid the squeaky-clean Robinsons (quick -- name two character traits of the teenage daughter).

Dr. Smith spends a lot of time with preteen Will Robinson (Billy Mumy), whom he hugs, grabs theshoulder of, and calls "my boy."  Thus leading to speculation that he was gay.

Maybe, but he certainly wasn't in a gay-subtext relationship with Will.

An adult and a child can't have a gay subtext relationship, because the tropes of the parental relationship would overpower it.  Imagine man and boy walking off into the sunset together at the end of the adventure -- the man is going to adopt the boy, not marry him. 

 For a gay subtext, the two need to be in the same age category: both kids, adolescents, or adults.  Maybe an adult and a late adolescent, like the superhero and his teen sidekick. 

Well, did he have another sort of interest in Will?  Was he a pedophile?

Obviously not intentionally, but did some sort of pedophile subtext arise from the actors' interactions? 

Nope.  No way.  Dr. Smith never expresses any erotic or romantic interest in Will (or in anyone else except an occasional middle-aged alien lady, and then only when he is trying to get something, like dilithium crystals or whatever they use to propel the ship). 

He puts his hands on Will for protection, not affection.  He calls him "my boy" to signify pretentiousness, not possession.

By the way, Will expresses no romantic or erotic interest in anyone during the course of the series.  He's a little boy looking for a playmate, and Dr. Smith is the only member of the crew who isn't a girl (girls!  gross!) or busy with important scientific duties. Who else is he going to befriend?

You'll have to look elsewhere for a sexual theme on Lost in Space.  Let's talk about John Robinson (Guy Williams) and Don West (Mark Goddard).  Which was gay in real life?  I'm not telling.

Threatened and Threatening Gay Kids

The early 1960s were all about children.  Two of three households in the United States contained children under age 18.  Entire neighborhoods were occupied by families with young children, with occasional elderly or childless couples (adults who lived alone were practically unheard of, and suspect).

31% of the U.S. population was under the age of fifteen, and 12% was under age five.   There were more elementary and high school students than ever before in history, and the number was increasing every year.  There were 1,393,000 teachers and 64,000 principals, the highest number ever.   Educational theory was big business.

The mental and emotional health of children was also a big business. Childhood was laden with infinite perils.  One false move -- a word said or left unsaid, a punishment too lenient or too severe, a hug or the lack of a hug, a school trip forbidden or allowed -- and the child would be sent careening into homicidal madness, or turn gay (which, in the mindset of the 1960s, was about the same thing).

Many movies and tv programs of the era involved kids with an aberrant sexuality being threatened or threatening the adults.

On a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone, Billy Mumy, soon to star on Lost in Space, plays a boy who can do anything.  What he does is  force people to obey his every whim.  Rebellion results in symbolic castration or death.  "You had him!" one of the townsfolk complains to his mother before trying to kill him. "You had to go and have him!"  

In Let’s Kill Uncle (1966), oddball outsider (that is, gay) Barnaby Harrison (Pat Cardi, who would go on to star on It's About Time) is heir to the family fortune, so his evil uncle tries to kill him.  Since no adults believe him, he fights back in the only way he can think of: he and a gal pal try to kill Uncle back.

The Gay Rights Movement didn't change the myth of the evil gay kid.  By the 1970s, threatening or threatened aberrant sexuality was everywhere. Lee H. Montgomery and Mark Lester made their careers playing sexual outsiders who plot murder or are murder victims.

In Bad Ronald (1974) Scott Jacoby plays a mother-obsessed (that is, gay) sexual outsider who wants a girlfriend, but nevertheless kidnaps and fondles the hunky Duane (Teddy Eccles).

In The Kid and the Killers (1974), oddball outsider (that is, gay) Miguel (Gerry Ross) wants revenge on the men who killed his sister, so he approaches a bounty hunter named Roper (Jon Cypher). After torturing and trying to kill him, Roper agrees to help, but his disgust at Miguel's increasingly overt displays of homoerotic interest almost compels him to abandon the mission.

Sausage Sighting of Billy Mumy and Jon Bon Jovi

Hi, Boomer,

This is Jeremy, Infinite Chazz's partner.  I saw Bill Mumy on your hookup wishlist.  I hope this is what you were looking for:

Summer 1991!  There has never been another summer like it.  Paula Abdul was at the top of the charts, Michael J. Fox and Keanu Reeves were at the top of the box office, and everyone was glued to the tv, wondering who killed Laura Palmer on Twin Peaks. 

I was a 21 year old undergrad at Florida State, studying philosophy of all things, and I landed the best summer job of all time -- an internship at Universal Studios in Orlando, where I became a gopher and script boy for the Superboy series!

It was about a college-age Clark Kent studying journalism at Shuster University.  Played by Gerard Christopher, aka Jerry Dinome, 30 years old, a strong romantic-lead type, a former physique model, tall, tanned, and buffed, with a bulge that wouldn't quit.  Hot!



I sidled up to Gerard, bringing him coffee and bagels, telling him that I wanted to be an actor (I actually didn't), trying to tease out whether he was gay or not -- and more importantly, whether he was into 21-year old philosophy majors!

Season 4 began with a two-parter (aired October 6th and 13th, 1991), in which Superboy runs afoul of Adam Verrel (Michael Des Barres), a stereotypic British-sophisticate villain.  Hey, I didn't write this stuff.

 Adam blackmails eccentric inventor Tommy Puck (Bill Mumy) into creating a super-weapon to take Superboy down.

Michael Des Barres was big, bold, and flamboyant, an androgynous glam rocker who had his own band in the 1970s, and had since performed with everyone from Blondie to Duran Duran.  He was newly divorced but still friends with Pamela Des Barres, quintessential groupie whose tell-all book,  I'm with the Band (1987), details wild nights of sex wilth everyone from Don Johnson to Mick Jagger.

Unabashedly bisexual, or I guess pansexual -- he liked sex, period.  And rather aggressively into me, with the hand on shoulder and accidentally-brushing-the-bum bits.  He wasn't at all my type, so I just kind of ignored him.

Bill Mumy was quiet, a little more reserved.  I never saw Lost in Space: I knew him from the old Twilight Zone episode where he plays a kid with eerie superpowers, and from his musical group Barnes and Barnes:  "Fish Heads" on the Doctor Demento radio show.

He was skinny, almost gaunt, with a long face and crazy hair, not really my type. 

Also rather conservative; Michael and Gerard went out drinking and "raising hell" after the table read, but Bill went back to his hotel to call his wife on the telephone.

We shot for two weeks.  During the last day, Michael wrapped his arm around my shoulders and said "Gerard and Bill and I are popping down to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow for a quiet little gathering at my mate Tico's house.  It's an overnight. Fancy coming along?"

An overnight party would certainly mean sharing Michael's bed.  But Gerard would be there, too -- showering, going to the beach, stripping down, all of those things that could lead to male-bonding and hand jobs.  Maybe I could convince Michael to "share"!  So I agreed.


Some quiet little gathering!  Tico turned out to be the drummer for Bon Jovi, and he had this marvelous five-bedroom house near the beach in Wilton Manors, the gay neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale.  He wasn't gay -- he had a live in girlfriend -- but half the guests were gay men.

The other half were famous musicians -- Jon Bon Jovi, George Michael, Blondie, Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue!

The rest of the story, with nude photos and explicit sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Lost in Space

I don't remember the first season of Lost in Space (1965-68), when the family of colonists -- waylaid en route to Alpha Centauri was having realistic science fiction adventures.  I only remember the last two seasons, where they were mostly crashed on a studio backlot, wandering around in bright pink and lavender jumpsuits, and encountering:

A lonely boy from the other side of the looking-glass (played by Michael J. Pollard).
An intergalactic zookeeper who wants them as specimens
The contestants in a Miss Galaxy pageant
A giant talking carrot

It wasn't exactly Star Trek -- well, the Star Trek episode with the space hippies was almost as bad -- but it was fun. What kid in the 1960s didn't want to be lost in space with the Robinsons?

Whatever you were interested in, there was someone for you on Lost in Space. Kids liked Billy Mumy, a busy child star with previous roles on The Twilight Zone and Village of the Giants (and later on Bless the Beasts and Children). Not only because he was cute, and knew it, getting teen idol attention at the age of twelve -- but because his character, Will Robinson, was bright and resourceful, a respected crew member, never told "you're just a kid" or "wait here where it's safe."

And Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), an accidental stowaway who provided comic relief.  He was a big kid, an unrestrained id, gluttonous, lazy, cowardly,  incompetent -- and flamboyantly feminine.  The unabashed friendship between a young boy and an older man assumed to be gay was quite progressive in an era where gay men were often accused of being pedophiles.      

Adults liked John Robinson, the patriarch of the family (Guy Williams), who also didn't seem much interested in girls.  He had a wife, Maureen (June Lockhart), but they behaved like colleagues, with few moments of tenderness and none of intimacy.  Guy Williams had previously starred in several buddy-bonding projects, including Zorro (1957-59) and Damon and Pythias (1962).

Teens liked Don West (Mark Goddard), the resolute, non-nonsense pilot (previously seen in The Monkey's Uncle with Tommy Kirk).  Since the spaceship was crashed through most of the series, he didn't have a lot to do, and we didn't find out much about him except that he was dreamy, and not interested in girls. In early episodes, he had a romantic involvement with the older Robinson daughter, Judy (Marta Kristen), but soon it was dropped and forgotten about.

Unfortunately, the female crewmembers had even less to do than Don West.  Maureen was a respected biochemist, but she was relegated to cooking and saying "Be careful."  Judy helped her mother cook.  The youngest daughter, Penny (Angela Cartwright, previously of Make Room for Daddy), had a few adventures, mostly involving adopting weird alien animals.

There was a bit of buddy-bonding, as in the episode "The Challenge" (1966), when Kurt Russell guest stars as an alien warrior.  There was an occasional shot of a muscular alien.  But the main draw for gay kids was the boy adventurer and his flamboyant pal.

Fabian Forte at the Beach

Born in 1943, Fabian (he didn't need a last name) was a superstar by age 16.  He was a competent singer, but in a market flooded by teen singers, it was his curly hair, heavy-lidded gaze, and buffed physique that sold his records.  He practically created the teen magazine market, with beefcake pinups boosting the sales of Teen Magazine, Teen Live, Teen Illustrated, and many others.  He even got his own magazine, Fabian: Boy of Mystery.  

After his film debut in Hound Dog Man (1959), buddy bonding with Stuart Whitman, Fabian played androgynous, gay-vague, girl-crazy teens against any number of men's men: Robert Mitchum, Bing Crosby, Stewart Granger, John Wayne.

Surrounding a fey teen idol with all that brawn created a problem: the boy simply did not seem straight, in spite of his girl-ogling, especially when he sang.  So, when Henry Koester directed Fabian, he simply gave up.  

Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) has Fabian on stage for about five minutes, long enough to dance with Jimmy Stewart's daughter and sing "Cream Puff."

He gets slightly more screen time in Dear Brigitte (1965), but no songs, and though he buddies around with Jimmy Stewart's next daughter, he is never identified as her boyfriend and never gets physical with her.  Instead, his part of the plot involves exploiting math prodigy Erasmus Leaf (Billy Mumy) for capitalist gain.

Ride the Wild Surf (1964) capitalizes on the star's androgyny.  College student Jody (Fabian) hits Hawaii's North Shore with his buddies Steamer (Tab Hunter) and Chase (Peter Brown), to surf amid crowds of male surfers and spectators (only a few girls). Surfing becomes intensely homoerotic spectacle: they stand, their power distilled into a sharp thrust of surfboard, and explode toward the shore, all bronze chests and thick biceps, war-whooping a triumph over the elements that has nothing to do with heterosexist civilization.

Should Jody stay in Hawaii forever, luxuriating in the male beauty, living as a beach bum, or get a girl, go back to college, and settle for the staid heterosexist future of wife, kids, job, and house?  You know how it will end -- he picks the girl. Yet there is no fade out boy-girl kiss: Jody wins a surfing contest and is enveloped by his jubilant buddies, all hugging and hollering, a solid mass of men as the camera pans out to a wide-angle shot of surf and sky.

Fabian continued to act through the 1960s and 1970s, starring in Fireball 500  and Thunder Alley with Frankie Avalon, in an adaption of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, in a cautionary tale about the dangers of marijuana.  And he continued to display his physique, including nude shots in Playgirl.  

You can see the nude photos on Tales of West Hollywood.

Today he is still performing, based out of Branson, Missouri.

Beach Movies 2: The Duds

Between 1963 and 1967, AIP churned out a dozen Frankie-and-Annette beach movies that emphasized biceps over bikinis and buddy-bonding over hetero-romance.  Other studios followed suit, but they were not nearly as eager to expose male muscle.  Where the Boys Are, Beach Ball, Palm Springs Weekend, and many others paired girls in bikinis with boys who were fully clothed.  The swimming pool scene in C'mon, Let's Live a Little featured six mostly naked girls and one fully-clothed boy.

Nor were there substantial gay subtexts.  Instead of plotlines about boys choosing buddies over The Girl, they involved boys abandoning buddies in search of The Girl.

For instance, Palms Springs Weekend (1963), is over-loaded with hetero-romance.  Overaged college buddies Jim (Troy Donohue) and Biff (Jerry Van Dyke) visit the desert resort, where they try to get with the police chief's daughter (Stefanie Powers) and a shy wallflower (Zeme North), respectively.

Meanwhile, high schooler Gayle (1960s it-girl Connie Stevens), posing as a college student, gets hit on by spoiled rich kid Eric (Robert Conrad, star of Hawaii Five-0) and tries to get with a cowboy named Stretch (Ty Hardin, a discovery of gay talent agent Henry Willson). 

Not enough hetero-romance?  Ok.  The boys' basketball coach (Jack Weston) comes along as a chaperon, and tries to get with the owner of the hotel they're staying in (Carole Cooke), but he's stymied by her rambunctious young son, Boom-Boom (Billy Mumy of Lost in Space).  Yes, there's a kid named Boom-Boom.

There are also some hunky basketball players in the background, played by Greg Benedict, Gary Kincaid, Mark Dempsey, and the last of the Henry Willson discoveries, Jim Shane (left).

With all of the competition over girls and ruminations over girls, there must be some gay-subtext triangulations somewhere.  But I couldn't find any.

The whole movie is a dud.  Leads you to wonder what made the AIP beach movies so beefcake- and subtext-heavy.

See also: Buster Keaton

Bless the Beasts and Children

When I was a kid, our church forbade going to movies, but a combination of factors (a babysitting uncle, an adventurous friend, increased freedom) led to me seeing a lot during the summer and fall of 1971: The Million Dollar Duck, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Omega Man, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, and Bless the Beasts and Children, an early example of the "shirtless teens working together" genre (others include Toy Soldiers, White Water Summer, and White Squall). But I found it painful to watch, and I haven't seen it since.

It stars a group of misfit teens at a summer camp, bullied by the others, ostracized as "The Bedwetters." They all have problems with distant, abusive, over-achieving, or absent parents (another of the establishment vs. youth plotlines of the hippie generation).
Counselor Cotton (Barry Robins, center)
Violent juvenile delinquent Teft (Billy Mumy of The Twilight Zone and Lost in Space).
Overweight Shecker (Miles Chapin, right)






The antisocial brothers Lally 1 (Marc Vahanian, right) and Lally 2 (Bob Kramer)
Shy, introverted Goodenow (Darel Glaser)

When they discover that a herd of buffalo at a nearby preserve will be hunted and killed, the Bedwetters decide to take action.  In 1971, during the heart of the Vietnam War, we couldn't miss the parallel between hunting buffalo and the parents' attempts to destroy the boys.

There is some buddy-bonding between Cotton and Teft, but usually the boys act as a group.

They even sleep together in a mass of entwined bodies.

The boys in Bless the Beasts and Children are not nearly as muscular as those in White Squall or Toy Soldiers; they are children, soft and vulnerable, in need of protection and nurturing, not objects of desire.

The many shirtless and semi-nude shots -- underwear so revealing that you literally see everything -- have been criticized as inappropriately erotic, but actually they add to the sadness of the movie. We see not only who the boys are now, but who they could become -- strong, powerful, potent -- endless human potential destroyed.

Only Bill Mumy and Marc Vahanian are still active in show business (Bill primarily as a singer). Barry Robins, who was gay in real life, died in 1986.  Miles Chapin is now an environmental activist and writer.

Bill Mumy's Music

As a kid, Billy Mumy was everywhere, on The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Ozzie and Harriet, Bewitched, The Munsters.  But Boomers remember him most clearly as Will Robinson on Lost in Space (1965-68), zapping through the universe with his family, facing campy monsters who growled "Crush! Kill!  Destroy!" while the Robot boomed "Danger, Will Robinson!"

And by the way: no episode suggested, in context or subtext, that the hedonistic stowaway Dr. Smith had any erotic intentions toward  the preteen.  They bonded because Dr. Smith was really just a big kid himself.

Boomers followed Bill's post-Lost in Space career with interest.

His homoromantic buddy-bonding (and extended underwear shots) in Wild in the Streets (1968) and Bless the Beasts and Children (1971).

His voice-over work.

His work in science fiction, especially as the alien Lennier on Babylon Five.

His musical career.

As half of the comedy-song duo "Barnes & Barnes," he authored the classics "Fish Heads" and "Homophobic Dream," plus the infinitely risque "Party in My Pants" and "Swallow My Love."

Still, heterosexism intrudes.

Bill wrote the Eclipse comic book version of Lost in Space, which ages Will's two sisters into adulthood, gives them enormous breasts, and places them in seductive positions.





His solo lyrics are loaded down with references to "girls" and "girlfriends" and "wives" and the women who bring meaning to our lives.

"The Ballad of William Robinson" imagines that thirty years have passed and Will Robinson and family are still chugging through the cosmos, discouraged and despondent. The middle-aged Will complains that there are no women in outer space except for his mother and sisters, so:

I’ll never take a wife
No children will I father 

I have no normal life. 

“Show me mercy in this universe,” he wails, “For I am lost in space.”

No matter how iconoclastic, Bill Mumy still equates heterosexual marriage and reproduction with normalcy, and eliminates the existence of gay people from the universe.