The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

The last place you'd expect to find gay content is in a movie about a brothel for heterosexuals, with no gay characters.  But The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is loaded down with gay symbolism.

The Chicken Ranch is a nice, cozy, down-home whorehouse in rural Texas, run by the heart-of-gold Miss Mona, and ignored by sheriff and occasional customer Ed Earl.  When a crusading tv reporter named Melvin P. Thorpe finds out that "There's a Whorehouse in Texas!" and starts a Moral Majority protest, Miss Mona isn't concerned; she's handled right-wing bigots before.  Besides, she's busy preparing for the annual visit by the winners of the big college football game (who sing "The Aggie Song" with their shirts off).

Turns out that Miss Mona was short-sighted; the tv crusade galvanizes the religious bigots, many of whom are customers "on the downlow."  Eventually the Governor himself, though a master of "the Side Step," calls to announce that the brothel must be shut down.  Defeated, Miss Mona and the girls get on "The Bus from Amarillo" and scatter to new lives.

It's a bit racy for high school and college drama departments, but there have been some productions, In March 2013, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC, sponsored an all-male version.

When the original play opened on Broadway in 1978, Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign was in the air, and fundamentalists were increasingly abandoning their old bogies of feminism, paganism, and evolution to scream "There are Gays in Our Town!"  Audiences could hardly fail to make the connection.

The movie adaptation arrived in July 1982, at the height of Jerry Falwell's anti-gay Moral Majority crusade, and gay director Colin Higgins made the symbolism even more obvious, with an ongoing romance between Miss Mona (Dolly Parton) and Ed Earl (Burt Reynolds) that must be hidden ("Sneakin' Around").

Plus lots of wink-wink casting: perennially gay-coded Dom Deluise as Melvin P. Thorpe, and open-secret Jim Nabors as sympathetic Deputy Fred.

And an increase in the beefcake.  Burt Reynolds, who previously posed naked in Cosmo, hangs out in a towel, Dom Deluise hangs out in his underwear, and the Texas Aggies sing in the locker room fully nude (lots of rear shots, and even a few frontals if you freeze frame).

See also: 10 Stage Musicals with Unexpected Beefcake.

Beefcake Boys in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"

Beefcake Boys in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"

What gay man of a certain age doesn't have a  fond memory of seeing The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)?  Dolly Parton as the madam, Burt Reynolds as the sheriff, and the entire Texas Aggie football team naked in the locker room, singing about how a visit to the whorehouse is their reward for a winning season. 

Male rear nudity!  Very rare in 1982!

It's based on a 1978 Broadway musical, with Carlin Glynn as the madam, Henderson Forsythe as the sheriff, and, again, the entire Texas Aggie football team dancing in their underwear.

The controversial subject matter makes most community and little theaters shy away from it, and no high school will touch it at all, but occasionally you can find a performance, with local hunks playing Aggies parading about in their altogether.

1. Diamondhead Theater in Hawaii.  I wonder if they changed the Texas Aggies to whatever team the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors.

2.Frostburg Theater in Maryland puts the guys in pants rather than towels.  As long as their chests and shoulders are out, that's fine with me.











3. The Circle Theater in Chicago is cheating.  Underwear, but mostly t-shirts.  No fair!

4. Finger Lakes Musical Theater Festival in upstate New York gives us leaping cowboys.

5. Carpenter Square Theater in Oklahoma City, a real cowboy town.  But...white pants?

6. Hobby Center in Houston.  More cowboys, more white pants. 

7. Signature Theater in Washington, DC.  Pants, and open shirts instead of shirtless.  That's really cheating.

8.  The Broadway Rose Theater is in Tigart, Oregon, the other side of the continent from Broadway.  White pants and some t-shirts, not spectacular.

9.  The Palace Theater in Manchester, New Hampshire gives us some really buffed Aggies.  Too bad they can't lose the plaid shirts.

10. The Tokyo International Players hide behind a sheet.  Why don't they just draw a line across their penises, like Japanese porn?

See also: My review of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Burt Reynolds Naked on a Bear Skin Rug

The most famous male nude photos in history:
1. Johnny Crawford's full-frontal nude shot advertising The Naked Ape (1973).
2. Burt Reynolds's nude centerfold in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan

The 36-year old actor specialized in serious dramatic roles, mostly Westerns about surly, downtrodden Native Americans (Navajo Joe, 100 Rifles, Sam Whiskey).  He had just finished filming Deliverance (1972), about four big-city businesmen who go camping in rural Appalachia, and encounter slack-jawed, gap-toothed hillbilly savages.  He expected it to get him a best-actor Oscar and acclaim as a serious actor.

Then Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown approached Paul Newman about doing a nude centerfold.  He refused, so she approached Burt.

Burt lay supine on a bearskin rug in a parody of the popular baby photos, grinning mischievously, coyly hiding his sex organs.  It was not an erotic photo.

But it was groundbreaking.  Nude male photography was still in its infancy -- only a few years ago, it was judged de facto obscene.  This was the first time that any man had ever appeared nude in a mainstream publication.

It was a victory for women's liberation.  Helen Gurley Brown reminisced: "Men liked to look at women naked.  Nobody talked about it, but women liked to look at men naked."  A few months later, Douglas Lambert was inspired by the photo to launch Playgirl magazine, featuring pictures of naked men: "It came to me -- that's what women want."

Both of them were disgustingly heterosexist, trying their best to pretend that they were unaware that  some men like to look at men naked, too.   But men were watching.  Burt Reynolds became a gay icon without ever playing a gay character.

The photo made Burt a celebrity, but kept him from being taken seriously as an actor.  Deliverance was snubbed at the Oscars, and he spent the 1970s in Southern-Redneck comedies like White Lightning (1973), Hooper (1978), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and the Smokey and the Bandit series (1977, 1980, 1983), often with his bff Bert Convy.

It has been recreated by  many other celebrities, including Neil Patrick Harris and Mario Lopez.

See also: Bert Convy: Spending the 1970s Nude

Bert Convy Spends the 1970s Nude

I suppose you're wondering who this Bert Convy was, who took his clothes off on both Love Boat (6 times) and Fantasy Island (4 times)?

I'm not sure.  He seemed to just appear in the 1970s,.  He was over 40 years old, with a 20-year career as a Broadway star and pop singer, and before that as a pro baseball player, but I didn't notice until he started strutting around with a Tom Jones Afro and a leisure suit unbuttoned halfway down his smooth, muscular chest. playing slightly befuddled New Sensitive Men in sitcoms and soaps: Mary Tyler Moore, The Partridge Family, Love American Style, Charlie's Angels, Murder She Wrote, and Hotel.  

Google Images said this was him, but it might be wrong. The photo seems too recent -- Bert Convy would have been that age in the early 1960s. (It may be Steve Bond).

But not to worry, the real Bert Convy displayed his physique many during his tenure as the host of about a thousand game shows, including Password (1972), Match Game (1973-74), Tattletales (1974-77, 1982), Win Lose or Draw (1987), and Super Password (1984-89), 

In the spring of 1976, he starred in a short-lived comedy-variety series, The Late Summer Early Fall Bert Convy Show.

He appeared in lots of movies, mostly sex comedies, like Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (1979), about...you know; Racquet (1979), about a tennis pro who beds women; and Help Wanted: Male (1982), about a career woman who wants a baby but not a husband.  More beefcake shots....

He and Burt Reynolds were best buds (imagine the confusion: "Bert came to my party, but Burt didn't.")  They starred together in the gay-subtext-heavy Semi-Tough (1977) and The Cannonball Run (1981), and produced two tv series together: Weekend Warriors and Win, Lose, or Draw.  

There were some gay rumors, but not a lot. During the 1970s, men drew gay rumors only if they were on the feminine side.  You could hang out with male buds all you wanted, and never make a dent in people's heteronormative expectations.

Besides, Bert was married throughout his career, to Anne Anderson (1959-1990), and, while he was terminally ill, to Catherine Hall (1991).

He died from a brain tumor on July 15, 1991, and was interred at Forest Lawn, among other Hollywood celebrities.

Burt Reynolds came to the funeral.

See also: Love Boat;  Burt Reynolds Naked on a Bearskin Rug