Dino Martin: Bisexual Rat Pack Kid

Dino, Desi, & Billy was a 1960s teen trio formed from the sons of two celebrity musicians, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Dino Martin, and their friend Billy Hinsche.  They released five boy-band style albums between 1964 and 1969, plus a lot of singles.  Some of them charted, mostly because the guys were famous and rather cute.

Dino was Dean Paul Martin, the son of Rat Packer Dean Martin.  He was very rich, very famous, and sort of talented, but not very focused.  He was good at so many things that he couldn't decide on one.

After his group disbanded, Dino played professional tennis and semi-pro football; he got his pilot's license; he studied medicine; joined the National Guard.  He started calling himself Dean Paul instead of Dino. He changed into a blond. He developed a spectacular physique.

And he acted, of course.  Not a lot -- he was too busy.  7 movies, mostly in roles as playboys or a woman's illcit lover; some guest spots on tv shows (including his Dad's Dean Martin Comedy Hour), and some "as himself" appearances on talk shows and game shows.

His most substantial role was in Misfits of Science (1985-86) as Dr. Billy Hayes, the hetero-horny scientist who drives around in an ice cream truck with a group of rowdy teenage superheroes. Kevin Peter Hall (left) had the ability to shrink. A pre-Friends Courteney Cox played a juvenile delinquent with telekinetic powers

More after the break

The Gay-Positive Episode of "Here's Lucy"

The last of the trilogy of Lucille Ball tv series, Here's Lucy (1968-74), made Lucy Carter a widow with two high school-aged kids, Kim and Craig (played by her real life children,18-year old  Lucie Arnaz and 15-year old Desi Arnaz Jr.).  Gale Gordon reprised his blustering Mr. Mooney role, but as Harry Carter, Lucy's brother-in-law and her employer at Carter's Unique Employment Agency.

Plotlines involved the unique characters seeking employment, generation gap antics between Lucy and her kids, and the usual stream of celebrity guest stars (celebrity to the Establishment, that is): Jack Benny, Eva Gabor, Liberace, Lawrence Welk, Richard Burton, even Lucille Ball herself (when "Lucy Carter" meets the famous actress).

Notice: not a lot of teen stars.

It was definitely Lucy's vehicle; she got the best lines and all of the slapstick comedy.   Craig was cute, nicely tanned, with a penchant for wearing shirts open to his navel, but he had only a few lines per episode, and in the first three seasons he had maybe three centrics (episodes devoted to him).  He sang a few times, but usually when sharing a stage with his mother.  After three seasons, he was written out of the series.

They weren't even trying to draw in a youth audience.  Craig is a fan of Frank Sinatra, not the Beatles.  In one episode, Lucy roils when Kim begins dating a boy who graduated from Berkeley -- with all the sit-ins and protests and...

As a result, Here's Lucy seems less hip, less energetic, and with fewer gay subtexts than the earlier Lucy Show.  

No beefcake to speak of.  No bonding.  No symbolism.

But there was a LGBT-positive episode on November 6,  1972.

Phyllis Diller is scheduled to perform at a benefit, but she can't make it, so Kim finds a replacement, female impersonator Jim Bailey.  Lucy  is shocked at the very idea of a man impersonating a woman, but Kim and Craig are perfectly nonchalant.

I was shocked, too; at the age of 11, I had never heard of such a thing before.

In real life, Miss Ball was gay-positive.  Jim Bailey was a friend of hers.

Los Angeles as Home: "The Lucy Show"

The Lucy Show (1962-68) was a fixture of my childhood.  I wasn't exactly entranced by the show -- no cute boys, no exciting outer-space adventures -- but it wasn't designed for kids.  Lucy had boring, mundane adult problems like sticking to a budget and worrying about her job, and she all but ignored the swirling social unrest in the world outside.  But my parents liked it, so it became a warm, comforting presence on Monday nights.

Apparently there were two versions.  The first (1962-65) was an early Kate and Allie:  Widowed Lucy Carmichael (Lucille Ball) and her divorced friend Viv (Vivian Vance) live in Danville, New York, with their children (Jimmy Garrett, Candy Moore, Ralph Hart).  Before my time.

I just remember the second version (1965-68), with Lucy Carmichael living in Los Angeles, where she worked for blustering bank president Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) and got into crazy predicaments.  

In spite of the lack of beefcake and space adventures, there were five points of interest:

1. Some of the guest stars were cute, like Frankie Avalon, Ken Berry, and Clint Walker (left). Not her son, Desi Arnaz Jr., though.

2. Years later, when I began watching classic movies and tv shows, I realized that many of the stars were familiar from guest appearances on The Lucy Show: Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, George Burns, Paul Winchell, John Wayne, Jack Benny, Sid Caesar.

3.  In later seasons, Lucy gets a sidekick, the hip, sprightly Mary Jane (Mary Jane Croft, right), who seems to "like" Lucy, and continues to hang around in spite of the constant scrapes and catastrophes.

4. Lucy and Mr. Mooney were two grown-ups, a man and a woman, but not married to each other.  In fact, they weren't married to anyone, nor did they express any interest in getting married (actually Mr. Mooney had a rarely-mentioneed wife off camera).   Maybe Los Angeles offered an escape from the endless man-woman couples that I saw in real life, that the adults insisted was my destiny.

5. Episodes involving movie stars, references to Graumann's Chinese Theater and the Brown Derby, even throwaway lines like "I was stuck on Santa Monica Boulevard" helped define Los Angeles as an Arcadia or Oz, a place that is intimately familiar, that you constantly long for, even though you have never actually been there.

Maybe Los Angeles was a "good place."

Desi Arnaz, Jr.

Desi Arnaz, Jr. was born on January 19th, 1953, in the middle of a whirlwind of publicity, the child of most famous couple on television, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and also the first baby ever "born" on tv (Lucy's real life pregnancy was incorporated into the plot of I Love Lucy).  He was on the cover of the first issue of TV Guide, on April 3rd, 1953.

Growing up with that kind of publicity, and his parents' connections, he had little choice but to go into show business.  In 1965, he started a boy band with his friends Dean Paul Martin (Dean Martin's son) and Billy Hinsche.

He guest starred on The Lucy Show (1962-65), and became a regular on Here's Lucy (1968-72), as Lucy's teenage son Craig. And he landed roles in lots of movies.

Oddly for the son of a comedy legend, Desi didn't do comedies.  He specialized in tear-jerkers. Many were about the tragic consequences of boys and girls who fall in love (Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, She Lives, Having Babies, Black Market Babies).  

Others were gay-subtext movies about the tragic consequences of boys who fall in love with boys (Billy Two Hats, Joyride, To Kill a Cop).  

In 1983, he starred in a buddy-bonding series, Automan, about a computer whiz (Desi) who creates a computerized superhero (the hunky Chuck Wagner).  Unfortunately, it was promoted as a comedy, and Desi didn't do comedy.  He thought it would be a gritty urban drama.

After 13 episodes he left, and hasn't done a lot of acting since.  He is still involved with his music, and he owns the Boulder Theater in Boulder City, Nevada.

Although he was the subject of many gay rumors during the 1970s (my friend Cesar claimed to have hooked up with him), Desi was linked to several women, including Liza Minnelli, and he was married to Amy Arnaz from 1987 to her death in 2015.

See: Cesar Tells about his Hookup with Desi Arnaz Jr.