The First TV Tarzan

After doing three Tarzan movies, Mike Henry turned down the opportunity to become the first tv Tarzan, so NBC hired tall, lanky 28-year old Ron Ely (no relation to Rick Ely of The Young Rebels) to play the Lord of the Jungle, and 10-year old Manuel Padilla Jr. as his kid sidekick Jai, and scheduled them on Friday nights in the fall of 1966.  They faced stiff competition from the beefcake-heavy Wild Wild West and the overtly homoerotic Green Hornet and Time Tunnel,  but still they did well.

Comic book and novel tie-ins were ordered, and they were renewed for a second season.

This Tarzan was a crime fighter, battling mercenaries and jewel thieves, tracking down fugitives hiding out in the jungle, making sure that traveling missionaries, scientific expeditions, religious pilgrims, and even circuses got to their destination ok.  There was lots of beefcake, of course, but not a lot of bonding -- Jai was too young, and the jungle was otherwise occupied by male scoundrels and females in need of saving.

Gay kids continued to watch Wild Wild West.

At the end of the second season, Ron Ely, who had been injured dozens of times by the "tame" animals he worked with, called it quits.  The network chopped some of the episodes into movies, and that was the last of Tarzan on tv until 1991.

Ron Ely continued to act on television for many years, and in 1975 he portrayed another legendary hero, Doc Savage, on the big screen.  Later he launched a new career as a writer of hardboiled detective novels.

Manuel Padilla, Jr. continued to play soulful-eyed Hispanic or Indian kids through his teens, in The Flying Nun, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and American Graffiti.  His last role was in Scarface (1983).  He died in 2009.

Philip Jose Farmer: Gay Sci-Fi with Muscles

When I was in college, you couldn't walk into Adam's Bookstore at the Augustana Student Union or Readmore Book World downtown without seeing a dozen sci-fi novels by Philip Jose Farmer (1918-2009) on display.  Bright, colorful paperbacks with amazingly muscular hunks on the covers, sometimes nude, and stories inside that sounded fascinating.

Sometimes they were.

There were three main types:

1. The World of Tiers: The Maker of Universes (1965), A Private Cosmos (1968), etc.  A man from our world is trapped on a multi-plane world occupied by various human, alien, and mythical beings.   He kills lots of bad guys and falls in love with a girl.  Yawn.

2. The Riverworld series: To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), The Fabulous Riverboat (1972), etc. Every person who has ever existed wakes up on the banks of an endless river.  Richard Burton, Alice Liddel (the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), Mark Twain, a Neanderthal named Kazz, and other colorful characters search for answers.

The first book is great, but it takes three more before anyone solves the mystery, and then it's a complete let-down: "So this was what all the fuss was about?"

Still, it was nice to imagine every person who has ever lived standing around naked, including Genghis Khan, William Shakespeare, and my high school history teacher,

3. I was most interested in the postmodern, self-referential mash-ups of fictional heroes: Tarzan meets Doc Savage (Lord of the Trees and the Mad Goblin, 1970), and Sherlock Holmes (The Adventures of the Peerless Peer, 1974).  

The Jules Verne hero Phineas Fogg meets aliens (The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, 1973).  

Dorothy's son returns to Oz (A Barnstormer in Oz, 1982).

One of the first sci-fi writers to incorporate sexual activity into his stories, Farmer went wild, with graphic descriptions of multiple sexual acts.  But no gay characters that I can recall, though in A Feast Unknown (1969), Tarzan and Doc Savage find that they can only get aroused through violence, so they enter into a violent homoerotic relationship of sorts.  It was originally published as porn.

Also, in Flesh (1960), the good guy mass-murders a tribe of gay-stereotype Elves.

Doc Savage: The First Gay Superhero

When I was a kid, I never cared much for Marvel comics, other than the gay-subtext heavy Werewolf by Night, but in the summer of 1972, my eyes were drawn to the gleaming hard-muscle physique on the cover of Doc Savage #1, "the first superhero of them all!"

How was that possible?  We already had Superman, Batman, Spiderman....

Turns out that Doc Savage got his start as a pulp hero, first created by Lester Dent in 1933 (5 years before Superman). His adventures have been reprinted in paperback form from the 1960s through the 1990s.  There have been comic books, two radio series, and a 1975 movie starring Ron Ely of Tarzan fame.

Like Batman, Doc has no superpowers; he relies on his superb physique, scientific gadgets, and medical training to fight evil (when he catches villains, he gives them brain operations to cure them of their criminal tendencies).

Unlike Batman and every other superhero, he doesn't wear a spandex costume; he appears shirtless and bronze and gleaming.

He lives and works on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City, accompanied by his team, "The Fabulous Five."
1.-2. Chemist Monk (who has the build of a gorilla) and attorney Ham, who feud with each other.
3. Renny, an engineer with a massive physique of his own.
4. Long Tom, a long, thin engineer.
5. The egghead archaeologist Johnny.

The only regular female character was Doc's cousin Pat, who tagged along on adventures in spite of being told to "wait here where it's safe."

Here are some of the plotlines:

Johnny finds a prehistoric egg that may have hatched into a dinosaur.
Monk runs afoul of the mind-controlling Lucky Napoleon.
Ham witnesses "the rustling death" that drops men out of airplanes.
A naked man is fished out of the Atlantic and hailed as a prophet.

Quite a lot of captures and nick-of-time rescues going on, and not a lot of hetero-romance.

Other members of the team occasionally get girlfriends, but as Monk explains, "There won't be any women in Doc's life."  He has a female companion in the 1975 movie, but doesn't kiss her.  Many rescued damsels-in-distress have tried to snare him, but he tactfully rebuffs their advances.  He has, you see, "no time for women."

Yeah, right, no time.

Philip Jose Farmer's A Feast Unknown (1969) gives Doc Savage and Tarzan an abusive sexual relationship.

Heterosexual fans have faced the "accusation" of Doc's gayness for many years, usually with shrieks of "No way is Doc gay!"  But a surprising number of gay kids found a role model in the Doc

.