Don Johnson and the Gay Community

Don Johnson had a close relationship with the gay community from the start.  In 1968 he dropped out of the University of Kansas to enroll in the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and immediately landed the starring role in Fortune and Men's Eyes, a play about a teenager who is sexually assaulted in prison.  He moved to Los Angeles to play the lead in the 1971 film version, directed by famous gay actor (who became his roommate).

And lover (according to the rumor mill).  But then, if Sal Mineo really had relationships with everyone the rumor mill said he did, he would have been too tired to act.

Don also played the titular character, who grooves on both men and women in  The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970) -- one of the songs, "Sweet Gingerbread Man," was covered by Bobby Sherman

A boy at an experimental college, where he was naked and having sex with ladies all the time, in The Harrad Experiment (1973).  Gregory Harrison played one of his classmates, also naked and having sex all the time.

Traveling through a bleak postapocalyptic world in A Boy and His Dog (1975), who gets captured and used as a breeder in a crazy underground city where the men are mostly sterile.  It was re-envisioned in 2010 in Cartoon Network's Adventure Time. 

And so on through the 1970s, in vehicles that were sometimes gritty, sometimes surreal, but always emphasized Don's sexual desirability -- to both men and women.

As the counterculture waned, he found himself in conventional heterosexist roles in tv series like The Rookies, Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones, and tv movies like The Rebels, Revenge of the Stepford Wives, and Six Pack.  

He made something of a comeback in Miami Vice (1984-1990),about an odd-couple of vice cops making the scene with fast cars, stylish clothes, and lots of buddy-bonding.  Crockett (Don Johnson) was the good old boy who grew up in rural northern Florida and had a pet alligator named Elvis; Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) was the streetwise New Yorker.

The buddy-bonding  is not nearly as intense as in Starsky and Hutch decade before, and interspersed with lots of heterosexual hijinks.  But during the homophobic 1980s, it was about all you could expect.

Gregory Harrison: Not For Ladies Only

While Magnum and Buck Rogers were grunting and posing, Gregory Harrison was quietly making a name for himself on Trapper John, MD (1979-86) as Gonzo Gates, the irreverent surgeon who lived in a trailer  (don't surgeons make a steady income?) and sunned himself semi-nude in the hospital parking lot.  Lot of beefcake, some minimal buddy-bonding, and two "gay episodes":

In 1981, a swishy gay guy named Judy is hospitalized after a hate crime (they called it "gay bashing" back then). All gay men are drag queens, I get it.   But at least all drag queens aren't homicidal maniacs; Judy turns out to be nice.

And in 1985, one of Nurse Libby's old boyfriends turns out to be gay and have AIDS -- the third AIDS-centered episode on network television.

Gregory Harrison is no stranger to beefcake.  In 1973, he played one of a group of students who romp around nude in The Harrad Experiment, along with Don Johnson, and during the 1970s (and 1980s and 1990s), he was often asked to appear shirtless in his tv and movie appearances, not to mention Battle of the Network Stars. 


But in 1981 he went all the way (or as far as the censors would allow), playing an aspiring actor who becomes a stripper in For Ladies Only.  In spite of the heterosexist title, he got many gay fans and write-ups in gay magazines like Christopher Street.

Nor is he a stranger to bonding.  In North Shore (1987), he plays Chandler, an experienced surfer who lives on the North Shore of Hawaii and begins a buddy-bonding romance with Arizona transplant Rich (Matt Adler, right).  In Red River (1988), he plays Cherry Valance, who buddy-bonds with Matthew Garth (Bruce Boxleiter) during a cattle drive.

Greg has always been quick to acknowledge his gay male fans.  In an interview, he estimated that about a third of his fan emails are about his role in the gay-angst movie It's My Party (1996), in which a gay man with AIDS invites his friends to a party, after which he will commit suicide.


He has also toured as Billy Flynn in the gay favorite Chicago.

See also: Eric Roberts: A career of sleazebag killers and noble gay guys

Homophobia and Trapper John

January 11, 1981: a Sunday night, my junior year at Augustana.  So far it's been rather heterosexist.  Last quarter I had a gay-free class in Modern American Literature; this quarter I will read Death in Venice but not yet. I saw Times Square (1980), starring Tim Curry of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but there was no gay content.  The radio has been incessantly playing "Every Woman in the World," by Air Supply.

I am studying German while watching lackluster episodes of One Day at a Time, Alice (no Tommy), and The Jeffersons (the second, un-cute Lionel).  Then comes Trapper John, MD (1979-86), about the wisecracking medic of MASH, now a modern-day hospital administrator with a free-spirited assistant named Gonzo (Gregory Harrison, left): A swishy gay guy named Judy (Craig Russell) is hospitalized after becoming the victim of a hate crime (in those days they called it gay bashing).  Her initial roommate is bigoted, so she is moved into a room with an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease.  The woman's son objects, but changes his mind when he sees that Judy's magical gay powers have cured her.

I have never heard the myth that all gay men are into Judy Garland, but fortunately Judy explains about The Wizard of Oz, a place where "there isn't any trouble."  Did she even see the movie?  The Wicked Witch of the West keeps trying to kill her!

All gay men are really girls.  Got it.   And that's not even the primary plot:

A cop named Joey Santori (Joseph Cali) is shot at a gay rights rally.  His partner, Sam (Charles Hallahan), is livid with rage: "Some fag shot my partner!  They want power -- well, there's already too much fag power in San Francisco!"

Gonzo investigates, and discovers that Joey is gay!  And the shooter was a fellow cop upset over "fag power" in San Francisco!  How's that for a plot twist?

At least Gonzo is not homophobic.  Gregory Harrison is actually a gay ally, and has played gay characters several times.  Joseph Cali is a veteran of Saturday Night Live (1977), apparently, hardcore porn; there are several fully nude pictures available on the internet.

Chicago, the Musical: Skip the Movie, See it on Stage

I hate the movie version of the musical Chicago (2002), directed by Rob Marshall.  It's set in the Jazz Age, but there are no scenes set in  speakeasies or vast Great Gatsby-style estates, or streets clogged with Model-Ts and movie marquees advertising Rudolph Valentino.   It's completely stage-bound.

There's no beefcake, not even an undone button, just lots of women in slinky leather outfits gyrating like exotic dancers.

And the lesbian angle is only hinted at, briefly.

The plot: during the 1920s, Roxy Hart (Rene Zellweger) is arrested for murdering her lover, and sent to Cook County Jail in Chicago to await her trial.   She becomes a cause celebre, and draws the attention of glitterati lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), to the consternation of his previous client, celebrity murderess Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Velma and Roxy begin competing to see who can gain the most celebrity. When another murderess hits the news, Roxy ups the ante by getting pregnant (or pretending to).  Velma counters by sabotaging Roxy's case.

Finally Roxie is acquitted, but she misses the limelight, so she and Velma team up to do a celebrity-murderess act.

Yawn.  Why couldn't Richard Gere at least have taken his shirt off?

Fortunately, the stage versions take care of those problems.

Well, it's still stage bound, of course, but prison matron Mama Morton is definitely a lesbian, who helps Roxy in exchange for sexual favors.

And there's lots of beefcake, male dancers along with the women strutting their stuff with fedoras and jazz hands.

Not to mention shirtless, muscular Billy Flynns played by Jerry Orbach, Ben Cross, James Naughton, Christopher Sieber, Patrick Swayze, Billy Ray Cyrus, Taye Diggs, Adam Pascal, Mark Fisher, Joel Warren, Tony Yasbeck, David Hasselhoff, Tom Wopat, and Gregory Harrison.

You're not going to see a high school or community college production anytime soon, but it's worth checking out in the various national tours.

William Inge's Picnic

William Inge's Picnic (1953) has a simple plot: a guy takes his shirt off.

It's one of those plays that kept popping up in the 1950s, when you couldn't talk about gay people openly, so you threw in as many hints as you could.

The hunky Hal shows up in a small town that's busily preparing for the annual Labor Day Picnic.  He takes off his shirt.

This is the 1950s.  You never see bare skin.

Everybody -- literally everybody -- starts lusting after him: shy Millie, aggressive Madge, schoolteacher Rosemary, her boyfriend Howard, and Hal's old college buddy Alan.  They flirt, posture, break up with their current flames.

Hal gets naked with Alan, has sex with Madge, and flirts with everyone else, but in the end he leaves, leaving everyone blinking in surprise and asking themselves "What just happened?"

In the original 1953 production, Ralph Meeker played Hal, and newcomer Paul Newman played Alan.

It was filmed in 1955 with William Holden and Stuart Whitman (top photo), in 1986 with Gregory Harrison, and in 2000 with Josh Brolin.

Other notable Hals have included William Poole (above) and Sebastian Shaw (left).  It has been transformed into a musical and an opera.

It's a favorite of high school and college drama clubs, though sometimes they cheat by putting Hal in a t-shirt.  He has to actually take his shirt off to get the full homoerotic effect of the piggy-back ride.