Charlie Gillespie: Gay Characters? Gay in Real Life? Beefcake? Or Not

I'm not going to let the 2nd Generation debacle dissuade me from researching Charlie Gillespie.  His Superman-cape photo was mega-hot, and I'm pretty sure his character was gay or gay-coded.

Any other beefcake photos?
Any other gay roles?
Gay in real life?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any biography at all, not even a single line, and every time I search for a shirtless photo, Google Images tries to push a photo of someone else.  Like Austin Mahone.

Charles Melton of Riverdale

Or someone named Gronkowski who I've never heard of.

Social media has proven fruitless.  There are over 100 Charlie Gillespie profiles on Facebook, most elderly, some women,  over 20 Charlie Gillespie instagram pages, and over 15 Charlie Gillespie twitter accounts.  You'd think that the guy with 7,500 followers would be the right one,but no, that's an airplane pilot.

Do you think this might be him? It's a frame capture from a video uploaded to one of the Charlie Gillespie instagram pages.

How about this guy, sticking his tongue out at a girl? (Obviously his girlfriend: they appear arm-in-arm, hugging, or groping each other n 3,543 other photos on the page.)

Well, at least I can go through his film credits, to see if there are any gay roles.

1. Charlie played himself in the documentary Bienvenue chez nous - La gang à Richibouctou Village (2014), about a New Brunswick village (where they speak English) welcoming a film crew.

2. The film is La gang des hors-la-loi (The Outlaw League, 2014), a sort of French Canadian Bad News Bears, where the kids have names like Shogun, Charlemagne, and Pic-pic.

3. In 2015, Charlie appeared as a guest host on Galala, "un concours télévisé de jeunes talents qui s'adresse aux 5 à 15 ans."   They sought out local talent in a different city each week: Edmonton, Saskatoon, St. Boniface, Halifax.  Charlie's town was Dieppe, New Brunswick.

I don't understand why a French-language tv program is auditioning talent in English speaking towns.

4. Fast forward two years to July 2017.  Charlie has a two-episode story arc on Degrassi: Next Class, a teen soap about students in a fictional Toronto high school.   He plays Oliver, hospital roommate of gay kid Tristan (Lyle Lettau).  But Oliver is straight.

Only two years ago, and Charlie looks a little chunky.  That might explain the lack of beefcake photos.

5. Another guest shot, on a November 2017 episode of The Next Step, about a teen dance troup in Toronto.  Charlie plays Marcus, a member of the math team who becomes captain when Zara leaves.

6. Next comes the 6 horrible episodes of 2nd Generation (2018), which required long hair for the androgynous effect. I think his character is gay-coded,but I can't be sure; that would require watching the tv series.

7. Speed Kills (2018) starred John Travolta as an aging speedboat racer (based on real-life speedboat champion Don Aronoff).   Charlie played his son, Andrew.  Since Travolta is 65 years old, his son must be in his 30s.

8.  A two-episode story in October 2018 on the new Charmed: he plays a college student who is dating Maggie until she dumps him.  When he's possessed by a demon, she saves him, but they still don't get back together.  There's a lot of kissing going on.

9. In January 2019, he appeared in the 6-episode miniseries I Am the Night, something about the Black Dahlia murder case in modern L.A.  Charlie appears only in the pilot as "Surfer Hank."  You can probably figure out what he's doing.

I'm sorry I started this research.  Not many beefcake photos, not gay in real life (if the tongue-wagger is the right Charlie), only one gay-coded role.

And I had such high hopes. The 2nd Generation  bait-and-switch strikes again.


See also: 2nd Generation: the Worst TV Series I Have Ever Seen

Top 10 Beefcake Horror Movies: The 1970s

Horror movies in the 1970s upped the blood, guts, and overall grossness content to compete with tv, but unfortunately backed away from the nonstop nudity of the swinging 1960s.  Still, there were plenty of muscular guys around, taking showers, climbing into bed, or being strapped to tables for weird experiments.  You just had to know where to look.  Here are the Top 10 Beefcake Horror Movies:

1. Daughters of Darkness (1971): John Karlen, the gay-vague Willie Loomis of Dark Shadows, plays a hip artist who stumbles upon a couple of female vampires.  You get a lot of butt shots, and a glimpse of Willie's willy in a shower-sex scene.

2. Malpertuis, aka The Legend of Doom House (1971): A Belgian movie about an androgynous sailor (Matthieu Carrier), who is abducted and brought to a creepy house populated by Greek gods, all of whom have sexual designs on him.

3. Frogs (1972). About homicidal frogs.  Sam Elliot (left) doesn't seem to own a shirt, and beefcake model Nicholas Cortland gets frogged to death in the shower.

4. Flesh for Frankenstein, aka Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973): Baron Von Frankenstein tries to build a sex-machine monster out of Srdjan Zelenovic (top photo), while his nude boyfriend, Andy Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro, tries to save him.  But be careful -- there are an awful lot of bare breasts on display.

5. Devil Times Five (1974). Five crazy kids, including future teen idol Leif Garrett, invade a winter resort and cause mayhem.  But guest Taylor Lacher still has time to strip down and make out with his wife.  There's also a seduction of a mentally-challenged handyman.

6. The Devil's Rain (1975).  If you didn't get enough of a shirtless William Shatner in his early teen idol days or on Star Trek, you can see him here as a guy battling small-town Satanists.  Look for the film debut of John Travolta as "Danny."

7. The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975): Michael Sarrazin, who took off his clothes frequently in 1970s dramas, here hangs out in the swimming pool a lot while figuring out that he's the reincarnation of his girlfriend's murdered Dad.

8. Track of the Moon Beast (1976).  If ever a movie was tailor-made for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffs....College student Chase Cordell gets hit by a meteor fragment and goes on a rampage.  He also took off his shirt in the grindhouse Sins of Rachel (1972).

9. Eaten Alive (1977).  A hotelier in the South handles unhappy guests by feeding them to a giant crocodile.  Robert Englund, who would go on to play Freddie Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, displays rather a nice physique as a victim named Buck.

10. Coma (1978).  Half-naked musclemen (and women) are being kept in comas to harvest for organs. Among them is Tom Selleck, a few years before he became Magnum, P.I.

Joseph Cali: from Physique Model to "Saturday Night Fever"

Joseph Cali was a familiar face in the late 1970s and 1980s, playing handsome Italian Stallion types:  John Travolta's friend Joey in Saturday Night Fever (1977), Joey Santorini in Trapper John MD (1981), Vincent D'Acosta in The Lonely Lady (1983).

He  starred in several short-lived tv series, such as Flatbush (1979), Today's FBI (1981-82), Santa Barbara (1989-90).

In the 1990s, roles became sparser.  Finally he retired from acting.  Today he is the co-owner of Cello Music and Film Systems, which sells home theater systems averaging $42,000 each to celebrity customers such as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

But there's more to Joseph Cali than meets the eye: a lot of nude photos online.

When he was in his early twenties, around 1970, he was discovered by George Haimsohn in the gay cruising area of Washington Square Park, and invited to model.  Haimsohn, who worked under the pen name Plato, published several sets of nude photos.  Later Cali posed the Model of the Month Club and Photozique, and after he moved to Los Angeles, Vulcan Studios.

Cali is apparently heterosexual or bisexual in real life: he's been married twice, most recently for 31 years, and he has four grown daughters.

But it's nice to know that he displayed his physique, and more, for gay fans in the past.

The nude photos are on Tales of West Hollywood

Grease Live: Still No Gay People at Rydell High

Grease (1978) was my coming-out movie, mostly because of the theme song, with lines I misheard::

The adults are lying, only real is real.
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel. 

The movie itself was unremittingly hetero-horny heterosexist: boys and girls circle each other, preen, posture, try to hook up, and finally succeed, with some uncomfortable gender politics.

No gay content except for a couple of homophobic jokes.

I just saw Grease Live (2016), a live version that aired on Fox.  Nostalgia about nostalgia, a 2016 broadcast adapting a 1978 movie which was itself an adaption of a 1971 musical set in the year 1959.

Got all that?

The plot stays the same: at Rydell High in 1959, Danny, leader of the T-Birds, and Sandy, member of the Pink Ladies, play a game of desire and rejection, "cool" greaser vs. "good girl" amid such nostalgic settings as a malt shop,a sleepover, and a drag race.  In the end, Sandy abandons the good girl act and pretends to be sexually voracious, thus driving Danny wild and winning his heart.

Meanwhile, each of the other T-Birds hooks up with one of the Pink Ladies.

The T-Birds are:

Danny: Aaron Tveit (top photo)
Kenicke: Carlos Pena Vega (left)

Doody: Jordan Fisher (left)
Putzie: David Del Rio (below)
Sonny: Andrew Call

How did they update the 1970's classic?

1. The cast is multi-ethnic, with plenty of interracial couples.
2. Sandy is from Salt Lake City, Utah, not Australia.
3. Danny defends Eugene the Nerd, and eventually invites him to join the gang.  Eugene also gets a girlfriend, a female nerd, and shows killer moves at the dance contest.
4. Pink Lady Jan, previously ridiculed for being fat, is now ridiculed for being weird.
5. There are male and female cheerleaders, but the dialogue, oddly, assumes that they're all female.
6. They changed some of the dirty lyrics, but they kept the rape-promoting "Did she put up a fight?" from "Summer Nights"

Gay Changes
1. During the dance contest, the coach reads the rules: in 1978, "male-female couples only," followed by a homophobic joke against Eugene.  In 2016, the line was changed to "couples only, no singles, no triples."  Which would have been great if there were same-sex couples, but there were none.  As the scene stands, it completely erases even the awareness that gay people exist.

2.  In 1978, Kenicke asks Danny to be his "second" in the drag race at Thunder Road; they hug, then jump apart in homophobic panic.  In 2016, they see the other guys staring before jumping apart. Kenicke asks "What are you looking at?"  Seems more homophobic.

3. In "We Belong Together" in 1978, each T-Bird is paired with his respective Pink Lady, except for Sonny, who looks shocked when he is paired with a dog instead of Marty.  This shot was cut in 2016.

I looked carefully, and couldn't see anyone who looked like a same-sex couple in any of the crowd scenes, at all.  In "We Belong Together," everyone pairs off into male-female couples.  Even the curtain calls are male -female couples.

If director Thomas Kail could introduce interracial pairings as unremarkable and commonplace in the 1950s, when they were anything but, then surely he could have introduced a gay couple or two into the dance contest or the final carnival scene.

But he didn't.  38 years later, gay people are still not welcome in the world of Rydell High.

See also: Grease 2: The Gay Connection; I Lost It at the Movies.

Adrian Zmed After Dark

On an episode of The Simpsons, the family goes to a review featuring the once-famous:
     We are the stars that you thought were dead,
     Like Bonnie Franklin and Adrian Zmed.

People who weren't watching television or going to moves during the early 1980s probably thought "I didn't think Adrian Zmed was dead, I never heard of him."  But during that brief few years, the sultry black-haired Romanian-American actor -- and his amazingly ripped physique -- was everywhere.

He sang and danced as a John Travolta clone in Grease 2 (1982), also starring Maxwell Caulfield.

He partied with Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party (1984).

He bonded with William Shatner in the police drama T.J. Hooker (1982-85).

He hosted Dance Fever
He guest starred on Bosom Buddies, Love Boat, Hotel, Glitter, and Empty Nest.

He appeared in Battle of the Network Stars (a reality series that was really an excuse to get male tv stars into speedos).  He didn't win any awards, but he got to hug Scott Baio.

His full-body speedo shots were more than enough to draw the attention of gay fans, but his characters always had a blatant interest in same-sex chums, regardless of whether they got the girl in the end.

In Grease 2, for instance, the plot revolves around an "opposites attract" between greaser Johnny (Zmed) and uptight British newcomer Michael (Maxwell Caulfield).

And, unlike most beefcake stars of the 1980s, he was aware of his gay fans, and actually played to them.  He remains a strong gay ally, like his "bosom buddy" Tom Hanks.

By the late 1980s, the Adrian Zmed train had stalled, perhaps overloaded by overexposure.  Though he has never stopped acting -- in 2007 he appeared in the soap Passions and in Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Special -- the era of speedo shots is long gone.

Goodbye, Horshack

Ron Palilo, who played cute-but-nerdy sweathog Arnold Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-79), has died at age 63.  Kotter made him a household name.  He didn't appear much on tv or in movies afterwards, but he was busy in live theater, and later he used his love of acting to become a drama teacher. He is survived by his partner of 41 years, Joseph Gramm.

I didn't watch Kotter very often.  The story  -- about a wisecracking underachiever who decides to move back to his old community and teach the new generation of underachievers at his old high school -- didn't appeal to me, when I was trying my best to get out of my home town.  I usually watched Chips instead.

I haven't seen enough episodes to determine if there was any significant gay content, but the closing bits always involved Kotter in bed with his wife, doing comedy schtick ("Hey, Julie, did I ever tell you about my Uncle Eddie?").  A man who uses standup comedy to stall for time when his wife wants to have sex -- sounds gay-vague to me.

The plotlines and catchphrases became part of the zeitgeist.  John Travolta, who played greaser Vinnie Barbarino, became a big star, thanks to some good movie roles (like Grease in 1978), and the strategic placement of beefcake shots.

But I liked Robert Hegyes as the Puerto Rican Jewish Juan Epstein: an Afro, a hairy chest, sleeveless shirts that displayed firm biceps, and a con-artist grin.  He specialized in forged notes from home: "Dear Mr. Kotter, please excuse Epstein today. He's sick. Signed, Epstein's Mother."

And there was a lot to be said for Horshack's quiet lunacy.