Allan Kayser: the Bodybuilder of Mama's Family

During the 1970s, a series of sketches on The Carol Burnett Show featured the young Vicki Lawrence in old-lady drag as the abrasive matriarch of a dysfunctional Southern family.  In 1983 she spun off into Mama's Family as the elderly Thelma Harper, still grumpy but considerably nicer -- a champion of the underdog, fighting such social ills as illiteracy, nursing home abuse, and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Her family consisted of her conservative sister (Rue McClanahan, later of The Golden Girls), her dimwitted son Vint (Ken Berry, center, previously of Mayberry RFD), his sexually voracious wife Naomi (Dorothy Lyman, right), and his kids.

The son was played by Eric Brown, left, star of the sex farce Private Lessons.

After a season, the show was cancelled.  It returned in syndication in 1986, with the sister and kids gone, and Allan Kayser (left) introduced as Bubba, Thelma's juvenile delinquent grandson.

And the jaws of gay men everywhere dropped.  The 22-year old Kayser had a dazzling smile, a stunning physique, and an amazing bulge, and he knew it.  And the producers knew it.






In every episode, he was crammed into muscle shirts and sweatpants or painted-on jeans, and his body always got the limelight, even when something else was going on.

Mama's Family immediately became must-see tv.  It aired on Saturday nights, so we watched Mama's Family and The Golden Girls before going out to the bars.






The only gay content was Thelma's subtext friendship with mousy neighbor Iola (Beverly Archer).  Bubba's plotlines were standard teenage sitcom fare -- school projects, teams, dates --  with no significant male friends, except his Uncle Vinton, and that relationship was avuncular, not romantic.

But sometimes beefcake is enough.

During the 1980s, Allan also starred in a few B-movies that allowed him to show off his bulge and biceps, including Hot Chili (1985) and Night of the Creeps (1986).

When Mama's Family ended in 1990, he retired from acting, married, and moved to Missouri.  He has appeared in only a few small roles since.












He still has a stunning physique, and he is still gracious to his gay fans.

See also: The Golden Girls

Looking for Muscles on the Carol Burnett Show

Variety shows are out of style now, but in the 1960s, they were all the rage.  At least among the adults.  In 1969, they could watch 9 hours of variety per week: Leslie Uggams, Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, Glen Campbell,  Jim Nabors, Tom Jones, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, and Andy Williams (programs all named after their star).

All of the kids I knew hated variety. Passionately.  Except for our own Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In, of course.  Slow songs from dinosaur times, lady dancers in skimpy costumes, jokes involving heterosexual desire, comedy sketches featuring characters popular on radio a thousand years ago, and bathetic closing numbers involving sad clowns or cleaning ladies.

I usually managed to get out of watching variety shows by claiming homework, or when my brother and I got our own tv set, watching something else -- anything else.  But for some reason I saw a lot of Carol Burnett, hatred or not.

There were only three reasons to watch:

1. Co-host Lyle Waggoner, a former male model who appeared nude in Playgirl.  He played the leading-men and hunks in comedy sketches.  Unfortunately, because they were comedy, he never appeared nude or even shirtless on the show.

2. Frequent guest star Ken Berry (previously of Mayberry RFD), who sang, danced, and appeared in comedy sketches.  He had some muscles, and often wore extra-tight pants that would give Frank Gorshin some competition in the bulge department. Unfortunately, his numbers usually involved heterosexual romance.  One, called "Love Stolen from the Cookie Jar," was about how much he enjoyed  grabbing the butts of strange girls.

3. Occasionally other hunky guest stars, like Steve Lawrence and John Davidson.

4. The "Mama's Family" sketches, about a dysfunctional Southern family, featuring Carol as the brash Eunice (left), Harvey Korman (not pictured) as her husband, and the much younger Vickie Lawrence as crotchety Mama (right).  Gay actor Roddy McDowell (center) appeared occasionally as Eunice's highly educated, sophisticated brother, who lived to regret his visits. Alan Alda and Tommy Smothers appeared as other brothers before it was established that Mama had only one son, Vinton (Ken Berry).

 Anything that skewered the myth of the deliriously happy nuclear family was fun.  And it spun off into the sitcom Mama's Family, which was a must-watch program of the 1980s due to the hunky Alan Kayser.

See also: Once Upon a Mattress.

Once Upon a Mattress

December 12, 1972.  I'm in seventh grade at Washington Junior High.  After our usual Tuesday night dinner of tuna casserole, we gather in the living room and light up the Christmas tree-- we just set it up last night -- to watch tv.  But Maude and Hawaii Five-O are pre-empted by a musical called Once Upon a Mattress.  

A musical!  Gross!  "Can I be excused?" I ask.

"Don't be antisocial!" my father exclaims.  "Whatever you got to do, you can do it in here with the family."

I'm used to playing, reading, and doing homework in front of the tv  -- when I try to spend some time alone in my room, my father always yells at me to "Don't be antisocial!" and "Get out here with the family!"

What do they think I'm doing down there, anyway?

 But I have to get out of this stupid musical somehow!

"Um...I have to practice my violin."  I just joined the orchestra.

"Hey, if Boomer doesn't have to watch this junk, then I don't either!" my brother Ken complains.

So we get permission to hide in our  basement room.  But eventually I have to go to the bathroom, which means passing right in front of the tv set where that...ugh!...musical is playing.  I brace myself to rush through quickly, but I can't help glancing at the tv set.

It's Ken Berry from The Carol Burnett Show, who has nice muscles and a rackish smile.  He's singing "I'm in love with a girl named Fred."

Wait -- Fred is a boy's name.  Could he be...in love with a boy?

No, "Fred" is played by Carol Burnett.  But Ken goes on to explain why he loves her:


She is very strong.
She can fight.
She can wrestle.

These are the reasons that boys like boys!

I sit down to watch the last half.  It's a version of the "Princess and the Pea" fairy tale, about Queen Agrivain, who doesn't want her sissy son, Prince Dauntless, to get married, so she forces every potential bride to take impossible tests.

 But Winnifred, nicknamed Fred, is so tough and strong that she passes every test, so the wedding can take place.

(In 2005, Carol Burnett returned to the production as Queen Agrivain, with gay actor Denis O'Hare, below with his husband Hugo Redwood.)

I don't realize that,  when the original musical appeared in 1959, "clinging mothers" were assumed the cause of gay identity, so Prince Dauntless would be assumed gay.   I don't catch the sexual symbolism of the mute King who suddenly finds his voice.  And of course I have no idea  that director Ron Field is gay in real life.

But I know all about liking people who are tough and strong,  liking biceps and pecs instead of the soft curves that boys are supposed to long for.

And I know all about doing things on mattresses.

See also: Looking for Muscles on The Carol Burnett Show

Looking for Muscles on The Andy Griffith Show

On a 1960 episode of Make Room for Daddy: nightclub entertainer Danny Williams (Danny Thomas), traveling through the rural South, is arrested by corrupt sheriff Andy Taylor (comedian Andy Griffith).  His sponsor liked the episode so much that they spun Andy off into his own hayseed comedy, The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968).  Now the slow-talking but wise sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, Andy rarely did any police work; he was a single dad, busy with the humorous catastrophes of his friends and family.

I know we watched; my parents were big fans of hayseed comedies, and it was sandwiched between some of their other favorites, Family Affair, and Carol Burnett.  But I don't remember a single episode.  I must have been rolling my eyes and saying "Can't we watch Felony Squad, starring former Physique Pictorial model Davis Cole (left) instead?"

When Andy Griffith left the show in 1968, it was renamed Mayberry RFD (RFD stands for "Rural Free Delivery," a mail service).  Most of the other regulars stayed on board, and the focus became single dad Sam Jones (Carol Burnett Show regular Ken Berry, right).  It lasted until 1971.

I've watched a few episodes recently for research. No shirtless shots, not a lot of beefcake (although Ken Berry has some beneath-the-belt things going on in some scenes).  But quite a substantial gay connection, for a hayseed comedy:

1. Andy Griffith played a gay villain in Rustler's Rhapsody (1985).

2. Ron Howard (his son Opie) went on to the gay-subtext Happy Days, and then became one of the more homophobic directors in Hollywood, heterosexualizing gay characters and adding homophobic jokes.

3. Jim Nabors (gas station attendant Gomer Pyle), spun off into his own gay-subtext series) and is gay in real life.

4. Buddy Foster (Sam Jones' son) is the brother of lesbian actress Jodie Foster, and played several gay-vague roles, including episodes of Chips and The Mighty Isis, before he retired from acting.














Here he shows some muscles as a feral Wild Boy on a 1975 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. 

5. Don Knotts (deputy sheriff Barney Fife) later played Ralph Furley, landlord to pretending-to-be-gay Jack Tripper on Three's Company.

6. The character of Howard Sprague (Jack Dodson) was a gay-stereotyped mother-obsessed milquetoast with an interest in music and art and no interest in women, one of the few gay-coded characters in hayseed comedies (or in any 1960s comedy, for that matter).

There's an Andy Griffith celebrity hookup story on Tales of West Hollywood.