20 Musclemen who guided me through the Age of Innocence, from Bomba the Jungle Boy to the American Psycho

Link to the n*de photos

This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that gay people existed, and guided me from junior high through college and to West Hollywood. They provided a joy that transcended aesthetic pleasure, telling gay kids that we belonged.  We were welcome. 

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide.

In your most need I'll be by your side.

1. Johnny Sheffield played Bomba the Jungle Boy on Tarzan Theater every Saturday afternoon when there wasn't a game.  I never actually made it through a whole movie -- they were dreadfully heterosexist.  But there was always time for those gleaming black-and-white muscles, especially when he was tied up.

2. Bruce Lee.  He died in 1973, but his movies were playing constantly on Kung Fu Theater, and everybody's older brother had his beefcake poster on his bedroom wall.

3. Michael Forest played a god of masculine beauty (literally the God Apollo) on an episode of Star Trek which I saw sometime in the 1970s.

4. Denny Miller. Moments of gay promise as a surfer and a jungle man on Gilligan's Island.

5, David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era showed us his stuff in American Werewolf in London (1981).  Plus he also gave us a strong gay subtext in spite of the 1980s homophobia.

6. Yukio Mishima.  It wasn't hard to find gay-themed books in the early 1980s.  Just look for "evil" or "hidden" in the title.  So I found Confessions of a Mask, with Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima's obsession with male muscles and death.  

7. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The 1980s start and end with Arnold, who single-handedly brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and made it respectable.

8.  Sylvester Stallone gave him a little help with his grunting, sweat-soaked Rambo and Rocky.  We saw his stuff  in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early adult movie.  

9. John Amos.  Gordy the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore, a warrior in a Conan rip-off that we all saw, and my gym buddy.

10. Lou Ferrigno, who played a muscular green Hulk against Bill Bixby's David Banner, dropped by often when I was working at Muscle & Fitness.  Did I mention our hookup?

More after the break

Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby: Bodybuilder and Buddy

Speaking of bodybuilder buddies, when Bill Bixby finished his gay subtext series My Favorite Martian and The Courtship of Eddie's Father,  he cashed in on the 1970s superhero craze in The Incredible Hulk (1977-82).

He played the antiheroic Marvel comic book character Bruce Banner, heterosexualized by being renamed David (Bruce "sounded too gay") and a getting a dead wife. When he gets angry, David transforms, Jekyll-Hyde style, into the green-skinned, muscular Hulk, who has super-strength, subhuman intelligence, and a nasty temper.  Fortunately the Hulk knows enough to avoid harming good guys or bystanders, and he usually disarms or scares the bad guys rather than killing them.

Like The Fugitive, David is wandering the countryside, trying to find a cure for his "problem," fleeing an tabloid reporter (Jack Colver) obsessed with him, and getting involved with people's personal lives along the way.

The Hulk was played by 26-year old bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno (left and top), a multiple Mr. Universe and Mr. America contender whom I met when I was working for Muscle and Fitness; he appeared on the cover at least once a year.

Other than the documentary Pumping Iron, this was his first screen appearance, but soon his physique and his inspiring story -- he had been nearly deaf since childhood, and had a slurred voice -- propelled him into fame.  After The Incredible Hulk, he had starring roles in Hercules (1983), Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989), The Cage (1989, with James Shigeta as the villain), and The Incredible Hulk TV Series (1996-97), where the Hulk could speak.   A special favorite of kids, he appeared as himself on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

I don't know if there were any gay subtexts in the series -- it was on Friday nights, so I never saw it -- but there was an off-screen bromance.  Bill became Lou's mentor and confidant, and like Paul Newman and Rocky Graziano twenty years before, they were often seen socializing together off the set.

I remember them coming into the Muscle and Fitness editorial office together, looking for all the world like a gay couple, especially Bill in his tan suit and sunglasses.

In his memoirs, Lou stated that he doesn't like to watch The Incredible Hulk now because it is too sad.  Bill "was like a brother to me.  We grew together.  I miss him."

Bill Bixby was a gay ally, of course, and Lou Ferrigno always seemed perfectly fine with the adulation of gay fans.  When he appeared on the reality series The Apprentice, he was fine with the elderly gay icon George Takei commenting on his  hotness of his semi-nude body, but got upset over a joke that criticized his fashion sense.

Lou is now appearing on the webseries The Incredible Ferrignos, in which his entire family, all certified personal trainers, offer make-overs to families with unhealthy diet and exercise habits.

Lou Ferrigno, Jr., (born 1984) starred in two of David DeCoteau's nearly-gay movies: 1313: Hercules Unbound! (2012) and 1313: Night of the Widows (2012).

I get more of a gay-friendly vibe from Brent (born 1990).  He's not an actor, but you can see lots of shirtless pix on his facebook page.

Movies in the Fall of 1983: Tom Cruise's Gay Panic, Lou Ferrigno's Muscles, Christopher Atkins' Frontal, and Robby Benson's Everything

In  1983-84, I was in my second year of my M.A. in English at Indiana University, working at the Eigenmann Hall Snack Bar, living in an upstairs apartment in downtown Bloomington with my friend Viju, and hooking up with impunity: I was 22-23 years old, new to gay bars, and AIDS was just whispered rumor, with no connection to everyday life.  But I was still interested in a monogamous romantic relationship, so I expected every hookup to end with a date.  Some did; I managed to go to 20 movies in theaters that year, so many that I have to divide this list into two. 

August: Risky Business. The movie that made Tom Cruise a star.  I don't remember what the "risky business" is -- a brothel, maybe? I just remember the racist, homophobic scene with the drag queen sex worker who shows up at high schooler Tom's house when he calls an escort agency.  Not to worry, he recommends a young, attractive female-presenting person who turns out to be the Girl of Tom's Dreams.  The drag queen, Jackie, is played by Bruce A. Young, who is heterosexual and masculine-presenting in real life.  In 1983, it took guts to play even an offensive stereotype gay character.

August: Hercules.  Bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno in a peplum-style sword-and-sorcery adventure.  He wins the Girl of His Dreams.  I would hook up with him, briefly, in a couple of years.

September: Educating Rita: my friend refused to go to this, assuming that it was a sex comedy ("Educating Rita in how to do it better"), but actually it's a My Fair Lady-style "opens a lower-class girl to the joys of academe" drama.  Michael Caine doesn't fall in love with Rita, and in the end, she's admitted to Oxford. 

October: All the Right Moves.  We would see anything with Tom Cruise (sigh).  Of course we thought he was gay; who knew that he was actually homophobic?   This one is about a high school boy named Stef, who plays...ugh...football and wins the Girl of His Dreams.  Or something.  Who cared?  You got to look at Tom Cruise for two hours.

November: Running Brave.  We would also see anything with Robby Benson (sigh), even another sports movie.  A First Nations guy leaves the reservation to compete in the Olympics as a runner and win the Girl of His Dreams.

November: A Night in Heaven.  AND we would see anyting with Christopher Atkins, hoping that his full-frontal spot from Blue Lagoon would repeat itself.  Here he plays a college student who works as a stripper, and ends up falling in love with one of his customers, who happens to be his professor (a lady, of course).  Her husband does not approve.  No gay content -- Chris strips only for the ladies.  But at least he gives us a full-frontal scene.

December: Scarface.  A nauseating number of guys being machine-gunned to death.  I felt sick.  But Al Pacino as a modern day drug lord has ample buddy-bonding going on with his "mentor" Robert Loggia.   Ok, they betray each other, but what do you expect with the heterosexist mandate: all women are good and nice and kind, all men either brutish bullies or snakes-in-the-grass.

Bill Bixby: My Favorite Martian

Bill Bixby played swinging 1960s bachelors with glamorous jobs, cool pads, boss threads, and a never-ending supply of babes -- until one day something happened that changed everything, made his heteronormative hedonism seem trite and crude.









In My Favorite Martian (1963-66), his Tim O'Hara rescued a Martian scientist from a crashed spaceship, and had to keep him hidden from the world.  But what started out as a standard "keep your unique talent hidden" sitcom like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched quickly developed into something more.  Tim and his so-called "Uncle Martin" share a home and a life and generally ignore the attentions of female suitors.  And though they rarely if ever disrobe on camera, they surround themselves with cute and muscular men:






In The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-72), his Tom Corbett is widowed, left with a young son (Brandon Cruz), like the Dads on a dozen other 1960s sitcoms.  But what started out as a standard "fix up Dad with a girl" plot quickly developed into something more.  Tom isn't really interested in marrying again.  Instead, he bonds with a coworker, magazine photographer Norman (James Komack).










 In an iconic photo, the three share the same  banana split, quite an unconventional family for the 1970s:

Bill went on to buddy-bond with Lou Ferrigno off-camera, while they were both starring in The Incredible Hulk.

Joe Weider: My Bodybuilder Boss

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I landed a job as a "contributing editor" for Muscle and Fitness.  It was actually a part-time job fact-checking and proofreading articles, but it looks good on my resume.  Besides, I got to hang out with the sort of guys who work for muscle magazines, and meet bodybuilding legends like Lou Ferrigno (not to mention Ivo, the Bulgarian bodybuilder who was insanely jealous of Michael J. Fox).

  And I met publisher Joe Weider, the father of modern bodybuilding.  He was rather gruff.

Born in 1919, Joe Weider grew up when the epitome of male beauty, as far as Hollywood was concerned,  was sophisticated and skinny, like Cary Grant.  Bodybuilders were usually assumed gay, and muscle magazines were published primarily for gay men (would you really buy this magazine for muscle-building tips?).

Although Joe began his career publishing Your Physique (later Muscle and Fitness) for a similar audience, he wanted to make bodybuilding "respectable," by which he meant heterosexual, and so he began a life-long crusade to re-brand the muscleman as an object of female desire.

In spite of his homophobia, Joe Weider was instrumental in bringing bodybuilding into the mainstream.  He published many fitness magazines (one edited by the Grandfather of Bodybuilding, Earle E. Liederman), and books (plus some other titles, including softcore hetero porn), and invented nutritional supplements like Tiger's Milk.   

His self-help pamphlets, covering everything from bodybuilding to nutrition to confidence building to how to be heterosexual (a "he-man," left), were advertised everywhere, even in comic books.

He founded the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness, which emphasized symmetry, grace, and beauty rather than the weight-lifting ability of the AAU (Amateur Athletic Association).  He mentored a generation of young bodybuilders of the new "body beautiful" school, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bob Paris.  

When Bob came out in 1989, Joe was reputedly furious that a gay person had sneaked into the ranks of his beautiful heterosexual bodybuilders. I wonder what he thought about gay employees.

Joe Weider died on March 23rd, 2013, at the age of 93.

James Shigeta and His Gay Buddies

Asian male actors have been underrepresented in American media, and when they appear at all, they are typecast as computer nerds and wise purveyors of inscrutable wisdom, never as hetero-romantic leads.  Even when they are action heroes, they never "get the girl."

Except for James Shigeta, who died a few days ago at the age of 85.   When he first started out in Hollywood in the 1950s, he broke through the racial barriers to land hetero-romantic roles.  One was even interracial, which scandalized audiences in the 1960s.

Generally the pursuit of The Girl was mediated by a competitor or buddy, giving Shigeta's movies a number of pleasant gay subtexts.

The Crimson Kimono (1959): Two L.A. detectives (Shigeta, bisexual actor Glenn Corbett) fall in love with the same girl.

Flower Drum Song (1961): Two Chinese-American men, a nightclub owner (Jack Soo) and a college student (Shigeta) fall in love with the same girl.

Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966): Elvis starts a helicopter service in Hawaii, and bonds with Dan Kohana (James Shigeta) and his ten-year old daughter.

Nobody's Perfect (1968): In Japan, an American soldier (Physique Pictorial star Doug McClure) falls in love with a Japanese woman who is betrothed to a traditional man (Shigeta).

Shigeta received fewer starring roles after the Swinging Sixties ended, but he appeared on tv in Medical Center, Mission: Impossible, The Young Lawyers, The Streets of San Francisco, and Hawaii Five-O, playing both idealistic young heroes and villains.

I remember him in Samurai (1979), a silly tv pilot with Joe Penny (then rumored to be gay) as a lawyer who goes undercover as a samurai warrior (which the producers thought was some kind of superhero).  Shigeta played Takeo, his Asian-wisdom-spouting sensei.

In Cage (1989) and Cage 2 (1994), two buddy-bonding man-mountains (Lou Ferrigno, Reb Brown) open a bar, and run afoul of the gang lord Tin Lum Yin (Shigeta) and his illegal "cage matches."

His last role was in The People I've Slept With (2009), about a woman who has had many lovers.  When she finds herself pregnant, she goes on a quest to find the father, accompanied by her gay BFF (Wilson Cruz). Shigeta plays her hip dad.

No wife is mentioned in his wikipedia article.  Maybe he was gay.

See also: What Happened to the Asian Beefcake?