Beach Movies: The Beefcake

The beach movie crazy began with Beach Party (1963), and lasted through Catalina Caper (1967).  During that 4 year period, American International Pictures churned out a dozen beach movies, starring former teen idol Frankie Avalon and former Mousketeer Annette Funicello, or if they were too busy, Dwayne Hickman, Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, and Yvonne Craig.  Other studios churned out their own teen-idols-in-Speedos movies, starring Bobby Vinton, Fabian, James Darren, Tab Hunter, and when they ran out of teen idols, Rod Lauren, Frankie Randall, Michael Callan, James Stacy, and Edd "Kookie" Burns.

The plot of the beach movie is the same in every installment: a gang of teenagers arrives in Malibu for a summer vacation.  Frankie and Annette (or their stand-ins) argue: she insists that they plan for marriage, the next step in embracing their heterosexual destiny, but he is too happy surfing, skydiving, and drag racing.

That is, he refuses to give up his homoerotic buddy-bonding with gay-vague chums.They separate, flirt with others, complain about each other to their friends, snipe at each other at the teen hangout, and walk forlornly on the beach.

Meanwhile a greedy corporation hopes to exploit the teenagers, or else salt-peter their heterosexual passions.  Maybe some juvenile delinquents cause trouble.  The climax comes in the form of a cartoonish teenagers vs. adults or delinquents brawl or car chase.  Frankie and Annette save the day, reconcile without resolving their disagreement, and head for home.

The teens are staggeringly affluent, white, and free from parental intervention of any sort.  They have all of the freedom of adulthood and none of the responsibilities.  They are living in their own surreal world of spies and saboteurs, drag races and skydiving contests, musclemen hanging from helicopters, gorillas riding surfboards.  There are Martians, mermaids, witch doctors, dime store Indians, bumbling crooks, and a girl whose gyrating hips cause volcanoes to erupt.

Every now and then Frankie mugs at the camera and asks "Can you believe this?"

And there is endless beefcake.  There are many girls in bikinis, but the beach is crowded with swimsuit boys; bulges are displayed as prominently as cleavage.  Jody McCrea's bulge makes a regular appearance.

John Ashley is dragged along the beach, the camera zooming in to capture the curve of his thighs, the tight muscles of his legs and calves, and even his frontside.

Tommy Kirk (left) wears a purple swimsuit so revealing that one can't imagine how it passed the sensors (not this photo).

Frankie doesn't bulge, but he is constantly shirtless, bedding down among his chums or standing tall and iconic beside his surfboard, his smooth, toned body preternaturally bright.

 In Fireball 500 (1966), which doesn't have a beach scene and only counts as a beach movie because it stars Frankie and Annette, Frankie spends a long scene shirtless, being interrogated by the police in his hotel room.  He never thinks to get dressed, though the officers stare at him, and one cheekily inserts his business card under Frankie's pendant, against his bare chest, like someone might insert a card into a woman's bosom.

Too bad the Disney Channel's Teen Beach Movie (2013) doesn't fare as well.

Next: The Duds

Jules Verne: The Disney Version

During the 1960s, every boy I knew loved Jules Verne -- journeys to distant corners of the world or to its center, lost civilizations, monsters, volcanoes, maelstroms, and nick-of-time escapes, all in an environment so masculine you could practically taste the homoerotic tension.

I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, Mysterious Island, and A Journey to the Center of the Earth in elementary school, in abridged Scholastic Book Club editions.  In high school, I read the originals, and collected some of the Ace paperbacks of Verne's lesser-known works: Michael Strogoff, The Begum's Fortune, The Carpathian Castle, Master of the World, The Village in the Tree-Tops.  

During the 1950s and early 1960s, "Disney" versions of these Verne classics appeared, with two important changes:
1. To draw the all-important Boomer audience, a teenager.
2. To ensure a Hollywood fade-out-kiss, heterosexual obsessions were added.

In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the French scientist Pierre Aronnax, his assistant Conseil, and his Canadian friend Ned Land are captured by Captain Nemo, who holds them prisoner in his electronic submarine.  Nemo became an outcast after his wife died, but no other women are mentioned or longed for.

In the 1954 movie (the only one actually from Disney), Ned (Kirk Douglas, not a teenager) sings about "the girls I've loved on nights like this," whose kisses make him "bubble up like molten lava."

In A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lindenbrock, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans journey alone, although Axel does have a girlfriend waiting back home.  In the 1959 Disney version (actually from 20th Century Fox), the Professor meets a lady, and the girlfriend gets a more substantial role.  But at least there are substantial shirtless shots of teen idol Pat Boone as Alec (Axel).  And in the last scene he's completely nude except for a sheep.

In The Mysterious Island , five Civil War POWs escape in a hot-air balloon and end up on the mysterious island, where they fight giant bees and pirates, encounter Captain Nemo (Omar Sharif), and flee a volcano eruption. In the 1961 Disney version (actually from Columbia), there are women on the island for the men to fall in love with.

But at least they are shirtless or semi-nude most of the time, especially Herbert Brown (Michael Callan).  The scene where he and the girl hide from a giant bee in a honeycomb is still scary today.

In Five Weeks in a Balloon, three men explore Africa in a hot air balloon. Again, no women are mentioned or longed for.

The 1962 Disney version (actually from 20th Century Fox) changes the cast, adding pilot Jacques (teen idol Fabian Forte) and newspaper report O'Shay (Red Buttons).  Each falls in love with a woman en route; the movie ends with two couples enthusiastically kissing. And there's no beefcake (although Fabian, right, often appeared shirtless and nude in other productions).

This was also the era of the Disney Adventure Boys -- like Tommy Kirk, James MacArthur, and Kurt Russell -- hired to display Cold War masculinity, which meant two things: muscular physiques and heterosexual obsession.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-63) was about a teenager (Dwayne Hickman of Love That Bob) so immensely girl-crazy that in the first season he announced it in every episode: "I'm Dobie Gillis, and I like girls.  What am I saying?  I love girls!  Beautiful, gorgeous, soft, round, creamy girls!"

Other people in Dobie's world are peculiarly low on straightness, however.  His proto-hippie buddy Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver, right, later of Gilligan's Island) shrinks away from the word "girl" as timidly as the word "work," both symbols of heterosexist destiny.

He expressed heterosexual interest only a few times, and usually in the first season.  In "The Gigolo," he is sought after for dates because his lack of heterosexual interest makes him safe.

Scripts sometimes "explain" this lack of interest as shyness, but in his autobiography, Bob Denver insists that Maynard "isn't afraid of girls; he just wants to pursue his own life."

Tomboy Zelda Gilroy (Sheila Kuehl) has a crush on Dobie, but withdraws in horror when he pretends to acquiesce; maybe she is using the crush to avoid any realistic attachments to boys (in 1994, Sheila Kuehl became the first open lesbian elected to the California state legislature).

Even the foppish Milton Armitage (Warren Beatty) seems uninterested in girls for their own sake, merely using them as tools to one-up Dobie.  After the first season, Warren Beatty left the series, replaced by the gay-coded cousin Chatsworth (Steve Franken), a mother-obsessed milquetoast who doesn't even bother with the pretense of liking girls.  Instead, he openly competes with Maynard for Dobie's affection.

Even the intensity of Dobie's attraction to girls is open to dispute.  The "I love girls" speech was dropped after the first season, and most episodes were about groups of friends rather than crushes and dates.

In one episode, Dobie is even suspected of being gay.  He dates a girl who belongs to a family of trapeze artists (Francis X. Bushman, Jud Beaumont, Tip McClure), who wander around the house in togas, discussing the benefits of "the Greek way," an obvious double entendre.

  To demonstrate their enthusiasm for Dobie, they mob him, rip his clothes off, and give him a toga of his own.  Dobie's Dad arrives, mistakes the togas for dresses, and concludes that Dobie has "gone funny" in a household of drag queens.

Dwayne Hickman went on to star in the buddy-bonding Cat Ballou, with Michael Callan.