The Mickey Mouse Club: Which Mousketeer was the cutest? Which was gay?

When Annette Funicello died on April 8, 2013, the world mourned one of the iconic figures of the Boomer generation.  She was the first crush for many heterosexual boys and gay girls who watched her every week on The Mickey Mouse Club, and later in comedies co-starring Tommy Kirk and Frankie Avalon (left).

The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-59) was the first children's television program that starred real children, "the Mouseketeers."  They wore wore mouse ear-shaped caps and white sweaters emblazoned with their first names, and performed song-and-dance numbers interspliced with Disney cartoons, amateur talent contests, and dramatic serials.

In the early 1980s, the original series was broadcast on the Disney Channel.  My sister watched every day after school, and I saw a few episodes.  Girls outnumbered boys three to one, but if you could find them, the boys were exceptionally cute.  And in the 1950s, singing and dancing were widely labeled "sissy" pursuits, so they were all gay coded.  Turns out that only two were actually gay.

1. Bobby Burgess (born 1941), who was very tall, well-scrubbed, and always smiling. Straight. 

He went on to dance on The Lawrence Welk Show.

2. The short, sandy-haired Lonnie Burr (born 1943) was the intellectual of the group (his website commemorates Annette Funicello's death with the Latin phrase "ave atque vale"). Straight.

He was a poet and playwright as well as an actor.

3. Tommy Cole (born 1941) was hired primarily for his singing ability, though had a handsome face and the hunkiest physique among the Mousketeers (left). Straight.

After MMC, he had a stint in the air force and then became a makeup artist.

4. Cubby O'Brien (born 1946), the kid of the show, became a professional drummer. Straight.

More after the break

Beefcake Dads of 1950s Sitcoms

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a fad of nuclear family sitcoms, set in small town Mayfields, with a pipe-smoking Dad, a Mom who did housework in high heels, groovy teenagers, and wise-cracking preteens.  They actually weren't very popular at the time; adults preferred Westerns, swinging detectives, and musical-variety shows.  But the first generation of Boomers remembers getting their first glimpses of what family life was like -- or what they thought it should be like -- from the nuclear family sitcoms.

They generally identified with and/or mooned over the teenage boys: the muscular physiques of Bud (Billy Gray) of Father Knows Best and Wally (Tony Dow) of Leave it to Beaver, the blatant bulges of Ricky and David Nelson (Ozzie and Harriet), the teen idol cuteness of Jeff (Paul Petersen) of Donna Reed.  But there's a lot to be said for the dads, too.

Unfortunately, they weren't always as gay-friendly as their tv sons.

1. Born in 1906, bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his wife, former dancer Harriet, started The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on the radio in 1944. They transitioned to television in 1952, and lasted until 1966, making Ozzie and Harriet the longest-running fictional program on radio/tv.  Still not satisfied, he tried a spin-off, Ozzie's Girls, in 1976 (in which Ozzie takes in three college girls as boarders).

Ozzie and Harriet had many gay friends in real life, although no openly gay characters appeared on their show (that would have been impossible in the 1950s).

2. Robert Young (here apparently informing us of his size) was not only less than adequate physically, he was homophobic.

After his tenure on Father Knows Best ended, he starred in Marcus Welby, M.D., one of the most homophobic tv series of the 1970s.  In one episode, Dr. Welby diagnoses a man with "homosexual tendencies," but assures him that with the proper counseling, he can overcome his affliction.  In another, he treats a gay pedophile, with the implication that all gay men are pedophiles.  Gay activists protested, but the network -- and Dr. Welby -- wouldn't budge.

3. Born in 1909, Hugh Beaumont started out as a minister, but moved into acting during World War II.  Although a devout Methodist, he played his share of scoundrels, in Apology for Murder (1945) and The Blue Dahlia (1946), plus hard-boiled detective Mike Shayne.  Leave It to Beaver was meant to be a change of pace, but he was so typecast as Ward Cleaver that he took only a few roles afterwards, and ended up retiring to grow Christmas trees.

No data on whether he was a gay ally or not, but apparently his tv wife, Barbara Billingsley, was nonchalant about gay people.

4. The youngest of the 1950s sitcom Dads, ex-football star Carl Betz was only 36 when he was cast as Dr. Alex Stone, husband of the practically-perfect Donna Reed.  He had been making the rounds of tv adventure series, with guest parts on The Big Story, Waterfront, Sheriff of Colchise, Panic!, and Perry Mason, and he continued to be a sought-after performer throughout his life.

While he was playing the titular lawyer in Judd for the Defense (1967-69), one of his clients was a father who thinks that his son's friend is "recruiting" him into the "homosexual lifestyle."  Judd assures him that there's no cause for believing such a scandalous rumor.

Paul Petersen's Family Values

I've never seen a single episode of The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966).  It was before my time,  and it hasn't been rerun often.  Apparently not a lot of people were watching in the early 1960s.  Like other nuclear family sitcoms, such as Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver, it barely hit the top 30, regularly being trounced by Westerns (Gunsmoke), medical dramas (Dr. Kildare), and reality tv (Candid Camera).   

But the squeaky-clean suburban sitcom left a lasting legacy: Paul Peterson, aged 13 to 21, played Donna's dreamy teenage son, Jeff.  I don't know if his character was portrayed as girl-crazy or not during the later seasons, but the teen magazines  seemed oddly obsessed with pushing him into girls' arms.

In the shirtless shots, he is almost always shown with a girl -- even if that girl is his little sister, and he's reading to her in pajamas.  What were they trying to prove?

Paul had the clean-cut handsomeness beloved in 1950s teen idols, and a dreamy voice, so he began recording songs in 1962: "Keep Your Love Locked," "Lollipops and Roses"; "She Can't Find Her Keys."   Before long he released five albums and contributed to a sixth.   His biggest hit, "My Dad," was, of course, a paeon to his real-life father, with no girls mentioned.

After Donna Reed, Paul continued to perform, acted occasionally, and published a series of novels about a macho adventurer named The Smuggler.  His most enduring legacy came in 1990, when he founded A Minor Consideration, dedicated to improving the working conditions for child actors and helping them transition to adulthood.

While no one would deny that this is a praiseworthy goal, and there are no specifically homophobic statements on his website, there is also not a word about gay child actors in a heterosexist workplace -- not one word -- and the editorials veer uncomfortably toward exclusionary family values" rhetoric.

See also: Beefcake Dads of 1950s Sitcoms