Ricky Nelson

Ricky Nelson was the first teen idol produced by television.  He was born in 1940 to show biz parents, band leader Ozzie Nelson and singer Harriet, who played "themselves" on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on radio.  Both Ricky and his brother David began playing themselves in 1952, after the switch to television.

His plotlines were standard Boomer-kid stuff -- paper routes, bullies, homework --until the night of April 10, 1957, when Ricky performed the Fats Domino classic "I'm Walkin'."

Teenagers -- never big fans of the program before -- went wild.  Envisioning a whole new market, Ozzie had Ricky sing every week after that.  At first he used the pretense of a "talent contest" or "school dance," but then he gave up, put a guitar in Ricky's hands, and let him perform to audiences of rapturous teens.




Ricky stayed on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet until it finally ended in 1962, but his parts became increasingly smaller as his performing career took off.  Between 1957 and 1962, he hit the Top 40 charts 30 times, more than any other performer except Elvis and Pat Boone. In the interest of maintaining closeness with his brother, he also performed in "The Flying Nelsons," a trapeze act, as the flier to David's catcher.

Many performers in the 1950s were androgynous or slightly gender-transgressive -- singing itself was coded as a "sissy" activity -- but Ricky was the first teen idol to promote a gender-transgressive image, as soft, shy, introspected, and somewhat dark, as if he had a secret pain.  Though he was attracted to women and married multiple times, his primary relationships -- his most fulfilling, intimate relationships -- were with same-sex friends.  My friend Drake claimed to have dated him.

At the same time, he was rather homophobic.

Teen magazines didn't do a lot of beefcake shots in those days, but that didn't matter.  Ricky looked good in chinos, and he could fill out a cowboy outfit.

Ricky tried to rename himself "Rick," but it didn't work -- fans called him Ricky through his life.  He was busy through the 1960s and 1970s, writing new songs, experimenting with new genres. "Garden Party" (1972), about Hollywood hypocrisy, became a hit for a new generation.

He died tragically in an airplane crash in 1985.

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.

David and Ricky Nelson: Teen Idols Show Off on the Flying Trapeze

Sons of bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his wife Harriet, David Nelson (born 1936) and his kid brother Ricky Nelson (born 1940)  began their careers playing "themselves" on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, first on radio (1950-52) and then on tv (1952-1966).  They shared equally in their parents' fame.

But then one day in 1957, Ricky sang the Fats Domino hit "I'm Walkin'" on the show, and suddenly he was a superstar, arguably the first teen idol of the Boomer generation, selling millions of records, performing at sold-out concerts, interviewed in every teen magazine.

David. . .wasn't.

The brothers had always been very close, and it hurt Ricky -- and his parents -- to see David left behind.  But how could he help?

David was much more muscular than Ricky, an accomplished acrobat (and apparently much more gifted in the beneath-the-belt department).  If his voice wouldn't bring fame, maybe his biceps and bulge would.

Ricky and Ozzie used their connections to get him a starring role in The Big Circus (1959), as Tommy Gordon, a teenage trapeze artist with murderous intent.  Not only did he get to play against type, he spent most of the movie in a tight, revealing leotard.

David showed so much talent that Del and Babs Graham, "The Flying Viennas" who performed the movie's stunts, asked him to join their troupe.  He agreed, and Ricky, sensing an opportunity for fraternal togetherness, joined as well.  Soon they were performing as "The Flying Nelsons," with Ricky as the "flier" and David as the "catcher" (not the gay meaning).  Dad had a circus big top installed next to the studio for them to practice in.

Is it just me, or is there something decidedly homoerotic about the sight of Ricky hurling through the air and landing in David's muscular arms?

Ricky didn't really like hurling through the air, so after the brothers performed on a 1960 episode of Ozzie and Harriet, he dropped out.  But David starred as a trapeze artist in The Big Show (1961), doing all of his own stunts, and performed on The Hollywood Palace (1966) and several Circus of the Stars tv specials (1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982).  It was a lifelong passion, all due to brotherly love.

See also: Ricky Nelson; and 1970s trapeze artist and Playgirl model Jim Cavaretta;

John Wayne was a Sissy

During the 1950s and 1960s,, John Wayne was the symbol for an all-American frontier masculinity that never really existed, but many people longed for: tough, surly, taciturn, quick with his fists and a gun.  He starred in war movies, dramas, and comedies -- he even played Genghis Khan, but he was most famous as a cowboy hero or antihero in movies with gutsy one- or two-word titles: Hondo, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, True Grit, Big Jake, The Shootist. 

But the "epitome of masculinity" was actually rather gender-transgressive:
1. His real name was the gender-bending Marion.
2. Watch him walk.  He sashays like RuPaul.
3. He had small, delicate hands.
4. He was slim and svelte, nothing like a muscleman.
5. He got his start as a "Sandy Saunders, the Singing Cowboy."
6. In His Private Secretary (1933), his character is a feminine-coded bon vivant who wants to marry a minister's granddaughter, but he's too "debauched."

And he had his share of gay subtexts, surly, taciturn guys with no particular interest in ladies who buddy-bond with the hunkiest star du jour that studios could cram into a cowboy suit.  Just to name a few:

1. The Searchers (1956).  Ethan (John Wayne), who has no particular interest in ladies, buddy-bonds with Martin (screen hunk Jeffrey Hunter) en route to saving a girl from savage Indians.

2. Rio Bravo (1959).  Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) teams up with Colorado Ryan (contemporary teen idol Ricky Nelson).

3. The Comancheros (1961). Texas ranger Jake Cutter (John Wayne) arrests Paul Regret (screen hunk Stuart Whitman), but then needs his help to fight the Comancheros.

4. The Undefeated (1969): former Union and Confederate officers (John Wayne, screen hunk Rock Hudson) must work together to guide a group through war-torn Mexico.

The Duke was notoriously homophobic, even in the days when homophobia was rampant, though he and Rock Hudson managed to work together on the set of The Undefeated.

And racist: in an infamous Playboy interview in 1971, he stated that he believed in white supremacy until "the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility."

Why was he trying so hard to maintain white heterosexual male privilege?  Was it that big a problem for him to share the world with people who were gay, or black, or female?

Sounds like a sissy to me.