Parker Stevenson and the Big One

In the fall of 1977, the question most gay boys were asking was: "Shaun or Parker?"

Most chose Shaun Cassidy, the fey, impestuous Joe on The Hardy Boys Mysteries (1977-79), the legendary gay-subtext tv adaption of the Hardy Boys books.

But many chose 25-year old Parker Stevenson (right), who played his older, cautious boyfriend. . .um, I mean brother, Frank.  He was just as dreamy, with brown wavy hair and piercing eyes, and he looked just as good in a Speedo.  Maybe better.

Besides, Parker had already played gay-vague characters twice: Gene, who falls in love with Finney in the boys boarding school drama A Separate Peace (1972); and Chris Randall, who is mentored by the older Rick (Sam Elliott) in Lifeguard (1976).

After Hardy Boys, Parker did the soap opera-softcore porn-thriller of the week thing (Not of This Earth, Are You Lonesome Tonight, Terror Peak, Trapped).  I haven't seen any of them.  His only movie with significant gay interest was Shooting Stars (1983), where he played an actor-turned-detective who buddy-bonds with the gruff Billy Dee Williams.

During the 1990s, he returned to the semi-nude beach shots as an aging lifeguard on Baywatch (1989-99).

In 1991, he came into the spotlight again when his then-wife Kirstie Allie won an Emmy for her work on Cheers.  She thanked Parker for giving her "the big one" for the last eight years.  All of his former fans immediately began scanning old teen idol pin-ups, and going through Baywatch in slow motion, looking for signs of "the big one."

I hadn't noticed anything noteworthy before, but now that she mentioned it....

Parker has been the subject of frequent gay rumors, but he hasn't made any public statements.

Fall 1985: Watching Brothers in the Hollywood Hills

When I first moved to West Hollywood in 1985, every Wednesday night my friend Mark, who introduced me to Michael J. Fox,  drove me up to a house in the Hollywood Hills, where there were about twenty gay men, most involved in the film industry, drinking wine, eating fancy hors d'oeuvres, and waiting until 10:00.

To watch tv.

What was all the fuss about?

Brothers (1984-89), a sitcom on the premium cable network Showtime, about three grown-up brothers who run a bar.

1. Macho ex-football player Joe (Robert Walden, left, formerly the roving reporter on Lou Grant).

2. Macho construction worker Lou (Brandon Maggart, left).

3. Cliff (Paul Regina, right), who, in the first episode, dumps his fiance on his wedding day and tells his brothers that he is...gay!

A gay character on tv!

In 1984, gay characters appeared on network tv very rarely, usually in "old high school buddy comes out" episodes of sitcoms. There were no gay characters in starring roles.  There were no tv series about gay people.

Brothers was revolutionary.

Cliff knows nothing about the gay world, so he and his brothers work together to explore cruising, dating and romance, gay organizations, gay rights, AIDS, and homophobia of various types.  Their tour guide is Donald (Philip Charles Mackenzie), a stereotypic swishy queen who is loud and proud.

Both are actually shown dating men, getting involved in relationships, and even kissing guest stars like Charles Van Eman, Jay Louden, Matthias Hues, and John Furey (right, the one with the basket).

Other gay characters in the 1980s were portrayed as completely sexless, announcing that they are gay but never doing anything about it.  Revolutionary again!

As the show progressed, episodes increasingly focused on non-gay topics, like machinations at the bar, Joe's dating and eventual marriage, or Lou's wife and kids, including a seminary student (John Putch) and a teenage prodigy (Yeardley Smith, later the voice of Lisa on The Simpsons).  

In the fall of 1986, I enrolled in a Wednesday night class at USC, and couldn't go up to the Hollywood Hills anymore. Brothers aired until 1989.

You can watch episodes on youtube, but I don't think I will.  I prefer to keep it part of my memories of those first months in West Hollywood, when everything was exciting and fresh and new.

Zachery Ty Bryan: Home Improvement Also-Ran

Born in Colorado in 1981, Zachery Ty Bryan was hired to play the oldest brother on the TGIF sitcom Home Improvement (1991-1999).  As he grew into adolescence, he became more and more muscular, but his spectacular physique never made a splash in teen magazines -- they were all agog over Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  For most of the series' run,  JTT was the standout star, Zachery a background player.

But he never became bitter over his second-banana status; ZTB and JTT remained on friendly terms.  Instead, he used his free time to star in movies and tv series:

1. First Kid (1996), about a regular guy who lands a date with the President's daughter.

2. "Mr. Muscles," a 1997 episode of Promised Land about steroid abuse.
3. Principal Takes a Holiday (1998), about a teen operator who gets a drifter to stand-in as his school principal.
4. Held for Ransom (2000), which allowed his character to buddy-bond with Jordan Brower.

Afterwards he mostly played athletes whose plots involve winning the championship, not getting the girl.  The Game of their Lives (2005), for instance, is about the U.S. soccer team beating Britain in 1950.

Code Breakers (2005) is about a cheating scandal at West Point Military Academy, with no girls in the cast.

In Hammer of the Gods (2009), he played a man-mountain, the Norse god Thor, who wields a mighty hammer and saves his friends (there's a girl, too, but it's most about his friends).

Today Zach has moved into independent film production.

The Hager Twins: Picking and Grinning

What can you say about twin brothers who grew up in Chicago but claimed to be cowboys?

Who were discovered working at Disneyland, and signed on by "pickin' and grinnin'" Buck Owens to 16 years of the hayseed "family values" variety show Hee-Haw (1969-1985).  Yet posed nude (and coyly hidden) in Playgirl in 1973?

(But not to worry; fully clothed, their tight cowboy jeans left nothing to the imagination.)

Who released singles like "Gotta Get to Oklahoma (Cause California's Getting to Me)" and an album entitled Motherhood, Apple Pie, and the Flag,  yet had a fast-paced, self-deprecating comedy routine, like a country-western Sonny and Cher?  In glittery, rhinestone-enlaced costumes, like country-western Liberaces?

Who sang mournful songs about cheating girlfriends and absent wives, but never married and were never seen with women?  They lived close together through all of their lives (except for a 3 1/2 year separation), and died eight months apart in 2008 and 2009.

Not many gay kids looked to Hee-Haw for role models.  But maybe they should have.

In addition to Hee-Haw, Jim and Jon starred in the tv movie Twin Detectives (1976), about twin detectives, and on a 1978 episode of The Bionic Woman, as evil twin clones from another planet.

The handsome, photogenic duo spent the last twenty years of their lives appearing at county fairs, nostalgia events, and the annual Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio.  Singing, riffing, and signing autographs for their thousands of devoted fans.

Frasier: The Gayest Show on TV, or the Most Homophobic?

In 1993, Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), the stuffy, elitist psychiatrist who hung out at Cheers (1982-93), moved back to his hometown of Seattle, Washington, where he hosted his own radio program, offering psychiatric help to callers.

Very few episodes of Frasier (1993-2004) involved the wacky mental problems of callers -- the producers thought that concentrating on the radio station would make it too much like WKRP in Cincinnati -- although producer Roz (Peri Gilpin) became a regular, and there were occasional appearances by leering, hetero-horny sports show host Bulldog (Dan Butler) and swishy food show host Gil (Edward Hibbert).

Most episodes were about Frasier's home life, conflicts with his macho, working class father, Martin (John Mahoney) and his even more elitist younger brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce).

It had a huge gay fanbase.  Many gay men could relate to conflicts with their macho, working-class fathers over their interest in fine art, show tunes, wine-tasting, and chick flicks.

Plus Frasier featured the most intense, passionate, and open gay romance on tv during the period.

Frasier and Niles were boyfriends.  Ok, they were scripted as heterosexual brothers, but come on...brothers simply do not act like that.

Their relationship was deliberately written as quasi-romantic.  Even other characters commented on it.

But, to keep it from crossing over the boundary into over romance, the writers gave Frasier any number of hetero-romantic conquests, and Niles a wife plus an ongoing crush on Daphne (Jane Laneves), Martin's live-in physical therapist, who remained oblivious (or pretended to be).

And they drew pitiably few gay plotlines, and all of the most simplistic, 1970s type.

In the fifth season, Niles and Daphne are mistaken for gay, and Frasier is embarrassed when his friends discover him in bed with a man, and conclude that he is...you know (shades of Three's Company!).

In the seventh season, Martin pretends to be gay to get out of dating a woman he dislikes, only to have her set him up with a gay man (he ends up going through with the date).

The most substantial gay plotline involved Gil the Food Critic, who was assumed gay throughout, and often ridiculed for his effeminacy,

In the ninth season, he reveals that he is actually heterosexual, married to a butch woman named Bev, and is rather offended by the gay rumors: "honestly, just because a man dresses well and knows how to use a pastry bag, people jump to wild conclusions!"

The retro, borderline homophobic storylines are particularly surprising when one realizes that David Hyde Pierce, Dan Butler (left), John Mahoney and Edward Hibbert were all gay.  That's the entire male cast, except for Kelsey Grammer.

To recap: an entire cast full of gay men playing heterosexuals, the focus character involved in a same-sex romance barely hidden under the "brothers" label, and no gay references except for a few retro "mistaken for gay" excursions.

Was it the gayest show on tv, or the most homophobic?

See also: Cheers, Where Nobody Knows Your Name; and WKRP in Cincinnati

Bobby Sherman: Here Come the Brides

Here Come the Brides (1968-70) was a quasi-Western that delivered lots of bare chested bravado and created two teen idols. In the back story, the idyllic frontier Seattle of the 19th century is inhabited by hundreds of tall, broad-shouldered men in tight jeans, but no women except the matronly Lottie (Joan Blondell), who runs the local saloon. So far it sounds like a homoerotic Eden, but then the three Bolt brothers, Jason (Robert Brown), Joshua (David Soul), and Jeremy (Bobby Sherman)  get the idea that some of the men might be interested in women, so they arrange for some to be transported from Boston. These aren’t mail order brides, however; they live in a dormitory with chaperones, waiting to be courted nice and proper.



Few courtships and fewer marriages actually occurred during the show’s two-year run. Instead, plots mostly involved the brothers facing shady lumber dealers, crotchety prospectors, decadent Shakespearean actors, wannabe Mormons, snake-oil hucksters, and miscellaneous scalawags. Bobby Sherman played youngest brother Jeremy, a shy outsider and a stutterer, as cuddly as a teddy bear, yet muscular enough to wander around Seattle with his shirt off. Although he was sweet on one of the brides, his plotlines were never heterosexist. He rescued boys from marauders and evildoers, or else got carried off by the marauders and evildoers himself, tied in a back room while his older brothers mounted daring rescue. And sometimes he sang.

Born in 1943, Bobby Sherman had been performing since the mid-1960’s, but his career didn’t take off until he became Jeremy Bolt. Within a year he had four charting singles, and his anthem, “Julie, Do Ya Love Me?,” hit #2 in September 1970. His first two albums were boring: most songs had “girl” as every other word and even a titular protestation of Bobby’s heterosexuality, such as “Little Woman” or “She’s a Lady.”

The only gay content was in “Hey, Mr. Sun": the lonely singer notes that “I've been running all my life / In search of something I can't find,” but then he looks up and realizes that “Mr. Sun” will always be beside him. It is only a small step from the sun to a human boy who will “tap me on the shoulder and whisper to me from behind / Remind me of the yesterdays I tried alone.”

With Love, Bobby (1970) and Portrait of Bobby (1970) were more interesting, with gender-neutral songs like “Spend Some Time Loving Me” and “Message to My Brother,” as well as the strangely seductive “Sweet Gingerbread Man,” originally sung in the gay-friendly Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, starring Don Johnson (1970).  Pop music aimed at preteens often associates sexual desire with food, as in Archies’ "Sugar Sugar" (“You are my candy girl”) and the 1910 Fruit Gum Company’s "Yummy" (“I’ve got love in my tummy”). And in this case the object of Bobby's desire is “all tasty and tan, sweet gingerbread man.”

In 1971-72 Bobby starred with Wes Stern in the gay-subtext Getting Together.   When his teen idol star faded, he became a EMT.

Married and divorced twice, Bobby is reputedly bisexual.  According to a 2011 biography, he and gay actor Sal Mineo became lovers during the 1970s, before Sal settled down with his long-term partner. 

Jerry Mathers as the Beaver

Teenager boys in the 1950s were expected to be girl-crazy, but preteens were expected to find girls odious, to make their presumed pubescent "discovery" more dramatic.  Thus, teenage Wally (Tony Dow, left) of Leave it to Beaver (1957-63) was indefatigably girl-crazy, but preteen Beaver (Jerry Mathers, right) snarls:  "Go see a girl? I'd rather smell a skunk!"

The anxiety for his big brother and parents (Ward and June) is that Beaver might not "discover" girls, abandon the same-sex bonds of childhood for a girl-crazy adolescence.

Gender transgressions are the most problematic, as in "Beaver's Doll Buggy" (1956): Beaver needs some wheels for his soapbox car, and a girl donates her old doll buggy.  As he wheels it down the street, everyone assumes that he is playing with dolls. His peers laugh, and an adult recoils in homophobic panic: "The new generation has gone sissy!"  Eddie Hasell is too stunned to wisecrack, and Wally solemnly advises, "Guys always pick on someone who's different."

Though Jerry Mathers is 14 years old when the series ends, and physically adolescent, his body noticeably harder and tighter, his body noticeably deeper, Beaver never "discovers" girls. But he becomes increasingly adept at feigning interest.

In "The Mustache" (1963), June is perplexed because Beaver and his buddy Gilbert (Stephen Talbot) failed to go to the high school to watch Wally's basketball practice.  (She assumes without question that they would be interested in ogling high school boys).  Beaver says that they decided not to go when they realized that girls would be watching, too.

 Alarmed, June asks: "You mean you and Gilbert don't like girls?" Realizing that to not like girls at his age would be suspect, Beaver quickly backtracks: "We like girls fine, but not with sports."

"Don Juan Beaver" (1963) is a masterpiece of feigned girl-craziness.  With everyone agog over the upcoming Sadie Hawkins Dance, Beaver claims enthusiastic interest, and accepts invitations from two girls.  They discover his two-timing and dump him, leaving him alone in his room, dateless, on the night of the big dance.

We see him happily dancing the twist by himself.  Then he hears Ward coming, so he quickly switches the record player off and sits on the bed, looking dejected. Ward invites him downstairs to be with the family, but Beaver refuses, saying he would rather be alone.  Ward leaves, and Beaver jumps up and starts dancing again, grinning broadly.

It is a remarkable scene.  Why is Beaver so obviously happy?  Why does he want Ward to believe that he is miserable?  The deception makes no sense unless Beaver has cleverly achieved what he wanted all along: he has met the social mandate to display girl-craziness without having to actually date a girl.

The Boy Who Fought Mutants: Lee H. Montgomery

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1985, my mother called every week, usually early Saturday morning, and asked "What stars have you met?"  But she wasn't familiar with most of the actors of my generation, so "Michael J. Fox" got a polite murmur, "Robin Williams" a vague "Oh yeah, I've heard of him," and "Lee H. Montgomery" a blank "Who's that?"

But Lee had more than enough claims to fame (and he was a lot friendlier than Robin Williams).

He played the boy who taught his pet rat to kill in Ben (1972).  If you separate it from the premise, the theme song, sung by Michael Jackson, is a touching evocation of same-sex love:

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for.
With a friend to call my own, I'll never be alone,
And you, my friend, will see, you've got a friend in me.

In The Savage is Loose (1974), an entry in the "sexually dangerous kid" genre that Mark Lester  and Scott Jacoby specialized in, David (Lee) is shipwrecked on a desert island, along with his Dad (George C. Scott) and Mom.  David eventually morphs into the bodybuilding hunk John David Carson (left), and tries to kill his Dad so he can mate with Mom.  About the same plot as What the Peeper Saw, but with more nudity.

In Burnt Offerings (1976), a married couple (Oliver Reed, Karen Black) moves into a California mansion with their son David (Lee) and elderly Aunt Elizabeth (film legend Bette Davis).  As the house starts asserting  itself, it tries to drown David, and then drops a pillar on him.

Was there a fad for threatening half-naked kids in the 1970s?  It also happened in The Possession of Joel Delaney  and The Omen.

By the way, the hunky Oliver Reed hangs out in a swimsuit.

When Lee hit adolescence, his chunkiness melted away, and he did the standard tv movies and guest spots on Chips, Family Ties, Fame, Hotel, and Dallas.

By this time, Lee had a tight, firm, hirsute physique, and he knew what to do about it.  In Night Shadows (1984), also released as Mutant, he displays his chest at all times, even the most inconvenient (while renting a room, at the doctor's office five minutes after the doctor says "You can put your shirt back on").  Incidentally, there's also a strong homoerotic subtext as Mike (Lee) cries for his dead "brother" Josh (Wings Hauser).

Many of Lee's teenage and young adult performances feature displays of his chest and abs, and strong buddy-bonds: Prime Risk (1985) and The Midnight Hour (1985), the episode "Man to Man" of Highway to Heaven (1986), and one of the more controversial of the Schoolbreak Specials, "Hear Me Cry" (1984), about two high school boys who make a mutual suicide pact.

His characters are often uninterested in women, though a girl is usually thrown in, almost as an afterthought, to provide a heterosexist fade-out kiss.

In 1986, Lee retired from acting to concentrate on his music.

I met him at a party in 1987, and assumed he was gay, but I don't really have any evidence one way or the other.  The story is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Bobby and Johnny Crawford

Many Boomer kids aren't aware that Johnny Crawford, the 1950s teen idol, star of The Mickey Mouse Club and The Rifleman, the bodybuilder with full nude scenes in The Naked Ape, had a older and even more muscular brother, Bobby Crawford or Robert Crawford Jr.

Born in 1946, Bobby starred with Johnny on three episodes of The Rifleman, and in Indian Paint (1965),  where the two play Native Americans.  They get many semi-nude shots and, as a bonus, develop a quasi-romantic physical intimacy.

TV and movie magazines love brother acts, and soon Bobby and Johnny were being photographed together, often framing them as if they were a romantic couple.  They released several albums together, including one entitled Pals. 

But Bobby also had a solo career, with guest spots on The Donna Reed Show and Whirlybirds, and a recurring role on Zorro.  

He was nominated for an Emmy for his performance on Child of Our Time, a 1959 episode of Playhouse 90, about a young boy searching for a home in 1930s France.

He starred in the Western Laramie (1959-60), about two brothers who run a stagecoach stop in the Wyoming Territory.  His character idolizes the hunky drifter Jess Harper (Robert Fuller), and soon the two actors were seen out together in real life, "two bachelors" hitting the Hollywood hotspots.

Later in the 1960s, Bobby played an oddball outsider on Kraft Suspense Theater, a World War II French resistance figher on Combat, and a young man who idolizes his outlaw brother on Gunsmoke.  His last small-screen appearances were on My Three Sons in 1968.

Moving behind the scenes, he produced The Sting (1973), The World According to Garp (1982), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), and other movies.

Don't Cry Now: David and Andy Williams

Born in 1960, twins David and Andy Williams (the latter named after their famous crooner uncle) began their teen idol career performing on Uncle Andy's variety show -- true, no kids watched, but that's how the Osmonds got their start.

Two albums followed.; Meet David and Andy Williams (1973) and One More Time (1973).  They consisted mostly of covers of old r&b classics, like "Baby Love" (The Supremes), "Going Out of my Head" (Little Anthony & the Imperials), and "I Won't Last a Day Without You" (The Carpenters).  Their vocal range and expression rivaled anything that David Cassidy could do.

Unfortunately, I didn't know it at the time.  I didn't buy their albums -- no one I know did.  And their singles weren't playing on the radio.  "I Don't Know Why" did the best, hitting #37 in March 1973.  Maybe their music was just a little to mature for kid audiences, like Craig Huxley's a few years before.

I only knew them from the teen magazines, which were predictably ecstatic, published dozens of pictures of the duo -- not a lot of shirtless or swimsuit shots, usually in soft, fluffy sweaters, with captions that might or might not be suggestive: "Come snuggle with us!"; "Check us out, top to toe!"  But who wanted to see such slim, soft, fragile-looking boys with their shirts off?  They probably didn't have any muscles at all..

They thought their career would jump-start with a January 1974 guest shot on the wildly popular Partridge Family: they had a crush on Laurie Partridge, and sang "Say It Again."

It turned out to be their swan song.  After another album and a few more guest appearances, the duo vanished.

But not really.  They opened for Roy Orbison and Susan Vega, played back-up, toured with T-Bone Burnett's band, and studied music.  They shifted their emphasis from bubble gum pop to a gutsy, hard-driving country rock, and released new albums -- Two Stories, Harmony Hotel, The Williams Brothers.

 David recognized that he was gay in 1979, and their music began to reflect the anger of facing homophobic bigotry and injustice every day, as well as other themes that can resonate with gay and heterosexual fans:

"Secretly" reveals the heartache of not being able to tell anyone about your love.

"Don't Cry Now" is a tribute to friends who died of AIDS.

"People are People": we're all the same inside, regardless of "religion, sexuality, color, or nationality."

They don't look soft and fragile anymore.

Fill Your Beefcake Quota with "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul"

Fans are upset because the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie, The Long Hall (2017), doesn't star Zachary Gordon or Devon Bostick.

Come on, the guy is 19 years old and buffed.  Do you really want him playing the 11-year old wimp Greg Heffley?

Jason Drucker, seen here with "Rowley" Owen Aztalos, is really 11 years old.  A better choice.

And actor/model Charlie Wright as sarcastic older brother Rodrick has some beefcake potential that Devon Bostick didn't.

Plus there are many other opportunities for physique-watching.  Hot tubs, showers, swimming pools.  Check out Tom Everett Scott, who played Johnny Galecki's boyfriend on stage, as Dad.

It's a road movie, so the usual junior high nightmares take a back seat to hotel and roadside-amusement nightmares and Greg's quest to meet Mac Digby, the creator of his favorite video game, plus an ongoing antagonist, Mr. Beardo (Chris Coppola).  He gets a shower AND a hot tub scene.

No heteronormative "boy meets girl" preteen romance, only minimal homophobic anxiety-jokes -- in that regard, it's far superior to its predecessors.

Unfortunately, it eschews plot development for scatological jokes and seeing how much abuse Greg's body can take -- it takes a lot. I suggest renting the DVD and going through on fast forward.

See also: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Matthew Laborteaux

Born in 1966, Matthew Laborteaux starred in several movies and tv series, including The Red Hand Gang, but he first drew the interest of gay boys and their straight female friends around 1980, when his character Albert on Little House on the Prairie shifted from cute kid to dreamy teen.  The teen idol treatment followed, with lots of pin-up pictures of Matthew and his brother Patrick (also on Little House).  

Patrick, who had a more muscular physique, may have received even more teen idol attention, though he left Little House in 1981.

In 1983 Matthew became the star of Whiz Kids, which lasted only one season but left an indelible mark on gay teens everywhere.  It was about a teenage computer whiz and his friends who solve crimes, with the help of their newspaper reporter mentor Lew (played by Max Gail of Barney Miller).  Richie (Matthew) was the computer whiz; Hamilton (Todd Porter) the jock; Jeremy (Jeffrey Jacquet) the black kid, and Alice (Andrea Elson) the girl.

There was significant bonding, oddly, between Lew and Hamilton.  In one episode, after Lew has been rescued from torture at the hands of evil record producers, Hamilton sits next to him and tenderly holds his hand.

None of the teen characters express any heterosexual interest, though Lew gets a crush on Richie's mother to explain why he hangs around teenage boys all the time.

After Whiz Kids, Matthew starred in a couple of bad movies and then moved into production and voice work.  He is rumored to be gay, but hasn't made any public statements.