The Gay Tease of "Bixler High Private Eye"

Bixler High Private Eye (2019), no comma, appears on my Vudu and Amazon Prime recommedations.  Doesn't this guy look gay?

I've got a free hour, and maybe he's gay, so why not?

It's one of those pieces advertised as a tv program, but there's only one episode, an hour and six minutes  long.

First scene:  Bixler High is not his name.  He's Xander DeWitt, played by Jace Norma, unrecognizable from his role as the uber-swishy gay-coded superhero sidekick on Nickelodeon's Henry Danger (2014-).

So far, so good.






Here Xander tries to grift a very attractive car salesman (Eddie Aguirre) out of information that may lead to his missing father's whereabouts.  He almost gets away, but in the end the police escort him home.

I'm not liking Xander.  He's got one of those smarmy, smug, borderline-sociopathic personalities that make you want to take him down a few notches.

However: his well-stocked room contains no photos of girls.   A good sign!

Xander discovers that Dad (Rick Peters) was visiting his hometown, Bixler Valley, on the morning of his disappearance.

Coincidentally, Mom is concerned about his slipping grades and frequent truancy, and suggests a change: how about going to live with Grandpa in Bixler Valley?

So Xander heads out.

Bixler Valley is a ridiculously depressed old mining town in the mountains, and Grandpa (Ed Begley Jr.) a ridiculously curmudgeonly geezer ("How can I tell kids to get off my lawn when one is living here?).  He also happens to be a retired private eye.

Here's an idea: Have Grandpa investigate his son's disappearance.

Xander tries to hug Grandpa, but the geezer pushes him away.  Men don't hug!  How about a handshake?

Xander is obviously gay.

All he has to do is enroll at Bixler High and find a boyfriend.

Or a male friend.

Or a group of friends, some male....

Or...

Uh-oh


He teams up with school reporter Kenzie (Ariel Martin).

Time to fast-forward, looking for beefcake and incidental buddy bonding.

No dice.

Lots of hunky actors, like Eddie M. Myrick (standing behind his boyfriend) as a cop. But no one even fumbles with a button.

And there appear to be no boys at Bixler High, just female cheerleaders with pom poms.  Xander never even talks to a boy his own age.

Final scene:

Grandpa: When are you two going to kiss?
Xander:  Grandpa!  We're partners (apparently they have opened a private eye business). Partners don't kiss.

My final hope: Xander means it.  He's not into girls.  Kenzie is a friend and business partner.  They won't....

They lean in for the kiss.  Fade out.

Ugh! Another gay tease!

Bobbseys, Boxcars, and Beefcake

I was never much of a fan of the mystery genre, but many gay kids liked the gentle, pre-Hardy Boys exploits of The Famous Five or their American counterparts, the Bobbsey Twins and the Boxcar Children.

Laura Lee Hope’s Bobbsey Twins series lasted through 72 installments from 1904 to 1979.  Originally the two sets of twin siblings aged normally, but when the series was revised and extensively rewritten during the 1960s, Bert and Nan remained twelve (but behaved as adolescents), and Freddie and Flossie remained six (they all seemed to behave somewhat older than their "real" ages, or maybe that is just a reflection of the extra freedom kids had in earlier generations).  In the 1960s they also began to have more dramatic adventures in realistic locales, though the titles were still aimed at a youngish market: The Secret of Candy Castle, The Doodlebug Mystery, The Flying Clown.

Gay boys found most resonance in Bert, who was in his last days of childhood, still happy to play with his sister and younger siblings but obviously longing for emotional connections outside the group.  In fact, an ongoing theme of the books is the conflict between the comfort and safety of family and the need to “leave the nest” and find one’s own way in the world.  But girls play no part in any of the stories; instead, in nearly every book, in the midst of piecing out clues and solving mysteries, Bert goes off on his own with a boy.

The Boxcar Children were another group of siblings, Henry (14), Jessie (13), Violet (10), and Benny (6), orphans who moved into an abandoned boxcar in the 1924 novel by Gertrude Chandle Warner.  Then, in the late 1940s, Warner realized that the four would make ideal child-sleuths.  She had them adopted by their wealthy grandfather, Mr. Alden, who traveled around the country to keep track of his various business investments, thus providing lots of exotic locales for sleuthing.  Eighteen new installments appeared between 1949 and 1976, sending the kids to haunted houses, bedeveled ranches, mountain cabins, and seaside resorts.   The children age through the adventures, and by #19, Benny Uncovers a Mystery, Henry is in college.

Like Bert, Henry is trying to establish his independence while still remaining part of the family, but, unlike adolescent boys in children's media today, he is never portrayed as girl-crazy.  Instead, when his life outside the family appears in the novels, he is usually seen in the company of a boy (the girl on this cover is his sister).

The 1970s Debacle of "Mrs. Columbo"

Columbo (1971-1979, and many movies thereafter) turned the whodunit on its head.  Instead of a two-fisted man's man detective, Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) is frumpy, disheveled, disorganized.  And the viewer knows who the murderer is; the fun is seeing Columbo outwit them with his scatterbrained persona ("Just one more thing...I can't understand how...")

Columbo often mentions his wife, a frumpy, disheveled, middle-aged housewife cooking pasta fazool in the kitchen and saying "Bring your sweater, it's cold outside."

So, the suits at NBC thought, wouldn't it be fun to have Mr.s Columbo solving some murders of her own?

Who did they cast as the frumpy, disheveled, middle-aged housewife cooking pasta fazool in the kitchen?  Glamorous, elegantly-attired  24-year old soap star Kate Mulgrew, later to become Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager and Red on Orange is the New Black

WTF?  There is no way on Earth that Kate Mulgrew could be the Mrs. Columbo described in the series. Al Molinaro from Happy Days would make more sense, and have a lot more chemistry with Peter Falk.

Fortunately, Mr. Columbo never appeared in the series.  That would have been a painful interaction.

Mrs. Columbo premiered on February 28, 1979, a Thursday night, up against Barnaby Jones (an old person solves crimes) and Family (angst).

The plot was hackneyed: Kate overhears her neighbor plotting to murder his wife (Didn't I Love Lucy it, and before that My Favorite Wife on radio?  )

Next episode: the author of a book on perfect murders is accused of murder.  Why is Kate investigating this?  Why not call her husband, who, you know, is like a real detective?

After two episodes of horrible ratings, the suits realized that they had made a mistake, and tried to divest Mrs. Columbo from Columbo.

On March 15th, 1979, the show was suddenly called Kate Columbo, and a line added to the script explaining that Kate was divorced from Lt. Columbo.  That was fast! 

The plot: A ventriloquist's dummy is commiting murder.  Seen it!

The ventriloquist is played by Jay Johnson, who starred in Soap.

Two more episodes of atrocious ratings (a caterer plans to murder her husband, a psychic is accused of murdering her husband), and the show was yanked.

The suits reasoned that the problem couldn't be the cliched plots and horrible writing.  It must be Columbo. 

So when the show returned on October 18. 1979, it was called Kate the Detective.  No mention of Columbo, and Kate has a new ex-husband. Philip.  She works for a newspaper, which gives her an opportunity to actually investigate cases rather than overhearing someone plotting murder.  And 1970s hunk Don Stroud joins the cast as Lt. Varick, a police officer for Kate to bat ideas off of.

Did that help the ratings?  Nope.  Maybe the fact that Kate wasn't actually a detective?

After five episodes, the show was retooled again, and appeared on November 22nd (Thanksgiving Day) as Kate Loves a Mystery. Better -- maybe a sort of Murder, She Wrote?

Nope.  A candidate for Congress is accused of murder, but didn't do it.  A psychologist conducting sensitivity training classes is accused of murder, but didn't do it.

How about we just call the whole thing off?

Three more episodes of Kate Loves a Mystery aired.  13 episodes total under 4 titles.  That's got to be a record.

Kate Mulgrew is a gay ally: "I'm flattered to be a lesbian pin-up," she says in 2017.  "Lesbians loved Janeway."

No other gay connection that I can find.  But wasn't the whole debacle wacky?

See also: Peter Falk: When Columbo Played Gay

Swinging Bachelor Detectives of the 1960s

The early 1960s was overloaded with tv shows about "swinging bachelors" who dug the ladies but found their deepest emotional bonds with each other: Route 66, Follow the Sun, Bourbon Street Beat, It's a Man's World, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside 6.  (Sea Hunt was an exception, about a solo scuba diver.)

They usually had a female friend who worked the switchboard or sang at the local bar and provided opportunities for leering, but few if any plots involved them finding heterosexual romance.

The bachelors were often discovered by gay talent agent Henry Willson, so they were often gay, bisexual, or gay friendly.

77 Sunset Strip (1958-64) paired Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (straight) and Roger Smith (straight) as detectives who lived in Los Angeles. Edd Byrnes (rumored to be gay) played Kookie, a hipster who worked at the nightclub next door, and eventually became a business partner. Jacqueline Beer played Suzanne, their telephone operator.

Bourbon Street Beat (1959-60) paired Richard Long (rumored to be gay) and Van Williams, left (rumored to be gay), detectives who lived in New Orleans.  Cal Duggan (straight) was their business partner.  Arlene Howell played Melody, their secretary.

Hawaiian Eye (1959-63) paired Anthony Eisley (rumored to be gay) and Robert Conrad (straight) as detectives who lived in Hawaii.  Connie Stevens played Cricket, who sang at the Shell Bar.

Surfside 6 (1960-62) paired Van Williams (just before he played The Green Hornet),  with Lee Patterson (gay) as detectives who lived on a houseboat docked at Miami Beach.  Troy Donahue, left (rumored to be gay) played their friend, a wealthy playboy who lived on the yacht next door.  Margarita Sierra played a woman with the odd name "Cha Cha," who sang at a bar with the odd name "Boom Boom Room."

Follow the Sun (1961-62) paired Brett Halsey (rumored to be gay) with Barry Coe, left (straight) as writers who solve crimes in Hawaii. Gary Lockwood (bisexual), who appeared shirtless in The Magic Sword, played their assistant.  Gigi Perreau played their secretary.

What are we to make of this abundance of beefcake and buddy-bonding?

An idolization of the unmarried and unattached heterosexual swinger, after years of 1950s Family Men.
A fear of the feminine: women were portrayed as a pleasant distraction from the important things in life. But inadvertently it gave Boomer kids a glimpse of homodomesticity, men who lived together, loved each other, and didn't need a woman to fulfill them.

Daniel Boone: a Big Man

Daniel Boone was a man --
He was a big man!

Sounds good so far.  When I was seven or eight years old, I was all for watching tv shows about a man, especially a big man.  Especially a big man who was a "dream come-er true-er."  

But Batman was on the other channel.  No kid in his right mind would pick a cowboy over the Dynamic Duo.  I never saw a single episode of Daniel Boone (1965-70) when it originally aired.

I've seen one since, for research purposes. Not a lot of gay content.  Not a lot of cowboy content, either.

1. Daniel Boone (Fess Parker)  is a family man, with wife and kids.  If you have to be a cowboy, at least hang out with other guys.

2. He has a sidekick anyway, Mingo, one of the least convincing Native Americans on tv, actually played by singer Ed Ames (who, although Jewish, became famous for recording the Chrismas song "Do You Hear What I Hear").

3.  It's not even the Old West.  This is Kentucky during the Revolutionary War.

4. While other cowboys were happily displaying monumental physiques, Fess Parker is kept strictly under wraps.  The only cast member to take his shirt off is Darby Hinton, who plays Daniel's preteen son Israel, and his buddy du jour.

Prior to Daniel, Fess Parker had starred in other Disney productions, notably Davy Crockett, Old Yeller, and The Light in the Forest (ignoring the crush of James Mac Arthur).  Afterwards he retired to run a vineyard and give conservative speeches.

Darby Hinton apparently was the first crush of some gay boys of the Boomer Generation, but he didn't have much of a teen idol career (this photo is from Getty Images, not from a teen magazine).

Post-Daniel, he's best known for the sexploitation Malibu Express (1985), as a Magnum P.I. clone who keeps encountering nude women and swishy gay stereotypes while trying to solve a murder.  At least he looks good semi-nude.

The Nice Guys: Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, and Heterosexism

I was not in a good mood yesterday.  Two books arrived from Amazon.

1. The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami.  "A charming, surreal story."  "It had me enthralled."  "A wry metaphysical play."

It's  a 5000 word novella about a little boy held prisoner by an old man who intends to eat his brains.

And a beautiful girl.  Who kisses him. And helps him escape.

Same-sex relations are always destructive, heterosexual romance is salvation, got it.

2. A Brief History of Manga.   A tiny book, about 1/10th the size I expected, with a few words of text and a lot of photos on each page.  Altogether maybe 5,000 words.

And the photos:  naked women.  Bare breasts on nearly every page.  Leafing through it, I felt like I needed a shower.

I threw them both in the trash.

And a Netflix movie arrived in its red package:

3. The Nice Guys (2016) starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, a "stylish neo-noir mystery set in 1970s Los Angeles."  I like the 1970s, and I used to think Ryan Gosling was hot, so ok, let's give it a look.

A teenage boy named Bobby (Ty Simpkins) steals his parents' porn magazine in order to masturbate to photos of porn star Misty Mountains.  Suddenly a car crashes all the way through his house. He runs out to see the porn star in the flesh, dying.  Naked.  Bare boobs.   We never see Bobby again.

Meanwhile, failed cop-turned-private dick Holland March (Ryan Gosling) -- is that the name of a gay villain out of a 1960s thriller, or what?  -  is hired by Misty's aunt, who swears that she's still alive.  He begins searching.  One of his leads is a girl named Amelia.

Meanwhile hired muscle Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) beats up a guy who has been having an affair with a little girl.   Then another little girl, who I thought was the same one but turns out to be Amelia, hires him to beat up a guy who is stalking her.  Guess what?  It turns out to be Holland March!

Later on Healy is interrogated by two thugs (Beau Knapp, Keith David), who demand to know the whereabouts of Amelia. 

Healy approaches March, the guy he just beat up, and suggests that they work together to try to find Misty.

Wait -- what about Amelia?

Did I mention that they meet at Holland's daughter's birthday party?  13-year old girls everywhere, piling around, eating, bowling, grabbing at Holland to take photographs.

I'm getting weirded out.  What's with the young girls in every scene?

Holland and March go to a protest held by Misty or Amelia's anti-smog activist group, and convince a guy named Chet (Jack Kilmer, left, with boyfriend Dylan Sprouse) to take them to Misty or Amelia's boyfriend's house.

It's burnt out, so they convince a little boy on a bike (Lance Valentine Butler) to take them to see...I don't remember what.  I got distracted when the little boy offered to show them his dick for $20.

Out of nowhere.

That's even worse than the screensful of 13-year old girls.  I like looking at dicks, but...WTF?

Is it supposed to represent the decadence of 1970s L.A.?

Turns out that Amelia/Misty and Dean were making a half-porno, half-air pollution documentary financed by Sid Shattuck.

Meanwhile, Holland's daughter Holly (that's right, Holly Holland) starts investigating on her own, and gets into trouble with...

That was enough.  I went to bed, leaving Bob up to watch the rest, and Wikipedia to summarize the plot:  There's a big porno racket going on, and Amelia, as the daughter of a high-ranking government official, was threatening to blow the whistle on it, so Shattuck has hired a hit man (Matt Bomer) to kill her.  Detroit car companies are involved, and Chet plays some role.  I don't know what Misty's mountains had to do with it.

To the film's credit, neither Healy nor Holland get girlfriends.  I'm not even sure if they display any heterosexual interest.  They walk off into the sunset together, one of the main criteria of a gay subtext.

 But you have to wade through a lot of scenes involving little girls to get there.

See also: Michael in the Boys' Room with Cole or Dylan Sprouse; Beefcake and Heterosexism in my Netflix Recommendations

Bowery Billy and his Boyfriend Lulu

I knew that boys' adventure series of the 1920s (such as the Hardy Boys) usually involved teenage same-sex pairs with a passion, exclusivity, and domesticity you would never see today: gay partners in all but the name.

But I didn't know how far back the fad extended until the Scans Daily website posted some cover scans of Bowery Billy, a teen sleuth from the mean streets of New York.  His adventures appeared in Bowery Boy Weekly, one of the illustrated story papers called "penny dreadfuls" because they cost a penny, and they were "dreadful."

A precursor of the working-class East Side Kids of 1930s movies, Billy was, according to the blurb, "an adventurous little Street Arab (homeless kid.)"  He  talks like this:

"Green bananers!  So dis pair is layin' for Bernard Gildersleeve, der millionaire that's jest come, from Chicago to show der fellers in New York how to blow in their boodle!"

Billy was tied up and threatened as much as Robin the Boy Wonder and other superhero sidekicks of 1940s comics.  This contraption seems designed to zero in on his manhood.

But who was rescuing him?  Did he have a boyfriend?  A girlfriend?  An adult benefacator?

After a diligent search, I managed to track down and read a story -- really a short novel, over 50 pages long.  And it turns out that Billy lives with a boy named Lulu.

Really Louis, but Billy gave him a girl's name because he originally thought he was a sissy:  he is "pale and delicate-looking," but with an inner resourcefulness. He knows how to use his fists.

The two live together, go out on adventures together, and rescue -- and then ignore -- girls together.  Of course, Billy needs rescuing quite often as well, and here Lulu is about to be drowned by evil cultists as Billy rushes in.

At the end of the story I read, "Bowery Billy became the millionaire's guest on board of the beautiful yacht.  Lulu Drexel remained with him for the night."

I'm reminded of the line in The Well of Loneliness (1928) which caused it to be judged obscene.  The lesbians meet, talk of love, "and that night they were not parted."

A gay teenage romance in 1904.

Fall 1977: A Gay Romance on "Barnaby Jones"

October 27, 1977, the cold, windy Thursday night four days before Halloween, during my senior year in high school.

The family has gathered in front of the tv set, as usual: the tv is on every night from dinnertime to bedtime, a backdrop to all of our other activities.

7:00: Welcome Back, Kotter.  I look up briefly to see Horshak (Ron Pallilo) explain, yet again, that his name means "The cattle are dying."

7:30: What's Happening!. I look up briefly to check out Haywood Nelson's butt and bulge.

At 8:00, my parents want to watch Barney Miller, but I'm anxious to see James at Fifteen, starring teen idol Lance Kerwin.  So I watch on my small portable set upstairs.

At 9:00, I turn off the tv and start doing homework.  A few moments later, my brother Ken comes clomping up the stairs.  "You'll never guess what they're watching down there!" he exclaims.  "Barnaby Jones!"

"You're kidding -- Jed Clampett as a private eye?"  The oldster detective is played by the star of the Beverly Hillbillies.

"And Catwoman is his secretary!"  Lee Meriwether, who plays Barnaby's daughter-in-law, was Catwoman on Batman.

"Gross!  Next they'll have Scooby-Doo!"

Ken laughs.  "Don't take my word for it -- you have to watch to see how terrible it is."

"Come on!" I complain.  "Old people tv?"  My friends would rib me unmercifully if they found out I had watched something as lame as Barnaby Jones!

Ignoring me, he flips the tv on, and clicks the dial to CBS.

No Jed Clampett, no Catwoman.  Two cute young guys, one in a muscle shirt that displays baseball-sized biceps, the other in skin-tight jeans that reveal an enormous bulge.  They are standing so close together that they seem about to kiss.

"You're the man for me!" Muscle Shirt says.

"Let's not get carried away!" Tight-Jeans protests.

"This looks good...I mean, awful."  I stammer.

Looking back, I'm surprised that I didn't come out at that moment.  But no, I absolutely did not connect I want to see those guys kiss!  with gay.

"What did I tell you?"  Ken flips the tv set off, flops down on his bed, and opens a math textbook.

The next week I pretend to be immersed in a book in order to watch Barnaby Jones with my parents.  Tight-Jeans is Mark Shera, playing Barnaby's nephew, a law school student.  But he definitely likes girls.

What about Muscle Shirt, with his baseball-sized biceps and the romantic plaint of "You're the man for me?"  He must have been a guest star.

Before the days of the internet, there is no way to track down the episode.  I'll have to wait for summer reruns.

But during the summer, I am working at the mall on Thursday nights.  The scene of gay romance is lost forever.

Until a few days ago, when I found a photo of the scene on ebay, which led to the entire episode on youtube: "Gang War," starring 31-year old Asher Brauner.  My memory changed the dialogue a bit: he's not in love with Mark Shera, he's about to kidnap him.

Asher Brauner has been in a few movies of gay interest: he  played "Buddy" in Alexander: the Other Side of Dawn (1977), about a teenage runaway who becomes a hustler, and "Ted," in the gay-themed Making Love.  

He played the hero in the Indiana Jones spoof Treasure of the Moon Goddess (1987), and a man-mountain who takes out entire countries in American Eagle (1989) and Merchants of War (1989).

And he was the hero of a gay romance that I misread 30 years ago on Barnaby Jones.

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.

Peter Falk: When Columbo Played Gay

  

Boomers remember Peter Falk as Columbo, the rumpled, disorganized detective who feigns cluelessness to catch the culprits off-guard; my friend Aaron in high school called him Clod-Dumbo.

After introducing the character in Columbo: Prescription Murder (1968), he appeared on the NBC Mystery Movie (1971-78), then on the ABC Mystery Movie (1989-90), and occasionally in specials through 2003.

The series had only one gay character amid the hundreds, in a 1994 episode.

 After seeing him as the same rumpled, shabbily-dressed, middle-aged character for 35 years, it is difficult to imagine Peter Falk as anyone else.

But he broke into acting at the age of 30 with serious dramatic roles in the Golden Age of Television: Studio One in Hollywood, Armstrong Circle Theater, Kraft Theatre, and others.  

During the 1950s and 1960s, he played a lot of gangsters and thugs, notably a Beatnik psycho in Bloody Brood (1959)

And Guy Gisborne in the Rat Pack showcase Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964).  

Some buddy-bonding roles, such as Machine Gun McCain (1969), about two mobsters (Falk, John Cassavetes) competing over a young gun (Pierluigi Apra); and Husbands (1970), about two suburban husbands (Falk and Cassavetes again) who bring their mourning buddy to London.      

He played gay-vague in Jean Genet's The Balcony (1963), and somewhat more gay-obvious in the  spoof Murder by Death (1976). Sam Diamond, aka Sam Spade (Falk) and some other literary detectives solve a murder hosted by twee Lionel Twain (gay writer Truman Capote).  

He throws a few gay slurs around, perhaps to hide his own same-sex desire:  

Tess: Why do you keep all those naked muscle men magazines in your office? 
Sam: Suspects. Always looking for suspects.  


Tess: Why were you in a gay bar? 
Sam: I was working on a case! 
Tess: Every night for six months?  

In his autobiography, Just One More Thing (2006), Falk states that what he remembers most from the movie are his "little chats with Truman Capote."  

Falk worked steadily through the 2000s, playing a series of irascible grandfatherly types, often in movies with gay characters, such as Corky Romano (2001) and 3 Days to Vegas (2007).  He died in 2011.     

Who Was Gay on "Perry Mason"? Everyone, Apparently.

To my parents' generation, Perry Mason was The Lawyer, what lawyers were all about: stern but caring, eminently professional (with no social life to speak of), defending clients on trial for murder, using logic and luck to uncover the real murderer, who is usually sitting right in the court room:  "I had to do it!  He would have ruined me, don't you understand?"

Created by Earle Stanley Gardner, in 1933, Perry Mason appeared in over 80 novels and short stories, becoming one of the best-known fictional characters of all time.  Movie adaptions began almost immediately, in 1934.  A radio series began in 1943.

The iconic tv series began in 1957, and ran for nine seasons.  Years later, tv movies began to air, three or four per year, thirty in all (1985-93).

In the original series, there were five main characters:

1. Perry,  played by busy character actor Raymond Burr.  Burr was gay, but invented a heterosexual back story for himself, and refused to be seen in public with lover Robert Benevides. He never came out to the rest of the cast; they knew, sort of, but they didn't know.

2. His secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale), with whom Perry did not have a "will they or won't they" sparring romance, like every pair of male-female coworkers on every tv show since.

Barbara Hale's husband, Bill Williams, was rumored to be gay.

They had one son, William Katt (The Greatest American Hero)

3. Private investigator Paul Drake.  Played by William Hopper (gossip columnist Hedda Hopper's son), who was rumored to be gay.  He was married twice, and had a son.

4. District attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman), who must hate going to trial against Perry Mason, since he will invariably lose.

Talman was also rumored to be gay, although he was married three times.  He was fired in 1960, after the police raided a party he was attending, and found the guests (both men and women) nude and  "high on marijuana."  Burr and other cast members intervened, and got him re-hired.

5. Homicide detective Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins).  He was probably straight.

There's a William Hopper hookup story on Boomer's Gay Celebrity Stories

Four Color Beefcake and Bonding

When I was a kid, my comic book buying budget was limited, but when I started making my own money in the late 1970s, the extra income allowed a thorough investigation of the back issue bins at the Comics Cave, and I expanded my beefcake and bonding library with Dell's Four Color Comics.

It was a series of one-shots, each issue dedicated to a different movie, cartoon, tv series, or comic strip character, over a thousand between 1942 and 1962.  The range was staggering.  Here's a brief selection: Donald Duck, Tilly the Toiler, Roy Rogers, Flash Gordon, Harold Teen, Tarzan, Fearless Fagan,  I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, Captain Kangaroo, Johnny Jason Teen Reporter.


I was looking for beefcake or bonding covers, like this Leave it to Beaver (FC 1191, 1961).   It showed Wally and the Beaver (Tony Dow, Jerry Mathers) considerably younger than they would have been in 1961, in a romantic pose, sharing a soda (one soda, two straws) while Beaver rests his hand lightly on Wally's thigh?







Tonka (FC 966, 1958) came out at the same time as the 1958 movie, with gay teen idol Sal Mineo as a bicep-bulging Native American (Tonka was his horse).

















But this Spin and Marty comic (FC 1026, 1959), with Marty's hand placed tenderly on Skip's shoulder, was released after the series ended.

Often the characters were completely unrecognizable, relics of the distant past.  Who on Earth was this blond, muscular Curly Kayoe (FC 871, 1957) boxing with a barefoot hunk?  Turns out that boxers were heroes during the 1930s and 1940s, and Curly Kayoe, like Joe Palooka, rated his own comic strip (1945-61) and comic book (1946-50). (Kayoe means "Knock Out.")  He didn't seem to have a girlfriend, but he did have a youthful ward named Davy, Robin to his Batman, who took over the strip in 1961.

Or Clint and Mac (FC 889, 1958)?  Turns out that Kurt Russell didn't play Disney's only American adventurer abroad.  In 1957-58, The Mickey Mouse Club featured a serial about the American Clint (Neil Wolfe), the one in the crew cut and extremely tight jeans, who visits Britain and buddy-bonds with Mac (Jonathan Bailey), the one in the beanie and striped tie.

Their adventure involves catching the thieves who stole an original manuscript of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. They also encounter a street gang, drive a car, and go to a birthday party for Prince Charles.  Both actors vanished from show business soon thereafter, and the serial has never been released on DVD, so without the comic it would have vanished completely.

Or Johnny Yuma, the Rebel (FC 1136, 1960), who shoots one gun and holds another, and wears a Confederate uniform (minus the shirt)?

Turns out that The Rebel (1959-1961) was a Western about Johnny Yuma, an ex-Confederate who wanders around the Old West with his shirt off.  Johnny was played by gay actor Nick Adams, who hung out with a crowd of barely-closeted gay actors, many discovered by gay agent Henry Willson (others included Guy Madison, James Dean,  Lee Patterson, Anthony Perkins, and Van Williams).

See also: All of the Four-Color Beefcake Ever Printed