12 Fairytale Hunks of "Once Upon a Time"

Once Upon a Time is a pastiche of feuding figures from fairy tales (mostly Disney versions), mythology, novels, folklore -- you name it.  The main characters are Snow White, Snow's daughter Emma, her grandson Henry, Regina the Evil Queen (who turns into the Good Queen), Rumpelstiltskin, Prince Charming, Captain Hook, and Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

But many other recognizable faces from your childhood appear.

With physiques that are the stuff of legend.


1. Michael Socha as Will Scarlett, Robin Hood's chum.

2. Liam Garrigan as King Arthur, the mythical king of Dark Age Britain, seen here schtupping his bff Lancelot (just kidding)

3. Deniz Akdeniz as Aladdin (the one from the Disney movie, not the one from the 1001 Nights).

4. Charles Mesure as Blackbeard, the real-life pirate, aka Edward Teach (1680-1718)
























5. Sinqua Walls as Sir Lancelot from the Arthurian legends.

6. Hank Harris as Henry Jekyll, from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel (Sam Witwer as Mr. Hyde).





More after the break

Staging the Male Nudity in "The Emperor's New Clothes"

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" (1837) is a fairy tale with no fairies in it,  about two scoundrels who tell an Emperor that his new outfit will be invisible to people unfit for their position or impossibly stupid.  They actually just pretend to make the new clothes, and dress him in nothing.

He struts about naked, with everyone afraid to say anything until a small boy points out "The Emperor has no clothes."

The phrase is often used to criticize yes-men who are afraid to point out their boss's flaws and mistakes.  Such as, for instance, the Republican Congress telling the Orange Goblin, "It was a good thing that you said" every day for the last 18 months.

Writers who want to adapt "The Emperor's New Clothes" for the stage run into two problems:

1. The story is very short, with one-dimensional characters. It has to be extensively fleshed out.

2. You can't have a guy running around naked in a performance that will draw children.

They usually end up just making the Emperor a vain fashion-plate, and giving the plot to someone else.  For instance, Alan Jay Friedman's musical adaption (1969)  has a princess and a prince disguised as a commoner save the kingdom from villains exploiting the Emperor's love of haute couture.

Alan Schmuckler and David Holstein have a musical version where the Emperor and his daughter Sam learn to get along with each other through judicious costume choices.

Eric Coble has a Caribbean adaption: Jasmin wants to wear a simple sash, but the Emperor of the island requires fancy clothes.  Until the magic tailor Buzz Butler arrives.

The Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens musical puts a gay-subtext take on the story.  When 14-year old Marcus becomes emperor, he is uncertain how a wise ruler behaves. A Swindler offers to give him a magical suit that will allow him to know everything.  His advisors are opposed to the idea, but he puts on the suit anyway, and everyone begins "yessing" him.  Only Arno, the palace mop boy, turns out to be a true friend, and tells him the truth.

See also: Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen: the Gay Writer of Fairy Tales about People Dying

Of all the authors that teachers foisted upon me as a kid to embrace Rock Island's Scandinavian heritage, the absolute worst was Hans Christian Andersen. I hated fairy tales anyway -- who needs fairy godmothers, when there are rocket ships blasting off to Jupiter?  -- and these were grim, morbid, horrible:

"The Little Mermaid": A mermaid sacrifices her life to save a handsome prince.

"The Brave Tin Soldier."  Yeah, he's brave, until he gets too near a fire, and melts to death.

"The Snow Queen." A cold person keeps kidnapping children and freezing them to death.

"The Little Match-Seller."  A girl selling matches..um...freezes to death.

Is it like cold in Denmark, or is this some sort of metaphor?

"The Garden of Paradise."  A prince dies.

One or two of his cautionary tales were ok -- "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling."  But really, who wouldn't rather be watching Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle than reading about people dying?

Later I discovered that Andersen was gay or bisexual in real life.  In fact, his psychiatrist invented the term homosexual from the Greek homo (the same) and the Latin sexualis in order to diagnose his condition.

Gay but depressed.  No wonder his characters keep dying.

I've never seen any of the film versions of Andersen's fairy tales, but I understand that Disney let The Little Mermaid, Ariel, live, in the 1989 animated version.

And displayed Prince Eric shirtless, although probably not as suggestively as this fan art from Lucien-Christophe on Deviant Art.com.

If you want to see beefcake in the Hans Christian Andersen oeuvre, you need to seek out the occasional stage version of "The Emperor's New Clothes" (above), or The Little Mermaid stage musical.

Eric doesn't display much, but King Triton, Ariel's father, is bare-chested.

Although sometimes the actor wears a ridiculous beard.

King of the Golden River: Boy Meets Dwarf

Shortly after I was born, my parents bought a set of Colliers Encyclopedia and The Junior Classics, an anthology of mostly Victorian-era stories like Alice in Wonderland and Jackanapes. During my earliest childhood I often took them from the shelves and leafed through them, marveling at the odd illustrations.  I first tried reading them at age 8 or 9, but the antiquated language and obscure references made it well-nigh impossible.  Still, their very impenetrability was attractive, suggesting hidden codes and secrets, so over the years I tried again and again, finally encountering some amazing gay subtexts.

The King of the Golden River (1841) begins with a blustery, round person, "The North Wind," visiting an extremely girlish young man named Gluck.   From there, things get even more bizarre.  Gluck battles his older, bullying brothers, Hans and Schwartz, for a golden mug, which turns out to contain the imprisoned spirit of the dwafish King of the Golden River.  

Someone must travel to the source of the river and sprinkle it with "holy water."  The evil brothers try, but fail, and are turned into black stones.  Gluck tries, but gives the water away in acts of kindness, and is rewarded when the river turns into a river of gold.

There is no same-sex romance, but Gluck (played by Thor Bautz, left, in a gender-transgressive 2009 stage version) is quiet, sensitive, feminine, gay-coded.

And,  bucking the tradition of fairy tales ending with "they were married and lived happily ever after," he never meets a girl.  At the end of the story, he is old, wealthy, well-respected by the community, with no wife.  

That was, in itself, a revelation.

John Ruskin (played by Tom Hollander, top center, in the 2009 tv series Desperate Romantics) was heterosexual; like Lewis Carroll, he liked young girls.  But there is no evidence that he had a physical relationship with anyone.

His marriage to Effie Gray was annulled after six years, not consummated because "there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked passion."  There have been many theories about what those circumstances were, but probably not the nude female form itself. (Effie later married his friend, pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais).

He was a scholar of the Renaissance, who became aware of the practice of "the bestial vice."  Although he was quite homophobic, revealing that same-sex practices occurred at all helped to create the image of the "queer Renaissance," where gay people didn't have to hide.  Oscar Wilde said that studying under him at Oxford was one of the turning points of his career.

Who Killed Cock Robin: The Only Gay Nursery Rhyme

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I liked science fiction, like The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree, but I hated fairy tales, and I especially hated nursery rhymes.

Most of them made no sense: who would bake  blackbirds into a pie?  Who keeps a lamb as a pet?  And what the heck is a tuffet?


Those that made sense (sort of) were entirely heterosexist.  Jack and Jill go walking up that hill hand-in-hand.  Jack Sprat and his wife have the disgusting habit of licking dinner plates. Some kid named Georgie likes to kiss girls.

The only one I could stand was "Who Killed Cock Robin?", which like most nursery rhymes, was intended to teach Medieval children about death.  It's not actually a mystery -- a Sparrow confesses to the murder in the first line -- and the rest of the poem involves various birds offering to sew his shroud, dig the grave, build the coffin, and so on.




What I liked about it:

1. I didn't learn the British meaning of the word "cock" (a male bird) until much later, so it was amazing to hear about a bird named after a penis.

2. I could even get away with asking my Dad to "read me the nursery rhyme about the cock."

3. The illustration in my nursery rhyme book showed a muscular male killer, not a sparrow.

4. One of my first "British Invasion" tv programs was the episode "Who Killed Cock Robin?" on Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), about a pair of swinging detective buddies (Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope), one a ghost.

5. An episode of Matinee at the Bijou in the 1970s featured a murder mystery entitled Who Killed Cock Robin (1938).  It starred the handsome Charles Farrell, who would go on to play the dad in My Little Margie in the 1950s.  I didn't know it at the time, of course, but Farrell was: a former nude physique model; and rumored to be gay.

6. The nursery rhyme is reputedly about William II, the King of England, who was gay.  He was shot with an arrow by Walter Tyrell, probably his lover, while hunting in the New Forest on August 2, 1100.  In The Golden Bough,  Sir James Frazier argues that his death was no accident, but a sacrifice to the Old Gods in a remnant of an ancient fertility rite.

See also: The Joy of Saying "Cock"

Disney's Descendants

The Disney Channel movie Descendants (2015) follows the unlikely conceit that seven Disney animated fantasies about beset-upon Princesses being saved by Handsome Princes all took place about 20 years ago:

Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Mulan, Sleeping Beauty. Snow White, Aladdin.

Wait -- those are all set in the Middle Ages, and the movies were made 50 years apart.   How...

Plus 101 Dalmatians, which is contemporary, and not about a Princess at all.

After the villains are defeated and the kingdoms are restored, the Princes and Princesses marry (except for Snow White, who decides to stay single and become a television reporter).

That's right, a television reporter.

The other kingdoms are all consolidated into the United States of Auradon (U.S.A. see?), ruled by Queen Belle and King Beast.

Wait -- his name was Beast before he was transformed into a beast by an evil curse?

Meanwhile the villains are all banished to the horrible Island of the Lost, where they, too, apparently find life partners.

A year or two later, every Princess and Villainess gets pregnant at the same moment!

A sort of Village of the Damned thing going on?  Do the kids all have glowing eyes and telepathic powers?

Fast forward 17 years.  Ben (Mitchell Hope, top photo), son of Belle and the Beast, will be inheriting the throne of the U.S.A. soon.  He's about to enter his last year at the exclusive Auradon Prep School (think Hogwarts without magic) along with his royal peers:

His girlfriend Audrey (Sarah Jeffrey), son of Sleeping Beauty (real name Princess Aurora) and Prince Phillip

His best buddy Chad Charming (Jedidiah Goodacre, left), son of Cinderella and Prince Charming.  Who knew that Charming was the family name?

Plain, mousy Jane (Brenna D'Amico), daughter of the Fairy Godmother, the Headmistress of Auradon Prep.  I guess they were running out of princesses.

Lonnie (Diane Doan), daughter of Mulan and Li Shang.

And the science nerd Doug (Zachary Gibson), son of Dopey from Snow White.  The Seven Dwarfs were obviously gay.  I wonder which one Dopey married?

Prince Ben is a progressive penologist who doesn't think children should be punished for the crimes of their parents, so he arranges for the Villains' descendants to be released from the Isle of the Lost and enrolled at Auradon Prep:

Mal (Dove Cameron), daughter of Malificent (the evil one from the 1959 movie, not the reformed one from Malificent)

Jay (BooBoo Stewart, left), son of Jafar from Aladdin.  One wonders what happened to Aladdin and Princess Jasmine.

Evie, daughter of The Evil Queen from Snow White.  So her actual given name was Evil Queen?  That's almost as bad as Malificent, which means "evil."

Carlos (Cameron Boyce, below), son of Cruella de Ville of 101 Dalmatians. The elderly, post-menopausal lady whose parents decided to name her Cruella?  He must be adopted.

They arrive all sneering and suspicious -- wouldn't you be, after a childhood in a Hell Dimension?

But after some classes in Remedial Goodness and buddy bonding through sports and pop music, they find that they prefer the company of high school hunks and babes to that of their snarling, wrist-shaking parents.

The problem is, their parents have given them the job of stealing the famous Magic Wand, so they can regain control over the empire...er, U.S.A.

What will they do?

Do you even need to ask?

This is a bright, flash, colorful mix of Harry Potter and High School Musical, so popular that it led to a 12-episode web sequel, a 23-episode short-form prequel, a novel, and a lot of merchandise.

There are two-hetero-romances, but they are countered by the extensive buddy-bonding between Jay and Carlos, and later Carlos and Chad.

And, of course, a lot of teen beefcake.

See also: Cameron Boyce; Maleficent.

Francois Goeske: Searching for Gay Subtexts

Robert Louis Stevenson's books are sacred, memories of childhoods past where boys conjured up lavish adventures with each other.  Especially Treasure Island, written specifically upon a request from his stepson Lloyd Osbourne that there be "no girls in it."  And there aren't, except for Jim Hawkin's mother.

So I was quite disappointed with the 2007 German miniseries, in which Jim Hawkins (Francois Goeske) not only has sex with a prostitute, he falls in love with a female stowaway, Sheila (Diane Willems)!

Ok, I thought, but maybe Goeske's other work will redeem him.  Some gay characters, or some substantial gay subtexts?

His first starring role was in a 2003 remake of the children's classic Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer (The Flying Classroom), set in a boys' school.  Only this one had girls and girlfriends.

In French for Beginners (2006), Henrick (Goeske) goes to France as part of a student exchange program, where he meets the Girl of His Dreams.  A reviewer on amazon.com suggests that this "charming" move be used in French language classes.

Grimm's Finest Fairy Tales: The Farmer's Daughter (2008).  I'm not familiar with that particular fairy tale, but I imagine it involves Goeske kissing some girls.

Summertime Blues (2009), based on the juvenile novel by Julia Clarke: Alex (Goeske) goes to the countryside with his mother, and meets a girl.

Dornroschen (2009): The fairy tale of Sleeping  Beauty.  Guess who wakes her with a kiss?

Schlaflos in Schwabing (Sleepless in Schwabing 2012): Consultant investigates a proposed deal with a Chinese company, and her nephew (Goeske) romances the boss's daughter.

Come on, I'm getting nervous.  There must be something.  How can you star in over 25 vehicles over a period of 10 years, and not have a single gay character or gay subtexts.

Ok, let's try his tv work:

On an episode of the German police procedural SOKO Stutgart (2011): Johannes (Goeske) comes out to his father, a conservative politician.

And on an episode of SOKO 5113 (2012): Julian (Goeske) is a gay concert pianist who suffers a homophobic attack.

I knew there had to be some somewhere.

The Naked Ghost of Hylton Castle: A Gay Murder Mystery

Hylton Castle in Sunderland, near the Scottish border, is closed now, but for centuries staff and visitors reported seeing a naked teenage boy wandering the hallways.

When they approached him, he moaned "I'm cauld"(cold),  and vanished.

Dubbed "The Cauld Lad of Hylton," the ghost had a helpful side.  He lit fires that had gone out, and tidied rooms that had been left in disarray.

But he also had a mischievous side.  He would slam doors, knock books over, blow candles out, and move objects around.

Besides, what could be scarier than a naked teenager complaining about the cold?

According to legend, the ghost was Robert Skelton, a stableboy in the employ of the young Baron Robert Hyland during the age of Shakespeare.  On the morning of July 3rd, 1609, he overslept and didn't have the Baron's horse ready for a trip.  The enraged Baron killed him.

Some versions say that he chopped the boy's head off; others, that he stabbed him with a pitchfork, or hit him with a riding crop. 

Historical records do mention that a Robert Hylton was tried for the murder of Robert Skelton in the fall of 1609.  He claimed that the murder was an accident, and was pardoned by James I.

But the 20-year old Hylton wasn't the Baron yet.  His older brother, Henry, was.

In English Fairy Tales (1890), the famous anthology by Joseph Jacobs, the Cauld Lad is turned into a monster.

Most modern illustrations make him human, but  much younger than a real stableboy of the era, and not nearly as naked.

This leads us to a question:  Ghosts usually appear in the outfit they died in.  Why was Robert Skelton naked?

Elizabethans didn't sleep naked, even in the summer time.   Unless they had thrown off their clothes in the heat of passion.

So Robert Skelton must have been having sex on the night of July 2nd.  Who was is partner?

Some legends give him a forbidden romance with the Baron's daughter, but in 1609 Robert was too young to have a teenage daughter.



Robert Hylton himself, then?  But why would Hylton then be surprised at Skelton's oversleeping?


Maybe his brother,  24-year old Baron Henry Hylton? Shortly after the murder, Henry went to live with his cousin Nathaniel Hylton, and stayed for 30 years. He never consummated his arranged marriage.  He was characterized as reclusive, eccentric, and "mad."

Picture it: Robert finds his older brother and the stableboy in the midst of a sexual encounter and, outraged at the breach of etiquette, grabs a pitchfork.  Robert is able to use his social position to get a pardon.  Henry never recovers.

And Robert Skelton wanders the hallways, moaning "I'm cauld..."

See also: The Gay Ghost of Davenport House.

Hansel and Gretel Grow Up and Get Boyfriends

Remember Hansel and Gretel, the Grimm fairy tale about a father who tries to kill his children by abandoning them in the woods, whereupon they stumble upon a candy house, and a witch who wants to eat them, but they turn the tables and burn her alive?

A very pleasant bedtime story for toddlers.

In Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), the siblings grow up into a pair of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style wisecracking, martial-arts-using witch slayers (Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton), who travel all over 17th century Germany with their arsenal of gigantic phallic-symbol guns.

By the way, Jeremy Renner seems to be somewhat homophobic.  Addressing the rumors that he's bisexual because he's living with both his girlfriend and his bromantic partner Griffin Hadley, he cursed "they're not f*** true!"

While investigating a mass child-disappearance in Augsburg, Hansel and Gretel run afoul of a bigoted sheriff and uncover a plot to bring hundreds of witches together for a Blood Moon Ritual.  They also find the answer to the secret of their past: why did their parents abandon them in the woods?

On the way, Hansel hooks up with a good witch (Pihla Vitala), who challenges his "the only good witch is a dead witch" philosophy.  But he gets a nice gay subtext with the fanboy Ben (Thomas Mann), touching him repeatedly on the chest, riding with Ben's arms around his waist, and finally inviting him to join the witch-hunting team.











Meanwhile, Gretel expresses no heterosexual interest, although she does get an unexpected ally in a gigantic troll (Derek Mears), who also joins the team.  In the last scene, they're fighting a "sand witch" in the vast desert of 17th century Germany.

This is a very bloody movie; a scene involving the mass-execution of dozens of witches is particularly disturbing.  And I didn't like the anachronistic dialogue ("Awesome!") and technology: they have machine guns, phonograph records, tasers, and hyperdermic syringes.  But the people are attractive (at least, all of the good people are attractive), and there's plenty of gay subtexts.  

Once Upon a Mattress

December 12, 1972.  I'm in seventh grade at Washington Junior High.  After our usual Tuesday night dinner of tuna casserole, we gather in the living room and light up the Christmas tree-- we just set it up last night -- to watch tv.  But Maude and Hawaii Five-O are pre-empted by a musical called Once Upon a Mattress.  

A musical!  Gross!  "Can I be excused?" I ask.

"Don't be antisocial!" my father exclaims.  "Whatever you got to do, you can do it in here with the family."

I'm used to playing, reading, and doing homework in front of the tv  -- when I try to spend some time alone in my room, my father always yells at me to "Don't be antisocial!" and "Get out here with the family!"

What do they think I'm doing down there, anyway?

 But I have to get out of this stupid musical somehow!

"Um...I have to practice my violin."  I just joined the orchestra.

"Hey, if Boomer doesn't have to watch this junk, then I don't either!" my brother Ken complains.

So we get permission to hide in our  basement room.  But eventually I have to go to the bathroom, which means passing right in front of the tv set where that...ugh!...musical is playing.  I brace myself to rush through quickly, but I can't help glancing at the tv set.

It's Ken Berry from The Carol Burnett Show, who has nice muscles and a rackish smile.  He's singing "I'm in love with a girl named Fred."

Wait -- Fred is a boy's name.  Could he be...in love with a boy?

No, "Fred" is played by Carol Burnett.  But Ken goes on to explain why he loves her:


She is very strong.
She can fight.
She can wrestle.

These are the reasons that boys like boys!

I sit down to watch the last half.  It's a version of the "Princess and the Pea" fairy tale, about Queen Agrivain, who doesn't want her sissy son, Prince Dauntless, to get married, so she forces every potential bride to take impossible tests.

 But Winnifred, nicknamed Fred, is so tough and strong that she passes every test, so the wedding can take place.

(In 2005, Carol Burnett returned to the production as Queen Agrivain, with gay actor Denis O'Hare, below with his husband Hugo Redwood.)

I don't realize that,  when the original musical appeared in 1959, "clinging mothers" were assumed the cause of gay identity, so Prince Dauntless would be assumed gay.   I don't catch the sexual symbolism of the mute King who suddenly finds his voice.  And of course I have no idea  that director Ron Field is gay in real life.

But I know all about liking people who are tough and strong,  liking biceps and pecs instead of the soft curves that boys are supposed to long for.

And I know all about doing things on mattresses.

See also: Looking for Muscles on The Carol Burnett Show

Cinderella: Men in Tights

Let's face it -- 90% of the reason we go to the ballet is for the beefcake -- to look at the muscular male dancers in skin-tight leotards.  10% or less is for the bonding -- gay subtexts are scarce, even when the choreographer is gay.

And Cinderella is the most heterosexist of the lot.  It's based on the most iconic of Charles Perrault's fairy tales:

1. Cinderella escapes from her horrible childhood home to a fancy dress ball, with the help of a fairy godmother and a furry-animal makeover.
2. The Handsome Prince falls in love with her.
3. She flees at midnight, before she turns into a pumpkin.
4. The Handsome Prince tries her shoe out on every woman in the kingdom, but it only fits Cinderella.

Cinderella has no female friends, only bullying stepsisters.  The Handsome Prince has no male friends, just fawning courtiers.  It's male-female pas de deux, heterosexual love! love! love! from here to eternity.

There have been about 20 ballet versions, but the most commonly performed is the 1945 version with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev.

It adds some comedic touches, such as having the stepsisters performed by men in drag (as they are in the popular British pantomimes).  In 1948, it was re-choreographed as a full-blown comedic ballet.

Still entirely heterosexist, from stem to stern.

Fortunately, costumers usually compensate by dressing the Prince in the most tightly revealing leotards they can find.

So audiences who are bored by the heterosexual love! love! love! mantra can still find something to look at.

See also: The Midsummer Night's Dream Ballets.