Boxers and Boyfriends: Joe Palooka

The most famous fictional boxer of the 20th century was probably Joe Palooka in the long-running comic strip (1930-1984).   Tall and immensely strong but gentle, Joe Palooka was the creation of Ham Fisher, who observed lots of young Polish immigrant boys hanging around boxing arenas, hoping that their muscles would bring them fame and fortune.

In slang of the era, a "palooka" was an incompetent boxer, but Joe Palooka was a star.

In his heyday, Joe was appearing on the radio, in movies, in big-little books, and in comic books.

Left: Tab Hunter lookalike Joe Kirkwood played Palooka.

You could buy Joe Palooka toys, gum, lunch boxes, board games, and a cut-out mask on Wheaties cereal.  

Pop quiz: Joe or Tab?

 In 1948, the town of Bedford, Indiana  (near Bloomington) erected a statue in his honor.  It was moved to nearby Oolitic in 1984.

More after the break

Matthew G. Taylor: Chongo, Nemesis, a god's guard, a lot of fan conventions, and some d*cks

Link to Matt's d*ck

On a 2001 episode of Queer as Folk , Emmett (Peter Paige) decides that he wants to become "ex-gay."  To dissuade him from this crazy idea, his friends arrange for him to be visited by performer Zack O'Tool, played by the super-sized-in-every-way Matthew G. Taylor.

Born in Burlington, Ontario, in 1973, Matt worked as a police officedr and martial artist before the acting bug hit.

Among his other early roles:

Legendary strongman Eugene Sandow in a 1998 biopic of Thomas Edison,

 A bushy-haired thug in Detroit Rock City (1999)

Medoc in The Skulls (2001), about an Ivy League secret society.

Matt's most famous role is probably Nemesis, a "huge, overpowering monster" in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004).  His instagram is full of selfies that fans wanted to take with him at horror conventions. 

He went on to play more man-mountain characters:

Boxer Primo Carnera in Cinderella Man (2005).

A Giant in Boondock Saints II (2009)

Shackles, an "uncontrollable monster with freakish strength" on the teen adventure series Aaron Stone (2010).

A character called "Man Mountain Guard" on Lost Girl (2011).

More man mountains after the break

Lorenzo Lamas: from Gay-Vague Prettyboy to Straight Kickboxer

The son of Hollywood royalty, Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl, Lorenzo Lamas had a delicate, prettyboy face, big hair, a slim, hairy chest, and a penchant for semi-nudity that made him perfect for gay-vague roles.

 Gay teens first noticed him in Take Down (1979), as a high school wrestler who finds inspiration in his unconventional English teacher (Edward Herrman).

And in  the short-lived California Fever (1979), hanging out on the beach with Jimmy McNichol and Marc McClure.

And in a photo spread in the gay-vague magazine After Dark (1979).

They were expecting a lot from the gay-coded young hunk.  But it didn't happen.

Instead he got married -- twice by 1983, four times altogether.

And he landed the nighttime soap opera Falcon Crest (1981-1990), as Lance Cumson, the lazy playboy grandson of matriarch Angela Channing (Jane Wyman).  His character was married four times during the course of 227 episodes.

Meanwhile Lorenzo started bulking up, to take advantage of the 1980s fad for man-mountains, and he branched out into martial-arts actioners.  Except instead of saving a buddy, he distancesdhimself from his earlier gay-vague roles by saving girls: his sister in Snake Eater (1989), his girlfriend in Night of the Warrior (1991), a female archaeologist in The Swordsman (1992).

There were a few minor buddy-bonding roles, such as the kickboxing movie Final Impact (1992), but nothing like the promise of the 1980s.  At least he took off his shirt a lot.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Lamas could be seen mostly in low-budget actioners.  He also starred in the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful (2004-2007) and parodied himself in the tv series Leave it to Lamas (2009) and Love Sex God (2012).

Not a lot of gay content in his work, but he has performed in The King and I and A Chorus Line at the Ogunquit Playhouse in the gay resort town.

Man-Mountains of the 1980s

The sensitive, androgynous New Man fell into disfavor during the conservative 1980s.  Instead we got man-mountains, masses of post-bodybuilder pecs and abs with steely eyes and gritted teeth who grunted when they spoke at all, and strutted through the plot with their shirts off (no shirt were big enough, anyway), carrying an Uzi in one hand and a hand grenade in the other, usually with a naked lady clinging to their leg like Conan in the 1970s, or Steve Reeves in the 1950s.

At first they weren't terribly popular at the box office.  The #1 movie of 1986 in the United States was Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Big Then, after slogging through Hoosiers, Pretty in Pink, The Hitcher, and Jean de Florette, you finally hit Cobra (with man-mountain Sylvester Stallone) at #63 and  Delta Force (Chuck Norris) #77.

But by 1988, Die Hard (with man-mountain Bruce Willis), was #1, and then there was Bloodsport (Jean Claude Van Damme, left), Red Heat (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Above the Law (Stephen Seagal), Missing in Action 3 (Chuck Norris), Mercenary Fighters (Reb Brown), World Gone Wild (Michael Pare), and Rambo III (Sylvester Stallone).

The titles were all about the same, two words suggesting hand-to-hand combat: Instant Justice, Hard Knox, Strike Commando, American Ninja (1,2,3,4,5), Kickboxer (1,2,3,4,), Bloodsport, Death Warrant, Forced Vengeance.  

The plots were all about the same:  the man-mountain, a good, patriotic white guy, travels deep into a jungle country occupied by amoral, barbaric Asians or Hispanics to:  a) rescue a prisoner of war, former boss, buddy, or brother; b) keep drugs from hurting kids; c) get revenge on a warlord who killed his wife or girlfriend.

He gets captured and tortured by a female or gay-coded male villain (the humiliation!), and escapes.  He then uses his martial arts training to take out the entire enemy army with his bare hands. (Left: Michael Pare in Deadly Heroes).

Oh, and he meets with a woman from the enemy country, usually a freedom fighter. They have s*x -- usually after he's been beaten or tortured.  She's always n*de, and always on top.  They fall in love.

Racist, imperialist, sexist, heterosexist, homophobic, horribly violent.  The list of negatives goes on and on.  So why would gay teenagers watch? (Or actually fast-forward the VHS tape to the good scenes).  (Left: Tom Skerritt in Opposing Force)

More after the break

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Nude photos of Trench, Mr. Freeze, The Terminator, Conan, and an Austrian fitness model

Link to the nude photos

Arnold needs no last name.  He almost single-handedly took bodybuilding out the realm of  Muscle Beach physical culturists and Italian sword-and-sandal movies and created the genre of Man-Mountains. His superlative physique and distinctive Austrian growl have been parodied innumerable times, on Saturday Night Live, on Seinfeld, on Tiny Toon Adventures).    It's hard to leave a room temporarily without being tempted to use his signature line from The Terminator, "I'll be back," or Terminator 2, "Come with me if you want to live."

Already a Mr. Universe and nearly a Mr. Olympia, the 21 year old Mr. Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in 1968 with his best friend Franco Columbu, to become an actor.  He posed for a lot of fitness magazines, including the gay-coded Tomorrow's Man.  In the 1970s he was the subject of more conventional semi-nude paintings by Jamie Wyeth.  In the 1980s, photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

I had a friend in the 1980s whose bathroom featured what looked very much like a nude photo of Arnold, clipped from a fitness magazine.  It's not the black and white flexing photo that's available everywhere; this one was in color, and showed Arnold standing on a hillside.

His first starring role was in Hercules in New York (1969), which nobody saw.  His accent was so bad that his lines were dubbed.

He starred in Stay Hungry (1976), about a young man, drawn into the world of bodybuilding, and in The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980), asMansfield's muscular husband, Mickey Hargitay.

More Arnold after the break

Sylvester Stallone: Rocky, Rambo, Estelle Getty's son, Kur Russell's boyfriend, and the Italian Stallion

During the 1970s, the New Sensitive Man was soft, cuddly, and sensitive, but during the 1980s Reagan-Thatcher conservative retrenchment, man-mountains came into style.  The first, and the best, was the uber-muscular Sylvester Stallone.

Skip to the nude photos

One of the original Boomers, Stallone began his career in 1970, at age 23, in the hardcore porn Party at Kitty and Stud's. Repackaged as The Italian Stallion during the 1990s, it became the bestselling porn dvd of the era.

Stallone was in a number of films during the early 1970s, including Lords of Flatbush, but he hit it big as the underdog boxer in Rocky (1976). Many starring roles followed, some straight policers (Nighthawks), some comedies (Rhinestone), one trucker-arm wrestler (Over the Top, with David Mendenhall),  but Stallone was at his best as a man-mountain who grunts, snarls, flexes, and saves the day.

Movies by other man-mountains -- Schwarzeneggar, Lundgren, Norris, Van Damme -- drew the crowds with their reactionary political agenda,  heterosexist girl-rescues, and climaxes where the effeminate gay-coded villain gets his just deserts, so there wasn't much for gay fans to watch except the beefcake.  But Stallone was different.

His characters  were macho, aggressively violent, and heterosexist, but they were not at all homophobic. They even did some homoerotic buddy-bonding -- with Kurt Russell in Tango & Cash (1986), for instance.

Even his beefcake was different.  Other man-mountains were rarely nude -- you don't need nudity to demonstrate that you are strong enough to lift a small country.  But Stallone never shied away from frontal and rear nudity.  His muscles were objects of utility but also of beauty, offered to both male and female fans.

Nor is Stallone homophobic in real life.  He is so gay friendly that when his son Sage Stallone died tragically in the summer of 2012, the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church picketed his funeral, "accusing" the elder actor of teaching him tolerance.

No gay characters, although he wrote a gay mercenary into an early draft of The Expendables (2023), then dropped him.

Nude frontal and rear photos of The Italian Stallion on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Barbarian Heroes: Conan, Brak, Kull

Depression-Era pulps often invoked the unimaginably ancient and unimaginably decadent civilizations based vaguely on the Orient: the cities all warrened with harems, opium dens, dungeons,  lairs, and oubliettes; the rulers all fat, bejeweled, and lecherous; the people childlike; the laws brutal; the religions by turns esoteric and superstitious: the distant past worlds of Hyperborea and Atlantis, the distant future world of Xiccarph, or the aging jungle-cities of Mars.

Placing Adventure Boys in realms of Oriental myth allowed for a lushly sensual homoromance.  In H.P. Lovecraft's "Quest of Iranon”(1921), a young man wanders a stern, unfriendly world in search of the city of Aira, where there are “men to whom songs and dreams. . .bring pleasure.”  He meets “a young boy with sad eyes” who also dreams of escape, to a city where  “men understand our longings and welcome us as brothers, nor even laugh or frown at what we say.”    They travel together, happy in a way yet always longing.  They grow old together and finally die, never finding their true home.
  
Often the outskirts of these unimaginably ancient cities were teaming with mighty-thewed, sword-wielding barbarians -- Henry Kuttner’s Elak, Clark Ashton Smith’s Tiglari, Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Brak, and Kull (played by Kevin Sorbo in the film version).  Their plots usually involved a masculine/feminine colonizer/colonized myth, with the muscle man rescuing a naked woman from some effeminate, ruby-ringed satrap.



Fellow muscle men appeared only as bullies, cads, or at best, untrustworthy companions who ended up betraying the hero -- except when the barbarians are teenagers rather than men. Then they rescue no naked women, and their same-sex bonds are true.

Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian spends his seventeen stories in Weird Tales rescuing the requisite naked woman and being betrayed by men, except in the only story set in his adolescence, “The Tower of the Elephant” (1933).   About sixteen years old, a “tall, strongly made youth” with “broad, heavy shoulders, massive chest” and so on, Conan sneaks into the Tower of the Elephant with the hope of stealing a fabulous jewel hidden there.  At this point, plot conventions decree that he find a naked woman.  Instead, he finds a naked man.





An alien named Yag-kosha, elephant-headed but otherwise human, has been blinded, crippled, and imprisoned in the tower by an evil sorcerer.  They become friendly, and Yag-kosha asks Conan to rescue him through the strange-sounding expedient of cutting out his heart.  Conan never hesitates about killing monsters and enemies, but he will not kill a friend, and complies only when Yag-kosha assures him that he will not die.  In fact, he uses the magic of the heart to take revenge on the evil sorcerer, and then, restored to his original strength and beauty, he jubilantly flies away to join his companions on his home planet.

This story is fascinating because it precisely mirrors the adventures of the adult Conan, only transformed from hetero-erotic to graphically homoerotic.  In the shimmering tower, the adult Conan would find a female object of desire (naked, beautiful, benevolent) contrasted with a male threat (clothed, hideous, evil).  However, the teenage Conan finds a male, both object of desire (naked, benevolent) and threat (blind, crippled, aged, with a hideous face “of nightmare and madness”).  Then ritualized death and resurrection removes the threat, leaving only desire: Conan perceives the new Yag-kosha as beautiful.

Even the hints of heterosexual intimacy that the adult Conan often enjoys with the naked ladies he rescues  are mirrored when the naked Yag-kosha gets to “know” Conan by caressing his chest and shoulders with his soft phallic trunk: “its touch was as light as a girl’s hand,” Howard tells us, suggesting a tender, gentle sexual congress.  Conan’s desire here is for the male, a yearning for masculine intimacy that must be sublimated beyond all recognition among the adults in Cimmeria but can be expressed freely, with only a veneer of euphemism, during the paradox of youth.

Danny Greene: Professional Hunk of the 1980s

During the 1970s and early 1980s, producers started realizing that heterosexual women like to look at men, so they began marketing male physiques to them -- Playgirl magazine,  the Chippendale Dancers, Gregory Harrison in For Ladies Only , Jon-Erik Hexum in Cover Up.  Of course, gay men were watching, too.  The producers usually pretended that they were unaware of the existence of gay men, but the performers knew.

Daniel Greene (aka Danny Greene) rode in on the tide of "female" adulation of the male form.  He began making the rounds of guest hunks on tv in 1982: Trapper John MD, Alice, Three's Company, The A-Team, a sex comedy called The Rosebud Beach Hotel (1984), an aerobics movie called Pulsebeat (1985) (Yes, there were aerobics movies.)

It didn't matter, as long as he took his shirt off, or better yet stripped down to his underwear or a Speedo, and the camera panned out to shots of ladies lusting over his killer bod.

His biggest role was in the nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1985-86), playing Dwayne Cooley, a truck driver who somehow finds his way into the ultra-rich family and begins having affairs with the ladies (thus cleverly combining the trucker and glitz fads).  He was so popular that he even got fan mail from Governor Bob Graham of Florida, his home state.

Afterwards Danny played buddy-bonding man-mountains in Hands of Steel (1986), Skeleton Coast (1988), The Opponent (1988), and Soldier of Fortune (1990), but he really wanted to market himself  "to the ladies" (and the gay men) again.

 So he played Buck on the gay-themed Brothers (1985), Bob, mild-mannered hunk who is romanced by the saucy Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988), and "Fantasy Rusty" in the sitcom Babes (1991).

Not a lot of starring roles during the 1990s and 2000s, when every actor worth his Equity card knew his way around a gym, so a body by Michelangelo was no longer a guarantee of stardom.

Danny is married to actress/model LaGena Hart, and according to wikipedia works for a company called ACN in Florida.

Swordsmen and Sorcerers of the 1980s

For over a century, people have been rejecting naturalistic literature to write heroic fantasy.  In Britain, mostly  about unlikely heroes who travel through magic-laden Medieval landscapes to fight ultimate evil (e.g., The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings). In America, mostly about heavily-muscled barbarians who travel through magic-laden ancient worlds to settle personal vendettas (e.g., Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan the Barbarian).  

Neither type had much luck in the movies, maybe because of the need for special effects.  Or the difficulty in presenting an entire world without lengthy, boring exposition ("The kingdoms of Caldarand and Bobinur have been at war for centuries....)  Or the distinct preference for naturalism in movie-going audiences.

During the 1960s, I can think of only The Magic Sword (1962).

During the 1970s, Wizards (1977), and a terrible animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978).

Then Arnold Schwarzenegger tore up the scenery as Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), and suddenly every bodybuilder who could read a script was being squeezed into a loincloth and given a magic sword to wield:
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Beastmaster (1982)
The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)
Ator (1982)
Krull (1983)
Hercules (1983)
Deathstalker (1983)
The Blade Master (1984)
Ladyhawk (1985)
Iron Warrior (1986)
Masters of the Universe (1987)
The Barbarians (1987)...well, you get the idea.

The plots were simple 1980s man-mountain plots, with an evil wizard instead of a drug lord, and a weirdly-named Medieval world instead of Southeast Asia.

And they had a similar appeal for gay kids and teenagers.

1. Endless quantities of beefcake. Muscle men, slim sidekicks, and little kids in loincloths or naked.  Unfortunately, also endless quantities of cheesecake, including lots of female breasts.  Bare. There's always a female warrior who fights semi-nude.

2. The buddy-bonding is strong and powerful, more emotionally compelling than the requisite romance with The Girl.  In Deathstalker, the Deathstalker (Richard Hill) is patently in love with Oghris (Richard Brooker).  In The Barbarians, Kutchek and Gore (Peter and David Paul) never fall in love with anyone (else).

  In Beastmaster, Dar (Marc Singer) forms an alternative family unit with Seth (John Amos) and young prince Tal (Josh Milrad).

3. There are usually kids around for the kids in the audience to identify with.  We see the barbarian hero's early childhood tragedies, to give them a personal motive for adult vendettas.

4. There is usually no fade-out kiss.  The Barbarian is a creature of the wilderness.  He saves civilization but does not reside there, so at the end of the movie, he usually moves on.

By 1995, the fad had run its course, along with the cinematic interest in man-mountains, as beefcake fashions returned to the trim and athletic.

See also: Man-Mountains of the 1980s

Miles O'Keefe: A New Sensitive Tarzan

Miles O'Keeffe graduated from the University of the South with a degree in psychology, and worked for a year as a prison counselor, before heading for Hollywood, hoping to make it big as an actor.

He did.  The biggest.

Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981), the first Tarzan movie in over a decade, was an attempt to revitalize the Tarzan myth for the 1980s generation.  It starred the breasts of Bo Derek, a heterosexual sex symbol from 10 (1979).

 The plot was about Jane (Bo Derek) and her breasts traveling to Africa on a scientific expedition, where they meet, civilize, and have sex with the Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe).  Though superbly muscular, Miles' Tarzan was not a man-mountain; he was a romance novel hero, a New Sensitive Man, desirable more for his tenderness than his muscles.

I don't remember him speaking, not even a "Me Tarzan" grunt.

There was no gay subtext.

Bo won the Golden Raspberry for the Worst Actress of the year, but Tarzan was a box office success, making more money than, Excalibur, The Great Muppet Caper, or An American Werewolf in London.

Miles disliked his Tarzan character, and spent the next decade trying to live him down.  I haven't seen any of his later movies, but apparently he played sword-and-sorcery heroes Ator (1982, 1984, 1987), and the Lone Runner (1986), the Medieval hero Sir Gawain (1984), and some man-mountains rescuing buddies from Southeast Asian warlords (1987, 1988, 1990).

No gay characters, but between 1999 and 2001, he appeared six times on So Graham Norton, a late-night talk show hosted by the gay British comedian.

See also: The Tarzan Who Might Have Been.

Kurt Russell: Teen Idol Turned Man Mountain

Few actors make the difficult transition from child star to teen idol, and fewer still survive as adults in show biz.  Kurt Russell did it, but he lost something along the way.

Born in 1951, Kurt first became a star on The Travels of Jaimie McPherson (1963-64) , about a boy traveling through the Old West who bonds with a gruff wagon train operator (Charles Bronson).

Later in the 1960s, he became a familiar sight on tv, often playing oddball outsiders -- a jungle boy on Gilligan's Island (1965), an alien warrior who bonds with Will Robinson on Lost in Space (1966), an Indian boy who bonds with William Smith on Laredo (1966).  His physique became a familiar sight, too, as many gay preteens of the era could attest.

As a teenager, Kurt's impish smile and slightly confused expression made him unsuitable for Disney Adventure.  He made only one Adventure Boy movie, The Secret of Boyne Castle (1968) -- as American exchange student Rich who fights spies in rural Ireland, along with his boyfriend -- but unlike other Adventure Boys like James MacArthur and Peter McEnery, he never dropped a button.  He had many more shirtless, underwear, and semi-nude shots as a boy than as a teen.

After that, he concentrated in comedy, taking over the oddball genius roles left behind by the fired Tommy Kirk -- The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), The Barefoot Executive (1971), Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), The Strongest Man in the World (1975). With one major exception -- Tommy Kirk wasn't very good at displaying believable heterosexual interest, but Kurt's comedy characters were indefatigably girl-crazy.

As a young adult in the 1970s, Kurt moved into serious dramatic roles, playing Charles Whitman, the University of Texas sniper, in The Deadly Tower (1975), and Morgan Beaudine, who travels through the Old West bonding with his estranged brother Quentin (Tim Matheson) in The Quest (1976).

And from serious dramatic roles to gnarled, surly Snake Plissken, who negotiates Manhattan as a maximum security prison in Escape from New York (1981); R. J. Macready, who fights a monster escaping from the Antartic ice in The Thing (1982); Reno Hightower, who longs to regain his former football glory in The Best of Times (1986).

His list of memorable buddy-bonding roles is practically endless: Detective Cash, who gets naked in the shower with Sylvester Stallone's Tango in Tango and Cash (1989); firefighter Bull McCaffrey, who rescues his brother Brian (William Baldwin) in Backdraft (1991); Michael Zane, who tracks down his former partner during an Elvis convention in 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001).

But subtexts only work if the actors are utterly unaware of the homoerotic potential of their on-screen friendship, or are completely aware and ok with it.  The adult Kurt Russell is aware, but not ok with it; he uses homoerotic potential as a source of squeamish laughter or disquieting menace.

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.

Bob Hover/ Richard Harrison: Muscle Buddies

During the 1950s, when Muscle Beach bodybuilders were being snapped up by the Athletic Model Guild to pose in the burgeoning gay-vague physique magazines industry, buddies Bob Hover (right) and Richard Harrison (left) sometimes posed together.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1936, Richard Harrison hit the beaches of Southern California in 1954, just after he graduated from high school.  Bob Hover was two years older, but he arrived that same year, after a stint in military (he was a boxer in the Marines).  They became close friends, and maybe lovers (if you believe the sly hints that the muscle mags used to sell copies).

Soon Hollywood came calling.  Bob had several small movie roles in 1956-58, usually with some of the other gay or gay-friendly actors of the 1950s, such as Lafayette Escadrille (1958) with Tab Hunter, and No Time for Sargeants (1958), with Nick Adams.


During the 1970s he starred on several soap operas, including Another World and As the World Turns.  He retired from acting in 1985, and died in 2013.

Richard first appeared on screen in 1957, and in 1961 moved to Italy to become one of the sword and sorcery peplum heroes.  Between 1961 and 1965, he donned the toga nine times, growing a beard in the process.  When the peplum craze ended, he stayed in Italy to make spaghetti Westerns and spy dramas.













In the 1980s Richard returned to the U.S. just in time for the man-muscle craze: Golden Ninja Warrior, Ninja Hunter, The Ninja Squad, Ninja Dragon.  He was over 50 years old, but age never kept a true bodybuilder from flexing and taking out enemy squadrons.   He also moved into writing, directing, and production.

Both Bob and Richard married and had children, but they made an indelible impression on gay men of the first Boomer generation.