Peter Barton's Powers

When I met Peter Barton, he was guest starring in some tv shows, doing live theater, and calling his agent every day, trying to transition to a macho 1980s leading man.  But just a few years before, he had been a soft, androgynous teen idol.

Born in 1956, the former medical student started his acting career in 1979, as the teenage son on the short-lived sitcom Shirley!  Only 13 episodes were filmed, but that was enough for the teen magazines to adulate Peter as the Next Big Thing.  He was handsome, muscular but not a bodybuilder, and just androgynous enough to meet the gender-bending expectations of the era of Culture Club and ABBA.

Dozens of shirtless, speedo, and semi-nude shots followed, plus a starring role in Hell Night (1981) with Vincent Van Patten, in Leadfoot with Philip Mckeon, and in a movie-of-the-week, The First Time (1982).  Peter also appeared in a tight swimsuit in an episode of Battle of the Network Stars.  Many gay boys found in him a kindred spirit, gazing at his movies or swimsuit spreads and thinking "He's one of us."

Then his big break came: The Powers of Matthew Star, one of the many kid-friendly sci-fi series in the 1982-83 season (others included  Voyagers!, The Greatest American Hero, and Knight Rider).  Strangely, it aired just before the drag queen-friendly Madame's Place.

The plot was similar to Shazam!, which aired on Saturday mornings a few years before: teenager with superpowers lives with an older man.  In this case, Matthew, or E'Hawke (Peter Barton) was a prince from a planet orbiting Tau Ceti, hiding out on Earth from enemies who wanted him dead.  He went to Crestridge High School and lived with his guardian, Walter, or D'hai (Louis Gossett Jr.), who was working undercover as a science teacher.

I watched occasionally, but it was a little too "Saturday morning tv" to draw a big audience.  Besides, Matthew had a girlfriend, there was no homoerotic buddy-bonding, and there was not enough beefcake.  Most gay kids quickly changed the channel to The Dukes of Hazzard on CBS.  Powers was cancelled after only 22 episodes.

Peter's teen idol fame ended shortly thereafter, as more muscular actors like Willie Aames and Scott Baio rose to the limelight.

In 1988, he got his big break, a starring role on The Young and the Restless.  Other soaps followed, plus the detective series Burke's Law.

Today Peter lives in upstate New York with his daughter.  He has never married.

See also: My Celebrity Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings

Hogan's Heroes: The Wackiest POW Camp in Germany

Our older brothers and fathers were in Vietnam, where casualties were mounting every day, but at home we watched wacky soldiers: McHale's Navy, No Time for Sergeants, F-Troop, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, and, the wackiest of all, Hogan's Heroes (1965-71), which also drew from the spy and "I've got a secret" craze.

It was set in a World War II prisoner of war camp, Stalag 13, where the "prisoners," deliberately captured, were all spies:

Back row: LeBeau, covert operations; Colonel Hogan (Bob Crane), the leader; Kinch (Ivan Dixon), communications.

Front row: Newkirk (Richard Dawson), impersonations and con games; Carter (Larry Hovis), explosives and all things scientific.

The commandant, Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer, right), was an incompetent bureaucrat. The only guard was Sergeant Schultz (John Banner, left), a sweet-tempered toymaker in civilian life, who turned a blind eye to the unusual activities ("I see nothing!").  Both were victims of circumstance, not actively evil; the  villains were the Nazi higher-ups, who might discover the secret operation and shut it down.

What was the attraction for gay kids, other than the fact that the only other choices on Saturday night were The Lawrence Welk Show and the first half of a movie?

1. Lack of displayed heterosexual interest. Other entries in the spy genre, such as I Spy and Wild Wild West, involved its heroes in endless leering at bikini-clad women, but the POW camp was an all-male world, with no women visible except for Colonel Klink's secretary and an occasional female resistance agent. Hogan occasionally smooched with a woman, but no episodes involved hetero-romance.

2. Dreamy guys in the cast, especially Robert Clary.  No beefcake, unfortunately -- no one as much as unbuttoned a button, even while lying around in the barracks. In fact, it's almost impossible to find nude shots of any of the cast members, even in other projects.

3. Hogan and Klink certainly weren't buddies. Klink was constantly annoyed by Hogan's  irreverence. Hogan found Klink stuffy and old-fashioned (another 1960s clash between the establishment and the counterculture).  Yet as they strategized against each other, or more often worked together toward some common goal, they developed a love-hate bond that one could easily see spinning into a forbidden romance.  It was a pleasure to watch them interact every week.

Bob Crane (1928-1978) became so famous as Colonel Hogan that it's hard to remember his many other roles.  He starred in the Disney movie Superdad (1973) and his own short-lived Bob Crane Show, guest starred on everything from Ellery Queen to Love Boat, and worked extensively in theater.

He was married twice and had five children (shown: his son Scotty), but he also had relationships with many women, and occasionally men.  He was reputedly a BDSM bottom; however, no BDSM scenes appear in the hundreds of tapes he made of his sexual encounters.

When he was murdered in 1978, people speculated that it was a BDSM scene gone wrong.The main suspect, his friend John Carpenter, was acquitted on lack of evidence.

Greg Kinnear played Bob Crane in the 2002 movie Auto-Focus.

"LIving with Myself": A Techno Take on the Identical Cousin Trope

Miles (Paul Rudd) is a middle-class heterosexual shlub with problems out of a John Updike novel:  he's bad at his job selling amalgamated sprockets, bad at his marriage, overweight, under-appreciated, and probably infertile. 

His jerk coworker Dan (Desmin Borges, below) tells him about a spa where, for $50,000, you get a "full cleansing," body, mind, and soul."  So, in a midlife-crisis desperation move, Miles decides to empty his savings and go.

Even after it turns out to be in a dingy galleria, run by two sinister-looking mad scientists playing on anti-Asian stereotypes, who strap him to a guerney and administer an anaesthetic.

He awakens in his underwear, in a plastic bag, buried in a shallow grave in the woods.

Wait -- if he was in the plastic bag for a long time, wouldn't he suffocate?

Just go with it.

Miles finally makes it home, only to discover a doppelganger in bed with his wife.

Turns out that the spa produces a clone of their clients, ages it to adulthood, adds all of its memories, and fixes all of its genetic defects, resulting in a duplicate who is stronger, smarter, more enthusiastic, more confident, and better in bed.  Then they kill the original.

Just go with it.

Except somehow original Miles survived, so now there are two Miles: the original, signified by his bad hair, belly, glasses, and slouch, and the fresh-scrubbed, powerlifting, green tea-drinking, first-name-using clone.  They will have to learn to live together while hiding their secret from the world.

So Living with Myself  turns out to be a "my secret" comedy. I've only seen two episodes, but I can imagine the others from Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Patty Duke Show.
"Take my place at the big presentation"
"Go on a romantic weekend with my wife,but don't have sex with her."

There is a deliberate gay subtext:  Miles and New Miles are often mistaken for a gay couple.  When determining if New Miles has an appendectomy scar, Miles gets on his knees, and a passerby thinks they are having sex and yells "Get a room!"

When New Miles decides to go off by himself, they "break up," complete with returning the wedding ring.

But no gay characters.  Even  Miles' ultra-butch sister (Alia Shawkat)  has a heterosexual partner.

Miles visits Left (Rob Yang), one of the mad scientists, and finds him living with his small daughter.

"And wife?" Miles asked.

Left hesitates.  "No." Does he mean his wife is gone, or that he never had a wife because he's gay?

The wife is gone. Gay people don't exist in this world.

Other than Paul and Paul, the male cast seems rather limited.  Desmin Borges (left) as previous clone Dan.

 Tom Brady, whoever that is, playing himself ("I've had the treatment six times.")

Rob Yang as the mad scientist.

Hopefully there will be some buddy bonding down the line, or some gay references other than jokes.

The Top Beefcake Stars of the Disney Channel, 2019

Disney Channel sitcoms used to be almost entirely about teenager girls who want to become singers, or who already are singers. Remember Austin & Ally, Sonny with a Chance, Jesse, Hannah Montana?  It wasn't all bad, since the teenager girls had teenage boys hanging around, with the potential for gay subtexts.

Besides, many -- most -- of the teenage boys were "dreamy" or muscular or both. Remember the Austin half of Austin & Ally?

Now Disney seems to be mixing things up with high-concept, fourth-wall-breaking, bizarre-premise shows.  Plus the cast has gotten exponentially younger, and the beefcake exponentially scarcer.

Sydney to the Max.  Does anyone use the phrase "to the max" anymore?

 12 year old Sydney lives with her father, Max.  Her adventures are paralleled by flashbacks to Max as a 12-year old having similar adventures.

12-year old Max has a best friend, Leo, but they both get crushes on girls.  And Sydney gets crushes on boys.

The adult Max is played by Ian Reed Kesler, who looks rather buffed, and has played gay characters.

Fast Layne.  Don't you hate series with titles that are awful puns?

12-year old Sophie stumbles upon a talking car named VIN.    "I've got a secret" antics ensure.  Brandon Rossel stars as her crush.

Just Roll with It: 12 year old Owen Blatt and his family have sitcom adventures, but several times per episode, they stop the action to ask the studio audience what should happen next (you get three choices).   Then they continue based on the selection.   I'm not sure if they actually filmed multiple segments, or if they are memorizing huge scripts.

Oliver's dad is played by Tobie Windham, seen here in a stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (he's the one with the bulge).

Coop and Cami Ask the World: 12-year old twins Coop and Cami Wrather have an online show called What Would You Wrather? Don't you hate shows with titles that are awful puns?  In the show, viewers get to vote on their decisions.  For instance, when Coop's crush cancels on him, should he accept his mother's offer to be his "date" to the dance?

What?  No, that's tots creepy.

The cast seems to consist almost entirely of 12-year olds, but I did find Kevin Daniels as the school principal.

Raven's Home:  Remember That's So Raven (2003-2007), about a girl with psychic powers?  Well, Raven is home, a single mother living with her "best friend" and their kids in Chicago.

Closeted lesbian couple? The two ladies don't even have any hetero-romantic plotlines, although their preteen kids do.  This is a program I can get into, even though it's beefcake-deficient.

Jonathan McDaniel has a recurring role as Raven's ex-husband.  Believe me, you do not want to see what's going on under that shirt.

Bunk'd:  Remember the kids from Jesse?  They are inmates at an endless summer camp.

The good news is, they're well into their teen-idol years: Karan Brar is 20.

The bad news: Cameron Boyce appeared only as a guest star.

More bad news: Heterosexual hijinks abound.

Pup Academy:  Sentient dogs from a parallel world have to go to a special school to learn how to pass as pets.  Huh?

And there's a prophecy about a "Chosen One."

The human characters include the founder of the academy, his crush, his grandson, and his grandson's crush.  The dogs are voiced by girls.  I got nothing.





Gabby Duran and the Unsittables: Gabby becomes the babysitter to a gaggle of alien toddlers, and must keep their secret while dealing with their weird powers.

For once, the star is a teenage girl, not a 12-year old, so she has a teenage boy accomplice played by Maxwell Acee Donovan.

He may not be a Tiger Beat Fave Rave, but I'll take what I can get.

Now could somebody point this boy in the direction of a gym?

Teen Angels

A year before they caused a counterculture-establishment standoff with their Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-70), comic duo Tommy  and Dick Smothers starred in an "I've got a secret" sitcom, The Smothers Brothers Show (1965-66).

Dick, the "straight man," plays a young, hip, self-absorbed bachelor in the Bill Bixby mold.  The paranormal event that jolts him out of his heterosexist stupor is not a crashed spaceship, but a knock on the door: his irreverent, anarchic, "queer" brother Tommy, lost at sea two years ago, has returned as "an apprentice angel," assigned to oversee Dick's life and do good deeds.

The plots involved Tommy's good deeds -- reforming gangsters and juvenile delinquents, helping the homeless, helping a musician change his tune -- and Dick's fruitless attempts to continue his skirt-chasing in instead of accepting a supernatural, well-night omnipotent same-sex bond.

I don't remember much about the series -- I was very, very young at the time -- but I remember Tommy's marvelous nonchalance about gender transgressions. To liven up a nursing home, he puts on old-lady drag and cavorts with the old men.

Fast forward thirty years, and the premise was recast in Teen Angel (1997-98), starring Corbin Allred  (left) as Steve, a young, hip, self-absorbed high schooler in the Michael Cade mold.  Again, a knock on the door: his irreverent, anarchic, "queer' best friend Marty(Mike Damus), who died last year after eating a spoiled hamburger, has returned as "an apprentice angel," assigned to oversee Steve's life and do good deeds.

The plots involved Marty's good deeds -- mostly helping Steve pass tests, get on the wrestling team, get the lead in the school play, and so on.  The sibling relationship gone, Marty and Steve become a more obvious romantic couple; though they both display heterosexual interests, they are obviously devoted to each other.

Again, Marty displays a marvelous nonchalance about gender transgressions.  When Steve likes a  cheerleader named Jessica, Marty senses that she will reject him, so he morphs into Jessica to go on the date.

What can we learn about the social changes between 1965 and 1997:
1. MORE heterosexism.  More tongue-lolling, leering, moaning insistence that boys and girls together are the meaning of life.
2. MORE subtext. More touching, more tenderness, more caring.
3. Humorous gender transgressions are ok, but you still aren't allowed to be gay.

Dick York: Bewitching Beefcake

I imagine that most gay male and heterosexual female Baby  Boomers have been desperate to see Dick York with his shirt off ever since their diaper days, when they saw him eye-bulge as Darren Stephens, mortal married to the witch Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) on the gay-symbolism-heavy "my secret" sitcom Bewitched (1964-69)  

Good luck.  As a stick-in-the-mud advertising executive in the Mad Men sixties, Darren usually wore a business suit, slept in pajamas, and was never shown in the shower or at the beach.  Dick was suffering from a debilitating back injury that prohibited most stunts and action scenes; finally the writers had to find reasons to keep Darren in bed for entire episodes.

Prior to Bewitched, Dick starred in various Westerns, thrillers, and dramas.  I haven't seen any of them except for Inherit the Wind (1960), but they probably didn't include significant beefcake.

But you can find everything on youtube.  A  compilation clip called Dick York: the Sexiest Man Alive seems to be displaying clips from Dick's very early work, playing high schoolers in "educational films" such as "How Popular Are You?" (1951).  They were used in classrooms for promoting conformity and compulsory heterosexuality.

In Bewitched, Darren was the "straight" man, in more ways than  one.  Not only the eye-bulging, slow-burning spectator to the mayhem, but aggressively heterosexual, faithful to Samantha but tempted by slithery witches, wood nymphs, sirens, and human women every five seconds.

But the compiler finds some gay-subtext images.  Dick and another boy check out each other's equipment in the shower (top photo), and he demonstrates that he is popular by walking off arm in arm with the school hunk.

There are also a few pics, very small, of an older Dick York at poolside, courtesy of Democratic Underground.  Not a bad physique.  Too bad Darren didn't get zapped out of his clothes from time to time.

David Lascher

The 1990s was the decade of the teen hunk; they appeared on Saturday morning, on Saved by the Bell and its clones (California Dreams, Breaker High), on the teen-heavy nuclear family sitcoms on ABC's TGIF (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Boy Meets World, Teen Angel), and on the material-starved kids' networks, Disney and Nickelodeon (Welcome Freshmen, Salute Your Shorts, The Adventures of Pete and Pete).

With all the teen hunks wandering around, it was easy to get lost in the crowd, even if you have a killer smile and a fantastic physique. David Lascher almost did.

Born in 1972, David hit Hollywood in a series of Burger King commercials and two failed network series before landing the role of teen operator on Hey, Dude  (1989-91), about the employees of a faltering dude ranch.  He hatched crazy schemes, competed with laconic Native American Danny Lightfoot (Joe Torres), gasped and  moaned over girls, and was nominated for a Young Artist Award.  But no one really noticed, not even when he took his shirt off.  Not that his smooth, muscular chest wasn't appealing, but if you changed he channel, you got Mark-Paul Gosselaer and Michael Cade.

 Next he was hired to play Vinnie Bonitardi on the TGIF series Blossom, as Blossom's wrong-side-of-the-tracks boyfriend.  He lasted through two seasons (1992-94), plus a special two-part call-back, but again, no one really noticed, not even in his swimsuit, shirtless, and underwear shots.  He was pleasantly muscular, but his co-star was the incredible Joey Lawrence.

In the fourth season of the TGIF "I've got a secret" comedy Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1999-2000), the teen witch went to college.  David played the manager of the coffee shop where she worked, and eventually competed with long-term boyfriend Harvey for her affection, which didn't make him popular with Sabrina-Harvey shippers.  He lasted for 3 seasons, then vanished, with viewership at an all time low.

But when he played a gay-vague or gay role, David had no trouble being noticed. His three-episode story arc as a gay high school jock on Beverly Hills 90210 was memorable, not at all shadowed by the regular cast of Beverly Hills musclemen like Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering (left).


In White Squall (1996), he has to contend with an incredible number of shirtless hunks, including Scott Wolf, Ryan Philippe, Jeremy Sisto, Ethan Embry, Balthazar Getty, and Jason Marsden -- and he doesn't even take his shirt off  -- yet his performance stands out as quiet, dignified, and touching.

Note to David Lascher: gay characters from now on.

Alf: from Melmac to West Hollywood

Alf (1986-90) was one of the "I've got a secret" sitcoms of the late 1980s (others included Harry and the Hendersons, Out of This World, and My Secret Identity).  It aired on Monday nights, opposite the female buddy-bonding Kate and Allie and the hunkfest MacGyver, so I rarely watched.  But you couldn't miss hearing about Alf, the sarcastic, irreverent Alien Life Form who crash-lands on Earth and imposes himself upon a nuclear family: nebbish Dad Willie Tanner, Mom Kate, eye-rolling teenage daughter Lynn, lonely preteen son Brian (Benji Gregory), and outcast Cousin Jake (Josh Blake).

Like all of the "family friendly" sitcoms of the 1980s, gay people did not exist.  Gay actor Jim J. Bullock had a recurring role as Uncle Neal, but his character was heterosexual.  Actually, every character was heterosexual.  Alf had a girlfriend back home, and started dating a blind woman (who didn't realize that he was an alien). Even ten-year old Brian had his share of crushes on girls (later photo, left).

Some teen idol attention fell upon Josh Blake, with some shirtless and semi-nude photos in teen magazines. His character was heterosexual, too, but his awkward attempts to form emotional connections with Alf allow for some gay readings.

Alf ended on a cliffhanger, with the government discovering Alf and carting him away.  Five years later, the movie Project Alf (1995) continues his story.  Fans were universally livid with rage; the Tanners were absent (none of the original cast wanted to be involved) and Alf was portrayed as far more antisocial and belligerent than in the tv series.  And he gets to make a homophobic crack about the army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Steve Burton: Out of This World

During the 1960s, there was a fad of tv programs about adults who were "different" and had to keep their secret lives hidden from the world.  During the 1980s, there was a fad of tv programs about teens with secret lives that they had to keep hidden from the world: My Secret Identity, Harry and the Hendersons, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, Alf, Small Wonder, Teen Angel.

On Out of This World (1987-91), the teenage Evie (Maureen Flannigan) discovers that she is half-alien.  She lives with her human mother, and her father, Troy from the planet Antares (voiced by Burt Reynolds), communicates with her through a cube. Aliens have all sorts of magical powers, from freezing time to controlling the weather, and disastrous misuse or accidental use of powers fuels the plots.





Along with Evie's attempts to live a "normal" life and her ongoing fear of discovery.

Gay kids could always relate to tv programs about being different and having secrets, but there was more.

A lot more.

Evie's on-off boyfriend, Chris, was played by Steve Burton, age 17 when the show began, blond, buffed, with six-pack abs and biceps that seemed to get bigger every episode.

And when the plotlines didn't call for his shirt to come off, the teen magazines obligingly plastered his shirtless and swimsuit-clad body over almost every page.

After Out of This World, Steve landed the role of mob enforcer turned body guard turned coffee importer Jason Morgan on the soap General Hospital.  But he still had time for beefcake photos, including the cover of Playgirl.

















From 2013 to 2017, he played Dylan McAvoy on The Young and the Restless.  He also moved into voice work, performing the character Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy video games.

In 2018, Steve left General Hospital to work on other projects.  Hopefully involving beefcake photos.

"The Good Place": Afterlife Beefcake and Bonding

Eleanor (Kristin Bell) has just died.   Her guide, Michael (Ted Danson), says that after a complicated algorithm analyzed her good and bad deeds, she has been assigned to The Good Place, a village where 300 compatible good people spend eternity.

They seem to mostly wander around, greeting each other, getting frozen yogurt, and flying kites.  In the evening, they throw parties.  Eternity seems really, really dull.

Or is it more sinister, like the Village in the 1960s British sci-fi The Prisoner?

Each resident of the village is assigned a soul mate, someone with whom they are spiritually compatible to share eternity with.  Eleanor, an environmentalist lawyer/human right advocate in life, is paired with Chidi  (William Jackson Harper), a West African professor of moral philosophy who suffers from indecisiveness and tummy aches.

I have a lot of questions:

Shouldn't most of the people in the afterlife be really old?

Should most of their soul mates be their partners back in life?

And what do they do all day?

Eleanor has a secret:  she is not who they say she is.  Someone made a mistake.  She was actually a boorish, foul-mouthed drunk who worked for a telemarketing company, scamming the elderly into buying medicine that they didn't need, and in her off hours refused to donate to charity or recycle.

She schemes to make sure no one finds out and sends her to the Bad Place.

Her allies include Chidi; Tahara (Jameela Jamil), a snobbish philanthropist; and Tahara's unlikely soulmate, Jianyu (Manny Jacinto), a Taiwanese Buddhist monk who has taken vows of poverty and silence.

Jianyu has a secret of his own.  He was actually Jason Mendoza, a small-time hood who sold fake drugs to college students.  He and his buddy Pillboi (Eugene Cordero, left) were trying to break into a safe when he died.

Actually rather bad.  Another mistake!

Tahara did get $6 billion in donations for a charity, but she was shallow, egotistical, obsessed with money and fame, and intensely jealous.  She died trying to tear down a statue of her pop-star sister at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Wait...

The first season has a big reveal.  Spoiler alert.
















They are actually in the Bad Place!  Junior demon Michael got permission from his supervisor to try a new type of torture: Sartre's "Hell is other people."  Most of the villagers are demon actors.  Eleanor, Chidi, Tahara, and Jason are the only humans, brought in to annoy each other for all eternity.

Once they discover the secret, Michael wipes their memories and reboots the village.

They keep discovering the secret, and Michael keeps wiping their memories.  Over 800 times.

Eventually some of the demon actors get frustrated with their minor roles, and start working to overturn Michael's experiment. And Janet, robotic personal assistant/Google for the village, falls in love with Jason, then builds her own boyfriend, Derek (Jason Mantzouakas, left), and becomes an ally.


 The humans negotiate with Michael, his boss, and finally a big moderator, Judge Hydrogen (Maya Rudolph)  They argue that if people can change in the afterlife, becoming better, then eternal punishment is unjust.

The Judge promises to think about the issue, and in the meantime reboots them them all the way, sending them back to the moments of their deaths and making sure that they don't die in their various accidents.

They end up encountering each other.  Maybe they really are soul mates.

The Good Place is very funny, and the characters are appealing enough to make the show worth watching.

Gay content: Apparently, in spite of the male-female icons on the explanatory video, there are some same-sex soul mates: gay couples appear occasionally in the background.  And they are referenced occasionally:  one deceased person states that he spent the first half of his life in North Korea, working for women's rights, and the last half in Saudi Arabia, working for gay rights (it must have been a short life).  That's quite a lot for a comedy starring Ted Danson, who is not known as a gay rights advocate.

Beefcake:  The two male humans, Chidi and Jason, are both cute, and there are lots of other hot actors around.  All racial groups represented.

Chris (Luke Guldan, top photo), a demon playing one of Eleanor's fake soulmates, who rips his shirt off and says "I'm going to the gym" at odd moments. (Do spirits need to go to the gym?)

Uzo (Keston John, above), Chidi's childhood friend.

Demon actor Trevor (Adam Scott).

Luang (Hayden Szeto, left), a demon playing one of Jason's fake soulmates (a "best friend" rather than a romantic partner).

See also: The Prisoner

Nanny and the Professor

There are two kinds of servants on tv.

1. The world-weary, laconic observer of the lunacy (Hazel, Beulah, Geoffrey on Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Florence on The Jeffersons, Benson on Soap).

2. The "breath of fresh air" whose joie de vivre revitalizes a failing family (Mr. Belvedere, Charles on Charles in Charge, Tony on Who's the Boss, Fran on The Nanny).

Nanny and the Professor (1970-71), which became a must-see when I was in fifth grade because it aired between The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, was an early example of the "breath of fresh air" type.

Phoebe Figalilly (Juliet Mills), a proper British nanny, complete with deerstalker cap and Inverness cape,  sweeps in like Mary Poppins to take control of the household of stuffy English professor Everett (Richard Long of The Big Valley, top photo, shown working out with gay icon Rock Hudson).

His kids:

1.Intellectual teen Hal (David Doremus), seen here trying to meditate.

2. Athletic preteen Butch (Trent Lehman)

3. Baby of the family Prudence (Kim Richards).

Nanny draws from the "I've got a secret" genre by teasing at having magical powers, though nothing is ever stated openly.

For instance, in "Spring, Sweet Spring," Nanny thinks a family picnic would foster togetherness, but everyone has other plans.  Then a series of humorous accidents and coincidences push them, one by one, to the park, where the picnic is set out for them.

When Nanny and the Professor first aired, I was in fifth gradedrawn to Nanny's independence, courage, and penchant for deflating masculine egos.  But there were several points of interest for gay boys.

1. The opening song sounded distinctly like the two boys were attracted to the Nanny ("soft and sweet, warm and wonderful...oohh, our magical mystical Nanny!").  But heterosexual desire was at a minimum: Hal liked a girl in one episode, and Butch, never.

 From the title, one expects a romance between Phoebe and Professor Everett, but that is never even hinted at.  In fact, the Professor fled from several girls anxious to snare him.  He could easily be read as gay.

2. Hal was a shy, intellectual, gay-vague outsider, like Peter on The Brady Bunch.

3. There was no beefcake, but my friends thought that Hal was cute, and there were several dreamy guest stars, including Van Williams and Vincent Van Patten.

4. Richard Long (1927-1974) was rumored to be gay or bi (married to women twice).

After Nanny, David Doremus continued acting until 1981, then retired to work in electronics.  He is married to a woman, and has four children.

Trent Lehman committed suicide in 1982, at the age of 20.  No info on whether he was gay.

Juliet Mills has been very active in movies and on tv, most recently playing Dottie on the gay sitcom From Here on OUT (2014).  Her husband, Maxwell Caulfield, was a gay icon of the 1980s.


See also: Maxwell Caulfield