"They're combing Wyoming": Eight hot/hung guys flexing in Idaho, hiking in Wyoming, and going to the Denver Opera

  

The title of "Eight Hot/Hung Arnkansans" comes from the musical Annie Get Your Gun, as Frank Reynolds explains that he's extremely good in bed, but a player, so you shouldn't get involved.  He continues:

There's a guy in Wyoming -- they're combing Wyoming/ To find the man in white who was with him that night. 

Gulp, that sounds sinister, but he just means that he ghosted the guy after the hookup.  

Here are eight hot/hung/naked guys from Wyoming and nearby mountain states.  First up: a wrestler from the University of Idaho, Moscow.

Link to the nude version

The Denver Art Museum. Generic name, Gaudi style.

Denver Opera Bulge

Wyoming muscle.

More muscle after the break

Fall 1980: Billy Budd: Gay Sailor Romance

In the fall of my junior year in college, just after I cruised the Miracle Mile and bought my first gay book, I took a class in "The American Renaissance," the burst of creative energy in the mid-1800s: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville.

Our professor (not the one who taught the execrable class in Modern American Literature) admitted that Melville was "a little light in the loafers," but he tried to heterosexualize the texts as much as possible, so he merely claimed that Billy Budd (1888) was about a Christ figure destroyed by the world's evil.

The book cover tried to heterosexualize Billy Budd, too, conveniently placing a woman in the background.  But how could you miss the same-sex desire?  During the Napoleonic Wars, a young cabin boy, described over and over as stunningly handsome, draws the wordless longing of Captain Vere ("Truth") -- and the homophobic ire of Claggart, who falsely accuses him of conspiring to mutiny. While being interrogated, Billy accidentally strikes and kills Claggart, so under British naval law he must be hanged.

Billy forgives the Captain; his last words are "God bless Captain Vere."  But carrying out the sentence destroys Vere; his dying words are "Billy Budd."  I couldn't help but think of Aschenbach, destroyed by his obsession for the beautiful Tadzio in Death in Venice. 

TV adaptions of the novella have appeared twice, in 1955 (with William Shatner) and in 1959 (with Don Murray).


 There's also a 1962 feature film, with Billy played by Terence Stamp (later in Meetings with Remarkable Men and Priscilla Queen of the Desert). 

In 1951, gay composer Benjamin Britten produced an opera version, with libretto by gay novelist E.M. Forster.  It  has Vere survive to old age, when he reflects that once he knew what true beauty was.  It has been filmed in 1988 (with Thomas Allen) and 1998 (with Dwayne Croft), and remains a staple of the theater.  

Recent productions feature a shirtless, muscular Billy, such as those performed by Nathan Gunn (above) and Simon Keenlyside (left).

Also see his gay-subtext filled Benito Cereno.

Porgy and Bess: Black Beefcake Folk Opera

I never saw "the American folk opera" Porgy and Bess (1935) before my celebrity boyfriend took me in the spring of 1987, though we played some of the songs in orchestra in high school. They're fun, though sometimes tainted by casual heterosexism.  In "It' Ain't Necessarily So," we hear the Biblical story of Methuselah, who lived 900 years:

Who calls dat livin', when no gal will give in, to no man who's lived 900 years.

It's really not so much an opera as a Broadway musical (and there are musical versions), so it has the standard obsession over "love! love! love!"   But what other musical is going to give you blasphemy, drugs, murder, prostitution, beefcake, and gay symbolism?

Set in the Catfish Row neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, it stars Bess, a drug addict and prostitute who is looked down upon in the community.  When her pimp, Crown, goes on the lam after killing someone, Bess needs a new man. She selects disabled beggar Porgy.  They fall in love.

Meanwhile innocent bystander Peter is arrested for the murder. 

Many fishermen are killed in a storm. 

Their women mourn them.

Crown returns, rapes Bess, and is murdered.  Porgy is arrested.  Released, he returns, rich from a crap game, but Bess has run  off with oily drug dealer Sportin' Life.

With agony and bitter tears all around, the curtain falls.

And the end result, other than angst and sadness?

A mostly black cast displaying a lot of beefcake.  Muscular, semi-nude Joshua Henry (top photo, from Dream Girls), Norm Lewis (second photo), Donovan Singletary (left).  Black beefcake is rare on screen, and even more rare on stage, except maybe in productions of The Wiz.

And gay symbolism: every woman has her man, and mourns him when he is killed or put in prison, which always happens. Men are always unfaithful to their women.  Relationships are always temporary; "a woman is a sometime thing."

The moral: heterosexual romance is always doomed.

 What remains are men together, singing joyfully as they play craps or head out to the sea in ships.

What remains are women together, singing mournfully as they comfort each other over their losses.

Same-sex romance is, in the end, valued.

14 Shirtless Stanleys of "A Streetcar Named Desire"

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams (1947), is probably the most-beloved American play of all time.  It's staged incessantly in big cities and small towns; it's been filmed six times, it's been made into a ballet and an opera.

This seems odd, because it deals with topics likely to make censors nervous: sexual promiscuity, domestic violence, and rape.

Not to mention its strong gay connection.













1. Faded Southern belle Blanche is reduced to living in her sister Stella's two-room apartment in New Orleans after losing the family estate. She is traumatized by the long-ago death of her husband Alan, a "poetic" (that is, gay) boy who probably didn't realize that he was gay until she confronted him.  He went out and committed suicide, one of Tennessee Williams' stable of dead gay guys.









2. Stanley, Stella's brutish, violent husband, has a coterie of male friends who like him...a lot.  Notable is Mitch, who is mother-obsessed and not particularly interested in women (two signifiers of gay identity in the 1950s).  He courts Blanche, but badly, not at all sure what he is doing, and then dumps her when he discovers that she has a history.

After Mitch dumps Blanche, Stanley sexually assaults her, leading to her descent into insanity and famous last line: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

3. Stanley takes his shirt off -- a lot -- most notably when he is flirting with Blanche, and when Stella flees to the upstairs apartment after an abuse incident, and he yells up at her: "Stella!"

I don't know if Williams wanted to emphasize his raw savagery, or if he just liked seeing muscular guys with their shirts off, but Stanleys from Brando on down, whether on Broadway, community theaters, or college drama departments, have always displayed muscular physiques.  Here are two dozen shirtless Stanleys:

1. (Top Photo) William L. Peterson, star of soap operas and CSI, at the Stratford Festival in Canada, 1984.

2. (Second Photo) Joe Manganiello, star of True Blood, is currently playing Stanley on Broadway.

3. New York actor Miebaka Yohannes (left) at the Boal Barn Playhouse in State College, Pennsylvania, 2010.








4. Marlon Brando (left), the original Stanley on Broadway and in the 1951 movie version.

5. Alex Baldwin, who starred in the 1992 Broadway revival and in the 1995 tv movie version.

6. Stephon O'Neal Pettway in an all-black version of Streetcar at Pace University in 2009.

More after the break

What's Gay About Don Juan?

Today we call a man a "Don Juan" if he's very competent at "getting" women.  It's a complement.

But the original Don Juan was evil, a Spanish nobleman who cruelly manipulated both men and women.

That gives his story an interesting gay subtext.

Take the opera version, Don Giovanni, by Mozart (1787).

Don Giovanni seduces women, not because he enjoys heterosexual acts, but for the fun of seeing them socially destroyed.

Meanwhile his servant Leporello displays no heterosexual interest, but is devoted to Don Giovanni.  Their bond is portrayed as noble.

Don Giovanni has Leporello help him seduce several women, including Elvira, who vows vengeance; Anna, who vows vengeance after he kills her father, the the Commendatore, in a duel; and Zerlina (he distracts her boyfriend by sending Leporello to dance with him).

Leporello almost leaves when Don Giovanni tries to frame him for an attempted rape, but decides to stay.

He is beat up while disguised as Don Giovanni, but decides to stay.

Adding sacrilege to his list of crimes, Don Giovanni orders him to invites a statue of the Commendatore to dinner.  He can't bring himself to do it, so Don Giovanni does.  It shows up at the dinner and drags Don Giovanni to hell.

Only then does Leporello seek a new master.

Directors usually cast Don Giovanni with the hottest baritones they can find,such as Jason Hardy, Erwin Schott, and Simon Keelyside.

Richard Crichton produced a modernized version, with a gay Don Giovanni in the club scene of 1987 London.

Kullervo: The Tormented Gay Youth of Finnish Myth

Growing up in a predominantly Scandinavian town, you learn a lot about Scandinavia -- Vikings, runestones, Ibsen, Hans Christian Anderson, Hamsun, Kierkegaard.  And especially the mythology.

I never liked the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic -- it's all about gods searching for wives.  But I was drawn to the figure of Kullervo.

He is born into tragedy, one of the last survivors of a clan killed by his uncle Untamo.

Sold to the god Ilmarin as a slave, he is approached by Ilmarin's wife, and when he rejects her, nearly murdered by a loaf of bread booby-trapped with stones.

He escapes, and while searching for his remaining family, accidentally seduces a girl who turns out to be his sister (in the Sibelius symphony, he rapes her).  She commits suicide.


His friend Kimmo goes insane.

Distraught, Kullervo vows vengeance on Untamo's clan, and uses a magic sword to kill them all.  But the sword also kills his the remnants of his own family.  Finally Kullervo uses it to kill himself.. 

The figure of Kullervo has been used to represent Finland's defiance of its Swedish and Russian overlords during its frequent quests for independence, as in Kullervon kirous or Kullervo's Curse (1899), by Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

There are many copies, parodies, and homages.  Some demonstrate Kullervo's sexual potency and aversion to women.
Kalervo Palsa's 1983 painting shows Kullervo hanging from a tree, using his penis as a knife to carve the words maailma voimakkaiden kiertopalkinto: The world's reward for the strong.

Others see him as a gay youth tormented by the heterosexist mandate of his society, the seduction of his sister a blind attempt to maintain a heterosexual facade. In the Aulis Sallinen opera (1988), it is the insanity of Kimmo that causes Kullervo to plunge into death.

There have been many other versions of the story, including a play by Aleksis Kivi, author of Seven Brothers, a symphony by Sibelius, a ballet (starring Tuukka Piitulainen, top photo), operas, and films, including a 1977 Finnish movie with Erkki Saarela.

Edson Stroll: Bodybuilding Opera Buff

I met Ed Stroll when I was working for Muscle and Fitness in Los Angeles: dashing, energetic, and still extremely buffed in his 50s. He was working in real estate, but he spent most of his time at the Marina del Rey Yacht Club, and knew everything there was to know about high culture: concerts, ballets, and especially opera.

And, whenever he could spare a moment, playing high-powered businessman types on Murder She Wrote, Hotel, Dynasty, Simon and Simon....

I didn't know that he had been in show biz for over 30 years. Or that his real name was Edson.

Born in 1929, Ed trained as a bodybuilder, actor, and singer, performing on stage in Shangri-La, Carousel, On the Town, and other plays before breaking into tv with guest shots on How to Marry a Millionaire, Sea Hunt, Lock-Up, and Men into Space.  

He starred in two famous episodes of The Twilight Zone: "Eye of the Beholder", about a society where the idea of beauty is our "ugliness"; and "The Trade-Ins," in which an elderly couple shop for hot new bodies.

He starred in the military comedy McHale's Navy (1962-66), as Virgil Edwards, "the handsome lover boy of the crew" (according to Wikipedia; I've never seen it).











He appeared in Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961) as Prince Charming, and The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), as romantic lead Captain Tom Andrews.

Not a lot of gay content, but you don't really need any when you spend all of your time hanging around gay men.

I assumed he was gay; he never said he wasn't.

When he died on June 18, 2011, his obituary stated that he was survived by Anita Winters and his two dogs,  Eddie and Sugar Baby.    I have no idea who Anita Winters is.