Kurt Russell's Secret

We usually went to church on Sunday nights, but for some reason I was home one night in November 1968 to see the last half of the best movie ever made, The Secret of Boyne Castle, on the anthology series Wonderful World of Color.
This was former child star Kurt Russell's only movie as a Disney Adventure Boy (others included Peter McEnery, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine, and Jeff East) before he moved on to playing oddball outsider Dexter Riley in a series of Disney comedies.

Here Kurt plays Rich, an American exchange student in Dublin who learns that his older brother Tom (bisexual muscleman Glenn Corbett, previously a model for Physique Pictorial and star of Route 66) is not a steel company executive after all, but a spy charged with delivering essential information to Boyne Castle, in the west of Ireland. When Tom is captured by Russian agents, Rich must take over the mission, racing through the quaint villages and lush green hills of Ireland, hoping to elude capture and reach Boyne Castle before the Russians. Fellow student Sean (long-faced, steely-eyed Patrick Dawson) tags along, throwing himself into deadly danger for no logical reason except that he rather likes Rich.

The two are presented as more intimate than mere buddies, framed in tight shots, their faces together in close ups. While they are sleeping on the heather, Rich hears a suspicious noise, and wakes Sean by moving his own body slightly. Although all we see are their faces and necks, to wake someone with such a small gesture means that they must be cuddling together. They rescue each other a dozen times, and are eventually rescued by big brother Tom.

But the most important scene, the scene I have remembered fondly for 40 years:

At an inn, Rich flirts with a waitress.

“You didn’t tell me you had an eye for the ladies!” Sean exclaims, as if he hadn’t anticipated any competition.

Rich responds by asking the waitress if she has any rooms to rent for “for a few hours.” Suspicious, she wants to know why the two boys would need a room for such a short period.

Rich and Sean exchange a knowing grin.

In 1968 I was entranced by that grin. I knew that it was a clue to the secret. If only I could decipher it, I could find my way to that other world, Oz or Living Island or Middle Earth, the world where boys could fall in love and got married.

How might we account for the not-so-subtle homoerotic bantr between the Rich and Sean? Certainly Glenn Corbett might be a gay ally: he began as a model for the Athletic Model Guild, the Advocate Men of its day, and made a career as a buddy-bonding “man’s man. Kurt Russell was never particularly gay-friendly.

Patrick Dawson works mostly in Irish radio, but his limited filmography includes the gay-vague Ginger in The Jigsaw Man (1983). We should look at the director, Robert Butler, who in the 1960’s specialized in dramas with strong male leads, such as Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, and I Spy, and later directed such hunk-fests as Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and Lois and Clark. Whether he was working with Bruce Willis, Dean Cane, Pierce Brosnan, or Kurt Russell, Butler neither minimized nor hid their physicality, allowing and even directing them to be open as objects of desire, both to male viewers and to each other.

There are nude photos of Kurt Russell on Tales of West Hollywood

See also: Kurt Russell

The Homophobia of "Rocky and Bullwinkle"

Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959-64, and rehashed into many different series during the 1960s) is often praised as genius, a classic of animation. Amazon promises: "the wittiest, most inspired, and relentlessly hilarious animation ever created!"

No one thought it was great in the 1960s.  It was relegated to the Sunday morning ghetto, with Totalitarian Television and Davy and Goliath.

Either of which were preferable to the Moose and Squirrel.

Ok, maybe I was too young to understand the clever satire, so a few months ago I  purchased and watched Season 1 on DVD.

I still hated it.

50% of each episode was devoted to repetitive, incomprehensible filler:

When the mountain they are climbing is destroyed by lightning, Rocky and Bullwinkle fall to their deaths, but are resurrected in a field of daisies.

Magician Bullwinkle tells Rocky, "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."  He pulls out a scary monster instead, and quips, "I take a 7 1/2."  

When you finally got to the story, it was an endless serial cut into five-minute segments.  I never saw the first or the last of them, so I had no idea what was going on.  But the titles were bound to involve incomprehensible puns.
The Treasure of Monte Zoom
Maybe Dick
The Guns of Abalone
Kerwood Derby

I know what most of them refer to now, except "Kerwood Derby."  It's a malapropism of "Durward Kirby," a very, very, very minor tv personality of the early 1960s.

And the animation!  There wasn't any.  Incomplete art, splashes of color instead of filled-in lines, no backgrounds, static scenes with only the tiniest mouth movement or gestures.  Abysmal!

The only things I liked were:

1. The scenes set in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home town of the Moose and Squirrel, where they behaved and were treated like romantic partners.

2. Boris and Natasha, the Cold War spies from Pottsylvania assigned to steal the couple's secret or just grift them in various ways.  Although a male-female dyad, they were obviously not a romantic couple, nor did they express any heterosexual interest.

3. Some of the supporting features, like Fractured Fairy Tales, Mr. Peabody's Improbable History, and Aesop & Son.  








4. Some of the parodies of dull poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Wordsworth (really, who would write an entire poem in praise of daffodils?)

5. Edward Everett Horton, who narrated Fractured Fairy Tales, played "pansy" roles during the 1930s.

The Moose That Roared (2000), a history of the program, reveals that Bill Scott, Jay Ward's partner and the voice of Bullwinkle, often made homophobic statements.  "Women's dresses today look like they were designed by fags," he would rant.  Or he would tell a voice artist, "for this story, do your Fag Prince voice."

Of course, lots of people in the 1960s were homophobic, but it is shocking how Moose That Roared author Keith Scott (no relation) gushes about the homophobia as if it somehow made him endearing: "'There are too many fags in Hollywood,' Bill said with his characteristic wit."

See also: Peabody and Sherman

Robert Conrad Dares You

We're used to thinking of Robert Conrad as a two-fisted action hero, but he originally wanted to be a singer.  During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the former professional boxer released a number of teen idol-style crooner records, but the market was overcrowded with Paul Anka, Fabian, Elvis, Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone, and nearly everyone else who could hold a tune.

Bob's records didn't sell, not even with the color shots of his impressive physique.

In 1959, Bob landed a role as Tom Lopaka, the half-Hawaiian partner of detective Tracey Steele (Anthony Eisley) on Hawaiian Eye.  Many of the cases took place on the beach, allowing Bob to strip down to a swimsuit or short-cut jeans.  The buddy-bonding was intense, and there weren't a huge number of episodes in which Tom meets a girl.


When Hawaiian Eye ended in 1963, Bob's singing career was forgotten; after starring against type in the beach movie Palm Springs Weekend (1963), he moved almost into the program that Boomers remember fondly: Wild Wild West (1965-69), a combination of the classic Western with the 1960s spy craze (other examples include Get Smart, The Secret of Boyne Castle, I Spy, and Mission: Impossible.

In the 1870s, special agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) travel through the Old West on the orders of President Grant. They use disguises and weird science fiction gadgets to foil spies, mad scentists, enemy agents, rebels, and miscellaneous high-tech scalawags.

West is tied up shirtless in nearly every episode.  He usually frees himself, but sometimes Gordeon storms to the rescue.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much buddy-bonding. West and Gordon were coworkers, not buddies, and they both leered at women nearly as often as they fell in love.









Bob had found his niche: tongue-in-cheek adventure.  During the next two decades, he was never very far from a tv series: The D.A. (1971-72), Assignment Vienna (1972-73), Black Sheep Squadron (1976-78), A Man Called Sloane (1979).  Although he had time for two buddy-bonding movies with Don Stroud.

When tongue-in-cheek adventure went out of style during the early 1980s, Bob switched to comedy (Wrong is Right, Moving Violations) or drama (Assassin, Charley Hannah).  But he rarely forgot to include a shirtless scene or two.

He parodied himself in a series of commercials for Ever-Ready Batteries in the 1980s, daring the viewer to knock a battery off his shoulder (traditionally one starts fights by daring someone to knock a chip off one's shoulder).

The rumor mill suggested that he was bisexual, and during the 1950s had liaisons with some of the great closeted actors in Hollywood, such as Tab Hunter, Wally Cox, and Rock Hudson.  Bob denied the rumors, stating to the press "I'm not gay" several times.

Ken Clark: Bodybuilder on My Sausage Sighting List

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've seen live performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific about a dozen times, but never the 1958 musical. Until now.

Beefcake abounds, of course.  But I already knew that.  Then I saw the minor character Stewpot leading the sailors in "There's Nothing Like a Dame."

Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing?

Fast forward to Stewpot's only other scene, a weightlifting contest.  In a swimsuit, not a skimpy 1950s posing strap.

Sausage Sighting: impossible to mistake.

Brian's Drive-In Theater has a lot to say about Ken Clark, who played Stewpot.  He was a 31-year old bodybuilder who had a string of B-movie roles in the 1950s.  In the early 1960s, capitalizing on the sword-and-sandal craze, he moved to Italy, where he starred in Maciste contro i Mongoli  (1963)  and  Maciste nell'inferno di Genghis Khan (1964) with Mark Forest, and Ercole l'invincibile (1964) with Dan Vadis.  He also starred in some spaghetti Westerns and played Dick Malloy, Secret Agent 077, in some Italian spy dramas.

Ken continued to live in Rome, and perform in Italian tv and movies, through his life.  He died in 2009, at the age of 81.

No word on whether he was gay or not, but he never married, and apparently he never had any girlfriends, except, just before he moved to Italy, Shelley Winters.

Ok, I heard that before -- it's the tale of a lot of 1950s bodybuilders.  I knew Ken would have a magnificent physique.  But would he display his Bratwurst so blatantly?

Yeah.

Here he is playing game warden Steve Benton in The Attack of the Giant Laneches (#10 on my list of the Top Horror Movies of the 1950s). That's not a giant leech in his pocket.

How did this one get by the censors?  It's from a 1957 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  

Here's he posing "demurely" in a turtleneck sweater for an Italian movie magazine.

Too bad he wasn't cast in the mid-1960s Batman.  He would have given the legendary endowments of Robin (Burt Ward) and the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) some major competition.

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.

Baby Huey and Dimwit: Bottom of the Barrel Buddy-Bonding

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, I loved Harvey Comics, in this order:

1. The Ghosts (Casper, Spooky, Ghostland, Spooktown), whose weird paranormal and science fiction adventures were full of gay subtexts.

2. Hot Stuff the Little Devil (Hot Stuff, Sizzlers, Devil Kids).  Sometimes he had paranormal and science fiction adventures, too, but more often he was stuck in crazy pun-ridden lands that made no sense.

4. Richie Rich.  Usually he was insufferable, with joke stories about how rich he was.  Who cares?  But sometimes there were fun adventure and spy stories.

5. The Girls with Halfway Interesting Adventures (Little Lotta, Little Dot).

6. The Girl with Incredibly Boring Adventures (Little Audrey).

7. Baby Huey.  Only if I was desperate.

Baby Huey was a gigantic duck toddler in a diaper and bonnet who got involved in slapstick shenanigans.  He had super-strength, like Little Lotta, but combined with basic lack of understanding of how anything worked.  The result was mayhem. He rarely if ever saved the day, although sometimes he succeeded through pure dumb luck.

He sparred with three normal-sized ducks who disapproved of him, and a fox who kept trying to eat him.  (Although the ducks were civilized and lived in cities, they were still likely to be victimized by predators.)

And he had an annoying lisping girlfriend, Matilda.  What did she see in the baby giant?  "You're so big and shtrong, Huey!"  I get it -- he was three times the size of a normal duck, so if he was proportional beneath the belt...

Who'd believe that there were 92 issues of Baby Huey (1956-1972), plus compendium titles Baby Huey Duckland (1962-66) and Baby Huey and Papa (1962-68).

As in all of the Harvey comics, there was a big change in theme and emphasis after 1966.  Baby Huey was still wearing a stupid bonnet and diaper, but he was older, able to go out on adventures by himself.

He was often accompanied by his Cousin Dimwit: an adult duck, rather cute as anthropomorphic ducks go, with a shirt that extended beyond his hands (a sign of stupidity, I suppose).

A sort of inventor, Dimwit popped in out of nowhere and announced "I want to take Cousin Huey on a trip to the Moon!"  Huey's parents would, strangely enough, permit this.

My favorite Huey/Dimwit stories:

1, They build a mechanical Frankenstein that terrorizes the town.
2. Trying to fly to Florida, they end up at the North Pole
3, They're hired by the governmnt to take top-secret pictures.
4. They use dehydrating pills to foil a criminal gang.
5. They take a wrong turn and end up kidnapped by spies.

Still humorous/slapstick, but with enough buddy bonding and nick-of-time rescues to create at least minimal gay subtexts.

Boy, I could really find it everywhere, couldn't I?

By the way, here are some people and businesses who have taken the nom de plum Baby Huey:

1. James Ramos (left), the front man for Baby Huey and the Babysitters, 1970s precursors to the hip hop style.  He weighed 350 pounds.

2. MMA fighter Tito Ortiz (top photo).  He's not fat at all.

3. Hell's Angels motorcycle club member George Wethern.

4. "Baby Huey," the host of the Saturday night show on The Bone (KSAN, 107.7 FM).  He also does the podcast "The Second Shift" with cohost Chasta.

Baby Huey is also:

1. A popular dance club and hipster hangout in Toronto

2. A moving company in Katy, Texas, and

3. A barbecue restaurant in Fremont, Nebraska.

George Nader: Actor and Gay Activist of the 1950s

Lots of monsters landed in space ships during the 1950s, or crawled out of the ocean, but by far the most ridiculous was Robot Monster (1953): a guy in a gorilla suit and a diving helmet. He's killed everyone on Earth except for eight survivors. He goes after them one by one, even killing a little boy (breaking the rule that children in horror movies are invincible).  He falls for a survivor girl, refuses to kill her, and gets in trouble with his boss, who destroys him, leaving three survivors. But it might be a dream.  Hopefully it's a dream.

Other than the ridiculousness, the movie's main claim to fame is George Nader's chest.  The actor spends most of the movie with his shirt off -- until he's killed by the Robot Monster.

The 28-year old Nader had only been in Hollywood for a few years.  He arrived just in time for the beefcake revival, when gay agent Henry Willson placed dozens of guys with monosyllabic names like Rock and Guy in movies based on their hunk appeal.  George costarred with several of them:

Steve Cochran in Carnival Story (1954)
Rory Calhoun in Four Guns to the Border (1954)
Tony Curtis in Six Bridges to Cross (1955)
John Saxon in The Unguarded Moment (1956)

But stardom eluded him, probably because of the gay rumors; he refused to put on a heterosexual facade, like his lifelong friend Rock Hudson.

In the early 1960s, the gay rumors forced George and his partner Mark Miller to move to Europe, where he finally found stardom -- and gay subtexts -- as secret agent Jerry Cotton in a series of German movies.  Heinz Weiss played his assistant/ boyfriend, Phil Dekker.

George retired from acting in 1974, and devoted himself to writing and gay rights activism.  His first novel, Chrome (1978), remains rare example of a science fiction novel with a gay male protagonist.

He died in 2002, survived by Mark Miller.  They had been together for 55 years.

Burn After Reading; Or Better Still, Burn Before Viewing

Three days after watching the execrable O Brother, Where Art Thou, the song "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" is still in my head.  My friend suggests that we add to my woes with Burn After Reading.

"I saw part of it before.  I walked out of the theater when a main character was killed halfway through.  Some comedy!"

"Give it a try," he says.  "Watch it all the way through before making a decision."

If I watch with him, there will be cuddling, and maybe some bedroom activity.  If I don't, probably not.  So...

Burn After Reading (2008) is a Coen Brothers "comedy" about a lot of old, bald, ugly guys in suits who have offices in Washington, DC.  Most deal with government secrets, but there's also a divorce lawyer, a plastic surgeon, and a guy who used to be a Greek Orthodox priest but now runs a gym.  I can't tell them apart, but according to the IMDB, they're played by John Malkovich, Richard Jenkins, David Rasche, J. K. Simmons, Olek Krupa, Michael Countryman, J.R. Horne, Hamilton Clancy, and Armand Schultz.

The main one is Ozzie (John Malkovich), who resigns from the agency and writes his memoirs, which he puts on a computer disk.

Meanwhile his wife is having an affair with fellow agent Harry (George Clooney), the only guy in Washington DC with hair.

In preparation for asking for a divorce, she copies all of Ozzie's financial information, plus his memoirs, onto a computer disk.  She give it to her lawyer, whose secretary loses it at the gym.

Where it is found by two conniving gym employees, the dimwitted Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand).  They think it contains government secrets, and blackmail Ozzie for its safe return.  When he balks, they try to sell it to the Russians.

Why are they committing this act of treason, the only crime other than aggravated homicide that can get them the death penalty?

Linda wants money for liposuction for her saggy arm and belly fat.

Even though her doctor tells her that those areas will respond to exercise.

And she works at a gym.

Chad is just an idiot.

Did I mention that Linda also happens to be dating  Harry, the guy having an affair with the wife of the man she's blackmailing?  Unbeknownst to any of them, of course.

At this point, I'm wondering who the protagonist is.  Who am I supposed to be identifying with, rooting for, hoping things will work out for?  These are all unpleasant, slimy, horrible people.

Harry is a runner.  Maybe I'll root for him.

Sneaking around the house looking for more government secrets, Chad accidentally encounters Harry, who thinks he's the man that's been following him (in another plotline).  Harry shoots him and disposes of the body.

He doesn't know it's Chad, of course, so later he agrees to help Linda find her missing friend.

Ozzie, meanwhile, believes that Linda's boss is the blackmailer, and kills him.

We adjourn to some old, bald, ugly guys sitting around talking about what happened next. It's complicated, but it ends up with with Ozzie in a coma, Harry in Venezuela, and Linda agreeing to keep quiet if they pay for her liposuction.

Keep quiet about what?  The agency hasn't done anything.

So probably another hour of plot time is covered in a brief synopsis.

It's like watching The Wizard of Oz, all the way up to where Dorothy and her companions reach the Emerald City, then adjourning to Dorothy telling Aunt Em "So we went to the witch's castle, with lots of adventures on the way, and in the end we defeated her."

Terrible way to end a terrible movie.

Gay content:  

A tiny bit of beefcake, the rather muscular arms and shoulders of one of the guys Linda has sex with.  Clooney and Pitt are fully clothed throughout.  Coming Up Daisy, the romantic comedy that Linda brings her dates to, stars Dermot Mulroney, but he's fully clothed, too.

One homophobic slur.

One racist stereotype.

Brad Pitt's character is probably gay, but nothing is ever said.  He just fails to express any interest in women.

But at least I got some bedroom activity out of the deal.

Red: Retired Operatives are Lethal and Heterosexist

I just saw Red (2010), a wisecracking caper movie about a bald, crotchety retired CIA agent  Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), probably so named to reflect the saying "older than Moses," although Bruce Willis was only in his fifties.

He teams up with other crotchety retired operatives, nursing-home bound cancer patient Joe (Morgan Freeman), brain-fried conspiracy nut Marvin (John Malkovich), elegant assassin Victoria (Helen Mirren), and blustering retired Russian spy Ivan (Brian Cox), plus Sarah, the call-center girl he's been perving on (Mary-Louise Parker) to find out why the CIA is trying to kill them all.

Hint: it has something to do with a village in Guatemala that was "liquidated" in 1980, and a cover-up that goes all the way up to...well, that would be telling.

By the way, RED stands for "Retired, But Extremely Dangerous."

I haven't seen such a vigorous and unnecessary defense of old people  since The Golden Girls.

There's a lot of galavanting around the country, but every set is so bright and shiny that you can't really tell where they are.  The witty banter is so nonstop, and the agents are so super-competent tat I had trouble believing they were ever in danger.  Fifty CIA agents descend on Frank's house, and he calmly escapes and walks away.  He easily breaks into the super-secure CIA headquarters, accosts William Cooper, the CIA agent in charge of his case, and vigorously beats him up, even though Cooper is half his age and armed.

 An assassin shoots at Marvin, and he returns fire so skillfully that the bullets meet halfway and explode.

Victoria is shot, yet still manages to elude the bad guys and make wise-cracks.

I know it was supposed to be a comedy, but in the end, it was so darn implausible that I kept saying "No way!"  The actors seem to be having a lot more fun than I was.

And why was it set at Christmastime, when no one mentioned Christmas?  The ornaments and Christmas trees everywhere were distracting.

Beefcake: None.  Although several very hot actors appeared in minor roles, like Alec Rayme (top photo) as a cop, or Greg Bryk as a firefighter, nobody took their shirts off.

Gay Content: None.  Frank and Marvin joke that William Cooper has "cute hair," and that's it.

Heterosexism: Nonstop.  The clash between work and heterosexual romance is a constant theme.  Frank has never dated anyone before because work was so pressing.  Victoria once dated Ivan, but the CIA disapproved and order her to assassinate him (as a compromise, she put three bullets in his chest).  They get back together.  Cooper is a "family man," a wife and kids that are "everything."  Frank and Sarah spend the last scene smooching.

Homophobia:  Yep.  In the first scene, Sarah notes that she's gone so long without a date, her landlady thinks she's gay.  Ok, last I heard, lesbians go on dates.

Frank says "I try not to judge," that is, "I try not to look down on gay people for their deficiency."

Hey, Frank, last I heard, being gay wasn't a deficiency.  I almost turned off the movie on the spot.

Shaken, Not Stirred: The Gay James Bond

I think I've only seen three James Bond movies all the way through: Diamonds are Forever (1972), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and Casino Royale (2006). But I've seen many, many clips of pivotal scenes, plus countless pastiches, parodies, and imitations, on everything from The Flintstones to Family Guy.  

From his introduction in a series of novels by Ian Fleming (1953-64) through fifty years' worth of movies (1962-2012), Bond created the image of the suave, sophisticated spy that has been  imitated over and over, in tv series (I Spy, Get Smart, The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible); in movies (The Bourne Identity, True Lies, The Secret of Boyne Castle, Austin Powers); even in comics (Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine).

Bond comes from a generation before the Man-Mountains, when Swinging Bachelors ruled.  He rarely took off his shirt; the producers didn't expect anyone to be looking at his muscles. In the tradition of "everybody's fantasy," the producers expected all women but no men to swoon over him due to his cool savoir-faire, his tailored suits, fluency in French, knowledge of clarets, and hint of danger.

And all men but no women to admire him for his spy expertise, his ability to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, kill an enemy spy on the way down, and land unfazed, unruffled, and ready for sex.

For all his popularity, there is very little for gay men to like in James Bond.

1. Very brief, minimal beefcake shots, only when absolutely necessary -- a part of his chest might peek out over the top of the sheets -- and overwhelmed by endless shots of bikini-clad and nude women.  Sean Connery (left) was a former bodybuilder and Mr. Universe runner-up, yet we saw no underwear, no towels, almost nothng of his physique.  Current Bond Daniel Craig has been a little better, offering an occasional swimsuit shot.

2. Few homoromantic subtexts.  The Bond world is as completely divided into evil men and nice women as Karate Kid.  Every woman Bond meets wants to have sex with him. Some try to kill him also, but usually they have a change of heart and become allies.

And the most a man can feel for him, or for any man, is a sort of grudging admiration. More often they feel raw hatred.  Same-sex friendships do not exist.

3. Intense homophobia.  Fleming wrote his novels for "warm-blooded heterosexuals," and decried the ranks of the "unhappy sexual misfits."  The movies almost invariably pit the heterosexual Bond against gay-vague "sexual misfits" -- or not so gay-vague, as the transvestite Spectre agent in Thunderball, or the hand-holding Mr. Witt and Mr. Kidd in Diamonds are Forever.  Even Jauvier Bardem, the latest villain (in Skyfall), camps it up to ensure that we identify him as a detestable poof.

4. It's hard to find a gay-friendly actor in the corpus of Bond movies.  Sean Connery became irate when he heard that some commentators found a gay subtext in one of his movies.  Roger Moore (left) played a negative stereotype in Boat Trip (2002).  Current Bond Daniel is a little more gay-friendly, but even he became irate at the suggestion that the superspy like both sexes:  "James Bond is heterosexual.  There will never be a gay Bond, ever."

Speaking of violent objections, in 1999 there was a rumor that gay actor Rupert Everett would be the next Bond.  He quickly spoke up, stating that it would be impossible: "Bond fans would burn down MGM if the studios got a gay actor to play James Bond."

So, what's gay about the James Bond movies?

1. A remarkable preoccupation with Bond's sex organs, from the laser-beam in Goldfinger to the chain-thwacking in Casino Royale.  Heterosexuals have never spent so much time envisioning phalluses.

2. Wearing tailored suits, drinking fine wines. dining on  haute cuisine, conversing in Italian and French?  Metrosexual, to say the least.

3. The violent objections incited when you suggest that Bond might be gay -- or played by someone gay -- suggest that he meets a deep-seated desire in heterosexuals to postulate a gloriously gay-free world.  It's fun to discomfort them, to point out that there are gay people everywhere, even in the most homophobic of texts.  So take one of Bond's male allies - Willard Whyte in Diamonds are Forever, Milos Colombo in For Your Eyes Only, Damian Falco in Die Another Day -- it doesn't matter how tenuous the relationship is -- and let the slash fictions roll.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

I missed most of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68).  First it was on past my bedtime, and then there were too many competing choices (The Time Tunnel, Hogan's Heroes) -- so I watched only sporadically, when one of my friends insisted.  But I had more than one friend who thought it was "good beyond hope."

 It was a buddy spy series, like I Spy and Wild Wild West, but with an interesting twist.  In the heart of the Cold War, we heard over and over that "Russkies" were all evil monsters plotting our destruction.   But one of the secret agents was Russian.

The premise: The USSR, the United States, and other countries have set aside their differences and formed U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) to fight the evil THRUSH (acronym unknown), which wants to "subjugate the human race."












The plots were much more extravagant than anything seen on Mission: Impossible, rivaling Batman in campiness:
THRUSH tries to bring Hitler back to life.
THRUSH invents a deadly hiccup-inducing gas.
THRUSH invents an exploding hula-dancing doll.
Pat Harrington, Jr. (later on One Day at a Time) steals a rare book containing THRUSH code.
Sonny and Cher play clothes designers with THRUSH code hidden in one of their dresses.

But the main draw was the "The Man,"  American Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn, previously seen shirtless in Teenage Caveman), and his partner, the Russian Illya Kuryakin (Scottish actor David McCallum).  They were not only spy partners: they seemed to live together (and when traveling always took hotel rooms with just one bed).  They expressed their affection with the easy nonchalance of Starsky and Hutch.  And, contrary to James Bond style, they mostly ignored women.

Solo was a no-nonsense man's man (notice the use of his last name).  By contrast, Illya (notice the first name) was soft, quiet, intellectual, "feminine."  As a result, he was captured by the baddies a lot more often: 8 times (Solo was captured alone 4 times, and they were captured together 10 times).

Sometimes the capture was specifically to egg Solo on.  For instance, in "The Deadly Quest Affair," Viktor Karmak (Darren McGavin) tells Solo that Illya has been sequestered somewhere in New York City, and he has 12 hours to find him before Illya is killed by nerve gas.

There were also many shirtless and underwear shots.  David McCallum had the blond, shaggy-haired dreaminess that appealed to preteens, so he received the lion's share of coverage in teen magazines.

There were lots of book tie-ins and miscellaneous toys.

After U.N.C.L.E., the two moved on to other projects, but returned to their characters in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1983). They are called back into service 15 years after they broke up.  Dig their civilian careers: Solo became a computer developer, and Illya. . .um. . .a fashion designer.