The Catbird Seat: Strong Women, Gay Men

I hated a lot of the stories that teachers foisted on us in school. They were always heterosexist, and usually depressing, dreary, and boring.  One of my least favorites, was James Thurber's "The Catbird Seat."

Two teachers assigned it in high school, and one in college, and none of them ever explained what the heck a catbird seat is.

A catbird is just a regular American bird.  Thurber made up the catchphrase "sitting in the catbird seat," just to confuse his readers. 

James Thurber (1894-1961) was a  mid-20th century writer who made a career of pointing out the humorous foibles of men as they pursued women, or women as they pursued men, heterosexual desire to the max: "The Male Animal," "My World and Welcome to It," "Is Sex Necessary?", etc., etc.

"The Catbird Seat" (1942) is about mild-mannered, gay-vague Mr. Martin, who is not interested in women and therefore reprehensible.

He clashes with brash, braying Mrs. Ulgine Barrows, a coworker who is dating the boss, and therefore invulnerable.  She loves incomprehensible catch phrases  like "Are you sitting in the catbird seat?"

She's really annoying, and about to take over the business, so Mr. Martin decides to kill her.  But his plans don't work out as expected.

So its basically a conflict of wills between two people who are outcasts in 1942 society, a strong woman and a "weak" (read: gay) man.

Strong women and "weak" (read: gay) men were savagely lampooned during the 1940s.  On the Burns and Allen radio program, Mel Blanc played a mild-mannered, nebbish postman who dreamed of killing his overbearing wife.  But "The Catbird Seat" is notable for its utter misogyny and intense heterosexism.

It's a very short story, but still, it's been filmed twice.

1. In a 1948 episode of Actor's Studio, starring Broadway actor Hiram Sherman, who often played gay-vague roles.

2. In the 1959 movie The Battle of the Sexes, with Peter Sellers (34 years old, but wearing old-man makeup), which frames the conflict as a modern American vs. old-school British.

The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Remember the cave where Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher got lost in the classic Tom Sawyer?  In yet another 1960s rendition of the "boys trapped far from home" genre (others included H.R. Pufnstuf,   Land of the Lost, and Journey to the Beginning of Time), that cave led to a time-space warp that zapped  Tom  (Kevin Schultz), Becky Thatcher (LuAnn Haslam), and Huckleberry Finn (Michael Shea) into various worlds based on fiction, legends, and history.

After battling or befriending Aztecs, ancient Egyptians, mad scientists, Don Quixote, Indian thuggees, Captain Ahab, a medieval Caliph, cavemen, and wizards, it was another zap and another adventure.

Huck, who was only marginally literate, narrated the story, and made humorous malapropisms and mispronunciations.

The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn aired on Sunday nights in the fall of 1968, where it faced stiff competition from Land of the Giants.  Twenty episodes aired before it was cancelled.  I saw them as reruns during the summer of 1969.  Later they were syndicated in The Banana Splits and Friends.  

Tom and Becky are friends only, with no romantic inclinations.  But Tom and Huck have ample buddy-bonding, particularly when one or the other requires rescue.  And they require rescue a lot.


And though there were few shirtless shots, both of the boys, aged 15, were on display enough to attract the interest of teen magazines -- and of gay kids.  Michael Shea, the "hunk," wore a white shirt unbuttoned to his navel and a red vest, and was frequently tied up, so his muscles could strain against the ropes. Kevin Schultz, the "brain," wore a white shirt with a thin red tie and tight slacks.

The New Adventures turned out to be the summit of their acting careers.  In adulthood, Michael became a police officer.  Kevin and his identical twin Keith started a musical group in 1970, chummed around with fellow teen idol Jon Provost (below), and later became professional photographers.

Tom Brown's School Days

I saw Tom Brown’s School Days (1940) on Matinee at the Bijou, a 1970s tv series that replayed classic movies.   I had never heard of the original novel by Thomas Hughes (1857), about the agonizing love between two boys in an elite British boarding school, but later I sought it out.  Robert Drake writes that it became “one of the more influential texts for emerging gay writers, or writers with a gay sensibility."  The same can be said for the movie.

A tall, slim seventeen-year old named Jimmy Lydon plays Tom, “the typical American boy” even though he is still scripted as upper-class British.   He expresses his typical American boyhood by being stoic, courageous, and adventurous, by taking off his shirt to reveal a slim physique.  And by ignoring girls.  The daughter of a local shopkeeper plays a pivotal role in the plot, but Tom never gives her a second glance.  Instead, he falls in love with an aristocratic upperclassman.

East (Freddie Bartholomew, previously in Captains Courageous), tall, thin, brittle-looking, and as feminine as a young Quentin Crisp,  takes the initiative in the courtship, approaching Tom the moment he gets off the train, showing him around, taking him by the arm or shoulder, and gazing at him with rapt ardor.  He gives Tom a picture of two ancient Greek warriors shaking hands -- a 19th century beefcake poster -- and marks them as “Brown” and “East."

East carefully dismisses or outwits Tom’s other suitors.  When they go out for “murphys” (baked potatoes sold as a snack), he protects Tom from a groping, leering boy named Tadpole.
Tadpole: Is this the new fellow? Nice looking, isn’t he?
Tom: How do you do?
Tadpole: (Looks him up and down.) Hungry, thank you.

A more violent threat comes from Sixth Formers (high school seniors), led by the bestial Flashman (Billy Halop of Dead End, shown here playing Humphrey Bogart's gunsel).  He offers several shirtless and semi-nude scenes, with a more muscular physique.

Flashman bullies Tom, and forces him to endure dangerous hazing.  Their fight, oddly, serves as the subject for the lion's share of lobby cards and posters.

When Tom is accused of “telling tales,” the worst crime in the boys’ honor code, East breaks up with him, tearing up the picture and sending him his half.  Even after Tom is found innocent, East refuses to take him back, using oddly romantic rhetoric: “I’m not interested in you or anything about you!  I never want to see you again!”

Adult women in movies of the era rely on the phrase “I never want to see you again” to angrily break up with their boyfriends, but this is nearly the only example of its use among "buddies."  The implication, of course, is that Tom and east are not buddies, but homoromantic partners: their relationship is emotionally intense, physically intimate, and exclusive, and but for their breakup, it would be permanent.

The movie ends years later, when Tom and East encounter each other by accident at the tomb of their beloved headmaster.  Tom asks “Can’t we be friends?” and East grudgingly shakes his hand, thus giving closure to their romance.  In the original story, Tom stands at the tomb alone. Only in the 1940 are Tom and East homoromantic partners, so only in 1940 do they require closure.

Bartholomew and Lydon were paired again in Cadets on Parade (1942). Rich kid Austin Shannon (Freddie Bartholomew), an eighteen-year old military cadet, is bad at sports and reviled as a “sissy” by his self-made-man father, so he runs away and encounters street tough  Joe Novak (Jimmy Lydon).  The two set up housekeeping together (in a flat with only one bed).  Joe never mocks his partner's sissiness, but he does gently suggest that success at school may depend on an increased manliness.  Austin’s salvation, his return to middle-class society, comes through learning to box and play football, not through heterosexual experience: no girls appear or are mentioned in he movie.  But Austin draws Joen into civilization through the same rubric that girls use with jungle boys, through teaching him to read and use proper table manners.  In the end they both enroll in the military academy.  The tagline is: “The Story of Two American Boys…On the Road to Being Men!”

 The last of the Jimmy Lydon - Freddie Bartholomew pairings was The Town Went Wild (1944):  gangly sophisticate David (Freddie) and blue collar Bob  (Jimmy) are best friends, but they do not share a homoromantic bond.  David is dating Bob’s sister, but there is no hint at triangulation: he really does spend all of his time with her, while Bob is relegated to the status of third wheel.  It is interesting that the sissy gets engaged, while the he-man never expresses any interest in girls, but still, one must wonder why the scripted homoromances between Freddie and Jimmy ended so abruptly.  Perhaps the subtext was becoming too obvious, veering too close to conscious thought.

The Little Vampire and Pal

Movies starring preteens, such as The Never Ending Story and Journey to the Beginning of Time, are a good place to find gay content.  Preteen boys aren't required to drool over girls quite as often as teenagers and adults, and the myth that there are no gay children -- gayness is something that happens to you as an adult -- means they aren't being patroled by the Thought Police quite as heavily. So same-sex romance can be displayed, as long as no one actually Says the Word.

In The Little Vampire (2000), an adaptation of the novel series by Angela Sommer-Bodenberg, Tony (9-year old Jonathan Lipnicki, left) moves from America to Scotland, and becomes involved with a boy vampire named Rudolph (13-year old Rollo Weeks, right).  They rather obviously fall in love, rescuing each other from danger over and over, and flying through the air holding hands in a scene reminiscent of Superman flying with Lois Lane in the 1978 movie.


Rudolph and his family (Mom, Dad, older brother, and sister) don't attack people -- they drink animal blood, not human blood.  They just want to live in peace, but they are always in hiding, from evil vampires, bigoted humans, and especially a vampire hunter named Rookery.

Everyone is looking for a mystical stone that can either destroy the vampires or turn them human. Tony finds it.  In a climactic battle, he turns them human to save them, but now they lost their memory and don't know who he is.  A tear trickles down Tony's cheek as he realizes that not even Rudolph knows him.

















But in the final scene, Tony whistles the mystical tune that the vampires taught him, and their memory is restored, and Tony and Rudolph, and their two families, can be together again.

This was not the only gay-friendly project of the two stars.  In 2006, Rollo Weeks starred in The Thief Lord, which also featured a strong same-sex romance.

Jonathan Lipnicki was a busy child star before The Little Vampire, with starring roles in Jerry Maguire (1996), The Jeff Foxworthy Show (1996-97) and Stuart Little (1999, 2002).  Recently he has been involved with independent films -- and bodybuilding.

I couldn't resist; most of these pictures are of the grown-up Jonathan rather than from the movie.

Jonathan is a strong supporter of gay rights. In 2011, he played in the STIKS Celebrity Video Game Challenge for Charity, representing the Trevor Project, a crisis intervention and suicide prevention hotline for LGBT and questioning youth.