Guys Who Didn't Need to Come Out 1: Joel Grey

In this week's People magazine, Broadway, movie, and tv legend Joel Grey has come out (with the proviso that he disapproves of labels, but if you must, call him "gay").

Why now, at the age of 82?

He began his Broadway career in 1951, with Borscht Capades.  A string of stage successes followed, notably the decadent, epicene Master of Ceremonies in the original Broadway version of Cabaret (1966-1969) and its revival (1987-88), but also George M. Cohan in George M., Amos Hart in Chicago, the Wizard in Wicked, and Moonface Martin in Anything Goes.  A string of characters with no or minimal heterosexual interests.

Plus he starred in the AIDS drama The Normal Heart, and directed the Broadway version.

His  tv career has been even more prolific, spanning 62 years form December Bride to CSI, and on the way Maverick, Ironside, Dallas, Matlock, Oz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grey's Anatomy, More Tales of the City, The Muppet Show, and Phineas and Ferb.

Again, a string of characters with no or minimal heterosexual interests.

His movies: Man on a Swing, The Seven Percent Solution, Marilyn and Me, Kafka, Dancer in the Dark, and of course the 1972 film version of Cabaret.

And again....

When I lived in West Hollywood, he was a staunch gay ally, a fixture at AIDS Walks and benefits.

He has released 9 albums, including show tunes and covers of the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, and Donovan.  On the cover of  Black Sheep Boy (1969), he is presented as a 1960s flower child (who happens to be in the process of ripping his sweater off, to give nature boys a glimpse of his rather slim, androgynous physique.

So, after such a long, illustrious, and gay-friendly career, who was mistaking him for straight?

See also: Gomer Pyle, Out at 82.

Franco Columbu: Arnold's Other Half

Sardinian-born Franco Columbu is a long-time work-out buddy and friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In 1968, they came to American together.  Joe Weider, my first boss in L.A., paid for their shared apartment while they were struggling.

But soon Arnold commenced a movie career, and he introduced Franco into some of the first movies to bring bodybuilding to a mainstream audience: Stay Hungry (1976), Pumping Iron (1977), and The Hustler of Muscle Beach (1980), which wasn't about that kind of hustler.

Their closeness elicited the usual gay rumors, which neither seemed to mind.

When Arnold became a star, he continued to help out his pal, giving him screen time in Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator (1984), and Running Man (1987).

In the 1990s Franco, still in top shape, produced a series of man-mountain actioners set in Sardinia: Desperate Crimes (1993), Taken Alive (1995), Doublecross on Costa's Island (1997).

Like most movies in the man-mountain genre, there was usually a girl, but the buddy-bonding took precedence.  Beretta's Island (1994) was about a retired Interpol agent trying to find out who murdered his friend.

Ancient Warriors (2003) paired Franco with Daniel Baldwin as special agent buddies eliciting supernatural assistance to defeat a crime lord in Sardinia.

In 2011 Franco starred in the Italian movie  La terra dei sogni (Dreamland), about boxer Frank Graziani (Franco), who mentors the young James De Cristoforo (Ivano De Cristoforo).  I haven't seen it, but according to the Italian synopsis, there are "stunning scenes" in which the relationship between the two becomes "vivid and full of emotions."

Sounds good.

Culture Club: From Hinting "We're Gay!" to Yelling "We're Straight"

In 1982, the conservative retrenchment had not quite set in yet, and hinting that you might be gay marked you as naughty, scandalous, and cool.  So the Culture Club pretended.

Lead singer Boy George was actually gay, and drummer Jon Moss (left) was bisexual.  The other band members, Mikey Craig (below) and Roy Hay, were heterosexual.  But they all had fun inviting speculation, giving coy answers to inquiries, and recording songs that dropped the "girl! girl! girl!" refrains in favor of hints and signals.

Some of their songs treated sexual identity as a choice.  You could decide to be straight today and gay tomorrow, why not?

"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" (1982)
In my heart, the fire's burning
Choose my color, find a star.

Sometimes "gay" and "straight" were just labels, unable to capture the fluidity of desire.

"Karma Chameleon" (1983)
I'm a man without conviction,
I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction.

But by 1984, the era of Ronald Reagan and Rambo and Real Men Don't Eat Quiche and Brave New World, only heterosexuals were welcome. Homophobia skyrocketed.  At first Culture Club rebelled:

"The War Song" (1984)
Now we're fighting in our hearts, fighting in the streets
Won't somebody help me
Man is far behind in the search for something new
Like a Philistine, we're burning witches too.

Then they gave up and started yelling, loudly, that they were just kidding, they had been heterosexual all along:

"God, Thank You Woman" (1986)
Woman, thank you, thank you.
God, thank you, woman.
Woman, you're so sweet, I would give my heart to you.
There's nothing I wouldn't do.

Then they went away.

Boy George waited until 1995, when the conservative retrenchment was over, to reveal that he was, in fact, gay.

See also: Subtext Songs of the 1980s; The Village People

12 Beefcake Stars of "Fringe"

I'm being forced to watch a sci-fi series about FBI agents investigating the paranormal.  No, not the The X-Files, Fringe (2008-2013).  The difference is: Mulder and Scully...um, I mean Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia (Anna Torv)...are assisted by an eccentric scientist/mental patient (John Noble), and the frame story is about parallel worlds, not aliens.

It was produced by J.J. Abrams, who helped eliminate almost all gay people from Lost,  so you have to expect even more heterosexism than usual in sci fi series.  And, indeed, people are always blathering on about "my husband!" or "my wife!", mourning lost heterosexual loves, and assuming universal heterosexual identity.  When Fringe first aired in 2008, I refused to watch because the pilot hit you over the head with "we're all heterosexual! we're all heterosexual!"  in the very first scene.

But I have noticed something interesting.  In every episode, at least one of the guest stars is buffed.  Body by Michelangelo,  Like, built.

A simple whisk through the cast list to take my mind off the "everybody on Earth is heterosexual!" chants reveals an incredible profusion of biceps and bulges.

1, "A New Day in the Old Town": Olivia has an auto accident and disappears for 40 minutes into a parallel world.  Luke Goss of Hellboy as "regular guy" Lloyd Parr.

2. "Momentum Deferred": Shapeshifters from the parallel world appear to steal cryogenically-frozen heads while talking about their wives.  Sebastian Roche (left) as Thomas Jerome Newton, aka Omega Man, a buffed villain from the Other Side.

3. "Dream Logic":  People start acting out their dreams and killing each other. Including men with wives!  A guest FBI agent is played by former soap hunk Travis Schuldt (left).

4. "Snakehead": Drug dealers are smuggling parasitic organisms into the U.S., using the bodies of Asian men (and their wives and children) as hosts.  They need to show the parasitic organism moving around inside the bodies, so lots of hunky Asian men take their shirts off, notably former model Jack Yang.

5. "Unearthed": Dead people comes back to life speaking Russian, which their husbands and wives insist they never knew. One of the dead people is Will Turlough, played by bodybuilder and soap star Mark Dobies (top photo).

6. "Johari Window."  See, there's a town full of deformed people who look normal most of the time, and don't like outsiders.  Including a heterosexual nuclear family, with the dad/husband played by bulgeworthy Canadian hunk Martin Cummins (left).








7. "What Lies Below": A 13,000 year old virus that wiped out all of the Pleistocene mammals resurfaces in an office building.  One of the quarantined office drones desperately calling his wife is played by Al Miro (left)

8. "Jacksonville": A building from the parallel world appears here, merging the bodies of two guys.  The one desperately calling for his wife is played by the extremely cute Ryan McDonald.

9. "Olivia in the Lab with the Revolver."  An illness from the parallel world shows up here, with muscular actor Jamie Switch as one of the victims.

10. "The Bishop Revival." The villain is killing people with certain genetic characteristics, like the descendants of a Holocaust survivor at a Jewish wedding chock-full of 20-ish hunks, notably Aaron Brooks as Josh Staller.

11. "White Tulip": A scientist tries to go back in time to reunite with his dead fiance. Jackson Berlin of Man of Steel plays Agent #2 (left).

12. "The Man from the Other Side."  The shapeshifters from the Other Side are trying to get to our world, with bodybuilder Fraser Aitcheson as Cop #1.

And that's just Season 2.

I can imagine the conversation in Casting: "Ok, your character is a businessman who explodes on the subway after yelling for his wife.  So take off your clothes...."

See: Prime-time Dramas Think You Don't Exist;  15 More Beefcake Stars of Fringe. and The Top 10 Hunks of "Orange is the New Black"