An Old Steve Reeves Movie

20 years before Arnold Schwarzenegger personalized the bodybuilder, a decade before William Smith brought bodybuilding Western heroes out of the closet, Steve Reeves became an icon for gay and straight men -- but mostly in Italy, with his voice dubbed in by someone else.

Born in 1926 in Montana, Reeves developed a massive physique during the 1940s, when it was still considered a weird affectation.  After minor roles in U.S. movies and tv sitcoms -- and physique shots in Bob Mizner's pro-gay Physique Pictorial -- he moved to Italy, where the peplum or sword-and-sandal genre promoted Italian nationalism through man-mountains in togas who wandered around the ancient world, fighting oppressors.

Reeves' Hercules (1957) became a sensation, even after it was released in the U.S. in 1959, and spun Reeves into a sequel, Hercules Unchained (1959), as well as a Hercules fad in comics and on tv.

 Soon Reeves was playing every ancient hero the studio could dig up or invent, 15 in all: Goliath (not the Biblical Goliath), Glaucus (from The Last Days of Pompeii), Morgan the Pirate, The Thief of Baghdad, Agi Murad,  and Phidippides  (I've never heard of most of them, either).

The plots were similar: Hercules, or Goliath, or Agi Murad fights to help a civilization throw off the yoke of a tyrannical oppressor, gets captured and tortured, rejects the advances of an evil black-haired woman and rescues and marries a good blonde-haired woman.

His lines were dubbed in English in post-production, so no one heard his real voice except in two American movies, the bodybuilder-exploitation Athena and the police drama Jailbait.

There is minimal buddy-bonding, as in the original Hercules, where the demigod tags along with Jason and the Argonauts.  But both Hercules and Jason fall in love with women, and at the end of the movie they part.

In Romulus and Remus (Duel of the Titans, 1961), Romulus (Steve Reeves) and Remus (Gordon Scott) are raised as brothers, and fight the evil oppressors together.  But then one becomes good, and the other evil, and they must duel to the death.

Gay fans had to make do with Steve Reeves' superlative musculature, which was displayed extensively in every movie.

He retired in 1967 after an injury,  and devoted the next 33 years to promoting fitness and raising horses on his ranch in central California.  No information on whether he supported his gay fans, but since they were an integral part of his fame, one imagines that he enjoyed  the homage in The Rocky Horror Picture Show , where Dr. Frank-N-Furter tells Brad and Janet:

If you want something visual, that's not too abysmal,
We could take in an old Steve Reeves movie.

The Bodybuilding Villages of India

In West Hollywood, everyone went to the gym.  The dating game was very competitive, and if you had a partner, there were lots of guys eager to break you up.  So you had to be in shape.  We joked that you could always tell the sexual orientation of guys in their 40s: the gay men looked 30, and the heterosexuals looked 60.

But there's a village in India where nearly the entire adult male population, gay and straight alike,  is into bodybuilding.

Actually two adjoining suburbs, Asola and Fatehpur-Beri, about 10 miles south of New Delhi, near the airport.

They belong to the Gurjar, a Scheduled Tribe (historically disadvantaged) from Rajasthan, previously nomadic, relocated to Delhi to work in farming and low-paying government jobs.  But mostly unemployed until they discovered bodybuilding.

The bodybuilding craze began 15 years ago, by accident.  A wealthy businessman, driving past, saw some of the village men wrestling, and offered them 2,000 rupees apiece (about $32 U.S.) to be the security guards at a wedding he was hosting.
This was big money!  They jumped at the opportunity.

Soon professional bouncer agencies were placing the other muscular young men of the village.  The more massive, the better.

You can make a living through your physique?

 Everyone started hitting the gym.

Kids growing up looked to bodybuilders as role models.

Now over 200 villagers are employed as "hired muscle": bouncers at New Delhi's trendy nightclubs, private security guards, and bodyguards.

The jobs are temporary: once you reach your 30s, your attractiveness to potential employers declines.  But by then, most of the  men have used their connections to pursue other careers.  Some have become wealthy businessmen.

I assume that the standard proportion are gay; the gay dating services list a number of men from Asola and Fatehpur.

See also: A Bodybuilding Contest in India; and The Erotic Temple Carvings of Khajuraho

One Life to Live

When I was a kid in the 1960s,  my Mom watched several soap operas regularly.  I saw an occasional snippet, when I was home sick or walking through the living room on the way to do something else.

Gross!  There wouldn't be any same-sex plotlines for 30 years, so they were occupied entirely by the heterosexist "true love between a man and a woman" mantra.

And it would be 20 years before the shirts dropped and soap hunks were regularly put on display.

And they always made you feel guilty for watching.

"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."

We don't have much time on Earth.  Better stop wasting time on soap operas and get busy with something useful!


But in 1968 when my friends and I began gathering in front of the tv every afternoon to watch Dark Shadows at 3:00, we sometimes stayed put for the new soap opera One Life to Live -- the only other choices were stupid game shows.

Dr. Larry Wolek (Michael Storm) filled out his 1970s hipster uniforms nicely, in spite of his plotline, which was both stupid and disturbing:

He found "true love" with town heiress Meredith, though her father disapproved of the match.  Shortly after they married and she gave birth to twins, she was shot and killed by a burglar, and Larry moved on to a new "true love."

Meanwhile, Meredith's uptight sister Vicki developed a split personality, becoming the funloving Nikki.  While slumming, she hooked up with muscular truck driver Vinnie (Antony Ponzini), Larry's working-class brother.

No class distinctions in Llanview!

Antony Ponzini (1933-2002) was a major crush of my childhood, with his dark curly hair, bronze skin, classic Mediterranean features, and muscular build.  I'd choose him over the whitebread Larry Wolek any day.

But then Vicki was cured and decided to marry Vinnie's best friend, newspaper reporter Joe Riley (gay actor Lee Patterson who starred with Van Williams, left, in the homoerotic Surfside Six).  

How did this incessant, absurdly exaggerated search for heterosexist "true love" fade-out-kiss resonate with gay kids?

1. Every heterosexual relationship played out against a background of  same-sex relationships.  Larry and Vinnie discuss their desires for Meredith and Nikki, respectively.  Vinnie and Joe discuss their desires for Nikki and Vicki, respectively.

2. Heterosexual relationships are doomed.  In a week, or a month, or a couple of years, your "true love" will die or fall in love with someone else.  But same-sex bonds are permanent.

We stopped watching in 1971, when Dark Shadows ended.  But Mom remained a fan for thirty more years of diseases, infidelities, and fade-out-kisses, and, eventually, when Dan Gauthier joined the cast, gay subtexts.

Can You Ever Get Tired of Tarzan Musical Beefcake?

Tired of Tarzans yet?

I didn't think so.

Here are a gaggle of loincloth-clad musclemen (more or less), gathered from high school and college drama departments, little theaters, children's theaters, and miscellaneous beefcake venues across the U.S. (with a few European entries).

1.North Shore Music Theater, Beverly, Massachusetts.  It has a theater in the round so you can see Tarzan from all angles.

2.  The Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia.

















3.  Amity High School in Woodbridge, Connecticut offers one of the more buffed Tarzan, with long hair but no dreads.

4. Stafford High School in Fredericksburg, Virginia gave Tarzan a 1950s greaser haircut, but with that chest, who cares?

5. Pittsburgh Musical Theater.  Rather an ugly Tarzan, but at least he has biceps.

More after the break.