Joel and Jody McCrea: The Bisexual Cowboy and His Beach-Movie Son

Speaking of showbiz families, Joel McCrea (1905-1990) was a tall, lanky, and muscular, perfect for roles as white-hat cowboys.  And he played a lot of them during his 50-year movie career.

But you're probably more interested in his movies with gay subtexts, such as The Silver Cord (1933), where he plays a young doctor with a domineering mother, or Ride the High Country (1962), where he and Randolph Scott play a pair of long-term cowboy partners.

Or at least the ones where he disrobes, such as the European-in-Polynesia romance Bird of Paradise (1932).

Bisexual in real life, he was married to actress Frances Dee from 1933 until his death, but also had male lovers, including Montgomery Clift.

Joel's oldest son Jody (born 1934) was tall and athletic, and a dead ringer for his father.  He started out playing cowboys, too.

But he is best known for his comedic roles, playing dopey sidekicks named Deadhead, Bonehead, and Big Lunk in six Frankie and Annette beach movies of the 1960s.  He still got to display his bulge in a swimsuit, when he wasn't self-consciously trying to hide it.

Typecast as boneheads, he retired from acting in the early 1970s, and became a rancher in New Mexico.

Of Jody's five children, only Wyatt is interested in show biz.  He has appeared in a few tv series, and produced Gen's Guiltless Gourmet (2009).  He also manages his grandfather's ranch, a tourist attraction in Thousand Oaks, CA

See also: Beach Movies 1: The Beefcake

More 1970s Saturday Morning Beefcake

During the late 1970s, I watched several live-action Saturday morning tv programs, like Space Academy and The Kids from C.A.P.E.R., but the 70s Live Action Kid Vid website gives some details about many that I never heard of.  They vanished quickly, and left little trace on DVD, though you may be able to find uploads on youtube.  Here are the four that look most interesting:

1. Ark II (1976-77): a sort of futuristic trucker show about Jonah (Terry Lester) driving around in a post-apocalyptic world solving people's personal problems, accompanied by his teen sidekicks Samuel (Jose Flores) and Ruth (Jean Marie Hon), plus a talking chimp.  Terry Lester, who was gay in real life, went on to become a soap opera hunk on The Young and the Restless.

2. Dr. Shrinker (1976-77), a segment of the Krofft Supershow: the teens Brad (Ted Eccles) and BJ (Susan Lawrence), plus their goofy friend Gordie (Boomer MacKay), are trapped on a desert island with a mad scientist who shrinks them.

Child star Ted Eccles starred in In Cold Blood (1967) and My Side of the Mountain (1969), and muscled up to hug James Coburn in The Honkers (1972) and get terrorized by Scott Jacoby in Bad Ronald (1974).

3. Bigfoot and Wildboy (1977-78), another segment of the Krofft Supershow: Bigfoot (Ray Young) and his teen sidekick Wildboy (Joseph Butcher) roam the Pacific Northwest, solving people's personal problems.  Sounds like some interspecies buddy-bonding occurred.

The Krofft Supershow was a very busy program. It also featured musical groups like The Bay City Rollers and Michael Lembeck (center) as Kaptain Kool (with the Kongs).

4. Jason of Star Command (1978-81): Jason (Craig Littler) and his assistants (including James Doohan, Scotty on Star Trek) work to keep the evil Dragos from taking over the galaxy in this Space Academy spin-off.

Craig Littler performed in many movies and tv programs, including Blazing Saddles (1974) and Laverne and Shirley.  In the 1990s, he became the voice of Grey Poupon mustard in tv commercials ("Pardon me -- do you have any Grey Poupon?").

"We Summon the Darkness":: Gay Heavy Metal Fans?

It's the distant, magical summer of 1988. Thursday night means Cosby, A Different World, Cheers, and Night Court.  Saturday is movie night: Die Hard, Cocktail, Rambo, Who Framed Roger Rabbit,   Everyone is listening to Cheap Trick, Tracy Chapman, and Madonna, or if you are into heavy metal, Bon Jovi, David Lee Roth, and Thrasher  And in the distant, magical country of Indiana, three little girls are driving to a heavy metal concert.   Their names are Alexis, Beverly, and Val, but that's not important. What's important is that they are just like millions of other little girls growing up in the distant, magical summer of 1988, discussing sex and fashion and Teen Bop magazine  and who ate the last Ding Dong.

At a gas station, the attendant is watching a televangelist scream about the evil of heavy metal music.  This is the summer of Satanic panic, the unfounded fear that thousands of kids were being abducted by their neighbors, the pastor, the school principal, or the mayor and sacrificed to Satan.  Somehow the two are connected. Foreshadowing? The girls scoff and move on.

You are probably guessing what will happen next.  You are wrong.

Continuing down a rural road in Indiana, they are passed by a blue van, which chucks a milkshake at their windshield.  OMG, what's wrong with people?

The girls arrive at the concert, negotiate scalpers and "Jesus Saves" protestors, and guess what?  There's the blue van!  Makes sense -- where else would anyone be going on that desolate country road?  They get revenge by throwing firecrackers into the van.  Three boys emerge:

Mark (Keean Johnson, top photo), Kovacs (Logan Miller), second photo, and Ivan (Austin Swift, left).

Turns out that they are aspiring musicians.  Yeah, in 1988, who wasn't?

Surprisingly, they don't do a ot of flirting with the girls. One might suspect that they are gay, except there aren't a lot of gay heavy metal fans.

They discuss Ozzy Osbourne and the epidemic of Satanic ritual murders. 15 so far this summer.  Gulp!

They go to the concert together, jump up and down, yell "Hail Satan!"

You're probably wondering, when are the real Satanists gong to show up?'''

Spoiler Alert:  




There aren't any real Satanists.

After the concert the girls invite the boys to "my dad's gigantic, elegant mansion," 30 minutess away.

Wait -- if they live 30 minutes away, what was with the driving for hours through the Indiana wilderness?

There they tie the boys up in their underwear, and prepare for the sacrifice.

Turns out that the girls belong to Daughters of the Dawn, the church of the pastor on the tv at the gas station.  They kill people and make it look like Satanic ritual murder, in order to illustrate the evils of heavy metal music.

What follows is a melange of unexpected visitors showing up to disrupt the plans, Pastor showing up to help, a lot of beefcake, and a lot of "I'll save you!" buddy-bonding.

One of the girls has a change of heart, and escapes with the Last Boy.

But other than the heteronormative ending, there's no  hetero-romance, and endless gay subtexts. (No texts, unfortunately).

And plot twists that I actually did not see coming.

My grade: B

Michael Lembeck

Speaking of One Day at a Time (1975-84),  the biggest hunk who entered the lives of the single mom Ann Romano and her two daughters (Barbara and Julie) was not William Kirby Cullen or Scott Colomby, but Michael Lembeck as the smiling, bearded, hairy-chested, tight-jeans wearing Max Horvath.

He first appears on October 14th, 1979, as the best man at Julie's wedding -- who falls in love with Julie himself.   Eventually they marry and have a child.  By the last season, Julie has run away, leaving Max a single dad. In an interesting triangulation, he is sharing a house with Barbara and her husband Mark (Boyd Gaines).

Born in 1948, Michael Lembeck was the son of Harvey Lembeck, famous as the juvenile delinquent foil in the Frankie-and-Annette beach movies.  He was visible through the 1970s, with guest spots on The Partridge Family, Happy Days, Love American Style, and Room 222, and a recurring role on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), plus several important movie appearances.

In Blood Sport (1973), mooning over high-school football star Gary Busey.

In the war drama The Boys in Company C (1978), as the wise-guy Vinnie Fazio, who buddy-bonds with Billy Ray (Andrew Pike).

In Gorp (1980), a spoof of summer-camp sex comedies, as muscular camp waiter Kavell, who buddy-bonds with the nerdish Bergman (Philip Casnoff, right) as they try to get laid and befuddle the authorities.

But he was most familiar to Boomer kids as Kaptain Kool, androgynous glam-rock lead singer for Kaptain Kool and the Kongs, the Saturday morning tv rock group that appeared on The Krofft Supershow and its various spinoffs in the late 1970s.

After One Day at a Time, Michael worked primarily as a director, with episodes of Coach, Major Dad, Ellen, Jesse, Veronica's Closet, Friends, Hot in Cleveland, and Baby Daddy (a sitcom with a queer theme, about two brothers raising a child together).  He hasn't played any gay characters, but he directed Connie and Carla (2004), about two women who hide out disguised as drag queens, and a 2012 episode of Baby Daddy in which the brothers' Dad turns out to be gay.