Fall 1973: Junior High Fantasies of Paul Getty Junior

During the summer of 1973, just after 7th grade at Washington Junior High, I started reading newspaper articles about Paul Getty Jr., the 16-year old grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who had mysteriously disappeared from his apartment in Rome.

Soon I discovered that it wasn't a paranormal disappearance: he had been kidnapped, with a ransom demand of $18 million.  His father and grandfather refused to pay, believing that he had somehow arranged the kidnapping himself.

The articles didn't say anything else about Paul, but the photos showed a cute, long haired guy with a slim build and dainty, feminine hands.

He obviously liked boys, not girls.  I imagined flying to Italy to mount a daring rescue, and getting a "my hero" hug and kiss.

Was he tied up with his shirt off?  Or naked? Was he struggling against the bonds, his chest heaving, his slim biceps straining?

On November 10th, a week before my 13th birthday, the kidnappers sent Paul's mother a package containing his severed ear, and warned that they would start returning him "by bits."  What body part would they cut off next, I wondered.  A finger -- or maybe his penis.

How big was his penis, anyway?

When I stormed into the dungeon where he was tied up naked, I would find out.  Then we would...

It never occurred to me to feel guilty over using Paul's ordeal as the subject of my junior high fantasies.

The elder Getty finally negotiated a deal, and delivered $2.9 million.  On December 13th, Paul was released.



He dropped out of the news, and I heard nothing more about him; I didn't even realize that Balthazar Getty, a noted actor of the 1980s, was his son.  But recently I began to wonder about the object of my junior high fantasies, and looked him up.

Apparently Paul was not as innocent as I imagined: living with a girlfriend, hanging out with criminals and mafiosi, using and selling massive quantities of drugs.

But he was bisexual: his biography notes experiences with both men and women.

After the kidnapping, he continued his jetsetting, bon vivant life.  He was married from 1975 to 1991, but pursued many friendships with gay men.  He partied with gay celebs like Elton John and Andy Warhol, who managed to talk him into nude photos.

It didn't take much talking.  Friends describe him as amiable, uninhibited, and eager to explore the risque.

And his tastes in clothing veered toward the Quentin Crisp style.

Paul was interested in show business, and starred in two movies, The Territory (1981) and The State of Things (1982).

But he continued to use massive quantities of drugs.  In 1981, at the age of 24, he drank a nearly-lethal mixture of alcohol, valium, and methadone, and suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and nearly blind.

The tragedy did not destroy his spirit.  Friends say that he remained positive, amiable, and charming up to his death thirty years later.

See also: The Gay Anthropologist and the Cannibal; and The Disappearance of Sean Flynn.

What Seth Gabel Looks Like Naked

According to the TV Line website, this person is Seth Gabel, with and without the shirt and glasses.  But I think they made a mistake. It looks like two different people to me.

The Seth Gabel on the right has a long, narrow face, which you may recall as one of my Top 10 Turn-Offs, regardless of his buffed physique.

The Seth Gabel on the left is kind of cute.

So which is correct?

The 33-year old actor has been trucking around Hollywood since 2002, when he played a "Sweet Young Sailor" on Sex and the City.  Sounds provocative.

His first major role came in a five-episode story arc on Nip/Tuck (2004) as a teenager who is having an affair with his mother.  When she dumps him for a non-relative teen, he tries desperately to get her back, even trying to kiss the new boyfriend.  Bisexual and incestuous!

Another role that sounds provocative: "Kissing Man" in something called Good Dick (2008), which is also about incest, paranoia, and various sexual dysfunctions.

On to the character of Jeremy Darling on Dirty Sexy Money (2007-2009): the troubled son of multimillionaire Tripp Darling, a chain-smoking cocaine addict who keeps getting involved with the wrong people.  Never saw it, but he is apparently bisexual.

To avoid being typecast as sexually dysfunctional types (which, according to Hollywood, includes bisexuals), Seth starred in Gothica (2013), a tv series pilot that weaves together all of the 19th century horror plotlines, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Poe's Fall of the House of Usher (he plays Roderick Usher). Dorian Gray was wandering around, so there must have been some gay content.

On Fringe (2010-2013), he played Lincoln Lee.  Something to do with parallel worlds.  Never saw it, but apparently he was gay or had a gay subtext.

And on Salem (2014), about real witches in Colonial Massachusetts, he plays the famous Cotton Mather as a bigoted, homophobic, hypocritical,witch-hunter (yes, there are gay witches in Salem).  With a buffed, hairy physique.

In real life, Seth is married to a woman with a boy's name, Bryce.  I don't know who the flamboyantly feminine friend is.

So which of the top photos is Seth?  All evidence points to the left, and the right as the significantly less attractive Stephen Amell.

TV Rage doesn't know what it's talking about.

Wil Horneff, Gay-Subtext Teen Idol of the 1990s

Born in 1979, Wil Horneff first drew teen idol attention with The Sandlot (1993), one of the misfit-kids-play-sports movies popular during the decade.

Next came Ghost in the Machine (1993), about a comatose serial killer who takes over the electrical grid to terrorize a single mother (Karen Allen) and her son Josh (Wil).  Although Karen Allen and her love interest Chris Mulkey were ostensibly the stars, the director played to the teen audience by giving Josh many shirtless and underwear scenes, as well as a gay subtext buddy-bond with the standard Black best friend Frazer (Brandon Quinton Adams).

The Yearling (1994) was a boy-and-dog tearjerker, with a deer standing in for the dog.

The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994) was based on the novel with a gay theme: Willie Marsden and his friend Ned walk off "hand in hand" to fight in the Civil War.  When Ned is killed, Willie is devastated: he "walked around numb for weeks."  He grows up, goes through his life numb with grief, and at age 50 marries Lucy, the narrator.

I never saw the movie, so I don't know if they kept the gay theme.  Wil plays Willie Marden, and Garrette Ratliff Henson plays Ned.

In the 1997 remake of The Shining, Wil plays the teenage Tony, appearing as a kind of future ghost to keep his younger self safe.

None of his teenage film roles called for him to display significant heterosexual interest.

In 1998, Wil graduated from high school and took a hiatus from acting to attend college and travel (he spent a year in Russia).

In 2005 he returned in The Roost, about four friends (Will, his sister Vanessa, Karl Jacob, Sean Reid) trapped in a farmhouse by zombies.  Still no heterosexual interest.

In the upcoming Longest Swim (2014), two friends are staying in an isolated cabin, when Ben (Stephen Ohl) goes into diabetic shock, so Matt (Wil) has to swim across the lake to get help.  There are no boats on that lake?  Sounds like a lot of buddy-bonding going on, but to keep audiences from getting the "wrong" idea, there are also flashback scenes of Matt in bed with his wife.

In addition to acting, Wil is a long-time participant in the sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.  Today he teaches adult and children's classes at the Training Grounds Jiu-Jitsu & MMA in Westwood NJ.

He's been married to a woman since 2008, so probably heterosexual.  No word on whether he's gay-positive or not.

Chicago, the Musical: Skip the Movie, See it on Stage

I hate the movie version of the musical Chicago (2002), directed by Rob Marshall.  It's set in the Jazz Age, but there are no scenes set in  speakeasies or vast Great Gatsby-style estates, or streets clogged with Model-Ts and movie marquees advertising Rudolph Valentino.   It's completely stage-bound.

There's no beefcake, not even an undone button, just lots of women in slinky leather outfits gyrating like exotic dancers.

And the lesbian angle is only hinted at, briefly.

The plot: during the 1920s, Roxy Hart (Rene Zellweger) is arrested for murdering her lover, and sent to Cook County Jail in Chicago to await her trial.   She becomes a cause celebre, and draws the attention of glitterati lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), to the consternation of his previous client, celebrity murderess Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Velma and Roxy begin competing to see who can gain the most celebrity. When another murderess hits the news, Roxy ups the ante by getting pregnant (or pretending to).  Velma counters by sabotaging Roxy's case.

Finally Roxie is acquitted, but she misses the limelight, so she and Velma team up to do a celebrity-murderess act.

Yawn.  Why couldn't Richard Gere at least have taken his shirt off?

Fortunately, the stage versions take care of those problems.

Well, it's still stage bound, of course, but prison matron Mama Morton is definitely a lesbian, who helps Roxy in exchange for sexual favors.

And there's lots of beefcake, male dancers along with the women strutting their stuff with fedoras and jazz hands.

Not to mention shirtless, muscular Billy Flynns played by Jerry Orbach, Ben Cross, James Naughton, Christopher Sieber, Patrick Swayze, Billy Ray Cyrus, Taye Diggs, Adam Pascal, Mark Fisher, Joel Warren, Tony Yasbeck, David Hasselhoff, Tom Wopat, and Gregory Harrison.

You're not going to see a high school or community college production anytime soon, but it's worth checking out in the various national tours.

Raoul Bova: Don't Come Out, Think of the Children!

Italian heartthrob Raoul Bova has been the subject of many gay rumors over the years.  There has even been a Facebook petition asking him to "please come out!"  But he refuses.

"If I were gay, I would not say it.  I would not come out.  I hate being labeled."

Any label except heterosexual, that is.

What about these grainy photos of him in a underwear-clad lip-lock with Marco Bocci?  It seemed so real!   He explained that in the upcoming Scusate se esisto (Pardon Me for Existing, 2014), he plays a married heterosexual who has an affair with a gay guy.  You can play gay characters without being gay, you know.

He goes on to explain that he can never come out because of the horrible damage it would do to children.  His kids are  already getting taunted in school: "Your father is sick, your father is gay!"

To quote Helen Lovejoy: Don't come out, think of the children!

Who knew that Italian society was so homophobic? Or maybe it's just Raoul Bova.

The 43-year old Bova got his start as a competitive swimmer, and broke into acting with the sex comedy Mutande pazze (Crazy Underwear, 1992).  He quickly put his amazing physique to use in movies about men who excite uncontrollable passion in women, sometimes comedies, sometimes tragedies (as in La Lupa, 1992, based on the story by Giovanni Verga).

More recently he changed slightly to movies about men who bring romance rather than horniness, as in Under the Tuscan Sun (2003).

But not wanting to be known as just a bicep and bulge, he also sought out fully-clothed roles as police officers, soldiers, and terrorists, which permit some buddy-bonding in spite of his fear of being labeled gay.

Look for Il Quarto Re (The Fourth King, 1997), a German movie about a young bee-keeper who is shanghaied by the Three Kings to help them deliver the gifts to the Christ Child.  He keeps griping about his wife back home, but the other Kings (including a gay-vague Gaspar played by Billy Dee Williams) display n heterosexual interest.

And I cavalieri che fecero l'impresa (The Knights Who Start a Business, 2001), about five Medieval knights (including Raoul Bova, Edward Furlong, and Marco Leonardi) who buddy-bond during their quest to find the sacred Shroud of Turin.

Skip Homeier: Gay-Vague Villain and his Nude Model Son

On February 21, 1969, Star Trek encounters the counterculture when a group of groovy, extremely muscular space hippies take over the Enterprise to fly to the legendary  planet of Eden.  Unfortunately, the plant life turns out to be poisonous.  Moral: don't be a hippie.

The gang is led by the long-eared Dr. Severin, played by Skip Homeier (left, with Charles Napier).
The kids watching probably didn't realize that Skip Homeier got his start as a prettyboy child star.  In 1944, the 14-year old debuted in Tomorrow, the World!, a tour de force about an American family who adopt a boy from Nazi Germany, only to find that he is spouting Nazi propaganda and bullying his classmates from "inferior" races.

During the 1930s, there was a fad for homoromantic dramas, starring Mickey Rooney, Jackie Moran, Jackie Cooper, Freddie Bartholomew, Frankie Darro, and a dozen other teen actors.  But by the 1940s, the fad was over.  There is no particular gay subtext in Tomorrow, the World! or in most of Skip's later teen roles, except for some buddy-bonding vestiges in Boys Ranch (1946).

As an adult, Skip worked steadily in war movies, science fiction, Westerns, and many tv dramas, usually playing gay-vague villains or good kids who go bad.

I've seen him in The Burning Hills (1956),  as the gay-vague Jack Sutton, who sends his hired muscle to kill Trace Jordan (Tab Hunter).  Isn't it ironic that the heterosexual guy plays gay-vague, and the gay guy plays heterosexual?

And in Day of the Badman (1958), as the snively gay-vague son of the villain.

In 1982, at the age of 52, Skip retired from acting and moved back home to Chicago.  I'm pretty sure that Christian Homeier (top photo), who posed for Playgirl in 1992 and now manages a smoothie bar in Springfield, Illinois, is his son.  Or maybe his nephew.

Ezra Miller: Ugly Face, Beautiful Movies

I usually stay away from film festivals: long, dull, ponderous movies about people with problems.  And usually heterosexist to boot.

But if you find yourself trapped at a film festival, look for the features starring 21-year old Ezra Miller.

This isn't him, it's Zach Roerig from Vampire Diaries.

This isn't him, either, it's Brenton Thwaites of Maleficent.

Ok, I'm stalling.  Ezra is not exactly a heartthrob.

Actually, he's one of the ugliest guys I've ever seen on a movie screen.

But you don't watch movies just for the beefcake.

He is gay and androgynous in real life, and he brings a refreshing queerness to his roles, even when he's ostensibly playing heterosexuals.

You can see him after the break.

Frank Gorshin: The Bulging Nemesis of Robin the Boy Wonder

Of all the villains who befuddled the Dynamic Duo on the 1960's Batman series, Frank Gorshin's Riddler was easily the most memorable -- for his giggly, frenetic energy, for his rather clever riddles, and for his obvious crush on Robin.  He preferred capturing Robin alone, with no Batman interfering, so he could caress the Boy Wonder's chest and shoulders, touch his hand, draw his face close, and look for all the world as if he wanted to kiss rather than kill him.

And for his physique.  Most Batman villains were dumpy at best, but the Riddler was hot, lean and toned, and his green jumpsuit was even more revealing than Robin's (after a few episodes, the censors forced him to wear a silly green business suit to hide his obvious gifts beneath the belt).

Frank Gorshin was a bulging fixture in 1960s tv.  In a famous 1969 episode of Star Trek, he plays Bele, the crazed survivor of a race of black-white aliens who all died trying to kill a race of white-black aliens. Lou Antonio, right, who played his white-black nemesis, was equally bulgeworthy).

But Frank Gorshin was more than revealing tights and frenetic energy.  He began his career playing juvenile delinquents in the 1950s, and starred in dozens of movies, playing mostly villains and tough guys.  A skilled impressionist, he won a Tony for playing comedy legend George Burns in the one-man show Say Goodnight, Gracie.  And, although he was married for 50 years, he was reputedly gay in real life.  He died in 2005.

Jean-Claude Brialy: Gay Actor in 1960s France

Gay actor Jean-Claude Brialy (1933-2007) lived in the days when LGBT people had to spend their lives hiding, so he hid, coming out only in his autobiography  Le Ruisseau des singes (The River of Monkeys).  But he managed to include a substantial number of gay-coded characters in his long film career.

Les Garcons (La Notte Brava, 1959), an adaption of Pasolini's novel Ragazzi di vita, follows the exploits of a gay-vague criminal couple (Brialy, Laurent Terzieff).







Une femme est une femme (A Woman is a Woman, 1961):  Brialy's girlfriend wants a baby, but he isn't ready, so he enlists the aid of his best buddy (Jean-Paul Belmondo).

Cheri (1962): The bisexual male prostitute from the Colette novel.

L'oiseau rare (The Rare Bird, 1973): a gay-vague waiter gets involved with the problems of his customers.

Robert et Robert (1978).  The two Roberts form a bromance while trying to find heterosexual partners through a computer dating service run by the gay-vague Brialy.

La nuit de Varennes (1982): during the French Revolution, a gay-vague hairdresser encounters the legendary lover Casanova (Marcello Mastroianni) and American patriot Thomas Paine (Harvey Keitel).

The Innocents (1987):  In his most overtly gay role, Brialy plays a German composer whose son is having an affair with his favorite male prostitute.

By the way, he's written several interesting books available on Amazon France, such as Les Pensées les plus drôles des acteurs.

See also: Colette's Cheri: A Male Prostitute Finds Love.

Samson Burke: the Villain of 1960s Bodybuilding Movies

If you saw The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962) -- and every Boomer kid did -- you probably that Joe DeRita, the most flamboyantly feminine of the Stooges, was trying his best to appear afraid rather than excited during his scenes with the super-muscular Hercules.

This was a rare example of a villainous Hercules, played by 6'6", 275 lbs Samson Burke (born Samuel Burke), a Canadian-born Olympic athlete, bodybuilder (a former Mr. Canada), pro wrestler, and budding peplum star whose Vengeance of Ursus had just been released (1961).

He went on to specialize in more rare examples of villainous bodybuilders: King Blo-Edin in the German Nibelungen series, Khemal in Three Green Dogs (1967), and Polyphemus the Cyclops in an Italian tv version of The Odyssey.  After a minor role in the Italian comedy Satiricosissimo (1970), he retired from acting.

He moved to Hawaii to pursue his interest in fitness (and incidentally joined the crew of Magnum P.I. when it was filming in Hawaii during the 1980s).  The Three Stooges film brought him his greatest popularity, and he still appears at fan conventions, where his bicep is still capable of crushing heads.

On his personal website, he advises: "once you're finished browsing, get out from behind your computer and exercise!  Taking care of your body is something you will benefit from for the rest of your life."

Good advice from a 84 year old bodybuilder.

Burke  has never married.  I don't know if he's gay or not, but on Hollywood Teen Movies, the interview keeps feeding him openings like "that actress you worked with was very beautiful" and "that actress was very attractive," but Burke won't own up to any heterosexual interest, limiting himself to evaluations of her physical fitness:  "yes, she was fit and healthy."

See also: The Three Stooges; Sword and Sandal.

Weeds: Gay and Gay-Vague Drug Dealers

You're probably wondering what Alexander Gould has been up to since he played David Collins, the young heir to the Collins fortune, in the 2005 reboot of the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows.

He's done some voice over work and guest starred on several dramas, such as Supernatural and Pushing Daisies.

He starred in How to Eat Fried Worms (2006) and the short Ties (2011), about a man (Jacob Grodnik) who gets stuck in a junkyard while taking his father's ashes to a memorial service, and bonds with the teenage Evan (Alexander Gould).

But he's most famous for Weeds (2005-2012), about suburban housewife Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), who begins selling marijuana to support her family after her husband dies, and eventually rises through the ranks of an international drug syndicate.  Her oldest son Silas (Hunter Parrish, left) assists her.

Alexander played Shane, her youngest son, a sensitive, often-bullied boy with a violent, unpredictable side.  After several seasons of out-of-control behavior, he settled down, went to the police academy and became a LAPD cop.

Shane expressed little heterosexual interest, except when he was goaded on by his friends or his uncle, leading fans to wonder if he was gay.  Not to worry: in Season 6, the writers took care of that little "problem" by giving him a girlfriend.

There were a couple of "real" gay characters on the show: Sanjay (gay actor Maulik Pancholy), one of Nancy's dealers, who was gay for a few seasons then turned straight and married a woman; and Josh (Justin Chatwin), who was selling marijuana to kids, breaking Nancy's cardinal rule, until she discovered that he was gay and blackmailed him.

Sounds rather homophobic.

Oh well, at least there was ample beefcake.  And Alexander is a gay ally.  He wore a white knot to the 2009 Emmy Awards to symbolize his commitment to marriage equality.

See also: David Collins, Gay Heir to the Throne

Joel Creasey: Gay Aussie Muscle God Comedian

Joel Creasey could probably make it big as a beefcake model, but he decided to go into stand-up comedy instead.

After winning the Best Newcomer Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the "Acid-Tongued Prince" began touring all over Australia  and making dozens of tv appearances, on A League of Their Own, The Project, This Week Live, and his own tv specials.  He recently released his first DVD.

His schtick is growing up gay in a small outback town where wearing pink was an unpardonable sin and being gay was the equivalent of being a Martian.  He also riffs on pop culture icons, queering the texts of Aussie movies and tv shows, and talks about run-ins with homophobes today.

The best hate mail I ever got was on Facebook. This guy messaged me and said “I wasn’t homophobic until I saw you. But now I want to move to Uganda because you can kill gay people there.” I just sent him the link  to Webjet with the flights to Uganda and I said to have fun, but I’m not coming.

Some of his run-ins with homophobia are too shocking to become comedy material.  In 2010, he was invited to perform at an anti-discrimination event in Colac, a small town about 150 km from Melbourne.  He arrived to see 20 young men waiting for him.  Assuming they were fans, he got out his pen and prepared to sign autographs.  Instead they called him homophobic names, threatened violence, and chased back to his car.

But fighting homophobia is what Joel Creasey is all about.

 If you're not in Australia, you can see him on youtube.

Peter Brown: Buddy-Bonding Cowboy of the 1950s

I never saw this massive chest before yesterday, that I remember, and he has a pretty common name, so sorry if I get the pictures wrong.

He's Peter Brown, a heart throb to the first generation of Baby Boomers.

Born in New York in 1935, he graduated from UCLA and hit Hollywood in 1957.  Guest bits on swinging detective and Western shows landed him his most famous role, Lawman (1958-62)

It starred John Russell (the one with the basket) as Marshall Dan Troup of Laramie, Wyoming (the name Laramie was taken).  Peter played his partner, deputy, and close friend Johnny McKay.

Sounds like a lot of gay subtext potential.  No wonder the first generation of Boomers remembers it fondly.

Next came some Disney movies, the sexploitation Kitten with a Whip (1964), and the surfing-buddy movie Ride the Wild Surf (1964), also starring teen crooner Fabian Forte.

I've already discussed its many gay subtexts.

In 1965-67 Peter returned to the Old West to star in Laredo with bodybuilder William Smith.

Then came more guest spots, soap operas, sexploitation movies like Teenage Tease (1971) and Foxy Brown (1974), and bad horror movies like Piranha (1972).  He was very busy as an actor, but his glory days were obviously past.

Peter been married five times, so I'm going to guess he's heterosexual.  But back when he was playing cowboys, his beefcake and homoerotic buddy-bonding kept lots of Boomer kids interested.

You can see more pictures of Peter Brown on Fabian Forte on the Beach.

What's Gay About Don Juan?

Today we call a man a "Don Juan" if he's very competent at "getting" women.  It's a complement.

But the original Don Juan was evil, a Spanish nobleman who cruelly manipulated both men and women.

That gives his story an interesting gay subtext.

Take the opera version, Don Giovanni, by Mozart (1787).

Don Giovanni seduces women, not because he enjoys heterosexual acts, but for the fun of seeing them socially destroyed.

Meanwhile his servant Leporello displays no heterosexual interest, but is devoted to Don Giovanni.  Their bond is portrayed as noble.

Don Giovanni has Leporello help him seduce several women, including Elvira, who vows vengeance; Anna, who vows vengeance after he kills her father, the the Commendatore, in a duel; and Zerlina (he distracts her boyfriend by sending Leporello to dance with him).

Leporello almost leaves when Don Giovanni tries to frame him for an attempted rape, but decides to stay.

He is beat up while disguised as Don Giovanni, but decides to stay.

Adding sacrilege to his list of crimes, Don Giovanni orders him to invites a statue of the Commendatore to dinner.  He can't bring himself to do it, so Don Giovanni does.  It shows up at the dinner and drags Don Giovanni to hell.

Only then does Leporello seek a new master.

Directors usually cast Don Giovanni with the hottest baritones they can find,such as Jason Hardy, Erwin Schott, and Simon Keelyside.

Richard Crichton produced a modernized version, with a gay Don Giovanni in the club scene of 1987 London.