Ishmael and Hagar

You remember the story of Ishmael in the Book of Genesis:  he was Abraham's oldest son, born to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar; but Sarah wanted her own son Isaac to be heir, so she had Ishmael and Hagar cast out into the desert to die.  When they were dying of thirst, an angel appeared and made a well magically appear.  Eventually they settled in the desert of Paran, where he married and had twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Arabs.

Ishmael was sixteen years old when he and his mother were cast out, an adult in ancient society, but a lot of artists like to make him a baby or a little boy, to emphasize the pathos. 

And to avoid having to draw muscular men.

Simone Cantarini (1612-1648) compromises.  Ishmael is that chubby baby in the background, dying of thirst while a naked, muscular male angel is appearing to Hagar.










Others, like Lodovico Caselli (1817-1862) have the naked, dying youth wrapped in his mother's arms, a sort of Pieta.

At least Jean Charles Cazin (1840-1901) gives us a nicely shaped bum.

As does Edward Sheffield Bartholomew (1822-1858)

Fidardo Landi (1865-1918) skips Hagar and concentrates on Ishmael.

In the 1994 movie Abraham, Ishmael is played by Giuseppe Peluso

Steve Cochran: All Man

The Internet Movie Database tells us that Steve Cochran (1917-1965) was "all man," by which they mean "not gay." As evidence:
1. He grew up in Wyoming
2. He was kicked off his college basketball team for hanging out with  ladies.
3. He worked as a cowboy before getting his start in Hollywood.
4. He had a very, very, very hairy chest.
5. He had a very, very, very large penis (ok, that one's not from the IMDB).
6. He mostly played villains and gangsters.
7. He had sex with lots of  ladies.

8. He was married three times.
9. He died while on a boating trip with an all-girl crew.

#1-9 don't necessarily require heterosexual identity. And there's more:

The Chase (1945). He plays Eddie Roman, a gangster who is betrayed by his chauffeur/gunsel Chuck Scott (Bob Cummings).

White Heat (1949): He plays Big Ed, the sidekick/gunsel who betrays volatile boyfriend Cody (James Cagney).

Private Hell 36 (1954): detective buddies (Steve, Howard Duff, top photo) steal money, and count it while shirtless. The headless lady is Ida Lupino.

I haven't seen any of Steve's other films, but film noir often included a hint of homoerotic desire between the gangsters.

Then there's The Beat Generation (1959), which has nothing to do with the literary movement of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; in search of a serial rapist, detective Steve immerses himself in the seedy, decadent, gay-vague world of the Beatniks.  Sort of like Al Pacino's descent into the "gay world" in  Cruising twenty years later.

Even someone who is "all man" invariably has a gay subtext or two somewhere in his career.

Milton Berle: Television's First Drag Queen

In an October 26, 1967 episode of Batman, Batman and Robin ran afoul of Louie the Lilac, who trapped them in a man-eating lilac bush and later got them. . .um. . .all wrapped up in each other (Batgirl was in the melange, too).

He wore a lilac suit, liked perfume, and had henchmen named Azalea, Petunia, Lotus, and Sassafras.   I was too young to recognize gay stereotypes, but I knew feminine-coding when I saw it.

Later I saw Louie the Lilac, aka Milton Berle, as a desk clerk on Get Smart (1968), a fast-talking used car salesman on Here's Lucy (1969), a tv clown on Mod Squad (1971), and another used car salesman in The Muppet Movie (1979), without ever realizing that he was Mr. Television.

In 1950, there were 500,000 tv sets in use in the United States.  By 1956, 30 million.  And when the millions of new viewers turned on their new tv sets, they were watching Milton Berle, a former vaudeville performer and radio comedian, on Texaco Star Theater (1948-56).

Not many episodes have survived, but apparently it was a musical-variety program with Berle, or Uncle Miltie doing stand-up comedy and sketches, including frequent drag numbers and the lisping catch phrase "I'll kill you a million times."  Sounds gay-coded to me.

For the first few years, it regularly trounced its competition (to be fair, its competitors included The John Hopkins Science Review and Uptown Jubilee).  Then sitcoms took over, and musical variety was passe.  But Milton Berle continued the format in Kraft Music Hall (1958-59), and he appeared in drag frequently through the years, even at the end of his life: on an episode of  Roseanne (1995), he catches the bridal bouquet at the gay wedding that Roseanne arranges for her boss.

Oddly enough, he was homophobic in real life, throwing around the words "fag" and "queer" with abandon.  In 1993, he was scheduled to present an award with drag performer RuPaul, and a backstage incident caused a well-publicized feud between Old and New Drag.  According to RuPaul, Berle made rude comments and inappropriately touched her breasts.

Hollywood rumors give Uncle Miltie another claim to fame: he was widely recognized to have the largest endowment in the business, surpassing a foot in length.  Apparently he was not shy about displaying it to anyone curious, as long as they weren't "queer."

Michael Copon: Power Ranger, Gay Ally

Born in 1982, Michael Copon got his start on the most recent of the Power Rangers series, Power Rangers: Time Force (2001-2002).  

He also starred on the evening teen soap One Tree Hill (2004-5) as Felix, a homophobe who writes an anti-gay slur on the locker of his sister's girlfriend.

And on Beyond the Break (2006-2009) as Vin Keahi, the boyfriend of two female professional surfers.

But it's in movies that the bonding -- and the beefcake -- really shines.  He specializes in movies about female bonding:
All You've Got (2006): volleyball players
Sideliners (2006): cheerleaders
Bring It On (2007): cheerleaders

But there's also some male bonding.  He also goes on a quest with Peter Butler in the Vin Diesel prequel, The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior (2008).

And he starts a BoyBand with Ryan Pinkston (2010).

No gay characters, but he's a gay ally, so maybe someday.

The Gay Hint of "Where's Huddles"

At the 1970 Superbowl, played on January 11th at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings 23-7.  The Chiefs got 16 first downs and 151 net yards efficiency. Len Dawson was the individual leader in passing, with 142 yards and 1 touchdown, and a 12/17 c/att.

I have no idea what any of that means, and I couldn't care less. Football is incredibly boring.  I'll go to a superbowl party for the snacks, but I never have any idea what's going on.  Occasionally the other guys in the room scream at the top of the lungs.  I look up from my book and say "So...did our team, like, make a point or something?"

I did try to find a picture of the Kansas City Chiefs with their shirts off.  This one came up, but it also says "Ohio State Football Players Can't Stop Being Shirtless."

I didn't know the Kansas City Chiefs were at Ohio State, but it makes as much sense as anything else in football.

Here's another one of the Kansas City Chief shirtless, at a barbecue that Channing Tatum threw for the Magic Mike Live dancers.

So a football team named after Kansas City that is actually in Ohio moonlights as a dance troupe?

This is why I don't follow football!

But in th summer of 1970, when I was nine years old, I did watch some episodes of a tv series about football!

I know, weird -- nobody watched summer replacement series.  They were awful comedy-variety crap.  Besides, there was something unsettling about watching evening tv when it was still daylight out.

But Where's Huddles was animated, and the two football players, Ed Huddles (Cliff Norton) and Bubba McCoy (Mel Blanc), did a sort of Fred Flintstone-Barney Rubble buddy-bonding routine.  Huddles' wife was even voiced by Jean Vander Pyle (Wilma on The Flintstones).

There was also a Muttley-style snickering dog wearing a football helmet, a daughter named Pom-pom, and a black guy (rare in 1970).

And a football-hating next-door neighbor, Pertwee, voiced with a strong gay accent by Paul Lynde, who I knew from Bewitched.  He voiced everything I thought about football and jocks in general, and he didn't have a wife -- somehow he had avoided the "wife-house-job" future the adults were always mapping out for me!

I didn't know that Paul Lynde was gay himself, and playing the character as gay.  I wouldn't even know that gay people existed for another six years.

But I remember a warm summer evening, when it was still light out, and you could hear the kids playing outside through the screen door, and the fireflies were just starting to sparkle, sitting in front of the tv in our small square house on 41st Street, and seeing a gay man.

Eddie is an Eye-Witness to Prince Charles Having Sex with an Extremely Muscular Scottish Athlete

Boomer: Hi, Eddie.  Did you know that I'm the sixth cousin, once removed, of Prince William?  His mother, Princess Diana, and my mother share great-great-great-great grandmothers.

Eddie:  Brilliant!  You should pop over to Kensington Palace and say hello.  Maybe Wills will invite you in for a sandwich.

Boomer:  I don't think so.  William probably has about six thousand sixth cousins.  You're much closer to the royal family than I could ever be..  You went to Eton with Harry and got a sausage sighting of him in the shower.  You've met William, Charles, Prince Andrew, Princess Anne...the Queen?

Eddie: Not formally, but I've been in the same room with her.  I was eight years old, not impressed.

Boomer: I know what you mean.  I met President Johnson when I was five, and the only thing I could think was 'He's not cute'!  But I was wondering, with all the insider scoops you've been privy to over the years, if you can substantiate the 'Prince Charles is Gay' rumors.

Eddie:  Not gay, though, really?  Bi, maybe.  My Dad tells me he had a girl for every day of the week before he met Diana.

Boomer:  I found a list on the internet: Caroline Longman, Lady Tryon, Laura Watkins, Angela Keating, Camilla Hipwood, Rosie Vestey, Davina Morley...well, the list goes on and on.  If he slept with all of those women, he'd be a regular Lothario.  But was there time on any of those days of the week for men?

The rest of the story, with explicit details of Prince Charles, the future king of England, having explicit gay sex with an extremely muscular Scottish athlete, with nude pictures of the athlete, is on  Gay Celebrity Dating Stories.

Gay Hints on "Let's Make a Deal"

Monty Hall, who died last year at age 92, was not exactly a gay icon, like Tarzan or James West, but he offered a few gay hints during my childhood.  He was the host of Let's Make a Deal, the game show that aired at noon or in the early evening from 1963 to 1986.

I never watched an episode all the way through -- game shows, gross!  -- but I saw snippets here and there, as I was walking through the living room on the way to do something else, or waiting for it to end so I could watch something else.










Glimpses of Monty Hall, a very well-dressed man with a beautiful smile, asking contestants to choose between Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3.  If they got a good prize, like a bedroom set or a car, "the lovely Carol Merrill" would run her hands over it while announcer Jay Stewart extolled its benefits in an obvious advertising ploy.

I never saw men in business in everyday life, except in church on Sunday, so watching Monty Hall walk up and down the aisles brought a frisson of erotic interest.  Nothing as intense as Tarzan or James West, but a frisson.

The end credits said "A Mark Goodson/Bill Todman Production."  I didn't know who Mark Goodson and Bill Todman were, but -- two guys together?  Come on, I thought, they must be boyfriends, sharing a house and a life.

Born Monte Halparin in Winnipeg in 1921, wearing a business suit even as a student at the University of Manitoba in 1944, Hall worked in radio before hosting the Canadian game show Who Am I? on television (1952-59).  He moved to New York in 1955 and hosted children's shows, sports programs, and of course game shows before developing Let's Make a Deal.

Over the years he appeared on many other talk shows and game shows, and played himself, or a parody of himself, on That Girl, Laugh-In,  Love, American Style, Love Boat, Providence, The Nanny, and That 70s Show.

Sometimes you don't need to flex anything.  A beautiful smile and a business suit are enough.

By the way, Mark Goodson, Bill Todman, Jay Stewart, Carol Merrill, and Monty Hall were probably all heterosexual.

Who Was Gay on "Perry Mason"? Everyone, Apparently.

To my parents' generation, Perry Mason was The Lawyer, what lawyers were all about: stern but caring, eminently professional (with no social life to speak of), defending clients on trial for murder, using logic and luck to uncover the real murderer, who is usually sitting right in the court room:  "I had to do it!  He would have ruined me, don't you understand?"

Created by Earle Stanley Gardner, in 1933, Perry Mason appeared in over 80 novels and short stories, becoming one of the best-known fictional characters of all time.  Movie adaptions began almost immediately, in 1934.  A radio series began in 1943.

The iconic tv series began in 1957, and ran for nine seasons.  Years later, tv movies began to air, three or four per year, thirty in all (1985-93).

In the original series, there were five main characters:

1. Perry,  played by busy character actor Raymond Burr.  Burr was gay, but invented a heterosexual back story for himself, and refused to be seen in public with lover Robert Benevides. He never came out to the rest of the cast; they knew, sort of, but they didn't know.

2. His secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale), with whom Perry did not have a "will they or won't they" sparring romance, like every pair of male-female coworkers on every tv show since.

Barbara Hale's husband, Bill Williams, was rumored to be gay.

They had one son, William Katt (The Greatest American Hero)

3. Private investigator Paul Drake.  Played by William Hopper (gossip columnist Hedda Hopper's son), who was rumored to be gay.  He was married twice, and had a son.

4. District attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman), who must hate going to trial against Perry Mason, since he will invariably lose.

Talman was also rumored to be gay, although he was married three times.  He was fired in 1960, after the police raided a party he was attending, and found the guests (both men and women) nude and  "high on marijuana."  Burr and other cast members intervened, and got him re-hired.

5. Homicide detective Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins).  He was probably straight.

The Windsors: Royal Gossip and Beefcake

I rather like The Windsors (2016-).  It's raunchy and silly, but endearing, an exaggeration of the foibles of the British royal family, told as a soap opera.

The central figures, Wills and Kate (Hugh Skinner, Louise Ford), are rather nice, except Wills doesn't want to be king.  The problem is, Wills doesn't know how the outside world works, like you have to pay for things and open doors for yourself.

Hugh Skinner is attractive, in a square-jawed fairy-tale prince way.   He's done a lot of British tv, including Our Zoo, W1A (About the inner workings of the BBC), and Poldark  

He's played a gay character at least once, in the stage version of American Psycho.

Harry (Richard Goulding) is a good-natured dolt, mega-stupid, working at odd jobs like apprentice window washer.  He's in love with Kate's sister Pippa (Morgana Robinson), who is trying to weasel her way into becoming queen by seducing Wills or Harry or both.

Richard Goulding is primarily a stage actor, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company beginning in 2007. He played Prince Harry in the stage play King Charles III, which was adapted into a 2017 tv movie.

Charles (Harry Enfield) is obsessed with "being king first," while his wife Camilla (Hadyn Gwynne) is a scheming soap opera villain, trying to sabotage the lives of his children.

Meanwhile Fergie (Katy Wix), persona non grata since her divorce, schemes to get back into the family.  Her daughters Eugenie and Beatrice (Ellie White, Celeste Dring) are forced to get jobs ("I couldn't stand the 12-3 Tuesday-Thursday rat race!).   Prince Edward (Matthew Cottle, seen here with his son Devon) keeps trying to make a few quid at odd jobs.

Meanwhile the ghosts of past kings keep appearing to offer Wills advice.  Look for "anarchist drag performer" Dickie Beau as the gay James I.  Otherwise not a lot of gay references, but the beefcake is ample.

Mikel Murfi: Intellectual, Avant-Garde Bulge

Speaking of Irish men that I want to see a lot more of:

I saw the movie The Last September (1999) because Elizabeth Bowen, who wrote the 1929 novel, often included gay-coded characters.  So I figured there would be gay subtexts.

It was set during the Irish War of Independence in 1920, when a wealthy Anglo-Irish family go through romantic intrigues against the backdrop of the political crisis. I didn't see much gay subtext.

But there's a three-scene minor character, Sergeant Wilson, who terrorizes and humiliates the Irish villagers.

They get revenge by kidnapping him, stripping him naked, and sexually assaulting him (off camera).  But there's a frontal nude shot.

You have to freeze frame to see it, but his beneath-the-belt gift is astounding. Easily Mortadella+.  Definitely deserving a place on my Sausage List.

Sergeant Wilson was played by Mikel Murfi (great name!).  The Internet Movie Database lists some screen appearances, mostly in Irish movies that I haven't seen: After Midnight (1990),  Guiltrip (1995), The Butcher Boy (1997).  

In 2014 he starred in Edwart and Arlette, a gender-bending take on the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box."

Most of his work has been on stage, a lot of avant-garde theater, with some gay subtext potential:

The Man in Woman's Shoes: about a man walking to town to deliver a pair of shoes in rural Ireland in 1978.

Sick Dying Dead Buried Out: the relationship between two clowns who are dying.

Ballyturk: Two men (Mikel Murfi, Cilian Murphy) trapped in a room, don't know how they got there or how to get out..

Murfi has also produced and directed a lot of avant garde plays through his theater company, Barabbas.  He's particularly interested in works that invoke the spirit of playwright Samuel Beckett.

And, apparently, have gay subtext potential.

The Country Girls: two girls from the west of Ireland in the 1950s have a relationship.

The Last Days of Ollie Deasey: a man searches through Ireland for his long-lost father.

Penelope: four men at the bottom of a swimming pool wait to die.

Knowing that he's done so much intellectual creative work, it's rather embarrassing to be thinking about something so mundane as Murfi's package.

But it was a magnificent sight.

See also: Bachelor Weekend: Six Irish Guys Get Naked.; and My Sausage List.

The Gay Connection of Three Radio Tarzans

By 1930, radio was the most popular medium in the United States.  Over 50% of urban and 30% of rural households had radios at home, and you could also listen at bars, nightclubs, restaurants.  Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan had already made a splash in fiction and the movies; it was time to break into radio.

1. The first series premiered in September 1932, with Joan Burroughs (daughter of ERB) as Jane and James Pierce as Tarzan. Broadcast for 15 minutes three times a week, it was aimed heavily at the kiddie market, with a special Tarzan Club that soon grew to 400,000 members.

James Pierce (1900-1983) was a struggling actor and football coach at Glendale High School when he went to a party hosted by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  The 50 year old writer, Burroughs took one look at the tall, handsome, muscular athlete and asked him to star in the next Tarzan picture, Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927).  The two remained close friends for the rest of Burroughs' life, and eventually Pierce married Joan.

Pierce continued to work on radio through the 1940s, and took minor roles in movies as guards, henchmen, police officers, and characters with names like "Big Man" and "Burly Man."  When Burroughs died in 1950, Pierce and his wife left Hollywood and moved to Shelbyville, Indiana.  He died in 1983; his tombstone reads "Tarzan."

2. Two radio serials aired in 1934 and 1936: Tarzan and the Diamonds of Ashur and Tarzan and the Fires of Tohr, starring Carlton Kadell (aka Karlton KaDell). Born in 1905 in Indiana, he moved to Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he appeared on such programs as Amos and Andy, The Edgar Bergen Show, Jack Armstrong All American Boy, Red Ryder, and Big Town.   

Kadell was gay.  In 1949 he was arrested on a morals charge after asking an undercover officer if he wanted "to have a good time" and making additional "lewd propositions."  He denied the charge, but still had to leave Hollywood and move to Chicago, where he became the announcer for the program Classical Kaleidoscope.  He died in 1975.

3. In 1951-1952, Tarzan returned to radio with a half-hour show, portrayed by Lamont Johnson (1922-2010).   75 weekly episodes aired.  Johnson later became a tv actor and director, with credits including That Certain Summer (1972), about a boy discovering that his dad is gay, and Paul's Case (1980), about a young gay man who steals money so he can run away to the city.













Movie Tarzan Gordon Scott was reputedly gay, and Johnny Weissmuller bisexual. That makes for a substantial gay connection for the Lord of the Apes.

See also: The Sons of Two Famous Actors Hook Up with Tarzan; Johnny Sheffield Almost Becomes Tarzan's Lover

Jackie Coogan's Boyfriend

When I met Keith Coogan in 2013, nearly the first thing I asked was, "Whose idea was the underwear scene in Toy Soldiers? (1991).

You're making a movie about the boys at an elite boarding school being held hostage by terrorists.  Whose idea was it to have the cast, composed entirely of teenage hunks, in their underwear all the time?

Not that I minded. I especially didn't mind getting an eyeful of Keith's bulge.

Keith insisted that there was no homoerotic intent.  Those scenes took place at night, when they were stripped down for bed.  They got to choose their own underwear, so he wore his regular "tighty whities."

Not that he minds the attention from gay fans: he's been a gay ally his whole life.  He learned all about gay people a long time ago, from his grandfather, Jackie Coogan

Famous to Baby Boomers as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family, Jackie Coogan was one of Hollywood's first child stars, co-starring with Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1924) at the age of 7.

He went on to play Peck's Bad Boy, Oliver Twist, Toby Tyler, and Huckleberry Finn before moving into a long career as an adult character actor, appearing in everything from College Swing (1938) to Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (1977).  He had four wives, including World War II pin-up girl Betty Grable.  He struggled with heart and kidney disease through his life, and finally died of heart failure in 1984, at the age of 69.

Daughter Leslie Diane, born in 1953, left home at age 15, and married, had Keith, and divorced within the next year.  Keith grew up in poverty, his mother working odd jobs and getting government assistance; for awhile they lived in a changing room on the tennis court outside the Malibu mansion where Leslie worked as a housekeeper.

Leslie wasn't happy about Keith's decision to become an actor, but she agreed to drive him around for auditions; he began doing commercials at age 5, got his first movie role at age 8, and landed a recurring spot on The Waltons at age 9.

Grandpa Jackie was a constant presence in his life, visiting every summer,  advising him on his acting career ("always know exactly where your money is going"), telling him stories of Old Hollywood.  Raunchy stories about men caught with their pants down in actresses' dressing rooms, all male parties where the guy with the biggest penis won a prize (Ramon Novarro always won.)   One of his favorite stories was about his teenage boyfriend, Junior Durkin:

Adam Mastrelli Reveals "Untold Secrets"

Watching tv on the treadmill at the gym during the daytime is usually awful. 

Endless reruns of Friends.  I get it: Joey is stupid, Chandler is neurotic, Phoebe is judgmental, and none of them are funny.

The Loud Family 35 times a day on Nickelodeon.

Austin and Allie on the Disney Channel (still?). 

Reality tv programs about pawn shops and interior design. 

The last 5 minutes of a movie.

. Sports, sports, sports, sports, and sports. 

And when you do hit something interesting, it will end in a few seconds to make way for a 5-minute commercial break (1/6th of my run!).

So it was quite a pleasant surprise the other day, when I came across a program about George Washington as a Mason.  I'm interested in the paranormal and secret societies, so I kept watching.

It turned out to be Untold Secrets a Travel Channel program about "a multitude of secrets, revealing amazing facts and stranger-than-fiction anecdotes that are destined to fuel water cooler conversations for days to come."  I happened to stumble across the first, and so far, only episode, "George Washington."

The "historical investigator" is 42-year old Adam Mastrelli, "a modern day Renaissance man," an actor with credits on General Hospital, Rescue Me, and a number of Broadway shows, including Yo, Alice (a hiphop version of Alice in Wonderland). 

He also does something with IBM, and he is involved with Grassroots Soccer, an organization founded by former soccer pro Ethan Zohn (top photo),  dedicated to using soccer for AIDS prevention.

Adam has no wife listed on IMDB, so he's probably gay.  I'm not sure about his history credentials: he has a B.A. in sociology from Duke.  But he has quite a nice physique.

Beats watching Joey, Ross, and Phoebe for the umpteenth time.