Looking for Muscles on the Carol Burnett Show

Variety shows are out of style now, but in the 1960s, they were all the rage.  At least among the adults.  In 1969, they could watch 9 hours of variety per week: Leslie Uggams, Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, Glen Campbell,  Jim Nabors, Tom Jones, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, and Andy Williams (programs all named after their star).

All of the kids I knew hated variety. Passionately.  Except for our own Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In, of course.  Slow songs from dinosaur times, lady dancers in skimpy costumes, jokes involving heterosexual desire, comedy sketches featuring characters popular on radio a thousand years ago, and bathetic closing numbers involving sad clowns or cleaning ladies.

I usually managed to get out of watching variety shows by claiming homework, or when my brother and I got our own tv set, watching something else -- anything else.  But for some reason I saw a lot of Carol Burnett, hatred or not.

There were only three reasons to watch:

1. Co-host Lyle Waggoner, a former male model who appeared nude in Playgirl.  He played the leading-men and hunks in comedy sketches.  Unfortunately, because they were comedy, he never appeared nude or even shirtless on the show.

2. Frequent guest star Ken Berry (previously of Mayberry RFD), who sang, danced, and appeared in comedy sketches.  He had some muscles, and often wore extra-tight pants that would give Frank Gorshin some competition in the bulge department. Unfortunately, his numbers usually involved heterosexual romance.  One, called "Love Stolen from the Cookie Jar," was about how much he enjoyed  grabbing the butts of strange girls.

3. Occasionally other hunky guest stars, like Steve Lawrence and John Davidson.

4. The "Mama's Family" sketches, about a dysfunctional Southern family, featuring Carol as the brash Eunice (left), Harvey Korman (not pictured) as her husband, and the much younger Vickie Lawrence as crotchety Mama (right).  Gay actor Roddy McDowell (center) appeared occasionally as Eunice's highly educated, sophisticated brother, who lived to regret his visits. Alan Alda and Tommy Smothers appeared as other brothers before it was established that Mama had only one son, Vinton (Ken Berry).

 Anything that skewered the myth of the deliriously happy nuclear family was fun.  And it spun off into the sitcom Mama's Family, which was a must-watch program of the 1980s due to the hunky Alan Kayser.

See also: Once Upon a Mattress.

"Ginny and Georgia": "The Gilmore Girls" with More Sex and Murder

When you log on to Netflix, a promo immediately starts blaring at you: a high school girl takes down the teacher for assigning 16 books this semester, but only two by women and one by a person of color. Is he teaching literature or white male privilege? I could use some woke characters, so I started watching Ginny and Ginny or something like that.  

Scene 1: Ginny is in a classroom, narrating: "My Mom had me when she was my age, 15, so I got the "sex talk" at age 7."  Hunkoid turns around to flirt with her.  She continues: "Sex.  Men want it, and they think you should give it to him."  Ok, all men are interested in sex with women.  No gay people exist.  Strike 1.

Hunkoid goes off to flirt with some girls with their hair blowing in the wind in slow motion (how do they get the wind to blow inside the classroom?)  Ginny seethes with jealousy.  

A teacher calls her out of class to say that her stepfather has been killed in an accident.  Whoops, I thought this was a comedy.  Strike 2.

Scene 2:  The open-casket funeral.  Ginny overhears two women talking trash about her mother and accidentally on purpose bumps into them.  To be fair, Mom is dressed in a Black Widow outfit and being overly dramatic about her grief.  She's obviously delighted that the geezer is dead: she inherits all of his money, and his own son gets nothing.

Scene 3: Ginny, her Mom Georgia, and 9-year old Austin are heading north in their convertible.  Georgia shoves her feet into Ginny's face and sings that song that Ashton Kutcher sings in that Cheetos commercial -- wait, it's a real song about catching someone having sex.  I thought it was weird for him to catch Mila Kunis eating Cheetos in the shower.

They have enough money now for Mom to take a break from marrying men.  Maybe she'll even try dating for fun, have sex with someone she actually likes for a change.  

Scene 4: They stop for gas at a small-town gas station (Interstate Highways don't exist, of course). A  fat redneck Southern sheriff stereotype sees Ginny pumping gas, stops his car, and walks toward her in slow motion (she's black-ish).  But then he sees that Georgia is white, and leaves them alone.

Scene 5: They arrive at ritzy small-town Massachusetts, with yoga studios and Thai fusion restaurants.  Better than Texas.  But this means the hunk from Scene 1 is gone forever.  Georgia sees a campaign poster for the Mayor, Paul something (Scott Porter), and thinks that she migiht want to have sex with him.  They arrive at their fancy federal-style house.

Flashback to a blond woman in a crappy trailer park, being assaulted by a man.  Hey, I thought this was a comedy.  She grabs a knife and slashes him to escape.  He calls: "I'm going to kill you. Mary!"

I'm confused. The women are both blond.  Is this another character, or did Georgia change her name?

Scene 6:  It seems like I've been watching forever, and there's been only one hunk and no gay references except an assertion that all men are heterosexual.  I'm about to call it quits.

A third blond woman gets out of her car and berates her son for smoking weed (son is played by Felix Mallard, back).  She sees Ginny and Georgia unloading their stuff across the street, and comes over with a plate of  "welcome to the neighborhood" cookies.  This one is named Ellen.  Three blond women in the first five minutes.  Doesn't the director find other hair colors attractive? 

Meanwhile, Ginny is talking on the phone to her dad -- apparently still in the picture, in spite of the five elderly stepdads.  She looks out the bedroom window to see the weed-smoking boy climbing ut of his window.  Wait -- Weed Smoker definitely lived across the street.  Is this another boy?

Scene 7: Georgia is dancing in front of a miror, practicing her flirtation and aiming her gun at random objects. 

I'm going to stop there.  Fast forward:  Georgia starts dating the Mayor, and starts a blackmail relationship with Joe (Raymond Ablack).  She is a survivor of abuse, which apparently explains her "marry them and poison them" life strategy.  We're supposed to find her endearing, not reprehensible.  

Ginny starts dating Marcus (Weed Smoker) and Hunter (Mason Temple, who, when you try to search for him online, you get a lot of photos of buildings).  She also gets a lesbian best friend, but gay men don't exist.

And we never see the hunk from Scene 1 again.

Zandor, Tor, and Chuck: Saturday Morning Muscle

When I was a kid in the late 1960s, it was hard to find beefcake on tv.  Wild Wild West and Tarzan were reliable, there were shirtless teens on Maya, and otherwise you had to hope that an episode of That Girl would have Ann Marie befriending a boxer, or Kirk would get his shirt ripped off on Star Trek.  

But Saturday morning cartoons more than made up for it, with huge numbers of teenage boys and adult men with muscular bodies on display (mostly spandex and open shirts, however; nothing like the semi-nudity of today).  In the fall of 1967, for example:

At 8:30, The Herculoids (1967-69), about a nuclear family of blond space barbarians who defend their planet from alien invaders.  The kid, Dorno, was about my age, but with an amazing build, like Tommy Norden from Flipper.  The dad, Zandor, was even hunkier.

At 9:00, Shazzan (1967-69), about two teenagers trapped in an Arabian nights world with the titular magic genie (not to be confused with Shazam, the Michael Gray series).  Shazzan wore a black vest and no shirt, and the teenage boy, Chuck, wore a white shirt unbuttoned to his navel.  Note: the girl was his sister, not his girlfriend.

At 9:30, you had your choice of Space Ghost and Dino Boy (1966-68), about a boy trapped in a prehistoric world with a cave man guardian, or Samson and Goliath (1967-68), about a boy and dog who morph into superheroic Samson and his lion, Goliath.  I preferred Samson, who wore another shirt unbuttoned to his navel, plus no pants.

At 10:00, The Mighty Mightor (1967-69).  about a prehistoric teenager named Tor -- super hunky already, and a member of a tribe of bodybuilders  -- who morphs into the superheroic Mightor. Unfortunately, the girl in this picture was his sort-of girlfriend.

  At 11:00, reruns of Jonny Quest.

Then a quick lunch, a bit of playing outside, and it was time for an afternoon of The Magic Sword or an old Tarzan movie.

See also: Bamm-Bamm Rubble: Gay Promise on The Flintstones.

Tim Matheson

During the 1960s, Tim Matheson voiced some of my favorite cartoon adventurers -- Jonny Quest, Sinbad Jr., Jace on Space Ghost, Young Samson -- all with strong homoerotic friendships.

I didn't actually see him on screen until Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), about a blended family with 18 kids.   He plays 18-year old Mike, a clean-cut footballer who expresses no interest in girls -- but takes his shirt off, revealing a magnificent physique.

You didn't see shirtless teenagers much in the 1960s.  I was stunned.  And hooked.

I saw him on tv a lot during the 1970s: not a lot of shirtless shots, but lots of intense, passionate same-sex relationships.  For instance, in The Quest, which lasted for only 15 episodes in the fall of 1976, Tim and Kurt Russell play brothers who didn't grow up together, and therefore treat each other more like lovers as they travel the Old West in search of their kidnapped sister.

In The Runaway Barge (1976), Tim and Bo Hopkins, workers on a barge on the Mississippi, struggle to keep it from crashing with a load of chlorine, and end up walking into the sunset together.

 Then something changed.  In Animal House  (1978), Otter (Tim) displayed a beautifully tanned chest in a toga.

Unfortunately, he formed no strong bonds with any of the other boys of Delta House.  Instead, he spent the movie sleeping with every woman in sight, including the Dean's wife.

I continued to go to Tim's movies for a few years.  He was displayed in his underwear or nude a lot, but sometimes beefcake is not enough.

He often played horny teen slackers with little time for same-sex romance.  In Up the Creek (1984), about an intercollegiate rafting race, his Bob has three buddies (Stephen Furst, Dan Monahan, Sandy Helberg), but doesn't buddy-bond with any of them.

Or else New Sensitive Men (like Ryan O'Neal), slim and handsome, but so busy bedding women that they didn't have a lot of time for same-sex romance.

 In A Little Sex (1982), for instance, Michael (Tim Matheson) has a long-term girlfriend plus the dreamy-eyed glances of every woman in town -- but his only male friend is his brother (Edward Herrman).

Or else Ordinary Guys and their wives and kids caught up in paranormal horror.  In Impulse (1984), an earthquake in a small town gives everyone poor impulse control.  Before long, they're fighting, stealing, and having indiscriminate heterosexual sex.

What changed?  The shift from television to movies?  From teen to adult? Or did the culture change, 1980s conservatism, Ronald Reagan, mechanical bulls, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche," making close same-sex friendships suspect?

I gave up in the mid-1980s.  Since then, Tim has been in over 60 movies  I've seen three.