Joseph and the Amazing Gay Dreamcoat

I'm not a big fan of musicals, but Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1972) is one of my favorites, for three reasons

Reason #1: The utter absence of a hetero-romantic plot, almost unheard-of in musical theater.

It's a Mod version of the picaresque adventures of Joseph (from the Bible), favorite of his father, given a Coat of Many Colors.

His brothers, jealous, set out to kill him, but have a change of heart and sell him to slave traders instead.  He ends up in Egypt -- depicted as a glittery Las Vegas -- as a slave to sleazy merchant Potiphar.

Potiphar's wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him -- "I don't believe in free love," he yells in 1960s slang.  Or maybe he doesn't particularly care for girls.  

Falsely accused of attempted rape, Joseph is thrown in prison, where he begins interpreting other prisoners' weird dreams, thus drawing the attention of the Pharaoh (an Elvis-like pop star).   Pharaoh makes Joseph his right-hand man. The brothers arrive, and Joseph toys with them a bit before reconciling.

Reason #2:  Pharaoh likes Joseph -- a lot.  Big gay subtext.

Reason #3: Joseph spends most of the play with the Dream Coat off.  And nearly everything else off.  The Pharaoh usually gets an opportunity to flex.

There have been innumerable revivals, in Britain and the U.S., with Joseph played by James Royce Edwards, Paul Jones, David James-Carroll, Bill Hutton, Mike Holoway, David Cassidy, his brother Patrick Cassidy, Jason Donovan, Lee Mead, and Keith Jacks (top photo).  Former teen idol Donny Osmond starred in the 1999 movie version.

But that's not all.  Joseph is a favorite of high school and college theater departments; apparently there have been 20,000 productions since 1972. So you have a good chance of seeing Stars of Tomorrow performing Joseph and the Pharaoh at a little theater near you.

David and Goliath: From King James Bible to Gay Men's Bedrooms

The Philistine warrior Goliath was BIG: nine feet nine inches (enough about the nine feet, let's hear about the six inches).  His suit of armor weighted 125 pounds.  He challenged King Saul and the Israelites, but they were too scared to approach him.

The shepherd David agreed to fight him, but the sword and armor was too bulky, so he took his clothes off and fought with just a slingshot.  He immobilized the giant, then rushed up with a sword and decapitated him.

Don't read too far, though, since in 2 Samuel we discover that David didn't do the job at all; it was Elhanan the Bethlehemite.

The story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel was a mainstay of Sunday school classes, probably because it showed a little guy triumphing over a big guy.  And because it's rather fun to imagine a nude, muscular shepherd boy striding across the battlefield, his penis swinging, the warriors all gazing in awe at his beauty.

The Biblical writers probably intended for David to be well into adulthood, in his late twenties, but artistic depictions generally make him 14-15.  And leave his pants on, as in this painting by French artist Gabriel Ferrier (1847-1914)

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) made him the right age, but upped the clothing, giving him a tunic and pants.

This Italian engraving by Marcantoni Raimondi (1480-1534) gives David a massive body and a penis, with a cloak flapping behind him.







More Davids after the break

Donny Osmond

Another performer who made gay teenagers swoon was Donny Osmond.  Originally the rascally "cute kid" in the Osmond group, he began his solo career in 1971, while still a 13-year old soprano, with "Sweet and Innocent." A string of hit singles and albums followed, mostly covers of pop classics from the 1950s -- with a twist.  Donny -- or his managers -- eliminated pronouns and the refrain of "girl!" to ensure that the object of his devotion could be male or female, thus doubling the potential audience.

For instance, in his cover of the Four Preps’ “Big Man,” Donny tells a former lover that he once he felt like “a big man,” but now that they have broken up, he feels small -- “boy, you oughta see me now.”

 “Boy” can be an intensifier regardless of the person being addressed, but after hearing 10,000 songs with “girl!” as every other word, it called attention to itself, making it seem to me that Donny was actually addressing a boy.

Similarly, in “Sweet and Innocent,” Donny either gender-bends himself into a girl or openly alludes to a same-sex love:

Lots of boys are gracious, and lots of boys are true,
 But they can’t make me feel the way I do when I’m with you.

In other words, he has had many previous relationships with boys. They were “true,” they didn’t seek out other partners. But his current boyfriend is far superior.

The most evocate of Donny's  albums, A Time for Us (1973), omits heterosexual desire almost completely. In the titular “A Time for Us" (penned by gay-friendly Johnny Mathis), Donny asks his beloved to imagine a future when “dreams so long denied can flourish, as we unveil the love we now must hide.” Fifteen-year old boys and girls rarely hide their loves; they are busy hiring limos for the junior prom, while parents snap photos to place on the mantle, friends pat them on the back, and teachers beam with satisfaction. But a boy's love for a boy may well be a “dream denied.”

At least, that's how I understood it in 1973.

Donny never did any shirtless shots for the teen magazines, but he was dreamy, with thick hair, brown eyes, and a bright smile, and as he grew into adolescence and then adulthood, he filled out his sequined jumpsuits well.

During my sophomore year in high school, my friend Rita used God's Infallible Promise to "get" Donny as her future husband.

An expert at reinventing himself, he transitioned seamlessly to an adult performer who still packs in the crowds.  He's guest-starred on countless television programs, showcased in Vegas, and performed on Broadway. His Broadway show Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which became a 1999 movie, gave audiences something they'd been dreaming of for 30 years: extensive views of Donny's physique.

Donny Osmond is a devout Mormon and staunch advocate of “family values”; but, unlike his younger brother Jimmy, he's not complicit with his church's condemnation of gay people.  He happily acknowledges that about half his fans are straight women and the other half gay men.

John Milton: 10 Gay Things About the Author of "Paradise Lost"

In one of the iconic scenes in Animal House (1978), Professor Jennings admits that he hates English poet John Milton (1608-1674), author of Paradise Lost:  "He's a bit long-winded, he doesn't translate very well into our generation, and his jokes are terrible."

And, I presumed, as heterosexist as most of the other "great writers" purveyed by English teachers.

A few months later, I started my freshman year at Augustana College, and my English Literature survey assigned Milton's  L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. 

1. Expecting the worst, I plowed in.  Surprise -- not boring at all. The poems contrasted the perennial college student question: should you spend your time partying and having fun, or studying and getting good grades?

 I leaned toward "having fun," since Milton mentions partying with Corydon and Thyrsis, two gay characters from Virgil's Eclogues.

2. During  my sophomore year, a course in Renaissance Literature assigned Comus, a masque (a sort of pageant with minimal plot): a Lady is kidnapped by the evil Comus, who tries unsuccessfully to seduce her while her brothers rush to the rescue.  It was performed for the Earl of Bridgewater, whose own brother had been executed for sodomy.  So Comus becomes a stand-in for a gay temptation.

3. This muscular, shirtless Comus appeared in the only modern production that I'm aware of, at Florida International University in 2010.

4. We also had to read Lycidas: An elegy lamenting the death of Milton's Cambridge classmate Edward King, who drowned (here he is portrayed as a naked muscle god).

Anything celebrating a same-sex love can't be boring.

5. John Fletcher (left) recites Lycidas in his underwear before a blow-up version of Stonehenge.  I don't know why.

6. During my junior year, I took an entire class in Milton, and we read the big, scary one: Paradise Lost, an epic poem the fall of Satan, the temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Paradise.  But there were lots of gay subtexts: Satan, an "angel of light," heterosexual sex leads to downfall, and so on.  I wrote a paper on it at Indiana University.

7. And you can't beat the beefcake of the illustrations by Gustav Dore.

8. We also had to read Paradise Regained, about Christ being tempted by all of the pleasures of the world, including: "fair stripling youths rich clad, of fairer hew than Ganymede or Hylas."  So they're hotter than the boyfriends of Zeus and Hercules in Greek mythology?

9. And the "closet drama" Samson Agonistes: the Biblical strongman has been captured by the Philistines, blinded, and enchained.  He bewails his seduction by Delilah: "foul effeminancy held me yoke."  That's right, liking women is effeminate.  Real men like men.

10. Strongman Fernando Lamberty played Samson in a performance at Florida International University in 2009.

John Milton was no doubt homophobic -- who in 17th century Britain wasn't?  But there's still a lot of gay interest in his works.

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

The Four Cassidy Brothers and the Gay-Friendly 1970s

Speaking of show business dynasties, character actor Jack Cassidy (who starred with Paul Anka in Look in Any Window) married musical theater star Shirley Jones in 1956 (they divorced in 1974).  They had three children of their own. After their divorce in 1974, Shirley Jones married comedian Marty Ingels, who helped her raise the youngest two.

1. David was born to Jack Cassidy and his first wife Evelyn Ward in 1950.  By 1970 he was starring with stepmom Shirley Jones in The Partridge Family (1970-74) and establishing himself as the top teen idol of his generation.  But he also did some tv and movie work, including his own series, David Cassidy: Man Undercover (1978-79).


2. Shaun, born in 1958, became a tv star of his own in the gay-subtext Hardy Boys Mysteries (1977-79).  He also had a teen idol career before becoming a writer, director, and producer.

3.Born in 1962, Patrick began his acting career in the anti-drug cautionary tale Angel Dusted (1981), and played gay characters twice: a West Point cadet in Dress Gray (1986), and an actor with AIDS in Longtime Companion (1989).  He is still involved in raising consciousness about AIDS.


 He's appeared in lots of other tv series and tv movies, including two versions of the Superman myth: he played the villainous Leslie Luckinbill in three episodes of Lois and Clark (1996) and Henry Small, the father of Superboy's girlfriend Lana Lang, on Smallville (2002-2003).

On stage, he got to display his physique in two renditions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  He's also been in The Music Man, Annie Get Your Gun, Camelot, and 42nd Street.

4, Ryan, born in 1966 (bottom, with his mother, Patrick, and Shaun), wasn't interested in an acting career.

But he guest starred on three episodes of The Facts of Life (1985) with Mackenzie Astin (left) which made the teen magazines go wild  -- and in the buddy-bonding Jesse Hawkes (1989) with several other celebrity kids, including Chad McQueen, Ethan Wayne, and Ramon Sheen.  Then he moved behind the scenes as a set designer.

See also: David Cassidy.

The Tomorrow People: British Science Fiction with clones and short-shorts

During the "British invasion" of the 1970s, I got a taste of British science fiction on PBS: Doctor Who, The Tripods, Timeslip, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Space: 1999, UFO, and The Prisoner.  One of my favorites was The Tomorrow People (1973-79), about children who are different.  Like the X-Men in comics, they are the next stage of human evolution, with telekinetic, teleportation, and telepathic powers (which allows them to communicate with aliens from all over the galaxy).  They work out of the Lab, in an abandoned London underground station, where they hide from the baddies who want to hurt them, fight various threats, and keep a watch for other Tomorrow People who are "breaking out" (recognizing their identity).

The gay symbolism is obvious: children realize that they are different, but must keep their identity a secret.

During Season One (1973-74), the three main Tomorrow People were Kenny (15-year old Stephen Salmon), John (24-year old Nicholas Young, left), and Carol (Sammie Winmill). But then Stephen (16-year old Peter Vaughan-Clarke, right) "broke out" and quickly became the central character.  He established a strong bond with John.

Stephen and John remained paired through Season Four (1975-76), as other Tomorrow People came and went with the frequency of Doctor Who's mortal companions.

There were also lots of other kinds of "different" kids.  Robert (Jason Kemp), for instance, belonged to the alien Denagelee race, who hatch from eggs, releasing enormous energy (last time they hatched, the Roman Empire fell).

15-year old Mike Holoway (right), well known in Britain as the drummer of the teen group Flintlock, joined the series in 1975, playing muscular rocker Mike.  His popularity led to the dismissal of Peter Vaughan-Clark; when Season Five began, Stephen was absent without explanation.

Mike frequently expressed heterosexual interest, but his constant shirtless, swimsuit, and underwear shots made up for it. He remained the central character until the series ended in 1979. (It was revived with new casts in 1992-95 and 2001-2007).

Mike Holoway is still a recording artist, and his numerous musical stage roles, such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Godspell, provide substantial beefcake.

The American version (1992-1995) starred Christian Tessier.

Samson, the Biblical Muscleman

The famous muscleman Samson appears in the Hebrew Bible in Judges 13-16.  His long hair is the source of superhuman strength, allowing him to wreak all sorts of mischief on the evil Philistines.  But Delilah teases the secret out of him and cuts his hair.  The Philistines blind him and put him to work on a giant millstone.  But he regains his strength long enough to pull down the pillars in the Temple of Dagon, killing himself and 3,000 worshippers.

Sounds similar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Several incidents from Samson's life have inspired artists. Leon Bonnat's Samson's Youth (1891) portrays a young, naked Samson killing a lion with his bare hands.  He will later use the lion's jaw to make up a riddle for the Phillistines.

At Yale University you can see a statue by John Cheere (1709-1787) of Samson getting a...I mean Samson slaying a Phillistine (he really hated them)

Probably the most common subject for artists is the betrayal by Delilah.

Giovanni Francesco Guercino's Samson Captured by the Phillistines (1619) emphasizes his muscular backside, and pushes Delilah over to the side in insignificance.

Samson and Delilah (1609-10), by Peter-Paul Rubens, shows the sleeping muscleman about to get cropped.

Paul-Albert Rouffio, Samson and Delilah (1874) by Paul-Albert Rouffio, shows a long-haired Samson with a smoking body reclining at the feat of Delilah.

Another popular theme is Samson pulling down the pillars at the Temple of Dagon. This statue is in Portugal.












This stylized depiction, with Samson as massive and square-edged as the pillars themselves, is in Ashdod, Israel.

Guido Renni's The Victorious Samson (1609) doesn't show any temples being destroyed.  A rather young, naked Samson is removing the blindfold from his eyes.

Jacob Wrestles the Angel

When I was a kid, our Sunday school classes went over all the great Old Testament stories of skullduggery, betrayal, abandonment, and murder (and those were the heroes).  In junior high, they were gradually phased out in favor of up to date "raps" about the evils of rock music and Roman Catholicism, but for a few years it was a wild ride.

My favorite hero/villain of the Old Testament was Jacob, son of Isaac.  It had deceit, sibling rivalry, and weird paranormal experiences. .

1. Esau, the eldest son, gets the birthright, but when he comes in famished from hunting, the sneaky Jacob tricks him into trading it over in exchange for a "mess of pottage."  Surely that constitutes duress.

2. He sneakily pretends to be Esau to get his father's blessing, too (his conniving Mother puts him up to it).

3. By this point, everyone is mad at him, so he runs away.  On the road, has some weird visions, like a Stairway to Heaven, with angels climbing up and down it.  Weird!

4. And, in the middle of the wilderness, an angel appears and wrestles with him all night.  That's quite a lengthy wrestling bout! The angel wins by wounding Jacob on the thigh.

Wait -- "thigh" is an ancient Hebrew euphemism for "penis." Maybe these guys weren't exactly "wrestling."

Other passages in the Bible state it was a "man" or "God," adding to the mystery of the encounter.

The "Wrestling with an Angel" story has received the most artistic interest, since it allowed artists to depict a homoerotic embrace between two naked men who aren't trying to kill each other.

This nude head-grabbing statue is by Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872-1940), the boyfriend of author Henry James.

A more stylized pair, with their crotches pressed together, was erected on the grounds of the University of Scranton in 1982 by sculptor Arlene Love.

I don't know what these guys are up to, but Jacob's backside is emphasized.  It's by British artist Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959).

Painters have gotten into the act, too.  The muscular legs and backsides are emphasized in this painting by Leon Bonnat (1833-1922).

Eugene Delacroix (1768-1863) clothes the angel, but gives Jacob almost a modern bodybuilder's physique.

Contemporary painter Paul Gilbert Baswell mysteriously hides the angel's face.