The Bugaloos: A male ladybug with biceps starts a rock band. With Gavin Lewis and Glenn Scarpelli's neighbor

17 episodes of The Bugaloos aired during the 1970-71 season, and were rerun in 1971-72.  That's a little short, even for a Sid and Marty Krofft live action-animatronic series: Sigmund and the Sea Monsters had 29, and Land of the Lost had 43.

But millions of 1960s kids fondly recall the 17 episodes, and the infinite array of tie-in merchandise: a record album, a lunchbox, a board game, a 4-issue comic book series, costumes for Halloween, 3 novels.

The Bugaloos were a hippie family/rock band composed of  British insect people, all named after virtues.

1. I.Q. (John McIndoe), a gangly blond grasshopper

2. Harmony (Wayne Laryea) a black bumblebee

3. Joy (Caroline Ellis) a female butterfly

4. Courage (John Philpott, left) a muscular male ladybug.

Very muscular.  Always wearing a tight red shirt that highlighted his pecs and lay bare his arms and shoulders.

And exceptionally tight pants.

Unlike most Krofft shows, they were not trapped far from home: they lived in a hippie commune, the Tranquility Forest, singing, dancing, flying, and displaying no heterosexual interest

But their Eden was threatened by Benita Bizarre (Martha Raye), who hated their youth, their beauty, their freedom, their talent, and. . .well, their tranquility.  She stole Joy's voice and IQ's wings; she kidnapped and branwashed Courage; she tried to drive them out of their forest.

Establishment fear of the youth counterculture,but from the counterculture's point of view.  Clash of innocence and experience, age and. . um, obviously a metaphor for. . .um. . .

Who could think about anything but the male ladybug, with his sleeveless shirt and obvious bulge?

More after the break

H. R. Pufnstuf: The Dragon and the Witch Compete over Jimmy's Flute

 I can’t watch H. R. Pufnstuf anymore. The lightning-quick takes, psychedelic colors, lame wise-cracks, and aggressive laugh-track are annoying. But in 1969, when I was 8 years old, I looked forward to it all week.

In the opening segment, a cute, androgynous sixteen-year old named Jimmy (Jack Wild, fomerly of Oliver), with a Beatles moptop and a cowboy hat, is prancing through a bucolic mountain countryside, playing with his golden flute (it is not really gold in color but dark bronze, thicker and blockier than real flutes, and extremely phallic later, as it peeps out of Jimmy’s pocket).

 A “kooky old witch” named Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes), passing by on her supersonic Vroom-Broom, spies Jimmy and decides that her drafty old castle could use his youthful vitality – and his ten inches of flute. She instructs a sentient boat to lure Jimmy aboard with the promise of a pleasant journey to Living Island. But when the trip commences, the boat develops arms and claws to hold Jimmy securely in place, while the witch laughs maniacally, and:

The sky grew dark
The sea grew rough
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on


In a scene that is still frightening today, Jimmy manages to free himself from the grasping claws, and dives into the dark, choppy sea. He crawls onto a distant, desolate beach and collapses, half-drowned and exhausted. Then – somewhat too late – help arrives. A tall green-and-yellow dragon named H. R. Pufnstuf resuscitates Jimmy, moves him into his cave, and dresses him in a garish Fab Four outfit (one wonders where the dragon got human clothes. Have there been other Jimmies, lost boys washing up on the beach over and over forever?). Then Pufnstuf introduces Jimmy to the citizens of Living Island, various animals, plants, and inanimate objects, all sentient and wise-cracking, almost all male.

Since Jimmy is well protected, Witchiepoo turns her attention to the flute, now sentient and named Freddy. Most episodes involve Witchiepoo’s grandiose, impractical schemes to steal Freddy, or, when she succeeds, Jimmy and company’s equally grandiose, impractical schemes to retrieve him. Jimmy also mounts a few half-hearted escape attempts, but it is obvious that he has no real desire to leave Living Island. Witchiepoo is more cranky than evil, promising excitement more than threat, and Jimmy is having the time of his life, dancing, singing, putting on plays with a group of caring, attentive friends who tolerate all of his many gender transgressions.

The feature film Pufnstuf appeared in July 1970. In a new back story, Jimmy has recently moved from England to a resort town (Big Bear Lake, California), where he plays the flute in the school band (rather a fairy choice of instrument, I thought). During a practice session on the front lawn of a gaudy, baroque junior high school, the other boys insult him, mock his accent, and finally trip him, and he knocks over some music stands. True to junior high form, the teacher concludes that Jimmy is the troublemaker, and kicks him out of the band. Jimmy runs away, through a town of small brown cabins and autumn-orange trees that, for all its beauty, promises nothing but brutality and viciousness. Eventually he stops by the lake to rest. Suddenly his flute grows longer and thicker, changes from gold to brown, and starts to move of its own accord – an awkward moment for Jimmy to enter puberty!

Witchiepoo happens to be flying overhead, and the plot proceeds as in the series. But now she has a homosocial motive for her designs. She believes that Freddy the Flute will be a perfect trinket to impress the other witches, especially Witch Hazel (Mama Cass Eliot of The Mamas and the Papas), with whom she has a sort of Auntie Mame/Vera Charles rivalry.

All of the many witches we meet in the film are female, and all are aggressively heterosexual. Witchiepoo tries to sneak into Pufnstuf’s cave by flirting with him as vampish dance instructor Benita Bugaloo, and when she telephones Witch Hazel, their conversation consists mostly of gossip about which female witch is dating which man. The film makes Living Island, conversely, a veritable Fire Island, inhabited by ten men (or male beings) and only two women, Pufnstuf’s sister and Judy the Frog (a parody of gay icon Judy Garland).

 None of them is married or involved with the other sex, nor do any of the male residents “boing” with lust over Witchiepoo in her bodacious disguise. It was not unusual for children’s films a generation ago to omit heterosexual content, but quite unusual to place it squarely in the laps of evil witches while infusing the hero and his friends with a blatantly gay sensibility.

Certainly Jimmy’s cherubic cuteness and sexy Cockney accent made the show a must-see for me in 1969, but there is more. The crux of the action is a competition between the female Witchiepoo and the male Pufnstuf over control of Jimmy’s phallus ( Freddy the Flute), and it ends unequivocally in the male camp. Witchiepoo lives in a dark, sinister castle dug-through with dungeons and pits, and Pufnstuf in a gaudy psychedelic Arcadia, with living trees and flowers. Witchiepoo barks out orders to cowering servants, Pufnstuf offers advice to dear friends. Who would disagree that the Dragon is far superior to the Witch?

There's a gay hookup story about Jack Wild on Tales of West Hollywood.

The Bay City Rollers

During the mid-1970s, I occasionally saw pictures of the Bay City Rollers in teen magazines, but I knew nothing about them, except that Ian Mitchell got the lion's share of semi-nude and bulging swimsuit photos, even though he was a member of the band for only about seven months.

I figured they were from Bay City, Michigan and performed on roller skates.

No, they were Scottish, trying to capitalize on American chic by throwing a dart at a map of the U.S. and naming themselves after wherever it hit.

And "roller" meant "rock and roll."

Consisting of Alan and Derek Longmuir, Eric Faulkner, Stuart Wood, Les McKeown, and for awhile Ian Mitchell (with Tam Paton as their manager), they were so big in Britain that they were compared to the Beatles.  There were also big stars in Australia, Canada, and Japan.  They established an entire "Bay City Rollers" lifestyle, complete with costumes and slang terms.

In the U.S., they charted in 1975 and 1976, but had only one #1 hit: "Saturday Night," which I remember only vaguely:

Gonna dance with my baby till the night is thru
On Saturday Night, Saturday Night
Tell her all the little things I'm gonna do
On Saturday night, Saturday Night

Maybe that's why I don't remember it; incessantly heterosexist.

In 1978, they appeared on The Krofft Superstar Hour on Saturday morning tv, along with such Krofft superstars as Witchiepoo from H.R. Pufnstuf (which had been off the air for years).

The program was even renamed, briefly, to The Bay City Rollers Show, making it one of the famous short-lived 1970s variety shows, along with The Brady Bunch Variety Show and The Hudson Brothers Show.

By the end of 1978, Les McKeown and Tam Paton left the group, and the remaining guys renamed themselves The Rollers, and then the New Bay City Rollers. Their last official concert was in 2000.  But today there are two competing groups: Les McKeown's Legendary Bay City Rollers, plus The Bay City Rollers Featuring Ian Mitchell.

In spite of their largely heterosexist lyrics, there are some gay connections. Tam Paton was gay.  In 2009 he faced charges of child sexual abuse for alleged incidents with under-aged boys. He was cleared, but the stress weakened his health, and he died shortly thereafter.  

Les McKeown came out as gay on tv in 2009.  He states that no one knew, not even his wife of 25 years.

"Sigmund and the Sea Monsters": Johnny Whitaker and his boyfriend encounter a blog

The Krofft animatronic Saturday morning shows like Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost usually involved boys trapped far from home, but the 1973-1975 entry, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, used the "I've got a secret" theme instead. Sigmund (Billy Barty), a three-foot tall blob of green tentacles, is expelled from his abusive family for being “a rotten sea monster.” He wanders up onto the beach and befriends two human boys, Johnny (Johnny Whitaker) and Scott (Scott Kolden). Most episodes involve Sigmund being befuddled by human society while hiding from his bullying brothers (who need him back for some mercenary reason), and the boys being likewise befuddled by sea monster society while trying to hide Sigmund from human authority figures.

Johnny Whitaker had previously starred as the saccharine Jody on Family Affair (1966-71), and as a shepherd boy who jumps off a cliff and becomes The Littlest Angel (1969).  He was only fourteen at the start of Sigmund, but still, he was on display far more than other Krofft boys.  His opening shots at the beach, in a swimming suit and then a muscle shirt, showed a toned body with surprisingly firm biceps, and later he sauntered around the set in impossibly tight jeans that almost allowed gay kids to overlook his hair, fluffy, carrot-red, with the texture of cotton candy.

He would show off his muscles that same year in Tom Sawyer (1973)

Sigmund critiques the myth of the heterosexual nuclear family both overtly through the bickering sea monsters, and more subtly through the human family: parents absent and never mentioned, the adult guardian a no-nonsense, grumpily affectionate, arguably lesbian housekeeper (played with gusto by character actress Mary Wickes).

 It is difficult to categorize the relationship between Johnny and Scott (especially since the actors use their real names): they are often shown sleeping in bunk beds, and they both acknowledge Zelda’s authority, so they most likely live together, but they are never identified as brothers, and they played best buddies in The Mystery of Dracula’s Castle. If they are brothers, then they exhibit an extraordinary physical intimacy, always touching arms and shoulders or chummily reclining against each other’s bodies. 

In “The Nasty Nephew” (October 1973), as they are prevaricating about the noises coming from their club house (where Sigmund is sequestered), Johnny reaches behind Scott’s back and takes his hand. They hold hands for a long moment, and then Scott shrugs him off. This is an odd gesture, with no rationale in the plot: they are not exchanging any sort of signal, and teenage boys have few other legitimate reasons for holding hands. But perhaps the behind-the-back intimacy mirrors the sea monster in the club house, both truths about their “friendship” that must be kept secret from the outside world.

Johnny announces in the theme song that the program is about “friends, friends, friends,” presumably Sigmund, but many of the lines seem to discuss a more intimate relationship: “a special someone” who will “change your life.” The unaired final verse makes it explicit:

I can't change the way I feel, and wouldn't if I could.
I never had someone before, who made me feel so good.

The inevitability, the loss of control, and the “feel so good” in the sex-happy 1970’s all point to romance instead of friendship. 

 Similarly, Johnny’s 1973 solo album, though entitled Friends, overbrims with tracks like “It’s Up to You,” “Lovin’ Ain’t Easy,” and “Keep It a Secret,” about romance that must be hidden, submerged behind the façade of friendship. But surely Johnny does not mean that he is secretly in love with a 3-foot tall sack of green tentacles. Instead, the mandate to care for Sigmund and keep him safe from the prying eyes of adults gives Johnny and Scott a reason to spend every moment together, to concoct wild schemes and harrowing rescue attempts, to share the joys and terrors of a secret life.

Perhaps the Krofft Brothers became aware, on some level, of the same-sex desire implicit in the relationship between Johnny and Scott. Though none of the other Krofft boys ever exhibited heterosexual interest, several episodes of Sigmund introduce a girl during the last two or three minutes: anonymous, with no lines, alien to the plot, present just so Johnny can gaze at her and sing love songs. This strategy backfires, as the girl, straw-haired, tanned, and freckled, looks exactly like Scott Kolden.

In the second year, therefore, the Krofft Brothers introduced a new theme song. To avoid conjecture about what sins a sea monster might commit, they made the reason for Sigmund’s expulsion from sea monster society explicit: like Casper the Friendly Ghost, he refuses to scare humans. He encounters Johnny and Scott on the beach, and now all three are “the finest of friends that ever can be.” The suggestion that Johnny has found a “special someone” has vanished in favor of a triad of buddies.

We need not assume that Johnny Whitaker, a devout Mormon who would serve as a missionary in Portugal and graduate from Brigham Young University, was consciously adding a romance to his character’s on-screen friendship with Scott. The intent of a performer does not diminish the possibility that a teenager might find hope in his image flickering on a television screen, months or years later and thousands of miles away. But it is inspiring to discover that, though Johnny Whitaker and Scott Kolden both married women and raised heterosexual nuclear families, they have remained close friends. Their relationship is intimate, loving, and permanent. Who cares if they ever kiss?

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?").

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.

Lidsville: Butch Patrick's Bubble Bath

One of many Krofft Saturday morning tv shows about boys trapped far from home, Lidsville (1971-73) starred Butch Patrick, formerly Eddie the werewolf-boy on The Munsters, as seventeen-year old Mark, more macho than the androgynous Jack Wild of H.R. Pufnstuf, with a firm, tanned body and a fondness for shirts opened to the navel (unfortunately, their color was so close to his natural skin tone that from across the room you thought you were getting beefcake).

 In the opening segment, Mark visits an amusement park and sees a performance by Merlo the Magician. Intrigued, he lags behind his friends and sneaks backstage, where Merlo’s magical top hat sits unguarded. He peers inside. Suddenly the hat gets larger, the room shakes, and Mark falls down a rabbit hole – through a kaleidoscope of sinister Day-Glo colors, with gape-jawed monsters and maniacal laughter. It seems that Merlo has orchestrated the entire sequence of events.  But what does he want with Mark? 

The only thing I could think of in 1971 was: don't trust strangers.  They want to kidnap you and take you away.

Mark falls into Lidsville, a land of badly stereotyped living hats (Nurse Hat, Chef Hat, Hillbilly Hat, and so on).

They are all terrorized by the evil magician Hoo Doo (gay actor Charles Nelson Riley), who has green skin and Satanic fire-red hair.  My friends and I found him scarier than any movie monster.

Most episodes involve Mark's increasingly desperate attempts to escape, while the lecherous Hoo Doo tries to capture him for an unspecified sinister purpose.  

Although fast-paced and frenetic, with Butch Patrick providing ample eye candy, Lidsville had none of the domesticity that made Living Island a desirable home: we never find out where Mark sleeps or how he eats. And he has no strong same-sex bonds, just an androgynous genie named Weenie (Billie Hayes in male drag), who is too weak and servile to become a chum.  

In Pufnstuf, the threat is female, but in Lidsville, it is male, the leering, gay-vague Hoo Doo.  Same-sex desire lurks in the shadows, unwholesome, festering, potentially violent.

Even Butch Patrick's only beefcake photo was disquieting.  Butch naked in a bubble bath, his leg raised to cover his privates, holding a rubber duck, leering at the camera:

My friends and I only watched a few episodes.  Lidsville did not offer a glimpse of "the good place."

Land of the Lost: Yet another teenager trapped far from home, with Sleestaks

Saturday morning tv in the 1960s and 1970s was full of teenage boys trapped far from home.   From 1974 to 1977, that boy was a hot teenager named Will (Wesley Eure), who was on a "routine expedition" with his hot dad Rick (Spencer Milligan) and kid sister Holly (Kathy Coleman), when they zapped through a time-space portal into a jungle world crowded with dinosaurs, reptilian aliens named Sleestaks, and cute gibbering primates named Pakuni.  After a couple of seasons, Rick vanished, replaced by hot Uncle Jack (Ron Harper).

There wasn't much bonding, since the only available males were close relatives.  Nor much beefcake; you'd think after three years in the humid jungle, the guys would start wearing Tarzan-style loincloths, but no, only one episode featured Will shirtless, in painted-on jeans.

Otherwise gay boys had to make do with shirts unbuttoned to his navel.

But at least there was an utter lack of mentioned or displayed heterosexual interest in any of the characters, ever.

And Wesley Eure made up for his lack of shirtless shots later, as Mike Horton on Days of Our Lives.  

In 2009, he finally made one of the obligatory "coming out" statements, informing the world that he was gay via afterelton.com,  but he was never really in.  While on Land of the Lost, he was dating Richard Chamberlain.