Wally Cox: Was Mr. Peepers Gay?

On February 9, 1970, Here's Lucy starred Alan Hale Jr. as Moose Manley (yes, that's his name), who worries that his son Wally (Wally Cox) is not manly enough -- he's "shy around girls."

I had never heard of Wally Cox before, but I knew all about the adults trying to push you into liking girls.

First Dad sets up Wally on a date with Lucy.  That doesn't work, so Dad gets Wally a job as a night watchman, and has Lucy pretend to be a burglar.  A real burglar shows up, Wally rises to the occasion, and Dad is satisfied.  Without "discovering girls."

Born in 1924, Wally Cox had a small frame and nasal voice that made him ideal for milquetoast roles, prissy, ineffectual, and not particularly interested in girls (although they often liked him).  Another example of the 1950s penchant for gay-vague characters.

He played junior high science teacher Mr. Peepers (1952-54), with Patricia Benoit as the woman trying to snare him and gay-positive Tony Randall as his ladies-man best friend.

Newspaper proofreader turned globetrotting adventurer Hiram Holliday (1956-57).

Bird-watcher P. Caspar Biddle on three episodes of  The Beverly Hillbillies (1966), who draws the attention of Ellie Mae.

Officious bureaucrats and other party-dampeners in several Disney movies.

He also provided the voice of superhero parody Underdog, and was a fixture on the game show Hollywood Squares for 11 years (his last appearance was on February 26, 1973, a few days after his death).

Although small, Wally was athletic and very muscular. He often bemoaned his milquetoast typecasting, which prohibited him from taking his shirt off and displaying his physique.

Many years later I discovered that Wally grew up with the bisexual Marlon Brando, and roomed with him when he first moved to Los Angeles. He married women three times, but he and Brando continued to be close, and when they died, their ashes were combined and scattered together.

If you need more evidence that Wally Cox was gay: he was also friends with Sal Mineo, Nick Adams, and the whole 1950s Hollywood gay and gay-positive crowd.

Paul Newman and Rocky Graziano: Somebody Down Here Likes Me

Paul Newman and James Dean met in 1952, when they were studying at the famous Actors Studio in New York.  They began a passionate affair.

But there were problems from the start: Paul didn't like sneaking around under the nose of his wife, and he wanted exclusivity, whereas Jimmy had a roving eye (Paul had the same problem when he dated Yul Brynner a couple of years before).

In 1953, they both auditioned for the roles of the twin brothers in East of Eden -- check out the homoerotic screen test on the Eddi Haskell blog.

Jimmy got the part, but Paul lost out.  He was devastated, and the relationship cooled.

After James Dean's tragic death on September 30, 1955, Paul was offered several roles that had been earmarked for him, including  Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), a biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano (top photo) based on his bestselling autobiography.

It was a Hollywood rags-to-riches story, with a juvenile delinquency twist.  The young Rocky is abused by his father, joins a street gang, gets into fights, is drafted into the army but goes AWOL, is sent to prison, finds a new life as a boxer, and finally triumphs over an evil rival (real boxer Tony Zale).

Oh, and there's a requisite hetero-romance, but there's a strong gay subtext between Rocky and best buddy Romolo (gay actor Sal Mineo), plus the gay symbolism of a blackmail plotline.

The story doesn't end there. The real 37-year old Rocky appeared as an adviser, and he and Paul hit it off. They were often seen socializing together off the set.

I couldn't find any information on whether they became lovers, but since Rocky also hung out with the bisexual Marlon Brando, it's a possibility.

The t-shirts are from Grossinger's Resort in the Catskills.

Paul went on, of course, to become the most famous actor of the 1960s and a master of gay subtexts.  Rocky Graziano had a respectable tv career and opened a restaurant.

14 Shirtless Stanleys of "A Streetcar Named Desire"

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams (1947), is probably the most-beloved American play of all time.  It's staged incessantly in big cities and small towns; it's been filmed six times, it's been made into a ballet and an opera.

This seems odd, because it deals with topics likely to make censors nervous: sexual promiscuity, domestic violence, and rape.

Not to mention its strong gay connection.













1. Faded Southern belle Blanche is reduced to living in her sister Stella's two-room apartment in New Orleans after losing the family estate. She is traumatized by the long-ago death of her husband Alan, a "poetic" (that is, gay) boy who probably didn't realize that he was gay until she confronted him.  He went out and committed suicide, one of Tennessee Williams' stable of dead gay guys.









2. Stanley, Stella's brutish, violent husband, has a coterie of male friends who like him...a lot.  Notable is Mitch, who is mother-obsessed and not particularly interested in women (two signifiers of gay identity in the 1950s).  He courts Blanche, but badly, not at all sure what he is doing, and then dumps her when he discovers that she has a history.

After Mitch dumps Blanche, Stanley sexually assaults her, leading to her descent into insanity and famous last line: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

3. Stanley takes his shirt off -- a lot -- most notably when he is flirting with Blanche, and when Stella flees to the upstairs apartment after an abuse incident, and he yells up at her: "Stella!"

I don't know if Williams wanted to emphasize his raw savagery, or if he just liked seeing muscular guys with their shirts off, but Stanleys from Brando on down, whether on Broadway, community theaters, or college drama departments, have always displayed muscular physiques.  Here are two dozen shirtless Stanleys:

1. (Top Photo) William L. Peterson, star of soap operas and CSI, at the Stratford Festival in Canada, 1984.

2. (Second Photo) Joe Manganiello, star of True Blood, is currently playing Stanley on Broadway.

3. New York actor Miebaka Yohannes (left) at the Boal Barn Playhouse in State College, Pennsylvania, 2010.








4. Marlon Brando (left), the original Stanley on Broadway and in the 1951 movie version.

5. Alex Baldwin, who starred in the 1992 Broadway revival and in the 1995 tv movie version.

6. Stephon O'Neal Pettway in an all-black version of Streetcar at Pace University in 2009.

More after the break

Guys and Dolls:Musical with Mostly Guys

Instead of watching the execrable Chicago (2002), watch Guys and Dolls (1953), set during the same time period, but with gamblers instead of murderers, and a gay subtext.

It's about the friendship between gambler Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) and Sky Masterson (bisexual actor Marlon Brando), triangulated by two very hesitant hetero-romances.

Nathan has been engaged to Miss Adelaide (Vivian Blaine) for 14 years, but has no interest in marriage, "old ball and chain." Sky is not interested in women at all.

So when Nathan needs $1000 to secure a garage for his illegal crap game (betting on dice), he makes a bet with Sky: Sky must seduce a girl that Nathan selects so thoroughly that she agrees to go to dinner with him in Havana, Cuba.  No way will Sky be willing, or able to do that!

Especially when the girl turns out to be the prim-and-proper Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) of the Save-a-Soul Mission (a take on the Salvation Army).

Sky knows his way around a bet; he tells Sarah that he will fill her mission with sinners in exchange for the dinner.   She agrees, and naturally they fall in love -- you can't have everything.

Nathan, meanwhile, goes through some machinations to hold his crap game, and ends up agreeing to marry Miss Adelaide -- you can't have everything.

There is also a group of gamblers led by the corpulent Nicely-Nicely (Stubby Kaye), who display no heterosexual interest.

No beefcake, but the period costumes are great.  So are the songs.

The stage version is even less hetero-romance-bound.  Nathan Detroits have been played by Robert Guillaume, Bob Hoskins, Nathan Lane, and Oliver Platt, and Sky Masterson by Robert Alda, Peter Gallagher, Ewan McGregor, and Craig Bierko.

It's also a favorite of high school and college drama clubs.

Yul Brynner: Bisexual Beefcake from Hollywood's Golden Age

Speaking of Yul Brynner, the Russian-born actor with the shaved head (1920-1985) was a reliable source of beefcake in the 1950s and 1960s.  While other actors were kept strictly under wraps, Brynner's chest and shoulders were usually on display, to add to his exoticism or sexiness.

Born in Vladivostok and raised in Paris, Brynner immigrated to the U.S. with his mother in 1940, and worked as a radio announcer for awhile before hitting Broadway.  In spite of the rumors, he never posed for physique magazines, though he did model nude for some private photos.

In 1951 he originated the role of Mongkut, King of Siam, in The King and I (he was to play Mongkut twice more in Broadway revivals, in the 1956 movie, and in a 1972-73 tv series).

No doubt the King's bare-chested costume added to his popularity.

In 1956 Brynner also starred in Anastasia and in The 10 Commandments; his Pharaoh Ramses began a fad for ancient Egyptian beefcake that lasted for about ten years.

Next came a string of adaptions of classics:  The Brothers Karamazov, The Sound and the Fury, Taras Bulba; plus Westerns, secret agent, and adventure movies.  He played Arabs, Russians, Native Americans, Mexicans, always with the shaved head and sultry looks, always with the physique.

One of his more interesting roles came in The Surprise Package (1960), in which he plays a thief who teams up with a deposed king (Noel Coward).

In The Magic Christian (1969), an anti-establishment movie in which a zany rich guy (Peter Sellers) and the hippie he adopts (Ringo Starr) set out to prove that money can buy not only love, but everything else.  Brynner plays a drag queen who cruises Roman Polanski. Apparently it wasn't his first time in drag.

 Although married four times, Yul Brynner was bisexual, and had relationships with Paul Newman,  Hurd Hatfield, Jean Cocteau, and Manuel Puig (who wrote Kiss of the Spider Woman).

Plus Marlon Brando; according to rumor, he provided the penis for that famous photo of Brando engaging in a homoerotic act.

There's a memorial to Brynner in his hometown of Vladivostok, including this full-sized statue (fully clothed). They probably don't know that he was bisexual.