Ted Prior: Man-mountain hero of the macho 1980s, Chippendale dancer, Playgirl model. Any gay content?

Link to the n*de photos

N*de photos of this guy have been sitting in my "to profile" file since March, and since I have some free time today (and my pageviews are down by about 70%)," I'll give him a try.

His name is Ted Prior.  He was active primarily during the 1980s Reagan-Bush era  man-mountain craze, when Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and a dozen lesser lights -- Chuck Norris, Reb Brown, Steven Seagal, Michael Pare -- stormed into POW camps and drug lord lairs, got tortured while shirtless, single-handedly defeated entire armies, and won The Girl, thus demonstrating the 

"supremacy" of white heterosexual  America.

Born in New Jersey in 1959 and raised in Baltimore, Ted originally planned to become a professional bodybuilder -- he states that he won Teenage Mr. Maryland and "ten other awards" before he turned 19.  He moved to Los Angeles, in fact, so he could train at Gold's Gym.

But he worked in theater, too, and once he hit L.A., a walk-on as a bodybuilder in an episode of The Incredible Hulk (1981) convinced him to try his hand at acting. His first starring roles were in  Sledgehammer (1983) and Killzone (1985), written and directed by his older brother David.

Most of Ted's work for the next twenty years would come from David's production company, Action International Pictures: Operation Warzone (1988), Jungle Assault (1989), The Final Sanction (1990), Raw Justice (1994).

Ted's most famous film, Deadly Prey (1987) is a sort of The Most Dangerous Game. People are being kidnapped and taken to a secret jungle enclave, where the evil Colonel Hogan (David Campbell) has his mercenaries hunt them down.  Vietnam Vet Mike (Ted) is grabbed while taking out the garbage, brought to the enclave, stripped, greased, gawked at, and forced to run naked through the jungle.  Uh-oh, they kidnapped the wrong guy.

He is shirtless throughout: a major draw of the film, as you can see from the VHS tape cover.

In November 2024, the Lyric Hyperion Theater in Silverlake, the second gay neighborhood in Los Angeles, held a "Deadly Prey" day, and promised Ted Prior "in the flesh," har har.

More after the break

Bill Cable: 1980s gay model and video performer, boyfriend of Elvira and Pee-Wee Herman, the rock star in "Basic Instinct."

  Link to the N*de Dudes

If you grew up in a heteronormative desert, like most gay boys in the 1970s, with n*de and even shirtless guys vanishingly rare in magazines, movies, and tv, West Hollywood in the 1980s was a Paradise.  You could buy a dozen glossy, full-color magazines aimed at gay men with every conceivable taste and interest:

Drummer for leather

Blueboy for dating advice

Mandate for muscle

In Touch for humor 

Inches for...well, you get the idea.

All of them were illustrated by full-page and centerfold photos of men, artistic or not, always n*de, sometimes more.

You saw this guy everywhere, but probably didn't realize that Cable, Stoner, and Bigg John were all the same model.  Now we know.

He was Bill Cable, born William  Laurence Cumpanas in northern Indiana in 1946. His grandparents were from Dalmatia (now part of Croatia), and he grew up with a strong sense of his Croatian identity,   

His family moved to Los Angeles in 1950.  He played football at North Hollywood High School and the University of Nevada, but a  massive head injury forced him to quit.  In 1970, he returned Los Angeles to pursue a new career as a model.

Bill modeled in all of the famous gay magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, plus gay pictorials for Colt Studios and The Athletic Model Guild.  

He also appeared in straight pictorials, mainstream fashion ads, and the influential After Dark magazine.  And in gay postcards, which you bought with no intention of actually mailing.

He posed for Playgirl three times, for:

"Long Cool Summer" (July 1973)

Victoriana (November 1974)

"Beauty and the Beast" (May 1975)

Bill's movie career began with a non-speaking role as a leatherman in the gay  Bijou (1972).  Next came some collaborations with straight director Carlos Tobalina: Last Tango in Acapulco (1973), Jungle Blue (1978), and Flesh and Bullets (1985).

Sometime in the early 1970s, Bill and Carlos wrote, directed, and starred in  What's Love (restored in 1987), "which deals with the themes of romantic obsession and Christian blasphemy."  From what I can tell from the various plot synopses, Carlos plays a cop who gets in touch with a magical self.  Bill as Jesus sleeps with him and his wife. 

More after the break

Just Shoot Me: Buddy Bonding and Snark

Beginning with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, many, many sitcom have featured a gung-ho female journalist paired with a stick-in-the-mud male boss.  Usually a romance develops.  But not in Just Shoot Me (1997-2003). 

 Its premise: aging playboy Jack Gallo (George Segal) runs a women's magazine, Blush, which offers frothy fashion and sex tips.  His daughter Maya (Laura San Giocomo) arrives, all but waving a "Women's Lib" sign, ready to fight the objectification of women and write hard-hitting articles about human trafficking and date r*pe.

She is shocked to discover that everyone at Blush is extraordinarily horny.  S*xual desires, exploits, adventures, and come-ons occupy all of their free time, which is all of the workday.

Photographer Elliot DiMauro (Enrico Colantoni) sleeps with every female model, no exceptions.

Wise-cracking secretary Davis Finch (David Spade) makes crude come-ons to every women in sight, no exceptions.

Fashion editor and former supermodel Nina Van Horn (Wendie Malick) sleeps with every man she sees, no exceptions.

There are episodes about the clash between hard-hitting journalism and froth, but mostly the series is about relationships.  Maya bickers with her Dad, clashes with his new wife, and gets boyfriends, eventually Elliot.

Nina competes with other supermodels, falls in love with the wrong man, pretends to be things that she's not, and gets her comeuppance.

Davis pursues a father-son relationship with Jack, pursues a relationship with his real father, and has the insecurities beneath the snark revealed.

They all become close friends.

There was some gay interest:

Nina Van Horn was an outrageous, boozy, profane type, the sort gay men like to emulate in their drag queen personae.

Everyone is shocked to discover that Davis is an extra-extra large (he didn't know himself, assuming that the guys in porn movies were about average, and he was just a little bigger than them).

Enrico Colantoni,  hairy and rather muscular, took off his shirt often (he even posed semi-n*de for Playgirl).

Gay people were referenced on occasion, the usual "mistaken for gay" and "pretending to be gay to enjoy the tremendous advantages gay people have" episodes.

Only two actual LGBT persons: the high school buddy who had a sex change; and a female model has a crush on Maya.

Typical for how the 1990s handled gay "issues," as a problem for the heterosexuals to solve.

You'd think they could do better, and have an actual gay character in a recurring role.  But it came on just before or just after Will and Grace, and network execs probably figured that viewers couldn't stand two programs with gay characters on the same night.

See also: Suddenly, Susan

Mike Henry's Tarzan

There were several Tarzans in the 1960s -- Denny Miller's blond beach boy, Ron Ely's lanky environmentalist, Johnny Weissmuller flickering on late-night reruns -- but Mike Henry captured the imagination of the Now Generation.  The former football star and tv cowboy donned a loincloth for Paramount only three times -- in Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), Tarzan and the Great River (1967), and Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968).  He had signed up to play Tarzan on tv, but he opted out and continued his career fully clothed.

Why was Mike Henry the iconic 1960s Tarzan?

1. He had a hairy chest.  Previous Tarzans had been muscular, of course, but only Mike Henry was a bear.

2. He got out of Africa.  Fighting the Waziri headhunters and elephant poachers was hackneyed. Mike Henry's Tarzan explored the jungles of Mexico, South America and Southeast Asia.

3. He was well-educated and sophisticated, more James Bond than Noble Savage.  Edgar Rice Burroughs' literary Tarzan was fluent in English and French -- it was Johnny Weissmuller who invented the "Me Tarzan" lingo.  Mike Henry returned to sophisticated Tarzan of the novels, taking his clothes off only when the plot required it (during 9/10ths of the movie).

4. He rescued and bonded with kid sidekicks: Ramel in Valley of Gold and Pepe in The Great River (both played by Manuel Padilla Jr.),  and of course the Jungle Boy (played by Steve Bond). They were too young to be his romantic interests, but gay boys who were about that age themselves certainly fantasized about fading into the sunset with Mike Henry's muscular arm around their shoulders. 

Manuel Padilla Jr. appeared in American Graffiti and Scarface, then retired from acting.  He died in 2008.

Steve Bond continued acting and modeling until his retirement in 2017.

See also: Steve Bond: Tarzan costar turned Playgirl centerfold turned soap opera hunk

Steve Bond: Tarzan boy turned Playgirl model turned soap hunk in the steamy 1970s

Link to the n*de photos

The October 1975 issue of Playgirl featured a layout of model/actor Steve Bond.  They quickly became the most famous n*de photos in the world (not counting those of Christopher George)

Not because he was a man-mountain -- no bodybuilder, he had the tight, pleasantly muscled physique of a New Sensitive Man.

Not because of his size beneath the equator, though he was huge.

Because of the contrast.

The last time anyone had seen Steve Bond, the 14-year old Israeli actor, born Schlomo Goldberg, was making his screen debut, in a 1968 Tarzan movie starring Mike Henry.

Seven years makes a big difference.

After one or two more child-actor roles, Steve went back home to Israel, finished high school, and completed his mandatory military service.  Now he was in L.A. again, ready to hit the big time.  The nude photos came at a moment of desperation, when he was flat broke

Unfortunately, posing in your birthday suit was still controversial in 1975, and Steve found it difficult getting the attention of casting directors. During the next decade, he played some street toughs, some sexploitation studs, a Chippendales dancer, and a forest ranger investigating some teen murders (in The Prey, 1984).

Finally, hoping that the photos were long forgotten, he landed one of the defining roles of his career, good old boy Jimmy Lee Holt on General Hospital (1983-87).

No such luck.  In 1985, an eagle-eyed editor at Playgirl discovered the old photos, and reprinted them.  Steve was devastated.  What would happen when the General Hospital producers found out?  Would he be fired? 

Turns out that nothing happened.  Jimmy Lee Holt was too popular to dismiss. The GH producers even commissioned a Speedo poster to show off Steve's assets.

He got profiled in teen magazines and Muscle & Fitness.

More after the break

Christopher George: Marine, cowboy, spy, Hugh Hefner, warlock, fitness model. Is there a gay connection?

Link to the uncensored photos

When Christopher George posed in June 1974, he was 43 years old and a Hollywood veteran, famous for The Rat Patrol and about 50 gung-ho, "can we win this time?" war and cowboy movies.

He reclines, eating watermelon, a little paunchy in middle age, but hirsute, tanned, gold-chained, the sharp phallic knife accentuating his obvious gifts beneath the belt.

IMDB calls him a "solidly built, boyishly handsome leading man.  He was born in 1931 to Greek immigrants, and didn't learn English until he was six years old.  In high school in Miami, he played football, soccer, and track, drove trucks, and shot alligators.  He was planning to become a Greek Orthodox priest, but in 1948 he dropped out of high school to join the Marines, and got the acting bug.  While waiting for his break, he held a variety of macho jobs, like bouncer, private investigator, and owner of a beer bar.  He started on the stage, roles in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Mr. Roberts, The Moon is Blue, and Stalag 17.

In 1965, he got a guest spot on Bewitched as George the Warlock, a Hugh Hefner-like playboy with a harem of women. Endora hires to seduce Samantha, but he likes her attractive neighbor more. 

He was also cast in In Harm's Way. with John Wayne as a naval officer who wants to beat the Japanese during World War II.  The two shared a gung-ho, macho philosophy, and became lifelong friends.Lots of rough, true-grit war and cowboy movies, flag-waving reactions to the pot-smoking, draft-card-burning, "can't tell the boys from the girls" hippies: Massacre Harber, The Thousand Plane Raid, The Devil's 8, Midway, Mayday at 40,000 Feet!

In Project X, 1968, Christopher plays a spy whose memories of a top-secret Commie weapon are being suppressed, so the good guys use advanced technology to extract them.  He has sex with the naked lady on the movie poster.

Christopher also did some modeling.  That's how he met Lynda Day, who became famous for her work on Mission Impossible and her Playboy centerfold.  They were married in 1970.

A heavy drinker and smoker throughout his life, Christopher died of a heart attack on November 28, 1983.  He received a Greek Orthodox funeral. In 2009, the Marines flew a flag at the Iwo Jima memorial.

Is there any gay potential to such an indefatigably macho, hetero-horny, beefy, boyishly handsome Hugh Hefner?

Answer after the break

Jimmy Cavaretta: Trapeze artist, nude model, Dating Game contestant, Las Vegas resident

 

Link to the nude photos

As promised, here is my research on Jimmy Cavaretta.  He turns out to be one of the few non-actors that I've profiled: he's a trapeze artist and nude model.

Born in 1949, Jimmy began training in the circus arts when he was still a toddler, and  in 1962, at the age of 13, started a trapeze act with his younger sister Terry.  The following year his other sisters got in on the act, and he became the "catcher" and the only boy in the Flying Cavarettas

Circus trapeze artists were still a big deal in the 1950s and 1960s.  The women wore skimpy outfits to draw the heterosexual male gaze, while  the men -- everyone from Tony Curtis to David and Ricky Nelson to teen idol Michael Callan got into the act -- didn't try to hide their bulges. 

Left: David Nelson's bulge.

Jimmy got the full teen idol treatment, with profiles in all of the teen magazines.  He a performed on  Ed Sullivan and The Hollywood Palace.  He released a single, "I Want to Be Free."  He was one of the "bachelors" on The Dating Game.

Meanwhile, the Flying Cavarettas were headliners at the Circus Circus hotel/casino  in Las Vegas from 1968 to 1973.

Then they broke up, Terry to form the Flying Terrells duo, with her husband Ron as the "catcher."  Jimmy joined the Flying Medallions, and toured with the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus.

He did some acting and modeling work. Only one entry in the IMDB, Like It Is, 1970: a teenage girl runs away from home and starts hanging out with hippies, smoking pot and everything.

The media was coy about mentioning his wife.  They wanted him to be available, an object of desire to the thousands of spectators who gasped at his acrobatics -- and his attributes -- every day at Circus Circus.

Of course, he also became the subject of gay rumors.  

More Jimmy after the break

Mark Harelik: You've seen his physique a hundred times. Now's your chance to see his penis

  

Link to the nude photos

You might not know his name, but you've seen Mark Harelik's macho "former high school letterman" physique on tv a hundred times.

On Cheers as Reed Manchester, the gay guy who Diane pretends to be married to.

On Wings as Helen's boyfriend, who she didn't bother to break up with before marrying Joe.

On Seinfeld as Milos, who Jerry threatens to out as a terrible tennis player.  Milos offers to set him up with an attractive woman to buy his silence, but she turns out to be his wife.

As Jedidah Lawrence, on Boy Meets World, who lies to his daughter Topanga about the reason he left his wife.

As Jeff, Single Guy Jonathan Silverman's neighbor who takes him in while his apartment is being repaired.  He is in a relationship with Mike (Michael Winters)

As Tim, Jack's boss who keeps making passes at him, on Will and Grace. 

 

As Dr. Eric Gablehauser, the pop-star head of the physics department on The Big Bang Theory

As Joe, buddy of Grace and Frankie's Lily Tomlin and her gay ex-husband, Sam Waterston.

As God in The Preacher, which also starred Dominic Cooper. 

 

Mark's dick after the break

Cheers: Where Nobody Knows Your Name

In the mid-1980s, Americans were afraid.  We had a crazy president who wanted to start a nuclear war (not as crazy as the Orange Goblin, though). People thought that AIDS could be transmitted through drinking water and mosquitoes.  Unemployment was as high as during the Depression, the violent crime rate higher than ever before in history.

 No wonder people wanted to go to a place "where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came."

Cheers (1982-93) was must-see tv, as in all your relatives and everybody at work talked about it constantly, so you had no choice but to watch.

The premise: Sam Malone (Ted Danson) flopped as a ball player due to his alcoholism, so he opens a bar in Boston (really?) and begins love-hate sniping with his stuck-up Ivy-League grad student barmaid Diane (Shelley Long), and later with neurotic bar manager Rebecca (Kirstie Alley).

Other cast members included earthy barmaid Carla (Rhea Pearlman), dimwitted bartender Coach (Nicholas Colassanto), replaced after the actor's death by Woody (Woody Harrelson), and two bar patrons, the rotund Norm (George Wendt) and the talkative Cliff (John Ratzenberger).

In spite of the theme song,  no one knew any gay names.

Gay patrons came to the bar in only one episode.  The gang sees two metrosexual guys talking and laughing, thinks they're gay, and is about ready to string them up, when Diane reveals that the real gay guys, two bears, have been masquerading as part of the mob.

Carla is particularly homophobic.  "If they keep coming out of the closet, there won't be any men left, and I'll have to. . .ugh!" she says, imagining sex with Diane.

Not only is the bar gay-free, there aren't any significant homoerotic subtexts.  Cliff and Norm are buddies, but reject any hint of affection.  The female characters seem as boy- crazy as Betty and Veronica in Archie comics: Carla has a dozen kids with many different men; Diane leaves two men at the altar; Rebecca has an unrequited golddigger crush on a millionaire.

Sam was the hunk of the series -- Ted Danson even posed for Playgirl (not nude) -- and two other male cast members warranted gazing.

 1. Woody (before Woody Harrelson, left, got craggy and redneck).

2. Hockey player Eddie (radio personality Jay Thomas, previously seen on Mork and Mindy), Carla's love interest for a season.  But since almost all of the action occurred on two sets, the bar and Sam's office, there was little opportunity for disrobing, thus no beefcake.

Not a lot of gay allies in the cast.  Kirstie Alley was rather aggressive in "defending" John Travolta from the "insult" of gay rumors. Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson have both played swishy gay stereotype.

In 1993, stuffy psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) spun off onto his own series, Frasier, which lasted for another 11 years.

Kurt Vonnegut: Homophobia on Trafalmador

When I was in college in the 1980s, all of the hip, cool guys read Kurt Vonnegut.  All of them.  He was even printed in Playboy

Oh, he's great!  They would exclaim.  There's this science fiction writer, see, but it turns out that the things he's writing are real....and, and, the crazy Trafalamadorians are behind Stonehenge....and, and Vonnegut and his sister turn into ducks...and, and Billy Pilgrim gets unstuck in time...and, and.

Sounded sort of like Monte Python and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Besides, The Sirens of Titan had a hot guy on the cover.  So I checked some of Vonnegut's books out of the library.

The homophobia was equal to or surpasses that of anything on the syllabus of my Modern American Literature class.

In The Sirens of Titan (1959), Salo, a robot, is in love with a man.  "There was nothing offensive in this love.  That is, it wasn't homosexual."  Well, that's a relief!  Can't have any of that offensive "homosexual" love!

In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), we read the personals column of a newspaper.  Some of the ads are nice, but this one is "sick": "St. Louis hairdresser, male, would like to hear from other males in the Show-me State."   Why am I supposed to find it "sick"?

In Breakfast of Champions (1973): Dwayne's son has "grown up to be a notorious homosexual" named Bunny.  

It was filmed in 1999, with Bruce Willis as Dwayne and Lucas Haas (left) as Bunny.

The short story "Harrison Bergeron" (1961), an impassioned plea against equal rights, posits a future dystopia where everyone is equal -- literally.  Attractive people have to wear masks, smart people hear loud noises to break their concentration, and graceful dancers are hobbled, all due to the draconian political correctness fomented by lesbian feminazi Diana Moon Glampers.

 It's been filmed three times, with  Avind Harum, Sean Astin (top photo), and Richard Kindler as the heroic heterosexual Harrison.

Lest you think that Vonnegut's homophobia mellowed with age, try his memoir, Man without a Country (2005):

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts."

Ok, how could being gay possibly hurt your parents?

And who in 2005 thought that you could decide to be gay in order to hurt them?

Danny Greene: Professional Hunk of the 1980s

During the 1970s and early 1980s, producers started realizing that heterosexual women like to look at men, so they began marketing male physiques to them -- Playgirl magazine,  the Chippendale Dancers, Gregory Harrison in For Ladies Only , Jon-Erik Hexum in Cover Up.  Of course, gay men were watching, too.  The producers usually pretended that they were unaware of the existence of gay men, but the performers knew.

Daniel Greene (aka Danny Greene) rode in on the tide of "female" adulation of the male form.  He began making the rounds of guest hunks on tv in 1982: Trapper John MD, Alice, Three's Company, The A-Team, a sex comedy called The Rosebud Beach Hotel (1984), an aerobics movie called Pulsebeat (1985) (Yes, there were aerobics movies.)

It didn't matter, as long as he took his shirt off, or better yet stripped down to his underwear or a Speedo, and the camera panned out to shots of ladies lusting over his killer bod.

His biggest role was in the nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1985-86), playing Dwayne Cooley, a truck driver who somehow finds his way into the ultra-rich family and begins having affairs with the ladies (thus cleverly combining the trucker and glitz fads).  He was so popular that he even got fan mail from Governor Bob Graham of Florida, his home state.

Afterwards Danny played buddy-bonding man-mountains in Hands of Steel (1986), Skeleton Coast (1988), The Opponent (1988), and Soldier of Fortune (1990), but he really wanted to market himself  "to the ladies" (and the gay men) again.

 So he played Buck on the gay-themed Brothers (1985), Bob, mild-mannered hunk who is romanced by the saucy Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988), and "Fantasy Rusty" in the sitcom Babes (1991).

Not a lot of starring roles during the 1990s and 2000s, when every actor worth his Equity card knew his way around a gym, so a body by Michelangelo was no longer a guarantee of stardom.

Danny is married to actress/model LaGena Hart, and according to wikipedia works for a company called ACN in Florida.

WKRP in Cincinnati

During the late 1970s, there was a fad of hip, urban workplace sitcoms that were very popular but had little to offer gay teens.  The office setting meant no shirtless scenes, the business plots meant no daring rescues, and buddy-bonding was all but absent in casts full of New Sensitive Men seeking out boogie nights.

WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-82), about a struggling radio station, was the worst of the lot.  I watched it -- everybody watched it -- but I didn't like much except the catchy theme song: "Got kind of tired of packing and unpacking, in town to town, up and down the dial").

1. The male actors not only displayed no beefcake, they weren't even cute to look at fully-clothed. Rock dj Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) was scraggly, reporter Les Nessman (Richard Sanders) mousy, and advertising manager Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner) smarmy.  That left station manager Andy Travis (Gary Sandy), who at least could fill out a flannel shirt and pair of 1970s extra-tight jeans (and appeared fully nude in Playgirl). 

2. No buddy-bonding, not even a lot of same-sex friendships.  Most of the conflict involved not external threats, but the various on-air personalities and support staff bickering with each other.

3. Most of the hip urban comedies had at least one "very special episode" with someone's visiting brother or college buddy informing the cast that he was gay, resulting in "hilarious" spit-takes, denials, some homophobic comments, and finally tolerance.  Not WKRP. Instead, tt had:

Les Nessman so upset by an unfounded "accusation" that he tries to commit suicide (see "Most Homophobic Moments in College #4).

A smarmy photographer with incriminating photos claims to be gay, so Herb Tarlek puts on his most effeminate facade to flirt with him and try to retrieve them.  

Dr. Johnny Fever wants to get out of his condo lease, so he pretends to be gay, and the condo board, aghast, practically kicks him out the door.

4. No gay-friendly actors.  Howard Hesseman had played gay before, but only negative stereotypes.  Gary Sandy had a few connections with gay people: he shared an apartment with gay superstar Sal Mineo, and got his start playing a hustler who beats up Candy Darling in Some of My Best Friends Are (1971).  But, all accounts suggest that he is even more homophobic in real life than his character was.

Better stick to the catchy theme song.

See also: Frasier, another sitcom about a radio station.

The Hager Twins: Picking and Grinning

What can you say about twin brothers who grew up in Chicago but claimed to be cowboys?

Who were discovered working at Disneyland, and signed on by "pickin' and grinnin'" Buck Owens to 16 years of the hayseed "family values" variety show Hee-Haw (1969-1985).  Yet posed nude (and coyly hidden) in Playgirl in 1973?

(But not to worry; fully clothed, their tight cowboy jeans left nothing to the imagination.)

Who released singles like "Gotta Get to Oklahoma (Cause California's Getting to Me)" and an album entitled Motherhood, Apple Pie, and the Flag,  yet had a fast-paced, self-deprecating comedy routine, like a country-western Sonny and Cher?  In glittery, rhinestone-enlaced costumes, like country-western Liberaces?

Who sang mournful songs about cheating girlfriends and absent wives, but never married and were never seen with women?  They lived close together through all of their lives (except for a 3 1/2 year separation), and died eight months apart in 2008 and 2009.

Not many gay kids looked to Hee-Haw for role models.  But maybe they should have.

In addition to Hee-Haw, Jim and Jon starred in the tv movie Twin Detectives (1976), about twin detectives, and on a 1978 episode of The Bionic Woman, as evil twin clones from another planet.

The handsome, photogenic duo spent the last twenty years of their lives appearing at county fairs, nostalgia events, and the annual Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio.  Singing, riffing, and signing autographs for their thousands of devoted fans.

Alan Thicke and his "Unusually Thicke" Family

Alan Thicke, who died on December 13th, was best known as the conservative psychiatrist dad on the Reagan Era warmedy Growing Pains (1985-1992), but he was most at ease as a mc.

He got his start as a talk show host, with The Alan Thicke Show (1980-82), renamed Thicke of the Night (1983-84), and through his career he hosted many specials, from the Emmies and the Golden Globes to The Barry Gibb Love and Hope Festival, and narrated many documentaries, from When Mom and Dad Break Up to How Canada Invented Hollywood.

Most recently he starred in a family reality series, Unusually Thicke (2014-2015), along with his wife, his sons and their spouses, and celebrity guest stars like David Hasselhof, Bill Maher, John Stamos, Lance Bass....

And his nephew Creighton Thicke-Rattray (second from left), a college swimming star.













Handsome but not muscular, Alan was a more of a lady's man than a gay fave rave.  He did get a photo shoot in Playgirl.   No nude shots.

And you could see a bulge here and there, leading to lots of jokes about just how thick Alan was.

Today we might make the same speculation about his sons.

Brennan (born 1974) briefly followed his father into show biz. As a child star, he voiced Scott Tracker in the cartoon MASK (1985-85) and Dennis in Dennis the Menace (1986-88).  He now runs a nonprofit marijuana dispensary in California and works for his wife's wedding dress business, Dolly Couture.

Robin (born 1977) is a singer/songwriter who has written and produced several R&B hits, such as "Sex Therapy."  He is best friends with gay singer Usher.

He has obviously inherited his father's looks and...um...other things.

Carter (born 1997) has appeared with his father in Celebrity Wife Swap, Celebrity Family Feud, Unusually Thicke, and the movie It's Not My Fault and I Don' Care Anymore (2015).

He is active in social media, where he has expressed strong support of the LGBT community.

See also: Growing Pains