Michael Cade: California Dreams, Chaplin, Devils, and That Chest. With a n*de Aaron and the Greek God Pan

After Saved by the Bell (1989-1993) demonstrated that Saturday mornings didn't have to be all cartoons, every kid in the country suddenly started eating their Cheerios to impossibly buffed teenagers in impossibly affluent high schools.  California Dreams (1992-1997) may not have been the best of the Saved clones-- I don't know if "best" is operant here -- but it was the most beefcake heavy.  

The premise: two Iowa teens, Matt (Brent Gore) and Jenny, move to California, where they form a band called California Dreams.  Wait -- why are you dreaming about California, when you live there?  

We pause this profile to quote the famous "California Dreamin'", which I heard many times during dark dank winters in the Midwest as I plotted my move to the gay freedom of West Hollywood:

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. 
I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
If I didn't tell her, I could leave today.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day.

Most of the Saved clones had the same basic characters: the schemer, who works every angle yet fails every class, and still gets into Harvard; the surly outsider who resents the schemer getting everything so easily; the goofball who litters his speech with nonsequiters; the popular girl, who ends up with the schemer; and the smart girl, who ends up with the surly outsider.  In California Dreams, Michael Cade, left, is the schemer, band manager Sly Winkle (sly wink, get it?)

William James Jones, left, is surly outsider Tony Wicks, the band's drummer and sometime soloist. 

In Season 2, Aaron Jackson joined the cast as Sly's cousin Mark Winkle, performing the goofball role. 

William and Aaron were cute, but they didn't get a lot of teen idol attention. Michael and That Chest were the definite stars. Shirtless photos littered the teen magazines and the gay celebrity websites.

I didn't watch California Dreams often -- on Saturday mornings, we usually watched Joel and the Bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000, then had lunch, browsed bookstores, bought groceries at the Gay Safeway, and went to the gym.  In the evening, we watched Mama's Family and The Golden Girls, then went cruising at Mugi or the Faultline...uh-oh, I feel "The Way We Were" coming on.

Can it be that it was all so simple then, 
Or has time rewritten every word?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?  Could we?

Sorry, these profiles from pre-2000 shows make me nostalgic.

Michael was born Michael Ocello in Elmwood Park, New Jersey in 1972.  He was interested in acting, but avoided drama club so he wouldn't be bullied -- "when I was in high school, being in the drama club wasn't cool," he notes in a teen magazine interview. Sounds like he was worried that people would think he was gay, which was a major concern in the late 1980s.

But the day he graduated in May 1990, he started taking acting lessons.  After a year, a few commercials, and a lot of bare chests, he moved to California where he could be open about his...um...acting.  It took only a few months for his chest to get a guest shot on Baywatch as Young Bobby, brother of focus character Eddie (Billy Warlock)

Michael also appeared in Chaplin (1992), the biopic of the silent movie star, as his nephew Sydney Chaplin Jr.

More after the break. 

Bamm-Bamm's Muscles: Gay Promise on "The Flintstones"

Quick, name a cartoon character who came from outer space, was adopted by a human family, and has superpowers?

Right, Bamm-Bamm Rubble.

In an October 3rd, 1963 episode of The Flintstones, about "a modern prehistoric family," Betty and Barney Rubble are upset because they can't have children -- apparently Barney's sperm count is a little low.  They wish on a falling star, and the next morning a baby appears on their doorstep, asleep in a turtle shell, holding a club.

He can only say "Bamm-Bamm," so that becomes his name. He turns out to have superhuman strength, easily carrying furniture and tossing his adopted father around.

As a kid, I was intrigued by Bamm-Bamm's mysterious origin.  Could he be an alien -- a falling star could mean a UFO!  His white hair certainly looked alien.  And the superhuman strength surely meant super muscles!

I didn't see The Flintstones often, so I didn't notice that the writers failed to make much use of Bamm-Bamm's potential.  His supernatural origins were rarely mentioned, and his super-strength became little more than a comic nuisance.

No gay symbolism: in fact, he began expressing toddler heterosexual interest, mooning over toddler-next-door Pebbles, romancing her in baby-talk.  Eventually they were closing episodes by singing the treacly Sunday-school song "Open Up Your Heart (and Let the Sun Shine In)." Yuck.

In 1971, a highly publicized spin-off appeared, The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (1971-72, and rerun long after).  With the characters as teenagers. 

But Bamm-Bamm dit not transform into Superboy.

He and Pebbles went to high school and belonged to a rock band, like everyone on Saturday morning in the 1970s.

No mysterous origin.  No superstrength.  He wasn't even built -- he had skinny arms and legs and a shapeless lump of a body.  

More after the break

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

What's Gay about Beany and Cecil?

Beany, a grinning 10-year old boy with blond hair, freckles, and a magic beanie that allowed him to fly, first appeared as a puppet on the local Los Angeles tv series Time for Beany (1949-1954). 

 A 26-episode animated version appeared on prime time (1962-63), and on Saturday mornings (1962-67). There were also books, toys, games, and comics.

This screencapt is from the short-lived 1988 remake, drawn by John Kricfalusi, implying that the two are boyfriends.

The animators had fun speculating on what was going on underwater, in the parts of Cecil that we don't see.

The plots involved Beany; his adult companion "Uncle Captain" Horatio Huffenpuff; and the giant green phallic symbol Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent.  There were a lot of puns which I didn't understand at the time: Hungry I-Land, "Malice in Wonderland," "Phantom of the Horse Opera," Cyrano de Bugs-R-Back (ok, that one is a bit of a stretch).

And a lot of heterosexist puns which I didn't understand: "We're headed for No Bikini Atoll."

Their main antagonist was Dishonest John, a silent movie melodrama villain with a handlebar moustache and a sinister "Nya-ha-ha" catchphrase.  He often captured and threatened to torture or kill Beany, whereupon Beany would cry "Help, Cecil, help!" and Cecil would rush to the rescue.

When I was a kid, I didn't notice the heterosexism.  It was far more pervasive than in the Hanna Barbera cartoons (Yogi Bear, The Flintstones).  The crew explores No Bikini Atoll, an island that looks like a reclining woman.  The Captain is in love with a husky woman named Ida, Cecil is dating a female sea serpent named Cecilia, and even Beany has a girlfriend, Baby Ruth. 

I just noticed a boy who needed lots of rescues.  Beany and Cecil didn't have a romantic bond, but the inversion of the standard female damsel-in-distress plotline paved the way for more overt gay partners, boys who faded-out in each other's arms -- Jonny and Hadji, the Hardy Boys, the Adventure Boys in the Green Library.

The first childhood toy that I remember is a huge, cuddly Beany doll wearing a red turtleneck sweater and blue overalls. When you pulled the string in back, he said random things:  "I'm Beany Boy!"; "Let's go explore!"; "Gee, this is fun!"; and "Help, Cecil, help!" 

I'm not sure that he should be encouraging five-year olds to go exploring.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse: Did somebody say "Swish"?

When I was living in West Hollywood, we watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 every Saturday morning, but we stayed away from children's tv.  It was crowded with insipid child versions of adult characters -- The Muppet Babies, The Flintstone Kids -- or insufferably cute furry animals -- Wuzzles, Kissyfur, Care Bears, Gummi Bears.  


But there was one "must see" exception.  At 11:00 am between 1986 and 1990, every household in West Hollywood watched Pee-wee's Playhouse.  It was a surreal, live action series hosted by the androgynous Pinkie Lee lookalike Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens), who would invite various live and puppet characters to play in his playhouse.

It was the gayest show on television.

1. A hunky speedo-clad lifeguard named Tito.

2. Drag queens Ms. Yvonne (right) and Mrs. Steve (left).  They both appeared at the 1990 AIDS Walk. We all assumed that Mrs. Steve was a real drag queen, played by a male actor; I only discovered that she was played by a woman while researching this post. .

3. The extraordinarily feminine Jambi the Genie, who lived in a drag queen's jewelry box and lisped "Wish?  Did somebody say wish?"  Everyone in West Hollywood spend the afternoon saying: Swish?  Did somebody say swish?"

4. Laurence Fishburn as Pee-wee's friend Cowboy Curtis, who informed us that he slept nude, and joked about his penis size: "You know what they say about big feet -- big boots!"

5. The creepy, leering, obviously drunk King of Cartoons, who stumbled across the room and slurred "Let the cartoon begin." And the creepy 1930s cartoon that followed.  Ok, he wasn't gay-coded, but who puts a guy who's drunk, or pretending to be, on a kids' program?

6. A hunky soccer player named Ricardo.

The writers, producers, directors, and cast have always claimed complete ignorance of any gay-coded characters or gay-subtexts.  In fact, according to Inside Peewee's Playhouse by Caseen Gaines, Paul Reubens was homophobic -- if he had known about any subtext, "he would have put a stop to it."

Or maybe he was just closeted.  Paul Reubens has consistently refused to comment on his sexual identity, although when he was arrested for allegedly possessing child pornography in 2002, he stated that he was a collector of muscle magazines and "vintage homosexual erotica."

Saturday Morning with Joel and the Bots

During the 1990s, when I was living in West Hollywood, we watched a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 every Saturday morning, before gong off to buy groceries or go to the gym or do whatever errands needed doing.

I remember a thousand Saturday mornings, eternal, brightly-colored, golden like Lewis Carroll's "golden afternoons," except in my memory  it wasn't summertime.  It was always those magical few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

MST3K was about a grown-up kid lost far from home: the smiling, laconic Joel (Joel Hodgson) has been zapped into space, onto the phallic-looking "Satellite of Love,"  where two mad scientists torture him by forcing him to watch horribly inept "cheesy movies."

 
After five seasons (1989-1994), Joel escaped to Earth, and the mad scientists abducted the hunkier Mike  (Mike Nelson above), who stayed on for ten seasons, until the series ended in 2004.

Joel, Mike and the "bots" (their robot chums, Tom Servo and Crow) stayed sane through the worst of bad-movie torture by making fun of the artifice and ineptness -- jokes, pop culture references, and sarcastic comments came fast and furious.  There were also interstitial sketches and comedy bits, often with guest stars from the movies being riffed.

The riffs and interstitials often made homoerotic subtexts visible, and many of the movies featured extensive beefcake, but that's not enough to make my memory of the basic-cable farce "golden."

Maybe MST3K was a metaphor.  Most gay people are trapped far from home.  The overlords are constantly torturing them with heterosexist statements and scenes, proclaiming over and over again that no gay people exist, hoping that eventually they will cease to exist.  The only way to stay sane is to laugh, to riff on the ineptness and artifice of the heterosexist myth.

It is no wonder that the slow, ponderous final theme, played over the ending credits, always filled me with a profound sadness.

The Clones of "Saved by the Bell"

During the 1990s, as advertisers were squabbling over the affluent teen market and cable stations were struggling to fill slots, Saved by the Bell-like teencoms appeared regularly: Welcome Freshmen (1991-92),  California Dreams (1992-97), Running the Halls (1993), Saved by the Bell: The New Class (1993-2000), Hang Time (1995-2000), Breaker High (1997-98), USA High (1997-99), City Guys (1997-2001).

The formula was easy: take six to eight beautiful people, three or four boys (schemer, hunk, nerd, and ethnic minority), three or four girls (cheerleader, feminist, princess, and ethnic minority).  Give all of the boys some tongue-lagging, eye-exploding girl-craziness, and all of the girls an obsession over boys.  Give them three sets: high school hallway, locker room, and teen hangout.  Add a clueless principal and an occasional parent, and voila!  The scripts write themselves (or actually, they can be recycled from  40-year old episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis).









In spite of the dull repetitiveness of the plots, gay teens might find them worth a look.

1. The shirtless, swimsuit, and speedo shots were constant, and the muscles often spectacular.  Even those teens who weren't man-mountains got their turn in the wrestling singlet.

Or found some other reason to take off their clothes.

2. Many of the high school hunks came in pairs, polarized into white/nonwhite or nerd/jock.  Breaker High was notable for having two homoromantic pairs: the nerd  Sean (Ryan Gosling) was paired with the schemer Jimmy (Tyler Labine); and the jock Max (Scott Vicaryous) was paired with the ethnic minority Alex (Kyle Alisharam).

These pairs often enjoyed emotional bonds much more intense than those of their knee-jerk heterosexual romances.  Plots often involved threats to their relationships.  For instance, on Breaker High, Alex and Max break up, and Jimmy jumps at the chance to befriend the hot jock.  But then he realizes where his true affections lie and returns to Sean.

But at the same time, they constantly patroled the boundaries of their relationship, evoking and rejecting the possibility of homoromance in joke after joke, episode after episode.  The studio audience usually responded with hysterical laughter: they knew exactly what was not being mentioned.

Beefcake, buddy-bonding, and borderline homophobia.  What else could a gay teen want from a Saturday morning teencom?

Yogi Bear and Boo Boo

A few years ago I published a scholarly article outlining the homodomestic relationship between Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. And Ruff and Reddy.  And Spongebob and Patrick.

People immediately started screaming at me.  Even today, every few weeks someone finds the article and starts screaming again:
"It's a kid's cartoon!"
"You're reading too much into it!"
"The cartoonists never intended them to be gay!"
"Can't two guys be friends without everyone thinking they're gay?"
"How can they be gay, when they aren't Wearing a Sign?"

Except I never said that the Yogi Bear and Boo Boo were "really" gay, whatever that might mean for beings with no bodies or minds, who don't exist at all outside of some images painted on celluloid.  Or that the producers meant them to be gay.  I said that their partnership provided a model with which gay kids could identify and validate their own same-sex desires.

A lot of the things I know about the world -- avalanches, duels, Napoleon, gangsters, daffodils, Shakespeare, karate, King Arthur, submarines, Egyptian hieroglyphics -- I probably first heard from the block of cartoons that Hanna Barbera broadcast on prime time in the late 1950s, and aired through the 1960s on Saturday mornings and on late-afternoon kids' programs like Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.

The characters belong to my earliest, preliterate, preverbal memories:

Huckleberry Hound
Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har
Pixie and Dixie
Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey
Ruff and Reddy
Snagglepuss
Wally Gator
Yogi Bear and Boo Boo






Note that they usually came in pairs who lived together, traveled together, and worked together to defeat the bad guy who wanted to eat or confine them.  I know now that they were reflections of the movie-comedy teams of the 1940s and 1950s, like Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, and Martin and Lewis.

I didn't know then.

I knew only that every adult man in the real world had a wife, and every teenage boy had a girlfriend whom he hoped one day to marry.  I saw no men, heard of no men -- none at all  -- who lived together, who built a life together, who didn't need or want wives. But at "cartoon time," in plain view, there was Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Pixie and Dixie, Quick Draw and Baba Looey.

See also: The Three Stooges and The Flintstones.

"Rocky and Bullwinkle": A gay couple, fairy princes, and Boris Badenov

Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959-64, and rehashed into many different series during the 1960s) is often praised as genius, a classic of animation. Amazon promises: "the wittiest, most inspired, and relentlessly hilarious animation ever created!"

No one thought it was great in the 1960s.  It was relegated to the Sunday morning ghetto, with Totalitarian Television and Davy and Goliath.

Either of which were preferable to the Moose and Squirrel.

Ok, maybe I was too young to understand the clever satire, so a few months ago I  purchased and watched Season 1 on DVD.

I still hated it.

50% of each episode was devoted to repetitive, incomprehensible filler:

When the mountain they are climbing is destroyed by lightning, Rocky and Bullwinkle fall to their deaths, but are resurrected in a field of daisies.  Why is this funny?

Magician Bullwinkle tells Rocky, "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."  He pulls out a scary monster instead, and quips, "I take a 7 1/2."  I assume that refers to his hat size, but how is it an appropriate punchline?

When you finally got to the story, it was an endless serial cut into five-minute segments.  I never saw the first or the last of them, so I had no idea what was going on.  But the titles were bound to involve incomprehensible puns.
The Treasure of Monte Zoom
Maybe Dick
The Guns of Abalone
Kerwood Derby

I know what most of them refer to now, except "Kerwood Derby."  It's a malapropism of "Durward Kirby," a very, very, very minor tv personality of the early 1960s.

And the animation!  There wasn't any.  Incomplete art, splashes of color instead of filled-in lines, no backgrounds, static scenes with only the tiniest mouth movement or gestures.  Abysmal!

The only things I liked were:

1. The scenes set in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home town of the Moose and Squirrel, where they behaved and were treated like romantic partners.

2. Boris and Natasha, the Cold War spies from Pottsylvania assigned to steal the couple's secret or just grift them in various ways.  Although a male-female dyad, they were obviously not a romantic couple, nor did they express any heterosexual interest.

3. Some of the supporting features, like Fractured Fairy Tales, Mr. Peabody's Improbable History, and Aesop & Son.  








4. Some of the parodies of dull poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Wordsworth (really, who would write an entire poem in praise of daffodils?)

5. Edward Everett Horton, who narrated Fractured Fairy Tales, played "pansy" roles during the 1930s.

The Moose That Roared (2000), a history of the program, reveals that Bill Scott, Jay Ward's partner and the voice of Bullwinkle, often made homophobic statements.  "Women's dresses today look like they were designed by fags," he would rant.  Or he would tell a voice artist, "for this story, do your Fag Prince voice."

Of course, lots of people in the 1960s were homophobic, but it is shocking how Moose That Roared author Keith Scott (no relation) gushes about the homophobia as if it somehow made him endearing: "'There are too many fags in Hollywood,' Bill said with his characteristic wit."

See also: Peabody and Sherman

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.

Saturday Morning Beefcake: the 1990s

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Saturday morning tv was strictly for little kids. By junior high, I watched only the live-action programs like H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Lidsville.  By high school, I had abandoned even those.

In the late 1980s, Saturday morning became cool again.  Everybody watched Pee-Wee's Playhouse  and  Saved by the Bell.  For some reason, most gay men preferred  Slater (Mario Lopez, right) to Mark-Paul Goesselaer's prettyboy operator Zack Morris.

Between 1993 and 2001, there was a whole lineup of teencoms to watch with your boyfriend and whatever guy you had brought home to "share" the night before. They all had the about the same plot: a group of high schoolers go out for sports, consider cheating on tests, take part-time jobs, date, and start bands.  There was always  a Zack Morris clone and a Slater clone, plus sundry stereotyped athletes, nerds, cheerleader-type girls, and brainy-type girls.

Boring stuff.  But who was watching for the plots?

1. Running the Halls starred blond goldenboy Richard Hillman as the Zack Morris clone who got into constant trouble with the vice-principal.   Hillman  also had small roles in Detroit Rock City and Teenage Caveman.  He died of AIDS in 2009.

2. California Dreams followed Iowa teens to their new home in California (shades of Beverly Hills 90210!), where naturally they started a band.  It starred Michael Cade's abs.

Fortunately, Book Circus had a full selection of teen magazines with Michael Cade centerfolds.

3. Saved by the Bell: The New Class was set right at Bayside High, with the vice principal and the nerd Screech still there.  It changed teen hunks frequently, but Christian Oliver is probably the best-remembered Zack Morris clone. 

You can also see Christian Oliver in the 2012 film Blow Me.

4. Hang-Time was oddly set in small-town Indiana rather than Malibu, and involved basketball rather than surfing.   It went through a lot of cast changes, too, with new groups of teen hunks every season.  Danso Gordon (left, recent photo) played the Slater clone.  Today he performs mostly in evangelical Christian movies like Heaven is Real.  I doubt that he would be happy learning that hundreds of gay men in West Hollywood thought that he was hot.

5.City Guys was set at Manhattan High School (apparently there is only one high school in Manhattan), with a diverse cast of two black guys, not just one, plus the Hispanic Al, played by Dion Basco (far left, from the cast of Naked Brown Men).

Mystery Island: A muscular Stephen Parr and the Robot from "Lost in Space"

During the fall of 1977, Saturday morning tv featured several live-action programs, including Skatebirds, an anthology series that ripped off The Banana Splits from a decade before.  It didn't last long, but one of its live-action segments, Mystery Island (note: not Mysterious Island) was noteworthy for two reasons.

1. It recycled the famous Lost in Space robot.

2. The mega-muscular Stephen Parr spent most episodes with his shirt off.


There's not much else to find out about Stephen Parr. He worked as a model (naturally). Beginning in 1975, he had guest shots on lots of tv series, from Barnaby Jones to Cheers, and had a brief starring role on All My Children.  According to the Internet Movie Database, he last worked in television in 1993. I don't know what he's doing now. But he certainly brightened a lot of Saturday mornings in 1977.

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.