Zephyr Benson: The Son of the Most Beautiful Teen Idol of the 1980s

What is it like to grow up with a father who was the most beautiful teen idol in the world, the source of gushing romantic fantasies for millions of gay boys and straight girls?

Of course, I'm talking about Robby Benson, teen idol of the late 1970s and 1980s.  He appeared in some movies, but really, he was too beautiful to be a major star -- everyone was so busy swooning and sighing to pay attention to the plot.

He had a physique and a basket, too, but who noticed?  We were busy imagining what it would be like to walk hand-in-hand with Robby through the rain, and share a brief, chaste kiss.

Oh, I hear laughter in the rain,
Walking hand in hand with the one I love

Sorry, I had a Neil Sedaka moment.What was I writing about, again?

Right, Robby's kids.  It seems that Robby managed to find someone strong enough to come within five feet of him without swooning (Karla DeVito), so he married her...um...sorry, just imagining their wedding...kissing Robby Benson! ...and they had two kids, a girl named Lyric (born 1983), and a boy named Zephyr (born 1992).

Zephyr lacks the drop-dead gorgeousness of his father: his long, oval face is rather a turn-off.  But he does have dreamy blue eyes. 

He has the same slim, tight physique as his father, but not so tightly muscled.

He's an aspiring actor with 7 credits listed on the imdb, including more than one gay character.

His magnum opus to date is Straight Outta Tomkins (2015), which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in.  It's about a teenager who falls in with a drug dealer, and mistakes the mercenary attention for a real emotional connection.

Plus he tweets his support of marriage equality.  What else could you want in the son of the most beautiful teen idol in the world?

Joel and Jody McCrea: The Bisexual Cowboy and His Beach-Movie Son

Speaking of showbiz families, Joel McCrea (1905-1990) was a tall, lanky, and muscular, perfect for roles as white-hat cowboys.  And he played a lot of them during his 50-year movie career.

But you're probably more interested in his movies with gay subtexts, such as The Silver Cord (1933), where he plays a young doctor with a domineering mother, or Ride the High Country (1962), where he and Randolph Scott play a pair of long-term cowboy partners.

Or at least the ones where he disrobes, such as the European-in-Polynesia romance Bird of Paradise (1932).

Bisexual in real life, he was married to actress Frances Dee from 1933 until his death, but also had male lovers, including Montgomery Clift.

Joel's oldest son Jody (born 1934) was tall and athletic, and a dead ringer for his father.  He started out playing cowboys, too.

But he is best known for his comedic roles, playing dopey sidekicks named Deadhead, Bonehead, and Big Lunk in six Frankie and Annette beach movies of the 1960s.  He still got to display his bulge in a swimsuit, when he wasn't self-consciously trying to hide it.

Typecast as boneheads, he retired from acting in the early 1970s, and became a rancher in New Mexico.

Of Jody's five children, only Wyatt is interested in show biz.  He has appeared in a few tv series, and produced Gen's Guiltless Gourmet (2009).  He also manages his grandfather's ranch, a tourist attraction in Thousand Oaks, CA

See also: Beach Movies 1: The Beefcake

The Sons of the Incredible Hulk

When you're the child of the Incredible Hulk and a personal trainer, muscles are a constant part of your life, so you'd have to expect Lou Ferrigno's kids to be rather buffed.
















Born in 1984, Lou Ferrigno Jr., aka Sweet Lou, played football at USC and made his acting debut in two of David DeCoteau's beefcake horror movies, Hercules Unbound and Night of the Widow (2012).  Since then, he's been on soaps, commercials, Teen Wolf, and How I Met Your Mother

He's also a comedian, motivational speaker, and all-around hunk.

Born in 1990, Brent has not yet expressed any interest in an acting career.  But he did appear in the reality tv series The Incredible Ferrignos (2011), along with his parents and siblings, to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

The family that flexes together, stays together.

The Sons of Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa (1940-1993) was a counterculture musician known for studio albums such as We're Only in it for the Money  and One Size Fits All, and for the single "Valley Girl," which memorialized 1980s slang phrases like "grody to the max."

His work had considerable homophobic content:

"Bobby Brown" (1979), the "cutest guy in town," has a run-in with a lesbian and turns gay.

"He's So Gay" (1984) is about a guy who's "so very, very gay" that he likes golden showers and S&M, and an evening's "not complete without some meat in his seat".

He had four children: Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva.











Dweezil (born 1969), top photo and left,  is a guitarist who tours with the group Zappa Plays Zappa.  Apparently he didn't inherit his father's rough features, as attested by the many pictures of his face and physique on the internet.

As an actor, Dweezil voiced Ajax, the surly teenage son on Duckman (1994-1997).  He has also appeared in Fully Loaded, Jack Frost, MAD TV, and Anarchy TV.

He doesn't seem to have inherited his father's homophobia.  He was even the subject of gay rumors early in his career.

Ahmet Zappa (1974-) doesn't have as many shirtless photos, but it doesn't look like he would be particularly impressive. He sometimes tours with his brother, and he's had a lot of acting experience.

He's been the subject of gay rumors, too.

The Mystery of Armie Hammer Solved

Armand Douglas Hammer, aka Armie Hammer (1986-), who played the Winkelvoss Twins in Social Network, Tonto to Johnny Depp's Lone Ranger, Illya Kuryakin to Henry Cavill's Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Clyde Tolson to Leonardo DiCaprio's J. Edgar Hoover, is the last in a chain of Armand Hammers.
















1. Armand Hammer (1898-1980) was a businessman and philanthropist who founded Occidental Petroleum, donated widely to liberal causes, and groomed Al Gore into a political career. He was married four times, but had only one child.

2. Julian Armand Hammer (1929-1986), led a life plagued by mental illness and substance abuse, and a charge of manslaughter.  He had two children,  Michael and Casey.   Michael was expected to run the empire.

3. Michael Armand Hammer (1955-) rejected his family's liberal Jewish heritage to become an evangelical Christian.  He now channels the fortune into an evangelical Christian film studio, a Christian college, Jews for Jesus, and innumerable fire-and-brimstone preachers.

4. Armie refused to be called Armand at an early age.  He got into Dad's bad graces when he said he wanted to become an actor, but was reconciled when he started getting starring roles.

By the way, Armie has a younger brother, Viktor, named after his great-uncle.

For all of my life up until today, I thought the Armand Hammer name was a pun on "Arm & Hammer," the baking soda produced by the Church and Dwight Company.  The picture of the muscular arm holding a hammer dates back to 1867, when it was first used by the Vulcan Spice Company to represent the Vulcan, the god of industry.

The Vulcan Arm and Hammer can still be seen on many building facades.

The original Armand Hammer swore that he was not named after baking soda, although he did join the Church and Dwight Board of Directors in 1986.  His parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants Julius and Rosa Hammer, were staunch Socialists who helped found the Communist Party of America.  It sort of make sense that they would name their son "Armand Hammer" after the logo of the Socialist Labor Party.

But staunch, serious Socialists naming their firstborn son with a pun?  Unlikely.

Hammer himself had another idea:  Armand Duvall, a young man in love with a dying prostitute in the Alexander Dumas novel La Dame aux Camélias, published in 1848 .  Here he is played by Colin Firth in a 1984 movie version. It has a strong gay subtext, and has often been parodied or adapted for the gay stage.

Armand's parents weren't necessarily interested in French novels, but they probably saw a stage version in New York in 1896, two years before Armand was born.

So, pun on a Socialist logo or a gay prostitute's boyfriend?  Either one is more interesting than a box of baking soda.

The Gay Connection of Julio Iglesias and Sons

Julio Iglesias is a famous singer in Spain and Latin America, with dozens of gold and platinum albums.

I knew him primarily from a series of duets performed in the 1980s with an eclectic assortment of American stars:

"All of You" with Diana Ross
"The Air that I Breathe" with the Beach Boys
"To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with Willie Nelson
"My Love" with Stevie Wonder

They were all very heterosexist, but what did you expect of popular music in the 1980s?

Not much gay connection, although he was a guest star on an episode of The Golden Girls, and once he said: "If I was gay, I would be the best gay in history."  I wonder what his criteria for gay excellence would be?

Well, maybe there's a gay connection in his sons.

The older, Julio Iglesias Jr. (born in 1973), got his start as a model, and now is an actor and singer.  He appeared as Luis on the tv series Hacienda Heights, a bilingual telenovela about a Los Angeles family.

The younger, Enrique (born in 1975), has followed in his father's footsteps to become one of the biggest stars in Latin America.

He has been the subject of gay rumors, so he responded with a post on Facebook:

"I try to make good songs and that are fun. Either way, what is the problem with there being many gay singers? There are many gay people that must be respected … the truth is that most people are good and human."

It's nice to know that most people are good and human, gay or not, but not a lot of gay connection there.

Wait -- Julio Sr. is married to a cousin of famed actor Steve McQueen, making Julio Jr. and Enrique second cousins of his grandson, gay actor and model Steven R. McQueen.

There's always a gay cousin or uncle somewhere in the family tree.

See also: Steve McQueen's Hunky Family Tree.

Fall 1973: Junior High Fantasies of Paul Getty Junior

During the summer of 1973, just after 7th grade at Washington Junior High, I started reading newspaper articles about Paul Getty Jr., the 16-year old grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who had mysteriously disappeared from his apartment in Rome.

Soon I discovered that it wasn't a paranormal disappearance: he had been kidnapped, with a ransom demand of $18 million.  His father and grandfather refused to pay, believing that he had somehow arranged the kidnapping himself.

The articles didn't say anything else about Paul, but the photos showed a cute, long haired guy with a slim build and dainty, feminine hands.

He obviously liked boys, not girls.  I imagined flying to Italy to mount a daring rescue, and getting a "my hero" hug and kiss.

Was he tied up with his shirt off?  Or naked? Was he struggling against the bonds, his chest heaving, his slim biceps straining?

On November 10th, a week before my 13th birthday, the kidnappers sent Paul's mother a package containing his severed ear, and warned that they would start returning him "by bits."  What body part would they cut off next, I wondered.  A finger -- or maybe his penis.

How big was his penis, anyway?

When I stormed into the dungeon where he was tied up naked, I would find out.  Then we would...

It never occurred to me to feel guilty over using Paul's ordeal as the subject of my junior high fantasies.

The elder Getty finally negotiated a deal, and delivered $2.9 million.  On December 13th, Paul was released.



He dropped out of the news, and I heard nothing more about him; I didn't even realize that Balthazar Getty, a noted actor of the 1980s, was his son.  But recently I began to wonder about the object of my junior high fantasies, and looked him up.

Apparently Paul was not as innocent as I imagined: living with a girlfriend, hanging out with criminals and mafiosi, using and selling massive quantities of drugs.

But he was bisexual: his biography notes experiences with both men and women.

After the kidnapping, he continued his jetsetting, bon vivant life.  He was married from 1975 to 1991, but pursued many friendships with gay men.  He partied with gay celebs like Elton John and Andy Warhol, who managed to talk him into nude photos.

It didn't take much talking.  Friends describe him as amiable, uninhibited, and eager to explore the risque.

And his tastes in clothing veered toward the Quentin Crisp style.

Paul was interested in show business, and starred in two movies, The Territory (1981) and The State of Things (1982).

But he continued to use massive quantities of drugs.  In 1981, at the age of 24, he drank a nearly-lethal mixture of alcohol, valium, and methadone, and suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and nearly blind.

The tragedy did not destroy his spirit.  Friends say that he remained positive, amiable, and charming up to his death thirty years later.

See also: The Gay Anthropologist and the Cannibal; and The Disappearance of Sean Flynn.