Woody Guthrie and his Clan: 4 Generations of Pro-Gay Folksingers

If you visit the facebook page of guitarist, drummer, and all-around cool guy Krishna Guthrie, you'll seem some nice beefcake photos.  And this sign:

Krishna is the latest in a dynasty of gay allies.  His great-grandfather was folksinger Woody Guthrie (right), who was introduced to radical politics by the gay couple Will Geer (later Grandpa on The Waltons, center) and Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, the first modern gay rights organization.

Woody remained close to Will through his life.  No doubt he would have been outraged to hear his anthem, "This Land is Your Land," used by the anti-gay marriage NOM at their rallies.

Woody's son Arlo Guthrie (left, with Will Geer) became the poster boy for hippie androgyny, gleefully transgressing gender norms in dress, hair, and behavior.

He starred in the counterculture classic Alice's Restaurant, which contains as many gay subtexts as the censors would allow.

He often sneaked pro-gay messages into his songs, like lambasting the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in "Alices Restaurant."

Woody's granddaughter (Krishna's aunt), Sarah Lee Guthrie, and her husband, Johnny Irion, often perform at gay venues.

And that's not all.  Arlo and his wife Jackie had four children and ten grandchildren.  There's an entire Guthrie clan out there, all raised to believe that it's ok to be gay.

The Gay Origin of Yankee Doodle

When I was a kid in the 1960s, we had to sing "Yankee Doodle" in music class every five minutes.

They told us "It's a great patriotic song, nearly as great as our national anthem!  It celebrates rugged American masculinity."

Like this Currier & Ives print of a muscular American trouncing the effete British dandies.

Except it didn't make sense.  Yankee Doodle was the dandy.

And what's the nonsense about sticking a feather in your cap and calling it macaroni?

And the immeasurably heterosexist "With the girls be handy"?

Turns out that the song was a British satire intended to signify that American men were prissy, feminine, and not interested in the ladies.

The high "macaroni" wig with a tricorner cap atop it was popular among British fops of the era, and an all-around term for feminine or gay men.

Rictor Norton's sourcebook of gay history reprints a British newspaper article from the 18th century complaining that: "the country is over-run with Catamites...or Macaronis."

A broadside explains:

Macaronies are a sex, Which do philosophers perplex;
Tho’ all the priests of Venus’s rites agree they are Hermaphrodites.

The admonition to be be "handy" with the girls was pure sarcasm.  Yankee Doodle would never dream of putting his hands on a lady.  A man, maybe.

The gay coding of "Yankee Doodle" continues in the famous painting "The Spirit of '76," by Archibald Willard.  It was originally entitled "Yankee Doodle," intended to be humorous.

Willard only decided to make it serious after seeing the determination in the eyes of his models, especially the younger drummer (modeled by railroad magnate's son Henry Devereaux) gazing with sullen admiration at the older (modeled by Willard's father).

And in the 1942 movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, a fictionalized biography of composer George M. Cohan. James Cagney as Cohan falls in love on schedule and sings the obsessively heterosexist "Yankee Doodle Boy":

I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart -- she's my Yankee Doodle joy.

But his mannerisms are so flamboyant that the gay coding seems almost deliberate.  Cagney's movies are generally loaded down with gay subtexts, and he may have been bisexual in real life.

The Big Men of American Tall Tales

In the mid-1980s, Shelly Duvall (fresh from playing Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie) hosted a Showtime series of Tall Tales & Legends, featuring live-action versions of Big Men (and Women) from American folklore: Pecos Bill (Steve Guttenberg), Johnny Appleseed (Martin Short), John Henry (Danny Glover), Davy Crockett (Mac Davis), Annie Oakley (Jamie Lee Curtis).

It was dreadful.  It brought back terrible memories of childhood, when those "colorful figures from our nation's past" were pounded into my brain through incessant classroom assignments and Wonderful World of Disney episodes.

Pecos Bill rode a mountain lion instead of a horse, used a snake for a lasso, and ate dynamite for a snack.

Davy Crockett was once swallowed by a bear, so he turned it inside out and escaped.

Paul Bunyan carved out the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe in the dirt.

Mike Fink (left) was half horse, half alligator, and half snapping turtle.

Who cared?  I much preferred Tarzan, Batman and Robin, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E.  For that matter, Li'l Abner and Alley Oop from the comics page.

For that matter, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.

And some of the tales weren't even very tall:

Casey Jones ran a railroad engine fast.

John Henry...well, he drilled a million holes in rocks, and then died.

Johnny Appleseed...um, well, he walked around planting trees.

But, on the bright side, they weren't given many heterosexual exploits.

Pecos Bill had a girlfriend, and I just discovered that Paul Bunyan had one, but she doesn't appear in any stories that I recall.

The other Big Men were portrayed without Big Women.

And there was a a lot of beefcake.  Big Men were by definition as muscular as Superman.

You could ask your parents for a Davy Crockett action figure, and then strip him out of his clothes.

John Henry was portrayed as a hard-iron bodybuilder, as in this 8-foot tall statue in Talcott, West Virginia.

 And Paul Bunyan?  Just think about the possibilities.  If he is 30 feet tall, then he must have a three-foot long....

See also: G.I. Joe and Ken; Roadside Beefcake

Alice's Restaurant: Gay Subtexts in a Hippie Classic

On Thanksgiving Day 1965, Arlo Guthrie, the 18-year old son of folksinger Woody Guthrie, offered to haul a load of garbage to the dump for his friends, Ray and Alice Brock, who ran a restaurant/hippie commune in rural Massachusetts.  He was arrested and fined for littering, then conscripted into military service, but rejected because he had a "criminal record."

He memorialized the event in a song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (1967), which became a counterculture classic and the cornerstone of his career.  The 1969 movie version, Alice's Restaurant, encapsulates the gay promise and anxiety of the hippie generation.

Transforming a 20 minute monologue into a 2-hour movie requires a lot of padding, so director Arthur Penn adds endless scenes of hippies dancing, singing, and saying things like "We have what we need!  We don't need anything else!"

And, at the beginning, lots of scenes that imply that Arlo is gay.

He experiences homophobic harassment due to his long hair.  He rejects several women's advances, and apparently invites male friend Roger (Geoff Outlaw) into his bed.  The landlady refers to them as "friends" with a disgust that usually implies "lover."

But then, as if worried that they might be going too far, Roger vanishes (to reappear later).  Arlo begins sleeping with women, and gets a girlfriend.  There's still a gay subtext, but int involves hippie commune leader Ray (James Broderick)  aggressively courting troubled heroin addict Shelly (Michael McClanathan) -- their grabbing and pawing has to be seen to be believed -- which causes Alice (Patricia Quinn) endless jealousy.

While Ray is watching a film of Shelly, Alice literally stands in front of the screen to distract him.  She also seduces Shelly to "get even."

(By the way, this isn't Michael McClanathan.  It's Daniel Garth, star of Any Body, Any Way (1968), Michael's first movie.)

Alice's Restaurant contains a lot of male semi-nudity, including an extended scene in the induction center, with dozens of recruits wandering around in their underwear.  There's even some homoerotic frolicking, as Arlo waits with the other inductees who may be "too immoral to kill babies and destroy villages."

There's a line in the original song in which Arlo suggests that you can get out of the draft by singing "Alice's Restaurant" to the psychiatrist.  Or two of you can sing it together, and he'll think you're both "faggots" and let you out.   Another example of the hippie anxiety over potential gay identity.  But during the 1990s, in live performances, he changed the line to protest the homophobic "don't ask, don't tell" policy.