Roger Mobley: Child star buddy-bonding, teen idol gazing at girls, Disney Adventure Boy, Green Beret

In spite of a few bright spots, such as Boyne Castle, Disney movies in the 1960s were overwhelmingly heterosexist. Disney Adventure Boys -- and there was a stable of them -- offered an aggressive conflation of muscles and heterosexual ravings.  The stand out hetero star was Roger Mobley.

Born in Evansville, Indiana in 1949, Roger began performing with his siblings in carnivals and county fairs, and on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour, a sort of radio precursor of American Idol.  

This led to many guest spots on the popular tv series of the day -- Hawaiian Eye, Donna Reed, Gunsmoke, The Detectives, The Virginian-- plus a starring role in Seasons 3 and 4 of Fury (1958-60), a "boy and his horse" Western.  Peter Graves played a rancher in modern-day California, a single dad raising his adopted son Joey (Bobby Diamond).  Fury was a "wild" stallion who won't be ridden, but doesn't mind saving the day.  Roger played the son's friend, Packy.

He starred in Emil and the Detectives (1964), based on the novel by Erich Kastner: After his 400 marks are stolen, rich kid Emil (Bryan Russell) follows the thief to Berlin.  He thwarts a bank robbery with the help of his gay-subtext buddy, the street urchin Gustav (Roger).

In 1964, Roger became a Disney Adventure Boy, appearing in six of the movies broadcast in installments on episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney.

For the Love of Willadean (1964) Rural

l boy Harley (Roger) tries to win the Girl of His Dreams, but his rivals trick him into stealing a prize watermelon, and then into braving a haunted house.  Future Lost in Space kid Billy Mumy plays his buddy. 

Next Roger started on his most famous character, Gallagher, a Gilded Age newsboy who first appeared in an 1891 story by Richard Harding Davis, then in two silents, Gallegher: A Newsboy Story (1917) and Let'Er Go, Gallegher (1928)

More after the break

"House of Guinness": Heirs to a beer empire in 1868 Ireland. With a gay brother, shirtless hunks, Irish hiphop, and a heck of a lot of d*cks

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been having trouble recently, beginning reviews of movies and tv shows and then not liking them, or when I like them, there's no gay representation or beefcake, so I can't review them here.   So this time I cheated by checked in advance: House of Guinness has a gay character, and lots of the actors have appeared n*de.

Episode 1 Prologue: Closeup of the beer-making process, with the ingredients, water, hops, and so on.  A sweaty bare-chested bloke adds the fire.  I like this tv series already.  Then comes family, money, and rebellion.  

Scene 1: St. James Gate, Dublin, 1868:  As Foreman Rafferty (James Norton, left) walks through the factory, a dude asks if there will be trouble today. Of course, there's always trouble with the Guinness Family. 

Outside, someone throws a beer bottle at the logo, and Prohibitionists burn an effigy of Benjamin Guinness: "A brewer of sin and debauchery!"  His funeral is today, and they are intent on preventing his procession from making it to the church.

The Temperance Movement was nearly as popular in 19th century Ireland as in the U.S., attributing almost all crime, poverty, disease, and insanity to alcohol consumption.  

Meanwhile, Fenian Leader Patrick (Seamus O'Hara) tells his followers than the Guiness heirs  are weak and divided, so this is a perfect time to free Ireland -- by attacking the funeral procession!  "Grab whatever weapons you can find, but spare the horses -- all horses are Catholic."

England occupied Ireland until 1922, forbidding the use of the Irish language, discriminating against Catholics, and promoting stereotypes that are still common today.  There were lots of revolts, rebellions, and terrorists acts, notably from the Fenian Brotherhood.

In the factory (very impressive set, lots of workers), Foreman Rafferty tells the men to arm themselves.  They have to fight to get the boss's corpse through to the church.

The battle is accompanied by the hiphop song "Get Your Brits Out," by Kneecap. Ordinarily I dislike contemporary music in a historical drama, but not when it's mostly in Irish:

Ach Stalford agus an DUP

Gach lá, taobh amuigh de mo theach

"Go back to Dublin if you want to rap"

Anois éist, I’m gonna say this once

Yous can all stay just don’t be c*nts

 

Scene 2: Iveagh House, the Guiness family home (built 1736, now the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).  Femme, decadent Edward (Louis Partridge) complains that his button-down conservative brother Arthur (Anthony Boyle) has been in London so long, he's lost his Irish accent.

The third brother, Benjamin (Finn O'Shea, top photo) is asleep on the couch, still hung over from one of his benders.

They discuss the hypocrisy of everyone pretending to grieve, when the Irish hated him, and the English are happy that he is gone: now they can manipulate the children.  

Sister Anne tells them to shush their bickering; it's time for the funeral, and they have to act like a civilized Christian family: "Decadent Edward, change your shirt. Drunken Benjamin, change into some clothes you haven't slept in. Conservative Arthur, just change." 

More after the break

Max Casella after dating Dougie: Christian Bale's buddy, Tony Soprano's buddy, Timon, Bottom, bi. With a small d*ck bonus.

 

Link to the n*de dudes

In the early 1990s, if your parents belonged to a certain socioeconomic class, you were required to watch ABC's ultra-conservative programming block on Wednesday nights: 

The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage as a boy winning the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.

Home Improvement, with Tim Allen grunting with tools.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a...football coach.

And Doogie Howser, MD, with Neil Patrick Harris as a 16-year old who somehow managed to finish medical school, become a doctor, and get girls.

I wasn't of a certain age, I was not living with parents of a certain socioeconomic class, so on Wednesday nights I was watching Seinfeld.   Not Doogie Howser, because of its ridiculous premise and "Girls are the meaning of life!" ideology.  

 But I did notice Max Casella, who played Doogie's buddy: 22-26 years, "cute as a bug's ear," as the oldsters would say, and a member of the Short Guy Brigade at 5'7".

As everyone knows, Neil Patrick Harris came out a few years after Doogie, and for some inscrutable reason agreed to play "himself' in the homophobic Harold & Kumar movies and heterosexual horndog Barney on How I Met Your Mother (2005-14).  More recently, in Uncoupled (2022), he played a gay man dealing with the death of his partner and suddenly becoming single at midlife. 

But what has Max Casella been doing?

I'm researching the three standard questions: 

1. Any gay roles?

2. Gay in real life?

3. Any n*ude photos?  

1. Any gay roles?

In Newsies (1992), a Disney movie about the newsboys' strike of 1899, Max plays Racetrack Higgins, who may be gay or bisexual.  When focus character Jack (Christian Bale) says that they can't beat up the newsboys who refuse to join the strike, he "jokingly" suggests kissing them.

In Ed Wood (1994), the biopic of the director known for crossdressing, Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space, Max plays Paul Marco, the gay actor who often starred in Wood's films.  His sexual identity is not mentioned here.

Later Max moved into animation, voicing characters on Pepper Anne, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Kim Possible; and video games such as Jak and Daxter (a humanoid elf and his previously-human otter-weasel buddy) and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony (he doesn't voice Gay Tony).

He appeared in 28 episodes of The Sopranos (2001-07) as Benny Fazio, who is partnered with Chris Moltisanti and sometimes works as Capo Tony's driver.  He's married with children.

Inside Llewelyn Davis (2013) depicts a day in the life of the folk singer (Oscar Davis) in the early 1960s Greenwich Village scene.  Max plays Club Manager Pappi Corsicato, who has s *ex with Llewelyn's girl.

More after the break

Out Our Way: Teenagers Before Girl-Craziness

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I was jealous of the comics they got across the river in Davenport, Iowa.  They got Peanuts, we got Winthrop.  They got The Wizard of Id, we got Apartment 3-G.  I sort of liked Alley Oop and Prince Valiant, but what was up with the single-panel strip, Out Our Way? 

 It was about an unnamed family -- mom, young adult daughter, teenage son, younger son -- drawn in grotesquely realistic detail.

They spoke in nearly incomprehensible slang and had bizarre customs. There was an "ice box" instead of a refrigerator, a gigantic radio instead of a tv.  They bathed in a tub in the kitchen.

The older son had a job, though he looked barely fifteen.

Confused, repelled, yet fascinated, I tried to decipher the strips day after day, week after week.  The world they portrayed was vastly different from the world I knew.

Boys in my world were always fully clothed, except in locker rooms, but in Out Our Way, they stripped down for baths and for bed and to swim.   They displayed a remarkable physicality, an awareness of the way their bodies looked and felt and moved.

Boys in my world did not touch each other, except during sports matches and fights. We were expected to find physical contact abhorrent.  But in Out Our Way, boys un-selfconsciously pressed against each other, draped their legs over each other's bodies, hugged, slept in the same bed

In my world, every trait, interest, and concern was gender-polarized.  Boys carried their books at their waist, girls across their chest.  Boys said "p.e." but "gym class," and girls "gym" but "p.e. class."  And the punishment for transgression was severe. But in Our Our Way, boys un-selfconsciously wore dresses.  The teenager performed "women's work," cooked (in an apron), cleaned, tended to his young brother.

Boys in my world were expected to groan with longing over the girls who walked in slow-motion across the schoolyard, their long hair blowing in the wind. They were expected to evaluate the hotness of actresses on tv, discuss breasts and bras, and claim innumerable sexual conquests.  But boys in Out Our Way never displayed the slightest heterosexual interest.  Instead, they consistently mocked the silliness of heterosexual romance.

What sort of world was this?

Many years later, I found that the comics I was reading were reprints from the 1930s, and even then, many had been nostalgic, evoking the author J.R. Williams' childhood at the turn of the century.

I was gazing into a time capsule, into a era when heterosexual desire was expected to appear at the end of adolescence, not at the beginning, so teenage boys were free from the "What girl do you like?" chant.

Jeff East: Tom Sawyer's boyfriend, Disney teen, young Superman, n*de fratboy, Pumpkinhead prey

Link to the n*de photos.

If you were  a kid in the 1970s, Sunday night meant either church or The Wonderful World of Disney, countless movies set in the wilderness chopped up into 40-minute segments.  It was dreadful, but at least you got to see a cadre of teenagers personally selected by Walt or Roy Disney to represent "youthful masculinity":  Tommy Kirk, Kurt Russell, Tim Considine, James MacArthur.  

And if you could tell your fundamentalist, "movies are sinful" parents that you were going to the library downtown and sneak into a matinee, you could see Jeff East and Johnny Whitaker playng boyfriends.

Born in 1957 in Kansas City, Jeff had virtually no acting experience when he was chosen from among 1,000 hopefuls in open auditions to play Huck Finn in Tom Sawyer (1973), with Johnny Whitaker as Tom.

They appeared together again in Huckleberry Finn (1974), with a romance that would be impossibly overt today.

Plus they both showed bare chests and backsides, which would never be permitted today.  

Jeff went on three Wonderful World of Disney movies about big animals.  Disney loved animal stars.

Return of the Big Cat (1974): he has to save his sister from a cougar.

The Flight of the Grey Wolf (1975): he tries to re-introduce a wolf into the wild.  Nobody flies.

The Ghost of Cypress Swamp (1977): he has to save his dog from a panther, and runs afoul of a crazy guy.

This was the era of the big name teen idols like Shawn Cassidy, and a guy who fought panthers couldn't compete.  Jeff got very little attention in the teen magazines.

Jeff moved on to his first "adult" role as a college student who participates in a deadly hazing in The Hazing (1977),  also released as The Case of the Campus Corpse to make it seem like a comedy.  

Again he takes everything off -- he spends about half the movie in nothing but a jockstrap.

And he has a painfully intense, gay-subtext romance with his costar, fellow college student Charles Martin Smith.

Charles Martin Smith went on to display his goods in Never Cry Wolf (1983), about a government researcher living with wolves.  

What's with these guys and their wildlife?

More after the break

"Shardlake": Murder in Tudor England, with a limb-different Sherlock Holmes and a lot of queerbaiting

There are three reasons that Shardlake, a four-episode tv series on Hulu, gives me bad vibes.

1. It is set during the reign of Henry VIII.  Maybe in British schools you get lectured on this every year, but all I know about Henry VIII is that he broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, married a lot -- I'm related to Ann Bolyn -- and was played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, William Cecil, and William Paulet straight.

2. Do you know what a "shard" is in America?

3. It stars Sean Bean, who I thought was Mr. Bean, the annoying Borat-like character. Turns out that Sean Bean has no connection to Mr. Bean. He played Boromir in The Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.  Might as well give it a try.

Prologue: Crows cawing at a gloomy looking monastery.  Sinister looking guy goes down the stairs, crosses the courtyard, unlocks a door, and heads down to the basement -- where a knight slices off his head!

Scene 1: Hunky guy with a upper-body limb difference washes, shows a little chest, gets dressed.  He tells an off-camera Matthew, no doubt his boyfriend, that he's "ready for whatever the day brings."

No boyfriend: he's Matthew Shardlake, talking to himself.

Shardlake is played by Arthur Hughes, left, who is limb-different in real life. He has appeared in a lot of Doctor Who movies, starred in the soap The Archers, and played Richard III.

Meanwhile, a young guy gallops across the countryside for five minutes.  You assume that he's going to be a main character, but he delivers a letter and vanishes from the story.  

It's for Lord Cromwell.  Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded.   

Bad news: "My representative!  My voice!  This cannot go unpunished!"  They must have murdered his representative in the monastery.

Scene 2:  Shardlake snarls through town.  People jump out of his way and cross themselves in fear. He stops to watch a magical parrot say "God save King Harry," but condemns it as a trick.  Harry is Henry VIII. 

A guy tries to pick him up.  After substantial flirtation, he admits that he's actually summoning him to see Lord Cromwell.  He seems to like-like Shardlake.  Maybe a gay-subtext is brewing.

He's Jack Barak, played by Anthony Boyle, left.

 There's been a murder, "a friend of yours. Poor Lord Singleton." Robin Singleton, fictional, sent by Lord Cromwell to investigate the Monastery of St. Donatus, also fictional.  

Scene 3: Their meeting.  Lord Cromwell is in a mood. Back story: Ann Bolyn was executed a few months ago.  This is the fall of 1536.   He shows Shardlake two skulls of Saint Barbara confiscated from monasteries to demonstrate how monks lie about everything, and has him read the letter revealing the murder.

His assignment: They're going to start closing monasteries, confiscating their wealth, and passing it out to the nobility.  But you can only close them if you can prove that the monks are "papists, thieves, or sodomites."  Aren't monks all Roman Catholics, so papists by definition?  That's what Robin Singleton was researching.  So Shardlake must discover who killed him, hopefully a monk, and get on with the investigation of monastic evil.

Jack is assigned to accompany Shardlake.  Being a misanthrope, he doesn't want any traveling companions, but it's an order from Lord Cromwell. Maybe they'll fall in love.

Scene 6: While snarling through town, Shardlake encounters a tough, who tells him to go into that house and up the stairs, then disappears from the story.  Grr.

He meets with Lord Norfolk, Thomas Howard, the uncle of Ann Bolyn. He's my great-great-great, etc. grandfather!  

An opponent of Lord Cromwell, Norfolk wants to know why Shardlake was cozying up to him.  "I'm to investigate a murder at St. Donatus, and then close the monastery so Lord Cromwell can confiscate its wealth." Norfolk disapproves: "It is theft in the name of God."

Norfolk is played by Peter Firth, left, who showed us his equipment in Equus, but is now 70 and a bit crotchety.

More crotchety guys after the break

Robert De Niro's 15 Gayest Movies, from "Bloody Mama" to "Dirty Grandpa"

In addition to being one of the most accomplished actors of our time, Robert De Niro is a strong gay ally.  In 2016 he received the GLAAD Excellence in Media Award, for media professionals who have made a significant difference in LGBTQ representation

He has 135 acting, 39 producing, and 2 directed credits listed on the IMDB, but these are the gayest, with gay characters, buddy-bonding subtexts, beefcake, or nudity.

1. Bloody Mama (1970). The 27-year old's first nude scene in an anti-Establishment tale of Ma Barker and her crime family.  Mama gives the squaling Lloyd a bath, and his penis pops out.

2. Mean Streets (1973): buddy-bonding between two Italian-American hoods, De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

3. 1900 (1976): buddy-bonding between two Italian boys, one rich, one poor (De Niro, Gerard Depardieu).  Their three-way encounter with a woman features frontal nudity.

4. Taxi Driver (1976): Travis Bickle becomes a vigilante, and rescues lesbian Jody Foster. Mega beefcake.

5. New York, New York (1977): "Lullaby of Broadway" romance between De Niro and gay fave Liza with a Z.

6. The Deer Hunter (1978): Depressed Vietnam War vets. One of De Niro's first nude scenes.

7. Raging Bull (1980): A self-destructive boxer.  Beefcake.

8. The Mission (1986): buddy-bonding in 18th century South America, between a Jesuit priest and a reformed slave trader (Jeremy Irons, De Niro).

More after the break

Mitch Vogel: The Bulge and Biceps of Bonanza

We needed as many freckle-faced redheaded boys as possible during the 1970s: Ron Howard on Happy Days, Johnny Whitaker on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Mitch Vogel on Bonanza (1970-73).

He played Jamie, a teenager adopted by the Cartrights to give Ben someone to offer fatherly advice to (and, apparently, to give Michael Landon some competition in the bulge department).




But before he blossomed into teenage biceps and bulges, Mitch was a popular child star, with roles in Adam-12, Ironside, The Young Rebels, and The Immortal.  

He was best known for The Reivers (1969), set in turn of the century Mississippi, as an 11-year old who tags along with his free-spirit relative (Steve McQueen) on a trip to a brothel in Memphis, sees naked ladies, and "comes of age" (although he doesn't actually have sex with anyone).

But the teenage Mitch did a lot of buddy-bonding, too.

In Two Boys (1970), Jud (Mitch) and his boyfriend Billy (Mark Kearney) "come of age" in a small Midwestern town.

In The Boy from Dead Man's Bayou (1971), Jeannot (Mitch) and Claude (Michael Lookinland from The Brady Bunch) buddy-bond as they wrest a church bell from the jaws of a giant alligator.

His characters got girls on Little House on the Prairie  (1975) and State Fair (1976), and were backwoods outsiders who didn't get anyone on Here Come the Brides and Saturday morning's The Mighty Isis (1975) and Ark II (1976).

His last credit movie role, Texas Detour (1978), is a Dukes of Hazard clone about three hippies stuck in a hayseed town.  Except it's a drama.

Today Mitch lives in Southern California, where he is active in directing, music, and church groups.

But gay Boomers will always remember him for the bulge and biceps of Bonanza.

The top 10 "Little House on the Prairie" hunks face fire, flood, disease, disaster, murder, and angst

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Pippin: a Gay Piece of the Sky

In high school (1975-78) and college (1978-82), I hung out with the drama club crowd and played in the orchestra, so I spent a lot of time playing in, going to, and analyzing musicals.  I saw Pippin on stage at least three times, including a 1978 performance with a young Chris Young, who would go on to become a Hollywood star. Its bare sets, broken fourth wall, and tinkly songs made it a favorite of high school drama clubs (photo is from an Eagan, Minnesota production starring Jordan Oxborough).

It has a theme similar to that of Peer Gynt: Pippin, son of King Charlemagne, sets out to find where he belongs in the world.   He tries becoming a scholar, a warrior, a hedonist, and a fighter against tyranny -- butting heads with the gay-vague villain Lewis.

None of those work, so Pippin becomes an artist, a religious zealot, and a tyrant.  Then he realizes that the only true happiness lies back home, in being a husband and father to the widow Catherine and her young son Theo.

Same old story: job, house, wife, kids.  Conform. Resistance is futile. Learn to love Big Brother.

The difference: everyone in Pippin knows that they're acting in a play, they and often break the fourth wall.  The Lead Player, a sort of Mephistophiles, keeps admonishing the actor playing Pippin to have his character dream, experiment, achieve things.

When the actor decides that Pippin would be happiest settling down with Catherine,  the Leading Player becomes furious. He orders the troupe and the orchestra to pack up everything, including the sets and the costumes, and leave.  No more play!  But even on a dark, silent stage, with no script and no final bows, Pippin is content.

I'll take the Lead Player's advice and aspire, thanks.

One thing Pippin never tries is same-sex love.  He doesn't even do any buddy-bonding, though sometimes the androgynous, leering, gay-coded Lead Player seems to have a homoerotic interest in him (or a hetero-erotic, when she's a woman).

And there is substantial beefcake.  Pippin and Lewis usually wear sleeveless form-fitting chain mail tunics that accentuate their chest and biceps, and they sometimes go completely shirtless.  You're not going to see many more bare chests on stage, except maybe in The King and I.

Pippin premiered on Broadway in 1972, and ran through 1977, with John Rubinstein (left) as Pippin and Ben Vereen as the Leading Player.

Other Pippins include Barry Williams (1975, above), William Katt (1981 film version), Jack Noseworthy (2000), Matthew Arden and Tyler Giordano (2009, playing Pippin together), James Royce Edwards, and Matthew James Thomas (2012, left).

Waltons: The Gay Connection

It's been off the air for 40 years, but people still point to The Waltons (1972-81) as emblematic of "good tv" about "family values," by which they mean it had no bad words, parental disrespect, or gay people.  Remember when President Bush told People magazine that we need fewer families like The Simpsons and more like The Waltons?

So we should all live in rural North Carolina during the Depression, have no money but an enormous house and chicken for dinner every night, have enormous numbers of children, and all go to bed at the same time, shouting "Good night" to each other across the darkened rooms?

I hate to be the bearer of "bad news," but even The Waltons had a gay connection.  

1. The central character, aspiring writer John-Boy Walton, was played by Richard Thomas, who starred in Last Summer (1969), about a three-way romance in the gay mecca of Fire Island, and Fifth of July (1982), about a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran.

2. Will Geer, Grandpa Walton, was gay.  His lover, Harry Hay, founded the Mattachine Society, the first gay rights organization in the U.S., in 1950. 

3. Ralph Waite, John Walton, is heterosexual, but during the 1980s he ran for Congress, primarily due to the incumbent's lack of support for AIDS research and gay issues. 

4. Eric Scott, left (Ben Walton), has starred in two gay-themed movies, Defying Gravity (1997) and Never Again (2001).

5. I've never seen an episode all the way through, but I understand that there was a parade of hunky guys, sometimes shirtless.

6. And frequent buddy-bonding.

7. The John-Boy doll didn't look much like him (it was a blond GI Joe in overalls) but it had a massive chest.

8. John-Boy had an almost total lack of heterosexual interest (before his wedding in a 1995 movie).

See also: My Crush on Richard Thomas