Bertie and Jeeves: A gay gentleman in 1920s Britain and his valet/boyfriend

In the early decades of the 20th century -- at least in fiction -- there was a certain category of aristocratic but impoverished young men who lived on the largess of imperial aunts.  The funds came with the demand, and eventually the hope -- that the young men would settle down to a wife and a prosperous career, but they would have none of it.

Indeed, they spent so much time plotting ingenious escapes to the twin prisons of marriage and work that they had precious little time left over for golf, tennis, gambling, the theater, and other pleasures of indolence.

We can see the Young Man of Indolence in the 19th century Aesthete/Decadent movement; in Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest; Kenneth Graham's Rat -- "there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats."  And in the featherbrained Oxford boy Bertie Wooster and his longsuffering valet Jeeves.

 P.G  Wodehouse (1881-1975) first chronicled the pair in Jeeves Takes Charge (1916), and within a few years was named the most prolific  (and funniest) writer in Britain.  He went on to write 11 novels and 35 short stories about Bertie and Jeeves.

Bertie spends most stories evading marriage and gainful employment, saving his friends from jams, and getting into a few jams of his own.  While not averse to feminine charms, he definitely occupies a homosocial world: his life is informed by his friends from college or the Drone's Club, with names like Barmy, Biffy, Gussie, Stinker, Sippy, and Beefy.  And his gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves.

A professional valet, Jeeves popped into Bertie's life unannounced, like witty servants from Mary Poppins to Charles in Charge, and quickly made himself indispensable.  His maiden aunts never encouraged him to marry, nor did he ever fall prey to feminine charms.  Everyone understood that Bertie was the love of his life.

And they were together forever.  The last Jeeves and Wooster novel, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, published in 1974, involved Jeeves helping Bertie evade a woman's clutches yet again.

The gay subtext is so obvious that one wonders if it was intentional.  Wodehouse was married to a woman, but according to some biographers asexual, repelled by the thought of sharing his bed with anyone, and according to others gay but heavily closeted after the downfall of Oscar Wilde and the dissolution of the Yellow Book chaps.  Regardless, he worked in the theater where he had many gay friends, so he was certainly aware of same-sex desire.  And many gay couples of the early 20th century masqueraded as young libertine and valet, so even if Wodehouse didn't intend for Bertie and Jeeves to be read that way, he surely knew that they could be.

More after the break

Why We Watched "The Nanny" in West Hollywood

We didn't watch a lot of tv in West Hollywood, but we did manage to watch The Nanny (1993-1999), part of the  "servant brings joie de vivre to a dysfunctional family" sitcoms that extends back to Hazel , "Somebody bellow for Beulah?", and probably back to ancient Roman comedy.

Here a  "flashy girl from Flushing",  the loud-mouthed, low-brow working-class Jewish Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) has no education or experience in childcare, but somehow manages to becomes the nanny for the children of the ultra-sophisticated, ultra-elite Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy):

1. Teenage Maggie (Lauren Tom)
2. Tween Brighton (Benjamin Salisbury. left)
3. Preteen Grace (Madeline Zima)

Filling out the main cast are Maxwell's business partner C.C. Babcock (Lauren Lane), who has an unrequited crush on him, and sarcastic butler Niles (Daniel Davis).

Episodes involve Fran's wild I Love Lucy-style schemes, Maxwell's play production problems,  occasionally caring for the kids, and of course the ongoing question of "Will they or won't they?"

Of course they will, but it seems to take forever.  Maxwell is concerned that, coming from different social classes, they are incompatible  (has he never seen, like, every romance movie ever?).

Meanwhile the Sheffields get along swimmingly with Fran's family:  stereotypic Jewish mother Sylvia, generally unseen father Morty, and grandma Yetta.

And Maxwell has an endless stream of relatives who demonstrate that it's ok to romance your servants.  His sister marries her chauffeur. His brother even romances Fran.

Yet Maxwell proposes and takes it back, says the "L" word and takes it back, kisses her and takes it back, yada yada yada.

I would have told him, "show me a ring or I'm outta here," like 35 episodes ago.

Not a lot of beefcake.  This is a distaff show, about women talking, scheming, commiserating, bonding.  The few men around are seen from the perspective of the female gaze, desired for their charm, sophistication, and power, not for their physiques.  They rarely if ever take their clothes off.

Not a lot of gay references.  When a very occasional gay person does appear, everyone is surprised.  Apparently the world of Broadway draws only straight people.

Then why was it such a hit among gay men in West Hollywood?

1.  We were envious of New York.  It was bigger, more sophisticated, more serious, the birthplace of Gay Rights.

2. It was unremittingly cheery, with few of the depressing "problem of the week" episodes that spoiled other 1990s sitcoms.

3. Fran is a flamboyant fashionista, a campy, corny drag queen.

4. Since Maxwell is a Broadway producer, every Broadway star, singer, and actor you ever heard of makes a cameo: Ray Charles, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme,  Eartha Kitt, Carol Channing, Patti LaBelle, Rita Moreno, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ben Vereen, Celine Dion, Lynne Redgrave, Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John,

And many you never heard of, famous at the time but now long forgotten: Joe Lando (left), Leslie Moonves, Donald Trump.

The Bodybuilder and the Nanny: Mr. Belvedere

An unconventional free spirit arrives out of nowhere, talks his/her way into a job as a maid, nanny, butler, or housekeeper for  a dysfunctional family, and ends up being "just exactly what the doctor prescribed."   It was the premise of a dozen sitcoms, beginning with Hazel and Nanny and the Professo in the 1960s, and going through  from Charles in Charge to The Nanny to Andy the Manny on Modern Family

Mr. Belvedere  (1985-1990) had the sophisticated, gay-coded British butler (Christopher Hewitt) intruding upon the household of macho, somewhat homophobic sports writer George Owens (Bob Uecker). Many episodes involved the journey of the mistrustful odd couple toward mutual respect and eventually friendship. Unfortunately, there were no actual gay characters, nor even a "college friend coming out" episode, though they did deal with juvenile AIDS, gender transgressions (George's young son Wesley studies ballet), and a boy who was "confused."

George had a standard sitcom family: wife, teenage son and daughter, and grade school son.  Oddly, 23-year old Rob Stone, who played high schooler Kevin, received little attention from the teen magazines, and gave gay kids only one beefcake shot, when he signs up to be a nude artist's model to impress a girl. An iconic moment in the generally homophobic 1980s

Brice Beckham (grader schooler Wesley) received more attention, even though he was barely adolescent when the program ended.  Maybe it's a reflection of the program's popularity among pre-teens.

Christopher Hewitt, who was gay in real life, died in 2001. Rob Stone is involved in many directing and producing projects, specializing in documentaries.

Brice Beckham has continued to act. In 2012 he organized a number of former child stars, including Jeremy Licht (The Hogan Family) and Maureen Flanigan (Out of This World), to produce a pro-gay response to Kirk Cameron's infamous homophobic comments.

Update: I looked for contemporary beefcake photos of Brice Beckham and Rob Stone, and came up with nothing.  But here are some other teen idols who grew up, bulked up, and showed us their d*cks:

Nathan Kress, Freddy from ICarly.

Shane Harper from Good Luck Charlie

Kurt Ostlund from Mr. Young

Vincent Martella from Everybody Hates Chris

What's the Gay Connection in "The Sound of Music"?

When I was living in West Hollywood, people kept saying things like:
"I can't go out tonight -- The Sound of Music is on!"
"Which Sound of Music character are you?"
"The Sound of Music is playing at the community theater.  We have to go!"

I have never seen it all the way through.  It gives me bad vibes.

It's my fourth grade teacher's fault.  She told us about Anne Frank and The Sound of Music at the same time, and I got them mixed up, thinking that the musical ended with everyone dying in a concentration camp.

When I used to hear the songs, they gave me a frisson of dread, since I thought they were being sung by the prisoners at Auschwitz.

But even without the horror, they made no sense.  Look at "Do, Re, Mi":

Do, a deer, a female deer.  It's a doe. 

Ray, a drop of golden sun.   It's a ray, not a drop.

Mi, the name I call myself.  No, it's a personal pronoun in the accusative case.

Fahhhh, a long, long way to run.  It's  pronounced far, not fahhhh.

Ti, a drink with jam and bread.  Who drinks tea with jam and bread?  For that matter, what the heck is jam?

Or "My Favorite Things":

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels.  Ponies don't come in cream colors, and strudel is a soft pastry, not crisp.

When the dog bites -- when the bee stings.  If a dog bites you, thinking of "favorite things" wouldn't help -- you need a rabies shot. And why would you feel sad when bitten or stung?  It's not sad, it's painful.

"Oh, no," everyone kept telling me.  "It's the greatest musical of all time!  And the gayest!"

So I've been looking for the gay connection.

Not in the plot: it's just a "servant inspires joie de vivre in dysfunctional family" story, done to death on tv: Hazel, Charles in Charge, Mr. Belvedere, Give me a Break, The Nanny.  Here the nanny is future nun Maria (Julie Andrews), and the family belongs to the stern Captain Von Trapp of the Austrian army (Christopher Plummer).  After they learn joie de vivre, the family hits it big as professional singers, and finally they escape from the Nazis by climbing over the hillside into Switzerland.



There is no beefcake or buddy-bonding.

There are no gay or gay-vague characters, except maybe Max Detweiler, who becomes the children's agent.

 In 1965 he was played by Richard Haydn, who was gay in real life.  This scene does not appear in the movie.

Maybe there's a gay connection in the cast?

Julie Andrews, of course, went on to play a woman disguised as a drag queen in Victor/Victoria (1982).

Christopher Plummer  won an Academy Award at the age of 82, for playing a gay man who comes out after retirement in Beginners (2010).  In the top photo, he seems to be having a little loincloth malfunction in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969).

Nicholas Hammond (left), one of the two boys in Von Trapp's mostly female family, played Spider-Man on tv (1977-78), where he is adequately cute.  He was married for only four years, and is rumored to be gay.

Not a lot of gay connection there.

What about the real life Von Trapp Family, lead by patriarch Georg Ritter Von Trapp (1888-1947)?  Ok, they were professional singers long before they met Maria, and they were Italian citizens who didn't need to escape Germany -- they just bought train tickets.  After the War, they opened a lodge in Stowe, Vermont.  

Most of the kids eventually married, although Agathe may have been gay: she ran a kindergarten with her "friend of 50 years," Mary Louise Kane.

Still not a lot of gay connection.

The Sound of Music Live! (2013) starred Carrie Underwood as Maria and Stephen Moyer (left) as Captain Von Trapp, Christian Borle (second photo), who plays a lot of gay characters, made his Max Detweiler as gay-vague as possible.

Not much there, either.

So the gay connection of The Sound of Music consists mostly of bulges?

See also: Charles in Charge

Mr. Belvedere

My Fair Lady.

The Action-Adventure "Hazel"

Amazon Prime is streaming a lot of old sitcoms from the 1960s: The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, The Lucy Show, Dennis the Menace.  I can't wait for them to get around to Hazel (1961-66), with Shirley Booth as the maid for a middle-class family.  Not because I loved it.  Because it gives me a visceral sense of foreboding and dread, as if something is not right.  And I want to find out why.

I was only five years old when the program ended, so I don't recall more than a few snippets of episodes.  Maybe the premise itself is not right?  

.In the 1960s, middle-class households did not have live-in servants.  Single fathers might have a nanny.  Hazel is a bizarre throwback to an earlier generation.  

There are two types of servants on tv: heartwarming nannies who bring joie de vivre to sullen children (like Fran on The Nanny and "Charles in Charge"); and sarcastic maids who skewer their boss's pretentions (like Florence on The Jeffersons).  But Hazel is neither.  

Accoding to the episode synopses, Hazel doesn't behave like a servant at all: she gets a job at a department store; she publishes a cookbook and goes on tour; a talent scout hears her musical group perform; she takes a job as a spokesperson for a cake mix.  When does she have time for cleaning the house?  Why does she stay a maid, instead of embarking on a career as an actress or singer?

Hazel actually works for two families.  During the first four seasons, lawyer George Baxter (Don DeFore), his wife Dorothy (an interior designer), and their son Harold (Bobby Buntrock).

I tried to research whether Don DeFore was gay, but only discovered that he was married several times and a staunch Republican who worked on the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964 ("In your gut you know he's nuts.")

Bobby Buntrock retired from acting after Hazel, and died in an auto accident in 1974, at the age of 21. I couldn't find out if he was gay, either.

 In the last season, the network wanted to appeal to a younger audience, so they axed George and Dorothy, sending them off to Iraq (without informing the actors), and gave Hazel and Harold to a younger family: George's brother, real estate agent Steve Baxter (Ray Fulmer), his wife Barbara, and their young daughter Susie.  

Harold was now a teenager, so he started getting "teenage" plotlines about jobs, girls, and the generation gap, and he got a new best friend, Jeff (Pat Cardi).

Ray Fulmer has only a few acting credits on IMDB, notably a 17-episode arc on the soap opera Somerset and the 1963 movie Wild is My Love, about three college boys who fall for a stripper. 

None of this sounds very appealing, but it doesn't explain the visceral dread.  Granted, the snippets of episodes that I remember would be very scary for a five-year old: 

1. Some poisonous mushrooms accidentally ended up in the supermarket.  Some worried-looking government guys complain that not all of the packages have been returned; one is missing.  Whoever bought it doesn't listen to the radio or read the newspaper.  Cut to Hazel, turning off the radio and throwing out the newspaper as she prepares the mushrooms that will kill everyone.

2. Hazel is tied to a conveyor belt that will carry her through a claw machine to her death.  Her hunky, much younger boyfriend arrives in the nick of time, stops the machine, and unties her.  They hug.

But I have found neither of those scenes in the episode synopses, or in the complete acting credits of Shirley Boothe (in case I made a mistake). Hazel has a boyfriend in only four episodes, and it's the middle aged Mitch (Dub Taylor), not the young hunk of my memory.

Maybe that's the reason behind my dread.  I was peering into another universe, where Hazel was an action/adventure series, not an outdated sitcom about a maid.

Modern Family Episode 5.6: Gloria's crush on Adam Devine, Phil's three-way, and a nude Matt Risch

  

Link to a nude Matthew Risch and an almost nude Ed O'Neill

Back in 2014, I was quite adamant that Adam Devine's character on Modern Family, Andy the Manny (male nanny), was homophobic, so I've been reviewing episodes, looking for evidence.  This is his first appearance, in Season 5.6: "The Help."  Ugh!  I hated being called "the help" when I was in high school, working at the Carousel Snack Bar.  I told the boss "I am a human being.  I have feelings.  I am not 'the help.'"

As in all Modern Family Episodes, we have three plots, usually involving a random assortment of family members, interspliced.  I separated them out.

Plot 1: Claire, her husband Phil, and their kids.  Phil's Dad, Frank (Fred Willard), staying with his family because his girlfriend dumped him, being depressed and annoying. They discuss whether he needs a therapist, but Claire's dad Jay (Ed O'Neill) says that he just needs a woman.

"I know a place," he tells Phil.  "Tonight you, me, and Frank are going out on the town." 

 "Fun!  A three-way!" Phil exclaims: a running gag has him saying innocent things that sound sexual, usually homoerotic.   

Cut to the bar.  The men approach two women and say hello. "Not interested!" one exclaims. The other flirts with Frank, so his wingmen scram.

In the morning, Frank tells Phil that he hooked up: "She's downstairs right now.'  Except she turned out to be a sex worker, and he owes her $500. Ok, first of all, you have to make the contract clear, and second, sex workers don't spend the night. They get the job done and go home. 

While they're scrounging to find $500 in cash, Claire returns from yoga class, and wants to know who the woman in the kitchen is.  "The therapist we hired!" Let the misunderstandings begin: "I have always wanted to do what you do. I'd be good at it.  It's basically what I do for the whole neighborhood anyway."  

The sex worker (Peri Gilpin, best known for Frasier) assures Frank that his performance was superlative.  She has a lot of elderly clients who can't even get...um there are kids present...but "any woman would be lucky to have you."  This gives him the confidence to start dating again -- and move out, which is what Phil and Claire wanted all along.

Plot 2: Gay couple Mitchell and Cam are getting married, but they can't decide on anything, so they've asked their flamboyant friend Pepper (Nathan Lane), a professional wedding planner, for help. He comes in with overloaded binders and his flamboyant assistant, Ronaldo. But when they don't like his first idea (a purple color scheme), he goes into a snit, so they have to pretend to like all of his other horrible ideas, like riding in on a unicorn and wearing Willy Wonka outfits. 

Pepper is burnt out from planning 50 gay weddings since they became legal in California, so why not let Ronaldo do it?  Uh-oh, the assistant stealing the job from his boss -- drama.  Of course, they all act like they are cheating on a romantic partner: "I couldn't stop thinking about you.  What happened here yesterday was real!"  Pepper-Ronaldo break up and reconcile.

Plot 3: Jay, the patriarch of the family, and his wife Gloria, who is actually younger than his adult kids, argue over her habit of firing their infant son's nannies: she feels threatened by other women in the house. Also, their teenage son Manny keeps sexually harassing them. 

At the park, Gloria meets Andy, the manny of her frenemey Joan.  Andy reveals that she is  unfriendly because she's worried that Gloria might steal her husband.  

Gloria is irate: Frenemy's husband is too fat to be attractive.  Not anymore: Andy helped him lose 30 pounds! He also can cook. Enough bragging, dude.  It sounds like you're hitting on Gloria.  But it works -- Gloria decides to steal Andy, but in a non-sexual way (well, not overtly sexual; she gets quite chummy as she leads him off).

When Jay and Manny get home, Andy introduces himself as the new manny. Manny: "Am I being replaced?"  No, he's the baby's new nanny, but "My mission is to make all of your lives happier and healthier." So, are you a nanny or a life coach/personal trainer/dietitian?

No way! Jay yells.  "He's a man!  It's weird!" The aging Baby Boomer Jay thinks that only women are qualified to do childcare, but Gloria has a big crush on him: "He's perfect," she sighs. Manny disapproves, too: how is he going to sexually harass a guy? Gloria storms out of the room.  That's the end of it, right?

The next day, Jay is in the shower.  He forgot to get a towel (isn't there always one hanging on the towel rack?), so he yells for Gloria. But Andy brings it for him, and does the gay discreet-glance-at-his-bulge thing (but in this case, he sees Jay's dick rather than his bulge).  I'm confused: is Adam playing Andy as gay, or do straight guys like looking at dicks, too?    

Andy made a heart-healthy breakfast for Jay and Manny, and afterwards, he suggests jogging.  How about taking care of the baby?  

"Nope," Jay tells him. "My wife overstepped her bounds by hiring you. You're fired!"

"I came on too strong, didn't I?  My dad warned me about that when I turned 14." He goes into a story of his dad dying, so he had to be "the man" of the family, and take care of the kids. But that doesn't dissuade Jay and Manny: they want him out.

Gloria returns and starts yelling.  They yell back.  Andy begins a group therapy session that ends with everyone apologizing and promising to do better at communicating their feelings. Cut to the whole family jogging...er, walking fast.

Ok, I get it.  All three of the groups hired "help" in scenarios that looked sexual (or, in Frank's case, were sexual), and turned out to be more "help" than anyone anticipated.

Beefcake: None.

Gay Stereotypes: Of course.  Mitchell, Cam, and their friends seem to be having a contest to see  who can be swishier. 

Homophobia:  I didn't see any in this episode, just some gender polarization.  Andy displays no queasiness about seeing Jay naked in the shower, and actually takes a peek at his penis.  All gay characters on the show are femme stereotypes, of course, so he's written as straight, but it  certainly indicates that he is not afraid of male nudity.

See also: Modern Family Episode 5.13: Phil wants Keefe's lips on his mouth. Who doesn't?

We Got It Made: 1980s Sitcom with Gay Actor Tom Villard

When I was at Indiana University, lots of guys in my dorm watched the comedy We Got It Made (1983-84), about two nerds who hire Mickey (Teri Copley), one of those ubiquitous 1980s servants who provide joie de vivre along with the housework.   I watched because it was stuck between the must-see Mama's Family and Cheers.  It wasn't awful.

1. The odd couple, button-down attorney David (Matt McCoy, left, John Hillner) and goofy salesman Jay (Tom Villard), had a nice gay subtext going on, in spite of the cheesecake maid and their respective girlfriends.

2. A hot bear cop, Max (former pro wrestler Ron Karabatsos), lived downstairs, with his teenage son Max (Lance Wilson-White).

3. Like Three's Company, it was all about thinking people were doing things, not actually doing them: Mickey sleepwalks and ends up in the boys' bed; Mickey and Jay work on a screenplay, and David thinks they're having an affair; Mickey's diary entry makes everyone think that she wants to get with mike with David; Mickey sleepwalks and ends up in the boys' bed yet again.

4. Tom Villard (right) was gay.  In the mid-1980s, I occasionally saw him at Mugi, the gay Asian bar in Hollywood. He came out as gay and a person with AIDS in an Entertainment Tonight interview in February 1994, which at the time was career suicide; but he thought that speaking out was more important.

He was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood.

When he died in November 1994, his partner,  production designer Scott Chambliss, set up The Tom Villard Foundation to provide assistance to people living with AIDS.

"Country Comfort": Is seeing Ricardo Hurtado, Eddie Cibrian, and Eric Balfour worth the pain?

 

Ricardo Hurtado, best known for starring in Nickelodeon's School of Rock, has a perfect combination of face and physique.  I would definitely be asking him out -- if we were both single and he didn't include Bible verses on his Instagram.  Quoting the Bible doesn't necessarily mean that he hates gay people, but I'm not risking it.    

He hasn't had many tv or movie roles recently, so if I want to see him perform as an adult, it will have to be GlichTechs, Malibu Rescue: The Next Wave, or Country Comfort.

We'll start off with Country Comfort, which must mean something like "cold comfort." (something that is supposed to encourage you, but actually makes you feel worse).

Link to NSFW version.

Scene 1:  A rainy night in a small town.  We pan past a church (see, we're religious) to a middle class house.  

There's a knock on the door.  Tuck (Ricardo!) answers: it's Bailey (Katherine McPhee), a young woman with black hair wearing a black cowboy hat.  He gawks at her gorgeousness and says "Looks like they sent the right woman to do the job."  Did he call for a prostitute?

Bailey thinks she has been mistaken for a prostitute, and starts to bolt, but Tuck explains that he thought she was from the nanny agency. (He makes gross sexual come-ons to all of his nannies?  And why does he need a nanny at age 21?)

No, she's not a nanny.  Her truck broke down, her phone died, and she wants to use theirs.  But Tuck is so horny for her that he trots out his siblings for introductions: two little girls, 12-year old Dylan, and Brody (Jamie Martin Mann, left).  Wait -- he's 17 (20 now), and way too old for a nanny.  

While all three of the boys gaze at Bailey with unbrindled lust, Tuck explain that their mom died two years ago, and they've gone through 10 nannies since (do  they get tired of the sleazy come-ons and quit?)   

But Baily likes their sleazy come-ons: "You think I'm hot?  You have no idea how much that means to me!"  Two of those boys are jail bait, lady. 

Finally Dad, a middle-aged cowboy, arrives, accompanied by his blond bimbette child-hating girlfriend Summer.   (wait -- if they didn't need a babysitter while Dad was out, why do they need a nanny?  To, like, restore their joie de vivre, like Fran Fine and Charles in Charge?).  He's Beau (Eddie Cibrian, who played lots of lifeguards and teen hunks back in the day).

Beau asks: "Why are you so early for your nanny interview?" (Wait -- he's just getting back from a date, so it must be after 10 pm.  Why did they schedule an interview in the middle of the night?  Oh, right, the sex...)

Then: "If you're not the new nanny, what are you doing here?" Baily explains:

Scene 2:  Flashback to earlier that evening.  Bailey and her boyfriend Boone (Eric Balfour) are singing at a honky tonk, with a record producer listening.  We hear her entire song: "Dream baby got me dreaming sweet dreams the whole day long."  Ugh!  That's terrible!. And are they supposed to stare at each other instead of the audience through the whole song?

The record producer hates it, naturally. So Boone replaces Bailey with a boobalicious bimbette (yeah, that will fix those atrocious lyrics), and Bailey angrily breaks up with him.  Since they live together, she has no place to stay (um...a friend's house?  A hotel?  Let her stay there until she finds a place?).  She starts driving aimlessly.  Then her truck conks out right outside the home of a family that needs a nanny.  Well, it worked for Fran Fine.

Boone is played by Eric Balfour (left), who played many hunkoids back in the day.

Scene 3: Dad offers to call Bailey an Uber (to take her where?  She's driving aimlessly, remember?).  At that moment there's a tornado alarm, so everyone rushes to the basement.   Beau jokes about the last nine nannies being buried there (whoa, creepy! If I was Baily, I'd take my chances with the tornado.)  But Bailey is too overwhelmed by the love and togetherness of this family to be scared.  

Hey, there are musical instruments in the basement.  Could the family be...coincidence of coincidence -- country-western singers?   

Yep -- they join her for an impromptu song: "When Will I Be Loved."  The kids know all the words to a song that last charted in 1975?

One of the girls -- Cassidy -- gets upset because her mom was a singer, and this is bringing up old memories.  Beau tells her to get over herself.  Great parenting, Beau -- why not let the girl be sad?

Now Tuck is upset -- since their Mom died they haven't been allowed to touch their instruments.  Why not?  This family gets more and more screwed up.  Fortunately, Bailey has come to the rescue. 

Scene 4: Cassidy runs out into the storm.  Bailey follows her into the barn and apologizes for the "singin'" (of course it's singin', not singing).  I fast-forward through their heart-to heart, which no doubt solves the psychological trauma that no therapist has been able to handle.  And no doubt Mom will never be mentioned again.

Scene 5: Morning.  I fast-forward through this scene, too.  Obviously Bailey will agree to become the nanny, get the Partridge Family band back together, and start dating Beau.  And the ex-boyfriend will be around in some capacity.

Beefcake: Probably.

Gay Characters: Are you kidding?

Teens Out of a 1980s Sex Comedy: 2

Creepy Lines: 7

Absurd Coincidences: Too many to count.

Bible Verse that Ricardo Quotes; Hebrews 11:12: "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

Is seeing Ricardo Hurtado worth the pain of Country Comfort?: Heck, no.

There are some frontal and rear photos of Eric Balfour and a bulge shot of Eddie Cibrian on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

Danny Pintauro: Gay Child Star Comes Out, Gets Engaged

We can roughly divide actors coming out into B.E. and A.E., before and after Ellen Degeneres said "Yep, I'm gay" in big red letters on the cover of Time Magazine (April 14, 1997).

B.E.: You may be out to family and friends, but you always pretended to be heterosexual in public.  If you were "accused" of being gay, you would issue an angry denial.  If you were outed by the media, your career was over.

A.E.: You would casually mention being gay in an interview, and continue to work, although you would never again be cast as action-adventure heroes or romantic leads.

Danny Pintauro came just at the end of the B.E. era.

Born in 1976, he was a popular child star of the 1980s, with a three-year run as Paul Ryan on the soap As the World Turns (1982-85), and starring roles in several movies, including the Stephen King thriller Cujo (1983), The Beniker Gang (1985), about five orphans on the run, and Timestalkers (1987), about time travel.

But he became famous for Who's the Boss (1984-92), starring Tony Danza as Tony Micelli, a housekeeper who brings joie de vivre to his uptight employer Angela Bower (Judith Light) and her horny mother (Katherine Helmond). 

Danny played Jonathan, a preteen who exhibits wide-eyed incomprehension to the sexual tension and double-entendre jokes.  As he entered adolescence, Danny's flamboyant femininity made it rather obvious that he was gay, but nevertheless he gamely followed the scripts and made Jonathan girl-crazy.

When Who's the Boss ended, Danny took time off from acting to finish high school and go to college, studying drama at Stanford.  He fully intended to resume his career.  

Then in 1997, the gossip magazine National Enquirer obtained pictures of Danny frolicking with a male friend, and threatened to out him.  Instead, he gave an interview: "I want Enquirer readers to be among the first to know I've 'come out' and am proud to say I'm gay."

Danny has had only three acting roles since, although he has appeared on Tony Danza's talk show and in a number of documentaries.  Former child stars often have trouble finding adult roles, and in 1997 coming out still made homophobic casting directors queasy. 

But on the bright side, Danny is living happily out of the limelight, managing a restaurant in Las Vegas, and engaged to travel agent Wil Tabares.

Who, by the way, is quite a hunk. 

Who's the Boss

Many 1980s sitcoms had an anti-nuclear family
message.  Moms and dads were utterly inadequate at raising children; it took an outsider -- a college kid (Charles in Charge), a proper English butler (Mr. Belvedere), a white guy (Webster, Diff'rent Strokes) -- or a hunky working-class schmoo from Brooklyn.

Who's the Boss (1986-92) transformed Taxi hunk Tony Danza into Tony Micelli, housekeeper to uptight Angela Bower (Judith Light) and her blond waif son Jonathan (Danny Pintauro, previously Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream).  Tony's daughter Sam (Alyssa Milano) and Angela's horny mother, Mona (Katherine Helmond) filled out the household.

Let's review: Tony Danza, who played a gay-positive character on Taxi and posed for the gay magazine In Touch. Judith Light, a tireless proponent of gay rights.  Gay ally Alyssa Milano. Katherine Helmond from the gay-positive sitcom Soap.  Sounds tailor-made for a gay-positive sitcom.

Nope.  No gay characters, no gay references.  At least Tony is cool with the kids' gender-transgressive interests; Sam's passion for basketball and Jonathan's for gymnastics. But the main plot arc involved everyone trying to set up Tony and Angela, who for some reason denied that they were attracted to each other.

Meanwhile everyone in the cast, including Jonathan, was busily falling for the wrong person, cheating on their partner, accepting and then rejecting marriage proposals, worrying about prom dates.

Fortunately, there was a lot of beefcake.  Angela kept stumbling across Tony in the shower or wearing only a towel. When Danny Pintauro became a flamboyant gay adolescent, he got some shirtless and semi-nude shots in teen magazines.













Sam had a series of hunky boyfriends, such as Jesse (Scott Bloom left, with brothers Brian and Mikey).  And the super-stud Billy Gallo had a recurring role as "Mr. Al."

In 1997, five years after the program ended, Danny Pintauro was outed in The National Enquirer.  His tv family was supportive, except for Tony, who later said "The Danny I knew died last year."  But in 2005, they reconciled enough for Danny to appear on Tony's talk show. They discussed their memories of Who's the Boss, but carefully avoided any mention of "it."

Charles in Charge: The First Teencom

Fresh from his tenure on Happy Days, Scott Baio made a dent in the "servant saves dysfunctional family" genre with Charles in Charge (1984-85), about a college student who works as a male nanny, a surprisingly gender-bending role for 1984.

Willie Aames, who had starred with Scott in the teen sex comedy Zapped! (1982), would play his girl-crazy best friend Buddy.

Charles' rather disturbed charges would include painfully shy teenager Lila (15-year old April Lerman), tween mad scientist Douglas (14-year old Jonathan Ward), and preteen juvenile delinquent Jason (Michael Pearlman).

Charles himself would be rather nerdy, fond of suspenders, ties, and shirts buttoned all the way up.  To preclude any gay suspicions, he would have a steady girlfriend, Gwendolyn (Jennifer Runyon), and Buddy would be indefatigably girl-crazy.

Charles in Charge premiered on October 3, 1984 in a block with John Stamos' teen-oriented sitcom Dreams. There were a few things to like about it, like Jason's blatant crush on Charles.  But the teens who were expecting a hot teen idol stayed away, and the adults were busy watching The Fall Guy and Highway to Heaven, so the show tanked after 22 episodes.

A retooled Charles in Charge appeared in first-run syndication on January 3rd, 1987.   Lots of retooling:

1. The theme song was revamped to sound sexy and risque ("I want...ooh...I want Charles in charge of me!").

2. Charles was now a collegiate hunk, with an updated wardrobe, when he wasn't wandering around the house in a towel (or a hot dog suit).  A Charles-of-all-trades, he supplemented his nanny income by working as a teaching assistant at the college, and at the local pizza parlor hangout.

3. Buddy's girl-craziness likewise faded away; he became a dimwit instead.

4. There were strong adult characters, grumpy Walter Powell (James T. Callahan) and Charles' mother Lilian (Ellen Travolta).

5. And Charles' new charges, the Pembrokes, were not at all dysfunctional: glamorous future model Jamie (14-year old Nicole Eggert), bookish future writer Sarah (13-year old Josie Davis), and preteen athlete Adam (12-year old Alexander Polinsky).  Justin Whalen played Cousin Anthony.

This time teen viewers took notice, and Charles quickly becoming the #1 syndicated program on the air (Mama's Family was a close second).  It lasted until 1990, and inspired a whole genre of beefcake-heavy 1990s teencoms.

Of the three kids in the first incarnation of Charles, only Jonathan Ward had a significant acting career as a teenager. He starred in the "boys alone" drama White Water Summer with Sean Astin (1987) and in the E.T. ripoff Mac and Me (1988), plus his own "my secret" teencom, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter (1987).  In 1994, he wrote and starred in a Discovery Channel documentary, Understanding Sex. 

Of the three kids in the second incarnation, both Nicole Eggert and Josie Davis went on to successful acting careers.  Alexander Polinsky does voice-over work and is involved behind-the-scenes in model construction.

See also: 

Alexander Polinsky: Adam on "Charles in Charge" grows up, models props, and goes Furthur.  With Andrew Keegan, Julian Sands, and some d*cks

See also: The Sound of Music