The Collegians: Muscle and Gay Symbolism of the Silent Movie Era

The Silent Movie Blog has an interesting post on The Collegians, a series of silent movie shorts (1926-1929) directed by Wesley Ruggles, about buddy-competitors at Calford College, Ed Benson (George Lewis) and Don Trent (Eddie Philips).  They spend their time playing sports, stripping down in the shower, and finding excuses to grab and fondle each other, while generally ignoring girls.

In Flashing Oars (1927), for instance, Don Trent goes out drinking on the night before the big rowing race with rival Velmar College.  In order to sober him up, Ed and his friends grab him, strip him out of his clothes, and throw him in the shower.

Meanwhile, Doc (Churchill Ross), a nerdish bookworm, explains why he goes to all the games, even though he hates sports, and hangs out in the locker room afterwards.

Supple vertebrae, right.

The Relay (1926) is about a boys-vs-girls swimming match, with the boys ripping each others' clothes off and wrestling in a swimming pool.  Oh, and the girls swim too.

There is occasionally a hetero-romance, or a scene of boys mooning over girls at the Hula-Hula Hut, but merely as film conventions, secondary to the plots that require the boys to get as naked as possible, as often as possible.

About a third of the 44 films survive.  The Relay is available on Amazon.

See also: The Four Devils: Lost Beefcake of the Silent Era; and Buster Keaton

Ramon Novarro and the Gay Hustlers

Ramon Novarro (1899-1968) was one of the great beefcake actors of the silent movie era.  He was cast mostly as "exotic" Middle Easterners (The Arab,  A Lover's Oath, The Barbarian, The Sheik Steps Out) or Mediterranean types (The Road to Romance, In Gay Madrid, Call of the Flesh), plus an occasional Native American.

Almost always as romantic leads.  He was advertised as "a new Valentino."  He was gay, but stayed strictly closeted, although he refused a "screen marriage."

Very few photos have survived of Novarro with his lovers.

In those days before the Hays Code, you stripped your stars out of their clothes as much as possible.  Novarro has semi-nude scenes in Ben Hur: A Tale of Christ (1925), The Pagan (1929), The Barbarian (1933), and probably lots of other movies that haven't survived.

With the rise of talkies and new 1930s models of masculinity, roles became scarce, but Novarro continued to work in movies and on stage, and later on television.  In the 1960s, he had guest roles on Dr. Kildare, Combat, The Wild Wild West, and Bonanza, in addition to appearing as himself in various nostalgia programs.

On October 30, 1968, he invited Physique Pictorial model Paul Ferguson and his brother Tom to his North Hollywood home for sex.  Believing that Novarro had a lot of money hidden away, they tried to beat him into revealing its location, and finally choked him to death with a large art-deco phallus.

They both received sentences of life in prison, but were paroled within seven years.  You didn't do much time for killing gay men in the 1960s.

See also: Ben Hur, a Gay Tale of Christ.