The Who's Tommy

November, 1978, my freshman year at Augustana College. Student Union Movie Night is showing  Tommy, the 1975 rock musical starring  Roger Daltrey of The Who!

"Um...does he, like, take his shirt off?" I ask my friend.

"All the time!"

So I ask a boy from my French class, and we sit cozily on folding chairs.

It's about a boy named Tommy (Roger Daltrey), who sees his stepfather murder his father, and is so traumatized that he becomes blind, deaf, and dumb. But he grows up to become a "pinball wizard" and the messiah of a new youth-oriented religion.  Gay performer Elton John plays one of his followers.

On the way, horrible, traumatic things happen to him.  When he is ten years old, evil Uncle Ernie (Keith Moon), who has blacked-out teeth and wears rubber gloves, is asked to babysit.  After reading The Gay News to get some ideas about how to be a more effective pervert, Uncle Ernie starts "fiddling down there."

 Oi, gay men are all child molesters. Got it.







The British rock group, with lead singer Peter Daltrey and backups Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle, didn't seem particularly homophobic, although they were certainly heterosexist.  I first heard about them in the fall of 1975, when the older boys at Rocky High started grooving to their song about fondling women's breasts:

Mama's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest
And when Daddy comes home, he never gets no rest.

Many of the other Who songs I heard over the next decade were  heterosexist:

"The Kids are All Right": "I don't mind other guys dancing with my girl."
"Heat Wave": "Sometimes she calls my name, and I feel a burning flame."
"The Real Me": "The girl I used to love, lives in this yellow house."
"Imagine a Man": "Imagine a girl [with] the body of chalky perfection and truth."



And two were actively homophobic:
"How Many Friends": "There's a handsome boy, tells me how I've changed his past.  But could it be, he's really just after my ass?"  Not to worry, he meets a woman who's a real friend.

"Rough Boys" (1980) is about gay men.  Apparently they're all into macho heterosexual hustlers: "Tough boys, come over here -- I want to bite and kiss you."  Some people thought that Pete Townshend (left) was "coming out," but he denied it, saying that he was just singing about gays.  Although in a recent interview he states that he's "probably bisexual."

Oddly, in 1998, Roger Daltrey starred in the gay-themed Like It Is, as a sleazy music producer whose assistant, Matt (Ian Rose) falls in love with a young boxer (played by Steve Bell).  Quite a transition from Tommy.

Clay O'Brien: No Girls Allowed

Clay O'Brien (no relation to Western star Hugh O'Brian) probably wins the award for the most tv and movie appearances without any displays of heterosexual interest.  His characters display none at all.

Born in 1961, he first appeared , along with his older brother Sam and a dozen other child stars, in The Cowboys (1972), about a cowboy (John Wayne) who hires a group of preteens to drive his cattle to market. I haven't seen it, but it sounds like a "boys alone" buddy-bonding adventure.

The Duke took a special liking to Clay, and mentored him in the art and craft of being an on-screen cowboy.  They played father and son in Cahill, US Marshall (1973), and he used his influence to get Clay some roles as the son or surrogate son of some other big name cowboys: Fess Parker (Daniel Boone) in Climb an Angry Mountain (1972), James Garner (Maverick) in One Little Indian (1973), and Roy Rogers in Mackintosh and T.J. (1975).  Plus gay-vague "confirmed bachelor" Bill Bixby in The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975).

For some reason, he was asked to appear semi-nude a lot.

With all of that older-younger buddy-bonding going on, you'd think that Clay would have little time for gay subtexts with boys his own age.  But he had a starring role in The Cowboys (1974), about a group of boys who run a cattle ranch.

Meanwhile Disney, which was still reeling from the stigma of the Tommy Kirk's outing, tried to revive the "teen genius" genre with preteens.  In The Whiz Kid and the Mystery at Riverton (1974), based on the Alvin Fernald books by Clifford Hicks, Magnificent Brain Alvin ( Christopher Shea, the original voice of Linus in the Peanuts animated specials) solves the mystery with the help of his best friend Shooie (Clay), the Greatest Athlete in the World.  The characters returned in The Whiz Kid and the Carnival Caper (1976).

Clay retired from acting during adolescence.  He became a cowboy in real life, a respected rodeo performer who has won seven world titles in team roping.  He is married with children.

Josh Hutcherson: Straight but Not Narrow

In April 2012, 19-year old Josh Hutcherson became the youngest person ever to win the GLAAD Vanguard Award for the "Straight but Not Narrow" anti-homophobia campaign that he started (with buddy Avan Joggia of Victorious).

Paradoxically, his on-screen performances have veered toward the heterosexist.

I first noticed him in Bridge to Terabintha (2007), about two preteens who escape from the horrors of real life into an imaginary world, but find that it can't help them.  Real life is too awful.

I hated it: the trailers led me to expect a Chronicles of Narnia-style adventure about a "real" fantasy world, not two mentally ill kids who were hallucinating.  And one of them dies. Oh, and Josh's character gets a girlfriend.

And Firehouse Dog (2007), about a movie-star dog who goes to work in a struggling firehouse, and revives it with the help of a boy, Shane (Josh).  Who gets a girlfriend.

So far this actor's work was depressing, but being a Jules Verne fan, I gave him another chance in the latest adaption of Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008).   In search of his missing brother, geologist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) explores the Center of the Earth, along with his nephew Sean (Josh) and their teenage guide Anita.  Both Trevor and Sean are into Anita (she picks Trevor).

Ok, what about Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009), based on the gay-subtext novel series by Darren Shan?  There's some buddy-bonding: Darren (Chris Massoglia) offers to become a vampire to save the life of his buddy Steve (Josh).

And The Kids are All Right (2010): Josh plays Laser, teenage son of a lesbian couple.

But The Hunger Games (2012): Peeta (Josh) and Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) are chosen to participate in a teenage survival-death game where the last one alive wins.  They fall in love, and find a way to both survive.  Fade out kiss.

The Forger (2012), with Jansen Panettiere, looks promising. But Paradise Lost (2014) will star Josh as a young surfer who meets "the girl of his dreams" in Colombia.

Besides, I'm still mad about The Bridge to Terabintha.

Ben Hur: A Gay Tale of Christ

Ben Hur (1959), based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ, by Lew Wallace, was one of those big-budget epics with "a cast of thousands" that studios in the 1950s hoped would draw people away from television.  And it worked: 11 Academy Awards, second-highest grossing movie of all time to date (after Gone with the Wind), re-released in 1969, broadcast on tv in 1971.  With a palpable gay subtext.

Gore Vidal, the gay author who wrote the screenplay, apparently included a gay text: around the time of Christ, the Roman Messala (Stephen Boyd) is made tribune of the province of Judea, and looks up his boyhood lover, Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston, previously seen in Peer Gynt).  But Ben-Hur refuses to rekindle the romance, and the enraged Messala tries to destroy him.

The gay text was removed -- you can't have lovers on screen in 1959 -- but the subtext was strong enough, with Messala and Ben-Hur gazing into each other's eyes and linking arms to drink out of each other's cups.  The only problem is, there's no real explanation left for why Messala suddenly turns evil: when a stone from Ben-Hur's roof accidentally falls and injures the Governor of Judea, he seizes on the incident to sell his former "friend" and his mother and sister into slavery.

After three years as a galley slave, Ben-Hur makes a new "friend," Roman Consul Arius (Jack Hawkins), who brings him back to Rome, trains him as a charioteer, and adopts him.

But Ben-Hur wants revenge, and he wants to find his mother and sister.  So after a few years of domestic bliss with his older boyfriend,  he heads back to Judea and challenges Messala to a chariot race.  Messala dies, Ben-Hur is reconciled with his mother and sister.

Ben-Hur gets a girl along the way, but no fade-out kiss.  The final scene shows Ben-Hur and his family witnessing the Crucifixion, where they learn to forgive the Romans.








"Admitted heterosexual" Charlton Heston (Ben-Hur) was no gay ally: "I find my blood pressure rising when [President Bill] Clinton's cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund-raisers..and claim it's time to place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts."

But Stephen Boyd (Messala) was gay. Here he buddy-bonds with David Wayne in another gay-subtext movie, The Big Gamble (1961).

See also: Ramon Novarro, who starred in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur.