Henry Fuseli: The Gay Painter of the Romantic Era

Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) was born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zurich, Switzerland.  He studied theology, but after publishing a pamphlet critical of the Swiss government, was forced to flee to Britain, where he fit in with the artists and writers of the Romantic Era, especially William Blake.

He specialized in mythological topics, including illustrations of Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, or Thor Battling the Midgard Serpent from Norse mythology (left).

Sometimes he seems to have quite a fetish interest.  Here the Germanic goddess Brunhilde has tied up a naked Gunther on their wedding night instead of having sex with him.

Ok, the scene happens in the Nibelungenlied, but still, it's a rather unusual topic for a painting, unless you're a bondage enthusiast.

Maybe Fuseli just wanted to show a naked guy not having sex with a woman.

He also drew pornographic drawings for private collectors, mostly of men having sex with each other, but sometimes of women together, and occasionally of men and women.

He often depicts men being accosted by predatory women.  Here Satan fights with the feminine Death (odd, because Death is a masculine noun in German, der Tod).

Gay in real life, Fusili put off marriage until he was 47, when he was too old to fuss with that "sex" stuff.  Later proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women) got a crush on him, and proposed a "threesome" with his wife Sofia.  He refused and cut off all contact.

Fusili was neglected for many years, but today his work is in demand for its bold colors, surrealistic nightmare imagery, and gay themes.

See also: The Gay Romantic Era

Guys and Dolls:Musical with Mostly Guys

Instead of watching the execrable Chicago (2002), watch Guys and Dolls (1953), set during the same time period, but with gamblers instead of murderers, and a gay subtext.

It's about the friendship between gambler Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) and Sky Masterson (bisexual actor Marlon Brando), triangulated by two very hesitant hetero-romances.

Nathan has been engaged to Miss Adelaide (Vivian Blaine) for 14 years, but has no interest in marriage, "old ball and chain." Sky is not interested in women at all.

So when Nathan needs $1000 to secure a garage for his illegal crap game (betting on dice), he makes a bet with Sky: Sky must seduce a girl that Nathan selects so thoroughly that she agrees to go to dinner with him in Havana, Cuba.  No way will Sky be willing, or able to do that!

Especially when the girl turns out to be the prim-and-proper Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) of the Save-a-Soul Mission (a take on the Salvation Army).

Sky knows his way around a bet; he tells Sarah that he will fill her mission with sinners in exchange for the dinner.   She agrees, and naturally they fall in love -- you can't have everything.

Nathan, meanwhile, goes through some machinations to hold his crap game, and ends up agreeing to marry Miss Adelaide -- you can't have everything.

There is also a group of gamblers led by the corpulent Nicely-Nicely (Stubby Kaye), who display no heterosexual interest.

No beefcake, but the period costumes are great.  So are the songs.

The stage version is even less hetero-romance-bound.  Nathan Detroits have been played by Robert Guillaume, Bob Hoskins, Nathan Lane, and Oliver Platt, and Sky Masterson by Robert Alda, Peter Gallagher, Ewan McGregor, and Craig Bierko.

It's also a favorite of high school and college drama clubs.

Nosferatu: The First Gay Vampire

According to the IMDB, the Transylvanian Count has appeared in over 400 movies and tv series since the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1891.

The first, other than the lost Hungarian Drakula halála (1921), was Nosferatu (1922).  Director F. M. Murnau changed the names and some of the details when he couldn't get the rights to the novel, but he kept the dread and disgust.

This is not the romantic figure in cape and tails who enthralls his victims with the hint of sexual ecstasy.  The nosferatu is a monster who smells of rotting corpses and brings pestilence and death.  To portray Count Orlok, Max Schreck drew on all of the anti-Semitic stereotypes common in the era, from the hooked nose and bushy eyebrows to the blood libel.

And on homophobia.

F.M. Murnau was gay, so he filled his movies with the most attractive male actors he could find, and made sure that they took their clothes off at least once (left: Tabou, 1931).

 Here he cast Gustav von Wangenheim as Hutter, the real estate agent who must visit Count Orlok on business.  En route he stays overnight at an inn, and promptly takes his clothes off.

At the castle, Count Orlok tries his best to seduce Gustav: "Can we not stay together a little while longer, my lovely man?  It's still quite a long time until sunrise, and I sleep by day, dear fellow!"  He approaches, while Gustav cringes in horror.

The next morning Gustav doesn't remember what happened, but he is filled with disgust.

Next Count Orlok sets his fangs on Ellen (Greta Schroeder), Hutter's wife, who has "a lovely neck."  But when she gives herself willingly to him, he bursts into flame.  This is perhaps the first time in history where a same-sex liaison increases one's vigor, but a heterosexual liaison is fatal.

Shadow of the Vampire, directed by E. Elias Merhige (2000) recreates the filming of Nosferatu, with John Malkovich as an aggressively heterosexual Murnau.

Costume designer Albin (gay actor Udo Kier) and cinematographer Fritz (Cary Elwes) discover that Max Schreck really is a vampire, and Murnau knew it all along.  Unfortunately, they are both killed before the vampire exploes.  But at least Murnau got his movie.

Mark Trail: A Substandard Tarzan

This is not a parody beefcake cover; it's the real thing. Mark Trail Magazine, the Magazine of Adventure for Boys, gave Boys' Life some strong competition during the 1960s, with articles about rough-and-tumble activities like camping, horseback riding, shooting, skiing, and fishing.

And, apparently, building rafts in your underwear.

It was based on Jack Elrod's comic strip Mark Trail, started in 1946 and still syndicated in 175 newspapers.

Mark Trail was a sort of North American Tarzan, an adventurer more at home among redwood trees and grizzly bears than in the city.  He lived in Lost Forest National Forest, where he shot pictures for Woods and Wildlife Magazine (a take on Field and Stream).  His assignments got him into jams involving rampaging grizzly bears or (more often) villainous poachers, gun-runners, and...well, um poachers.

His comic strip was very popular during the 1950s and 1960s.  There was a radio series, a tv pilot starring Todd Armstrong (Jason and the Argonauts), and even a series of books, from Mark Trail's Book of Animals to Mark Trail's Cooking Tips.  

But Mark Trail was no Tarzan.
1. Darkest Africa offered much more interesting animals than the United States.  Lions, jaguars, 20-foot pythons, crocodiles vs. grizzly bears and...um...squirrels.

2. Darkest Africa had cannibals, leopard cults, and lost civilizations.  The United States had....um, poachers.





3. Outside of the MGM movies, Tarzan worked alone, or with a teenage sidekick.  Mark Trail had a girlfriend, Cherry Davis, and a series of flirtatious female photographers, damsels in distress, and villainesses to contend with.

4. Tarzan was loincloth clad and muscular.  For that matter, real naturalists tend to be quite muscular, like Stan Brock of Wild Kingdom.

But Mark Trail almost never took his shirt off, and when he did, he displayed a scrawny, unimpressive physique.

Artists have the choice of drawing muscular physiques or not.  Why wouldn't they?

See also: Top 10 Nature Show Hunks.