I Dream of Jeannie

When Larry Hagman died, his obituaries praised his conniving Texas oil magnate J.R. Ewing of Dallas (1978-1991, plus a 2012 remake).  But I rarely watched Dallas.  I remembered him from one of the "I've got a secret" sitcoms of the 1960s, I Dream of Jeannie (1967-70).

I didn't watch that a lot, either.  Most gay kids preferred Bewitched.  The premise seemed too much like a Playboy fantasy: astronaut Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) finds a bottle washed up on a beach, opens it, and out pops a genie -- nameless, so he calls her Jeannie (Barbara Eden).  She calls him Master.  She wears a belly-dancing costume that leaves little to the imagination, and is willing to do anything he wants. Anything.

To his credit, Tony doesn't take advantage of the situation.  Like Darren of Bewitched, he wants to take care of himself, and he forbids Jeannie from using her magic (she, of course, disobeys him). His best friend Roger (Bill Daily) is less scrupulous -- he can think of lots of things to wish for.

Neither makes the slightest attempt to compromise the lady's virtue, but no doubt that is exactly what was on the minds of millions of straight male viewers.

Every "I've got a secret" sitcom has a Gladys Kravitz to suspect the secret, peer through windows,  and snoop around.  On Jeannie, it was base psychiatrist Dr. Bellows (Hayden Rorke), who was gay-vague: no wife, and no reason for his obsession with the strange goings-ons in the Nelson household, except for a desire to see more of the hunky astronaut.

According to Barbara Eden's autobiography, Rorke (here with gay icon Judy Garland) was "unashamedly gay" in real life, and "a prince" who often invited cast members to dinner parties at his home.

After Jeannie, Larry Hagman went on to Dallas, of course, and Barbara Eden chose roles involving gutsy, go-getting women to prove that she wasn't just a belly-dancing sex object.

 She reprised her Jeannie character twice:

I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later (1985) substituted Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H for Larry Hagman, who was busy with Dallas.   In order to save Tony's life, Jeannie has to sacrifice her relationship with him -- and he must forget that he ever knew her.

In I Still Dream of Jeannie (1991), the events of the previous movie never occurred, but Tony was absent (Larry Hagman was still busy).  Jeannie has to find a new temporary master, and meanwhile saves her kidnapped son, Anthony Jr. 

Los Angeles as Home: "The Lucy Show"

The Lucy Show (1962-68) was a fixture of my childhood.  I wasn't exactly entranced by the show -- no cute boys, no exciting outer-space adventures -- but it wasn't designed for kids.  Lucy had boring, mundane adult problems like sticking to a budget and worrying about her job, and she all but ignored the swirling social unrest in the world outside.  But my parents liked it, so it became a warm, comforting presence on Monday nights.

Apparently there were two versions.  The first (1962-65) was an early Kate and Allie:  Widowed Lucy Carmichael (Lucille Ball) and her divorced friend Viv (Vivian Vance) live in Danville, New York, with their children (Jimmy Garrett, Candy Moore, Ralph Hart).  Before my time.

I just remember the second version (1965-68), with Lucy Carmichael living in Los Angeles, where she worked for blustering bank president Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) and got into crazy predicaments.  

In spite of the lack of beefcake and space adventures, there were five points of interest:

1. Some of the guest stars were cute, like Frankie Avalon, Ken Berry, and Clint Walker (left). Not her son, Desi Arnaz Jr., though.

2. Years later, when I began watching classic movies and tv shows, I realized that many of the stars were familiar from guest appearances on The Lucy Show: Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, George Burns, Paul Winchell, John Wayne, Jack Benny, Sid Caesar.

3.  In later seasons, Lucy gets a sidekick, the hip, sprightly Mary Jane (Mary Jane Croft, right), who seems to "like" Lucy, and continues to hang around in spite of the constant scrapes and catastrophes.

4. Lucy and Mr. Mooney were two grown-ups, a man and a woman, but not married to each other.  In fact, they weren't married to anyone, nor did they express any interest in getting married (actually Mr. Mooney had a rarely-mentioneed wife off camera).   Maybe Los Angeles offered an escape from the endless man-woman couples that I saw in real life, that the adults insisted was my destiny.

5. Episodes involving movie stars, references to Graumann's Chinese Theater and the Brown Derby, even throwaway lines like "I was stuck on Santa Monica Boulevard" helped define Los Angeles as an Arcadia or Oz, a place that is intimately familiar, that you constantly long for, even though you have never actually been there.

Maybe Los Angeles was a "good place."

What Kind of Flower are You: Queer Boys of the 1920s

Before World War II, teenage boys were not expected to like girls.  At Everett High School in Washington, most of the boys in the graduating class in 1925 are memorialized in their yearbook with manly "woman-hating mottos": "Tall, dashing, quick and fair, spurns all girls with vigilant care!"

In movies and literature, the teenage boy who liked girls was labeled gay, an effeminate contrast to the real, red-blooded, masculine boy who “spurned all girls with vigilant care.”   He was jeered, blackmailed, and ostracized. He was asked “What kind of flower are you?” and “Can I borrow your lipstick, dearie?”  His peers called him “honey-boy,” “panty-waist,” “mollycoddle,” and “Percy,” and the adults, “sensitive,” “gentle,” “artistic,” and “sweet.”

Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt (1922), though hetero-horny himself, worries when his son Ted, “a decorative boy of seventeen,” offers to give two girls from his high school rides to a chorus rehearsal.  “I hope they're decent girls,” he muses. “I wouldn't want him to, uh, get mixed up and everything.”  (Ted was played by Raymond McKee in 1924 and Glen Boles in the 1934 movie version.)

His wife suggests that he take Ted aside and give him a little talk about “Things,” but he rejects the proposal: “no sense suggesting a lot of Things to a boy’s mind.”  He assumes that no seventeen-year old boy could possibly experience heterosexual desire unless he is manipulated from outside.

The next summer, Babbit discovers Ted kissing a girl, but he blames her for "enticing him," refusing to believe that any eighteen-year old could want to kiss girls of his own accord.

Richard, a boy just short of his seventeenth birthday, falls for a girl in Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! (1933), but he is coded as gay.  There is “something of extreme sensitiveness. . .a restless, apprehensive, defiant, shy, dreamy, self-conscious intelligence about him.”  He reads too much poetry, especially sexual anarchist Swinburne and gay icon Oscar Wilde, whose trial and incarceration for “the love that dare not speak its name” was still freshly scandalous in 1904 (the date of the plot).

“He’s a queer boy,” his mother muses. “Sometimes I can’t make head or tail of him.”

Richard has been played in movies by Eric Linden (1935), Simon Lack (1938), and Lee Kinsolving (1959), and in the theater by many actors, including Luke Halpin (of Flipper), left and T.R. Knight (of Grey's Anatomy), top photo.

In the first movies of his series (1937-1939), Andy Hardy (played by Mickey Rooney, left) had an effeminate girl-craziness and was  psychoanalyzed as "queer," suffering from a “unconscious fixation on youth.”

Henry Aldrich, gay girl-crazy star of his own movie series (1939-1944) (played by Jimmy Lydon of Tom Brown's School Days) was subject to pummeling by bullies and tense heart-to-hearts with his parents.  His buddy Dizzy usually tolerated his eccentricity,  but sometimes even he couldn’t take it anymore, and yelled “What the heck’s the matter with you, anyway?”

"The Upshaws": Bernard Finds His Truth in Wanda Sykes' New Sitcom

 

The Upshaws, on Netflix, is being advertised as "the new generation of African-American family comedies."  It was created by and stars Wanda Sykes, who is gay, so I imagine there will be some gay representation.  I watched the episode "Night Out," in which "Bernard reveals his truth."  The truth that he's gay?

Scene 1:  Bennie's Garage.  Muscular Duck (Page Kennedy, left) reading the Bible, svelte Tony (Michel Estime) cell phoning.  Boss Bennie  (Mike Epps) comes in and criticizes them for not doing any work.  They criticize him for his failed marriage.  He's planning to get back together with her at the employee party at her hospital tonight.

Captain Cam (Adam Lazarre-White), the boyfriend of Lucretia (Wanda), comes in and yells at Bennie for constantly insulting her.  Wait, Wanda is gay and created the character -- why isn't Lucretia gay? 

After Cam leaves, Lucretia reveals that she's been there, under a car, all along.   She's been avoiding him.

She appears to be the owner of the garage and Bennie's mother-in-law or sister-in-law (Wanda Sykes is only seven years older than Mike Epps, but she's presented as belonging to the older generation)

Scene 2: Regina the estranged wife (Kim Fields, best known as Tootie on The Facts of Life a lifetime ago) doing dishes as Bennie arrives to drop off their toddler daughter after ballet class.  He promises to come to her recital tomorrow. Regina points out that he always promises to attend, then doesn't show up (this girl looks about five.  how is she old enough to have had several recitals?).

Bennie is looking forward to the Big Hospital Party tonight.  Regina reminds him that they've broken up, so he's not invited.  

Scene 3: Lucretia (Wanda) helping Regina (Kim) get dressed for the big party with a necklace that looks like it came out of a pharaoh's tomb.  Lucretia: "Bennie actually thought he was coming?  I knew he was a dick, but I didn't know he had big balls."  About five more minutes of insulting Bennie.

Captain Cam keeps calling; Lucretia ignores him.  Regina: "You need to talk to him.  He left his family for you!"  

Scene 4: The Ditch.  Beers on Tap.  Bennie and his friends/employees are eating and watching the game instead of going to the big hospital party.   Tony is standard sitcom married-but-hates-his-wife; Duck doesn't mention anyone, but with the Hollywood belief that all gay people are anti-religion, I highly doubt that he's gay.

Regina calls and tells him to go home and stop "acting a fool."  Hey, they broke up.  She can't tell him what to do.

Scene 5: The Big Hospital Party.  Elegantly-dressed people standing at tables eating hors d'oeuvres.  Her friend comes in, but only to grab some food -- she's in the middle of a shift.  She asks where Bennie is.   When's Bernard going to come out?  For that matter, when is he going to be introduced?

The butch Jan arrives and snarks at a lesbian couple.  She explains: "Bobbie's my ex-wife, and Nan's the bitch she left me for."  Ok, some lesbian representation, anyway.  They ask where Bennie is.  Regina is starting to realize that he was the life of the party.

Scene 6: Bennie and Tony at the bar.  Tony complains that he doesn't have the knees to dance with "young girls" anymore.  I assume he doesn't mean children.  They insult Duck for being religious, and he leaves.  

Lucretia comes in.  They trade insults.  Turns out that she's not there to see Bennie, whom she hates; she's meeting Captain Cam (so, just one bar in town?).  

Scene 7: The Big Hospital Party.  Regina is being ignored, except for people who walk up, notice that Bennie isn't around, and scram.  Hot guy in a UPS uniform (Jermelle Simon, top photo). comes in.  It's her son.  She texted him to get there pronto, to give her someone to hang out with. But he's in the middle of a shift...  Bernard, is that you?

Scene 8: Lucretia talking to Captain Cam: "We had fun, but it's over.  Accept it."  Cam: "I will never accept it."  Whoa, that's messed up, like a 1980s romcom.  Dude, it's 2021. No means no.   He gets angry and abusive; Bennie and the bartender come to the rescue. Recurring joke: Bennie thinks he has scared the bad guy away, but actually there's a man-mountain standing behind him.

Scene 9: At the Big Hospital Party.  Suddenly the tables are for sitting rather than standing.  Regina tries to figure out why she's so bored; her son, unnamed but I'm assuming Bernard, suggests that it's the absence of Bennie. "We were together 30 years.  I miss him," Regina admits.

"Well, I'm here for you," Bernard says.  Until a cute waiter comes by and cruises him, and he takes a crab puff, even though he's allergic.  Ok, the son is gay!  But apparently Mom doesn't know: "Is there something you want to tell me, like why you almost killed yourself over some hazel eyes?"  

Son: "Ok.  Mom, I'm..."

Bernard: "Gay.  I know, and I'm fine."  Um..Regina, this isn't about you.

Question: According to IMDB, Bernard appears in five of the ten episodes.  So why wait until Episode 8 for him to come out?  Why not just have everyone know?

I checked Bernard's appearances in the other episodes.  Mostly it's arguing with Bennie: "You were never there for me!" and so on. 

 Once Bernard mentions that he has a date, and Bennie says "What's her name?  Let me see a picture of this girl you been playing!  You Mama's worried that you've been running through women."   Bernard ignores the questions and leaves.

In two episodes, he sits down with Mom and says "I've been trying to tell you something for a long time, but we keep getting interrupted."  Then he's interrupted.

Kelvin, Bennie's young son from another baby mama, stops by for advice, just as a trick is leaving.  Bernard tries to cover, but Kelvin says "Do people really not know that you're gay?  My Mom and I talk about it all the time."  Bernard: "This stays between us.  I haven't told my parents yet."

After coming out to Mom, he comes out to Bennie in the boxing ring.  Bennie: "I wish you waited until the boxing match was over, 'cause now, if I hit, you it wil be a hate crime...Of course I'm cool with it, dude.  What kind of father do you think I am?"

In the last episode, Bernard is worried about going to his high school reunion and reuniting with his old girlfriend, who doesn't know that he's gay.  When he shows up, yes she does.  Everybody in high school knew.  "If you knew I was gay, why did you sleep with me?" Bernard wants to know.  "Well, look at you."

Can't argue with that.

Scene 10:  The next day.  Bennie is asleep in a car at the garage.  He wakes up with a massive hangover gng all day?

Whoops, Lucretia is in the car, too.  They are appalled, thinking that they may have had sex while drunk.  Before killing themselves, they check the security cameras to be sure: no, they just discussed how much Bennie loves Regina.

Scene 11: The Recital.  Toddler daughter gets stage fright, so Bennie jumps on stage and shows her how it's done.   The end.

Beefcake:  Some hot guys.  In other episodes we see Bernard shirtless and Duck fully nude.

Gay Characters: Lesbian couple and ex-wife. Bernard comes out.  A full season plot arc about coming out seems a little retro, especially since there is no reason for reticence: everybody already knows or is completely accepting.  Is this an attempt to refute the alleged homophobia rampant in the African-American community, or an attempt to ease into Bernard's gayness so the primarily African-American audience won't recoil in homophobic horror?

My Grade: Some of the elements of African-American culture, like matriarchy and having children from several mothers, were intereesting, but Wanda Sykes was a bit too vulgar for my tastes.  And other than the Bernard coming out story arc, this seemed like standard sparring frenemy trope that we've seen a hundred times before.  Bennie and Lucretia are just clones of Drew and Mimi on The Drew Carey Show, or Fred and Aunt Ester on Sanford and Son.  B