Zach Galligan: The Bright Spot of the Summer of 1984

Summer 1984:  When everything fell apart.  I was 23 years old, with a M.A. in English from Indiana University and no job.  Over 200 resumes sent out, and an endless stream of "no openings, no openings, no openings."  All of the factories in Rock Island closed, so I couldn't even follow my parents' dream of working on an assembly line.   I couldn't afford my apartment, so I moved back into Eigenmann Hall, my old dorm, and took my old job in the snack bar.

I saw myself at age 50, still making sandwiches and watching the world change around me. 

Even the movies from that summer are depressing:  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Karate Kid, Revenge of the Nerds.

Except for Gremlins.  The story was about cute cuddly creatures who go on a rampage and humorously destroy a small town, just what I needed to channel my aggressions over my failed life. 

And Zach Galligan, who played  Billy, the boy who opened the Pandora's Box:

Stunning.   Breathtaking. A work of art.

Billy got The Girl at the end, but who cared?  He was obviously gay anyway.

No nude scenes, but who cared? A smile from Zach Galligan was just as good as seeing his cock.

Well, maybe not as good.

In those days before the internet, I scoured the movie magazines to find out more about him:  a 20-year old Columbia University undergraduate with only two previous on-screen roles.  

I couldn't wait to see what Zach would appear in next.

It turned out to be a long wait. For the next couple of years, Zach appeared mostly in tv movies, which I never watched or even read about. His next big-screen role was Waxwork (1988), about small town high school students terrorizd by living waxwork monsters:  a werewolf, Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, and so on. Zach's character gets the girl again, and all of his other friends die.  Rather a bummer.  

And the intensity of his gorgeousness was rather subdued.  Attractive, but not breathtaking.

I guess you needed to be in the summer of 1984.

I didn't bother with the sequels, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and Waxwork 2: Lost in Time (1992), but All Tied Up (1993) was a must-rent because of the iconic scene where the three women his character has wronged tie him to the bed and rip his shirt off.

No definition at all, but, and he's got a definite bulge, obvious partially aroused.  And he's tied up.

But after all these years, still no gay characters or gay subtexts? Did he even talk to another man on screen?

I never went out of my way to see a Zach Galligan project again. Occasionally a hot guy would appear, on Melrose Place or Star Trek: Voyager, and I would check the credits and see the name "Zach Galligan"  and be pleasantly surprised.

No gay characters anywhere in his works, but in 2002 he starred on stage in Judy!, as a homophobic cop who goes undercover as a drag queen impersonating Judy Garland.

There were Judy Garland impersonators in 2002? But she died in 1969.

Today Zach states that he's constantly recognized for Gremlins.  Every day someone asks him about it.

I guess a lot of people remember the summer of 1984.

Mackenzie Astin: Bisexual-Inclusive

In 2011, Mackenzie Astin starred in Caught at the Zephyr Theater in Los Angeles.  He played a gay man blissfully planning a wedding with his partner (Will Beinbrink), when suddenly his Bible-thumping sister arrives for some screeching.

I hadn't heard much about Mackenzie, son of John Astin and Patty Duke, younger brother of Sean Astin, since the 1980s.  His biggest claim to fame then was a starring role on The Facts of Life (1985-88), about four girls in a private boarding school.

By the time he hit the series, the girls had graduated and were working in a boutique, Over Our Heads.  He played Andy Moffett, an orphan adopted by end-of-series lead Beverly (Cloris Leachman).

Teen magazines gave Mackenzie some attention, but not a lot.  Maybe because he wasn't very muscular.  He was soft, pretty, and feminine, a tween version of Kurt from Glee.

During the 1990s, he grew hard, hairy, and rather gaunt, as he tried to distance himself from his gay-coded teen years with macho hetero-roles: Iron Will (1994), about a dogsled competition; the Western Wyatt Earp (1994); Ernest Hemingway's wartime buddy in In Love and War (1996).

But Mackenzie played a lot of gay characters, too. In Stranger Than Fiction (2000), he plays a gay man named Jared who kills someone and asks his straight friends to help him hide the body.  In the short-lived tv series First Years (2001), he played a gay lawyer living in San Francisco.

Out as bisexual, Mackenzie is married to a woman, and a gay ally.

See also: The Patty Duke Show.

Henry Willson: The Man Who Invented Beefcake

During the Cold War of the 1950s, the Clark Gable-Cary Grant- Fernando Lamas model of  masculinity, the suave, sophisticated bon-vivants who sipped champaign at El Crocadero, fell into disfavor.  Movies began to display a new model of "youthful masculinity" featuring regular guys, small-town boys who sipped sodas at maltshops.   They had to be wholesome -- God-fearing, mother-respecting, patriotic -- yet sexual, overbrimming with erotic energy, aware (without stating it) that sometimes things happened in bedrooms.

They had to be stunningly handsome, of course, and muscular -- for the first time ever in the movies, they would rip their shirts off regularly, providing a beefcake spectacle that might draw audiences away from the still-prudish tv.

Walt Disney and his minions scoured the countryside to provide a stable of Adventure Boys for the teen and preteen audience -- James McArthur, Roger Mobley, David Stollery,  Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine, and many others.

For adult beefcake, the go-to guy was talent agent extraordinaire Henry Willson.

 Born in 1911, Willson began his career as a talent scout for the Zeppo Marx Agency, where he signed on future film great Lana Turner.  In 1943, he became the head of the talent division for David O. Selznick's Vanguard Pictures.  He and his assistants prowled gyms, modeling agencies, athletic events, and community theaters looking for prospects. Muscle Beach was a good bet, training ground to dozens of bodybuilder hopefuls drawn in by Earle E. Liederman's chatty columns in Muscle Power.

Since he was gay, Willson tended sign up men who were gay, or bisexual, or at least "gay for pay."   He spruced them up, arranged for acting lessons and gym memberships, and gave them strong, macho, all-American names:

Orton Whipple Hungerford III = Ty Hardin
Robert Mosely = Guy Madison
Francis Durgan = Rory Calhoun
Merle Johnson = Troy Donahue
Roy Harold Scherer = Rock Hudson

They present a straight facade to the world, of course, so Willson conspired with movie magazines and gossip columnists to send them on dates with female stars or link them romantically with in-the-know starlets.  Sometimes he even arranged "Hollywood marriages."  It seems that the "hiding in plain sight" was part of their appeal, adding a salacious twinge, "is he or isn't he"?


In 1953, Willson opened his own agency.  He didn't need to seek out prospects anymore; he was receiving 9,000 letters per week from high school football players and small-town thesbians anxious to make it big.  And some did -- if they were willing to make it on the casting couch first, or at least flirt a bit.  Almost every Hollywood hunk of the new beefcake model got his start as a Willson boy:

Doug McClure
James Darren
Chad Everett
Dack Rambo (left)

John Saxon
Nick Adams
Clint Walker (left)
John Derek
James Gavin

Willson didn't care for bodybuilders, except for Cal Bolder -- they had to find their representation elsewhere. And a few other hunks managed to find work without him.  But even if they weren't discovered by Willson, they often realized that connections are everything, and gay, bi, or straight, they became regulars at his weekly pool parties:

Ed Fury
Farley Granger
Van Williams
Robert Stack

Roddy McDowall
Steve Reeves
Tony Curtis
Aldo Ray
John Bromfield
Gary Conway
Gary Lockwood
Richard Long
Robert Wagner (left)

Disaster hit in 1955, when Willson made a deal with Confidential magazine to keep the rumors off Rock Hudson in exchange for a story about Tab Hunter's arrest at a gay party in 1950 (the actor and agent had a falling out).  The deal fell through, and Willson was effectively outed.  His established clients left -- most denied that they had ever met him -- and it became difficult to sign new clients.

During the 1960s, the fresh-faced, wholesome look became  "square," replaced by shaggy and androgynous,  and Willson's career ended.  Destitute, drinking heavily, forgotten by his former friends, he moved into a rest home for indigent Hollywood stars, and he died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1978.

But he left an amazing legacy, a 1950s world where "gay" was always just beneath the surface.

Lukas Haas: Gay Tragedies and Angst

 L

Lukas Haas has been a Hollywood icon for over 40 years. He starred in some of the classic films of our childhood, like Witness (1985),  Lady in White (1988), The Ryan White Story (1989), and Mars Attacks! (1995).

Although his main focus has been indie doomed-romance-with-women movies, he has played several gay characters, generally of the angst-ridden, tragic-ending sort.

In Johns (1996), he plays a hustler who falls in love with a coworker (David Arquette) who insists that he's not gay.

In Last Days (2005), based on the last days of singer Kurt Cobain, he has a romantic relationship with Scott Patrick Green

In Meth Head (2013), he takes crystal meth and destroys his life, in spite of his partner's attempts to save him.

His friendship with Leonardo DiCaprio and lack of public heterosexual romances have  sparked gay rumors, but Lukas hasn't made any public pro- or anti-gay statements.  

There are beefcake and nude photos on the NSFW site, Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends.