American Queer Life: How Culture Saved a Little Gay Boomer Boy: TV

In the late 50s, when television was new and God was in diapers, I loved the original Mickey Mouse Club, my Mickey Mouse beanie, and guitar. I was subjected to a brilliant marketing strategy, but little did Disney know they were also marketing to a little gay boy in rural Colorado who was thrilled with Spin and Marty, a serial that aired infrequently on the Club about best friends at the Triple R Ranch.

As a precocious, 5-year-old tyke, I didn’t know what those “thrills” meant. As a horny teen and then curious collegiate in the mid-70s, those hormonal surges drove me bonkers, also to self discovery. Television stimulated my natural inclination toward men. In my continuing series on culture’s influence on this boomer queer (yours truly), I reflect on the media’s role.

Spin and Marty became a prototype for what I yearned for: friendship and more, the “more” having to do with “things” astir south of my belt buckle. I drooled over George Maharis and Martin Milner in Route 66, American spy Napoleon Solo and his Russian partner Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson as Batman and Robin in the campy 60s series.

Saturday morning movies exposed me to other male duets: Tarzan and his adopted son, Boy; Charlie Chan and his goofy son, Sherlock Holmes and his wifely Watson. There wasn’t anything gay about these relationships; they were partnerships of love and loyalty, adventure, and mentorship that I desired and found missing in life.

Then came Star Trek … and William Shatner … sigh … and the ultimate BFF, Mr. Spock. I didn’t share my lusty visions of the captain and his first officer with my fellow Trekkies. Decades later, I found I’d not been alone. Star Trek’s two stars became the first slash fiction—stories written by fans about romantic and sexual pairings between same-sex fictional characters—as in Spock/Kirk, the slash being the punctuation mark separating the two names. Fifty years later, the internet is the perfect distributor for these x-rated fanzines.

Websites also bring fan-driven intimacy to the cartoon cast of Jonny Quest: pre-teen Jonny, his scientist father Dr. Quest, their bodyguard Race Bannon, and adopted ward Hadji. I admit Dr. Quest and Race make a handsomely drawn, imaginary couple with Race’s uncanny resemblance to Mike Pence adding a contemporary ironic twist, but when I was 11, I envied the quartet who took care of each other and jetted off to exotic exploits.

Related Article: Wilson Cruz Continues the ‘Star Trek’ Legacy of Queer, Diverse Representation

Sexy cartoon characters were no match for flesh-and-blood cute boys and wild cowboys. The adolescents in family comedies—Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show—competed with the manly men of Westerns—Sugarfoot, Maverick, Colt 45, The Virginian, Rawhide, The Rifleman—for my reveries. Pretty blonds Richard Chamberlain (Dr. Kildare) and Troy Donahue (Surfside 6) competed with swarthy and dark James Drury (Lawman) and Carl Betz (Judd for the Defense). Gardner McKay in Adventures in Paradise, the smoking-hot, pipe-smoking captain of a sailboat in the South Pacific, brought lusty romance to the high seas of my imagination.

Two other seafaring series from the 60s were not in the least homoerotic: McHale’s Navy and Gilligan’s Island (well, the Professor was kind of handsome). Through insipid plots, these bands of misfits had each other’s backs, which is what I was seeking: my own band of misfits. I just didn’t know where to look.

Starving for crumbs of identity, I hungrily absorbed these touchstone programs: That Certain Summer (1972), a positive portrayal of a committed, gay relationship; The Naked Civil Servant (1975), the biographical film based on Quentin Crisp’s life; Dynasty (80s), a soap set in Denver. In 1985 An Early Frost depicted the first realistic story about AIDS, and The Rape of Richard Beck confronted the sexual assault with a unique victim, a misogynistic detective. Yes, squeamish territories, but at least I saw portrayals of gay characters, courageous and humorous.

For a comprehensive list of the hundreds of television programs with LGBTQ characters and plots, check Wikipedia. They’re broken down by decade and gender, including nonbinary and pansexual characters. My tribe had been represented much more than I was aware of.

I also didn’t know that some of the actors had gay experiences. Before George Maharis starred in Route 66, he posed nude in the 50s, later for Playgirl magazine, and also was arrested for lewd behavior in men’s restrooms. Edd Byrnes—Kookie of 77 Sunset Strip, with its finger-snapping theme song—would begin his career as a male prostitute before growing a sky-high pompadour and scoring a hit with “Kookie, Kookie Lend Me Your Comb.”

Tommy Kirk, Disney star of The Hardy Boys, and Mousketeer Dennis Day, were gay; the careers of both nosedived as a result. The world may have laughed at John Inman, the nelly mama’s boy from Are You Being Served, but he left about 3.5 million dollars to his civil partner of 35 years, Ron Lynch.

I couldn’t help that Wally Cleaver or Sugarfoot Brewster or Mr. Donna Reed stirred my aching, adolescent loins. Except for the few touchstone shows I mentioned, until the 90s, television only provided fodder for fantasy. I was a willing voyeur, and the beauty was delightful, but you can’t hug a TV set. I would learn what it meant to be a gay man from other arts. And from other men, what it meant to be a man, period.