How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [48]
In the sixties and seventies, even kiddie shows seemed gay, although the Liberace Syndrome saved many children and parents from realizing it. One of the local television kiddie-show hosts in Philadelphia, Gene London, used to draw, tell stories, and cry. He later went on to collect Hollywood ball gowns. Frank de Caro wrote a hilarious article in The Advocate, “Witchie Poo Made Me Gay,” talking about how homosexual the Sid and Marty Kroft seventies show H. R. Pufnstuf really was. Even in the “innocent” late eighties, Paul Rubens was able to get away with amazing queeny scenes on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. The homoerotic hunk,Cowboy Curtis, was played by Laurence Fishburne; I remember one funny bit in which Pee-wee mused, “Do you know what big boots mean? Big feet!”
In the sixties, seventies, and even into the eighties, most gay characters or talk-show guests were not “out.” We all knew there was something different about them, especially in the way they bandied words. Game shows were a haven for queers, where wit and verbal skill could make a gay guy quotable at the dinner table.
All in the Game: Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde, and Rip Taylor
Hooray for Charles Nelson Reilly, the pipe-smoking bon vi vant on The Match Game panel. He, along with Paul Lynde, was the only fresh voice in the ubiquitous game shows of the 1970s. And even though they and their audience denied it at the time, both were gay men.
You could always count on Chuck, in his aviator glasses and poufed hair, to liven up the boring questions with “queeny” quips and mordant observations. He was known for his flamboyant ascots and the omnipresent pipe, which in his hands looked very fey, not at all professorial.
Reilly was a Tony Award-winner for his role in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and a denizen of the gay theater world. So what was he doing coming into America’s homes? Entertaining us with wit and sarcasm that can only come from a gay perspective. During the same period, Reilly also starred in a series of enormously popular TV commercials, including the “Bic Banana Pen,” in full banana-phallic regalia. (Supersize the irony, please.)
In 2001, when the gay news magazine The Advocate interviewed Reilly about his career, he recalled a 1970 meeting in which a certain NBC executive told him that there could be “no queers on television.” At the same time, Reilly counted that he had been on the airwaves twenty-nine times in the past month. The same executive was found dead years later, murdered by a male prostitute.
Although Reilly was never exactly “out” in the sixties and seventies, he was definitely the designated homo on The Match Game. Before he filled out his match card, he would often fling it around or flick it with his wrist. He’d make a great show of trying to concentrate while fidgeting in his chair. Reilly often bickered with Brett Somers, a ditzy, drunken-seeming actress who would whine about her life and then taunt Reilly or complain that he was stealing her spotlight. They seemed clever and funny at the time (well, I was eleven years old!), but the Reilly/Somers exchanges seem a bit flat and dated now. One anonymous Internet fan of the game described them as an early Will and Grace, but I wouldn’t go that far. Two typical clunkers from a show in 1977:
Brett: Boy I’m so sleepy. Before the show I took a little nippy-nap.
Charles: Then you had a little nippy-nip!
Brett: Don’t boo me. Please don’t boo me. I’m a woman in my middle years.
Charles: That’ll be the day!
When The Match Game was scheduled into an evening slot, Reilly got bolder and began